His eyes grew wide. “You’re naughty. Come here.” He pulled me into him, my head on his shoulder, legs over his lap. “Wherever did I find you?”
“Vegas.” I smiled. “So is there nothing in your contract that addresses vacation time?”
“Vacation time. What a quaint idea. Most groups get months of downtime with the natural ebb and flow of putting out an album and supporting it, touring, and then the time it takes to gear up to do another one. We just don’t have that luxury.”
“So you’re just beholden to the record company?”
“We’re beholden to our management first, and they run a very tight ship.” His hand was in my hair, comfortable. “Oh, Graham says hello, by the way.”
“Who’s Graham?”
“Graham, with our management company. He was at lunch today. You met him in New York.”
It clicked then, the nattily dressed laptop fellow from the Four Seasons. The one who could not have been more dismissive. I’m sure he was surprised to find me still in the picture.
“Speaking of lunch…” Hayes raised his head up from the couch. “Daniel!”
“Daniel. Yes. So that’s Daniel.”
“Wow. Solunchwith Daniel?” There was more than a hint of suspicion.
I laughed at that: the idea that I would entertain anything with my ex-husband ever again. “Trust me, it was just lunch.”
“I’ve seen your ‘just lunch.’ I’ve been on the receiving end of your ‘just lunch.’” He smiled. “It’s not always ‘just lunch.’”
“With Daniel, it’s just lunch,” I said definitively. “I’m going up for Parents’ Weekend at Isabelle’s camp at the end of the month and he wanted to pass on a couple of gifts for her birthday.”
He let that sit there for a moment, and then, satisfied: “HowisIsabelle?”
“She’s fine.”
“What did she say when you told her about us?” His hand was on my knee, beneath the hem of my linen skirt. It had started.
“I didn’t…”
“You haven’t told her?” His eyes widened, huge blue-green pools. “What are you waiting for?”
“The right time. I was dropping her off in the wilderness for seven weeks. I didn’t think it was appropriate to lay that at her feet before heading out the gate. ‘By the way, I’m fucking one of the guys from your favorite band. Have a great summer!’”
He was quiet for a minute, thoughtful. “‘Fucking’? Is that what we’re doing?”
I paused. “Well, not right this moment. But I’m guessing soon, yeah.”
He nodded his head, slow. “And what about the in-between times? When we’re not having sex and we’re just enjoying each other’s company. Like now. What do you call that?”
It felt like a test. “Friendship?”
“Friendship,” he repeated. “So we’re just friends?”
“I don’t know. That depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“On how many friends you have…”
He nodded again, weighing his response. “I have a lot of friends,” he said slowly. “Most of them I’m not fucking.”
I didn’t say anything.
