He smiled. “Sometimes…”
And so, Monday afternoon, when I was still reeling about Daniel and Eva’s news, and when Isabelle was still punishing me with monosyllabic exchanges, Hayes showed up at the house. I had not given Isabelle warning. Because I did not want her to prepare or overthink it. I just wanted her tobe. She was sitting on one of thelounges in the backyard, doing her homework, a blanket wrapped around her narrow shoulders.
“Izz, someone’s here to see you.”
She glanced up, and her expression when Hayes stepped out revealed what to me seemed the full extent of everything a thirteen-year-old girl could feel. Love and betrayal and heartbreak and expectation and disappointment and fury and lust and hurt. And the fact that it all fell on his shoulders worried me. But if he was daunted by it, it did not show.
“Hi, Isabelle,” he said, sitting beside her on the lounge. His voice raspy, comforting, familiar.
She smiled at him, faint. And then she started to cry.
Hayes, apparently, was used to girls crying around him. Girls crying because of him. I watched as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and tucked her head into his neck, and repeated, over and over, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” while stroking her hair. And it was like magic. Everything she would not allow me to do for her, she accepted willingly from him. And he sat like that, still with her, for a very long time.
“You all right?” he said eventually.
She nodded. “You came all the way here to see me?”
“I heard you were upset.”
Isabelle looked over to where I was standing by the sliding doors. She started to say something and then stopped. “You guys were really good last night,” she mustered instead.
“Thank you. Did you see me almost trip? That was classy.” He was quiet for a moment and then: “So… this is weird, right? I know. It’s kind of weird for me, too.”
“Except you don’t have all my albums, and pictures and stuff. You never stayed up late watching my videos and planning how you were going to marry me and my friends. So no, it’s not weird for you in the same way.”
“All right.” He smiled at her. “Point taken.” And then, after a very long pause: “I really like your mum.”
Isabelle did not speak. She was avoiding eye contact, fingering her friendship bracelet, the lone survivor from summer camp. The others had all unraveled.
“I’m sorry that upsets you, but it kind of justhappened. And sometimes you can’t plan these things.”
He allowed her to sit with that for a bit. Not forcing the issue. He was so good at this. And in that moment I recalled our conversation in the bar of the George V.I’m surprisingly well-adjusted, he’d said.
“But look, it’s just me, right? And I’m here. And I’m kind of in your mum’s life. Which means I’m kind of in your life. For the time being, anyway. And I’d really like for us to be friends.”
I could sense my eyes welling.
“I know right now you feel like shit…”
Isabelle smirked.
“Sorry,” Hayes apologized, “like crap. But when you’re feeling better, if you’re up for it, we have a movie coming out next month and they’re premiering it in New York, and I would really love for you to come. And maybe you can bring a friend or two. But you have to promise me you won’t cry. No crying on the red carpet. Can you do that?”
She giggled, hiding her braces with her hand. I hadn’t seen her smile in eight days.
“You also have to promise you’re going to be nice to your mum. Because she never wanted to hurt you, and it’s killing her that you’re so sad. All right? Can you promise me that?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said. “What are you working on?”
“Math.”
“Maths? Ech. I sucked at maths.”
She laughed at that.
“I am sorry that you are being subjected to that… torture. I’m very sorry.” He reached into his pocket. “Fancy a stick of gum?” He offered it to her, and while she was opening the wrapper, he glanced over his shoulder at me and stuck out his tongue. Still my Hayes.
