“He’s not theleastgay.”
“There’s aleastgay? Who’s the least gay?”
“Rory,” they said in unison.
“Okay, I can’t deal with this right now. I’m going to have a shower and think about it and then I’ll let you know. But don’t get your hopes up. And take off that makeup. No one is going anywhere with makeup.”
“Okay,” Isabelle said. “But we’re supposed to meet him in the lobby at eleven-fifteen. So could you kind of shower fast?”
I was trying to remember everything I knew about Simon. Whether he’d struck me as a potential rapist, child molester, predator. But the only image I had of him was as a jocular blond who liked age-appropriate models. Regardless, I texted Hayes.
Simon invited the girls on an outing to the Apple Store. Please advise.
Totally safe.
Really?
Really.
Also, did you know there was a LEAST gay guy in your band?
Lol.
Rory.
Great. I want to ask where you fall on that list, but maybe I don’t really want to know…
?????
You haven’t been complaining.
Stop getting ur intel from 13 yr olds.
By ten after eleven we’d all congregated in the sky lobby, with its sweeping view of Columbus Circle, the park, midtown. The girls were near jumping out of their skin, and at the same time trying to keep their cool. And I had still not made up my mind.
“Please, Mom.”
“Do you not trust me?” Simon smiled, all broad shoulders, cleft chin, and blond chiseled perfection. Did they just make them like this in England? How was it they all found one another? “Your girlfriend doesn’t trust me, Campbell.”
His candor threw me. I was not yet in the habit of referring to myself as Hayes’s “girlfriend,” especially in front of Isabelle.
“I made a promise to Georgia’s mom,” I said.
This was true. Earlier in the week, when I’d swung by Georgia’s house to pick up her bags, her mother, Leah, had asked about Hayes. I told her the truth. She high-fived me, and I laughed, but vowed to keep her daughter under lock and key.
“She’ll be fine,” Simon said. “Trevor will be with us the entire time.”
I looked over to see Trevor standing watch near the elevatorbank. Tall, all-powerful Krav Maga Trevor. Ready to take on the tsunami of fans below.
There were a group of girls congregating in the sunken lounge not far from us. Fans who’d somehow figured out the boys’ schedule and booked rooms at the hotel. Security detail was keeping them at bay, but I could see them in my peripheral vision, whispering and giggling and capturing everything on their camera phones. Later, our exchange, inaudible from a distance, would end up on YouTube.
“They’ll be okay, Solène,” Hayes said, reassuringly, his hand at the base of my spine.
But they weren’thiskids.
My eyes moved from Hayes to the girls to Simon and back again.
“Trevor,” Desmond called over to him. He’d been surveying the activity in the lounge, never more than twenty feet from Hayes. “I’ll go with them. You stay here. You all right with that, Solène?”
