It was sublime, my dress. Lanvin. Midnight blue silk, draped, gathered, fitted, hitting me at the knee.
“Red lipstick?”
“I thought I would switch it up.”
“It just makes me want to do things to your mouth,” he said.
“As opposed to all the other times when you don’t?”
He laughed, withdrawing. “Hello, ladies!”
I looked on as he greeted Amara and the girls and introduced us to those in his booth: friends of his parents, a couple of reps from TAG Heuer, a publicist. Ever the host, he busied himself making certain we were all taken care of, pouring me and Amara flutes of champagne and the girls cranberry juice, even though he was drinking water.
“Fucking Graham,” he muttered to me, “he’s been on me and Liam like a hawk. Oh, girls.” He turned to Isabelle and Georgia. “Have you met Lucy Balfour? She’s Liam’s little sister. She’s thirteen. She flew all the way from London with her mum and dad and she’s miserable because she says she has no one here her age to hang out with. And when I pointed out that there were quite a few thirteen-year-old girls here, she complained that they were all ‘crazed, immature fans.’ And then I said, ‘Well, you haven’t met my friends Isabelle and Georgia, because they are certainly not that.’”
My girls were beaming. So very sweet in their dresses.
“Come, let us find Lucy!”
“Where the hell did you find him?” Amara asked. We had stepped away from the booth and were navigating a path toward the main floor. “He is really quite perfect.”
“I know,” I said. “He is.”
“Jesus. How did you do it? I’m out here on Tinder, and I’m miserable…”
I nodded, empathetic. Amara was a few years older than me and had never been married. She had never wanted kids. But she had also never wanted to be alone.
“And with all these online dating services,” she continued, “so much comes down to your photos, your physical appearance, your face. Tinder is purely your face. It’s people swiping left and right in reaction to your face. And my face is changing. And people react to it differently. Men react to it differently. I used to be a hot young blonde, and I’m not anymore. Although I still think of myself that way on the inside,” she laughed.
“I think of you that way.” I smiled. It seemed to me that all my friends were going through this. The self-definition crisis.
“But I’m not. On the outside anyway. And it’s like I have this shifting identity. I’m not who I used to be. And ten years from now I might be somebody else altogether. Even if I never become someone’s mom or change my career or move to Idaho. My identity is different because the world responds to my physical appearance differently. And their response inadvertently changes how I see myself. And that’s kind of… crazy.”
“It is,” I said. “But we redefine ourselves. We evolve. That’s what people do.”
“But I want to evolve becauseIevolve. I don’t want other people to choose when that happens for me.”
She had a point. And I had to wonder if I was evolving. Or if this thing with Hayes was just one giant step back. Never mind how people were viewing it.
The DJ was playing Justin Timberlake, king of the boy band graduates. Justin, who had somehow settled down and was about to become a father. Clearly, he’d evolved.
“I think aging is hard for everyone.” Amara swiped a red bliss potato with crème fraîche and caviar off a passing tray. “But it’s definitely harder for women. And I think even more so for beautifulwomen. Because if so much of your identity and your value is tied up in your looks and how the world responds to your physical appearance, what do you do when that changes? How do you see yourself then? Who do you become?”
I paused, attempting to process all of it. Hayes was on the screen. His features blown up to ridiculous proportions, and the symmetry still, like art. His beauty clearly defining him. “I think I’m going to need more to drink.”
She laughed, popping the potato in her mouth. “Don’t worry. You have a couple more years left. Things don’t really start falling apart until forty-two.”
We spotted each other at the same time. He was engaged in conversation with two fetching twenty-somethings who were clearly smitten. But he waved and I inclined my head, and then he dismissed them before making his way over.
Oliver.
“This one is so fucking cute,” Amara said under her breath as he approached.
“Let it go. He’s trouble. But he does know his art.”
“Murakami.” She smiled. “You can just look at him and be happy.”
She’d said it casually, a throwback to an earlier conversation. But something about it resonated. Finding joy in art.
