As he was turning to leave, he paused again, peering at something beyond my shoulder. “Chuck Close,” he said, gesturing toward the print. “Nice. Clearly, Hayes got the better setup.”
He’d said it casually, but instinct told me there was more there.
Hayes, Desmond, and I whiled away a few hours touring East Hampton and Amagansett. On the way back to the house, we made a detour to a pharmacy and Desmond ran inside, leaving us in the air-conditioned car with the engine running.
“We’re almost out of condoms,” Hayes stated, matter-of-factly.
“We are?” I could have sworn he’d opened a box yesterday. Of how many? Twelve? It took me a moment to process. “You sent Desmond in there to buy us condoms?”
He nodded from the front seat of the SUV. “I wasn’t going to sendyou, and it’s not like I can be seen casually buying condoms in the Hamptons on a Saturday afternoon.”
“He’s yourbodyguard, Hayes.”
“Well, it is guarding a part of my body.” He smiled. “I was trying to be responsible.”
“Yes, I appreciate that. It’s just… Your life is so bizarre.”
An understatement. We’d spent most of the day in the car, thwarting any would-be photographers. I had not protested.
“Not that we really need them…” he said.
I pitched forward on the seat in order to see his face. “What do you mean, ‘not that we really need them’?”
Hayes was quiet for a moment and then he turned back to me. “I know you’re on the Pill, Solène.”
This threw me. How he knew, what it meant, what he might have been insinuating. “You went through my stuff?”
“I’ve racked up quite a few hours in hotel rooms with you these past couple of months. I might have seen it in your wash bag.”
“Mighthave?”
He leaned back through the gap between the seats. “Might have.”
“I’m not having sex with you without a condom, Hayes.”
“Have I asked you to?”
“I don’t know what you do when you’re not with me.”
“Why is it you think I’m doing something?”
“Because you haven’t convinced me that you’re not.”
He paused, tugging at his lower lip. I couldn’t see his eyes through his sunglasses. “They test us regularly, you know.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“Management. They have to do it for insurance purposes.”
“Well, good for them. They can sleep with you, then.”
He laughed. “All right, you’ve made your point.”
I scooted back in the seat then. The elephant in the room. The idea that he was randomly hooking up with other people. That I had tacitly accepted it. I had thought the less I knew, the better. But maybe not.
“Fuck.”
I thought I said it under my breath, but he heard.
