I stood there, shaking. Not knowing quite how to react. Because it was so subtle he could have easily denied it. So faint, I could have imagined it. But I hadn’t, and there was no mistaking his intention.
I returned to the pool eventually and dropped off the pitcher before making some pathetic excuse about needing a break from the sun and retiring to our room. He and Hayes had been laughing about something, and I could not even bring myself to look at them.
I felt sick.
Within half an hour Hayes appeared at the bedroom door. “Hey, what are you doing in here?”
“Reading,” I said, barely looking up.
“You all right? I missed you.” He planted himself at the foot of the bed.
“I just wanted to be alone for a little bit.”
“You sure everything’s all right? ’Cause I can’t really leave you alone,” he said, wrapping his hands around my feet. “I mean that kind of defeats the purpose of you being here.” He lowered his head then, kissing my ankles, my shins, my knees.
“I can’t have half an hour to myself?”
He shook his head, forced my knees open. “Nope. What are you reading?”
I held up the book.Adé: A Love Storyby Rebecca Walker.
“A love story,” he said, planting kisses on the inside of my thigh. “Is it any good?”
“Yes.”
“Very good?”
“Very good.”
“Is it as good as ours?”
I laughed at that. He had my attention. “Is ours a love story?”
“I don’t know. Is it?” He took the book from my hands then and placed it on the night table, before peeling off the bottom of my bikini.
“What are you doing, Hayes?”
He smiled. “I brought my mouth.”
The thought occurred that it might not be the most opportune time to mention Oliver’s transgression.
In truth I did not know how or what exactly I would say to Hayes about what had happened. Because their relationship was already so peculiar and complicated and because what Oliver had done was relatively benign and because I did not want to be stuck in the same house with the two of them if and when things were to blow up, I kept it to myself. I managed not to be alone with him for the remainder of the weekend. And Oliver went back to being his occasionally charming, occasionally disdainful, amusing, aristocratic self. And all was well, on the surface.
On Sunday, Hayes and I took a long bike ride before having lunch in Sag Harbor and then returning for a swim. The others were elsewhere, and we relished the solitude.
“How is it I don’t tire of you?” he asked. We were drying in the sun, our lounge chairs drawn in beside each other, cozy.
I laughed at that. “Do you tire of people easily?”
He nodded, his fingertips tracing over my back. I’d untied the straps of my swimsuit to avoid tan lines but taken care to shade my face with a large hat, and he’d managed to wedge his face in next to mine beneath it.
“But not you,” he said, soft, his lips against my temple. “I never tire of you.”
“And yet…”
“And yet?”
I said nothing.
