“What was a first?”
“He just called me Mr. Marchand.”
I started to laugh. “You didn’t correct him? You didn’t say, ‘It’s Mr. Doo to you’?”
He smiled, pulling me into him, his hands and nose still icy. His cheeks, red. “No, I quite liked it. ‘Mr. Marchand.’ It’srather sophisticated.” The last bit he stressed with an upper-crust accent, mocking his own people, as it were.
“Think I’ll try it out for a few days, see if I like it enough to make it a permanent thing. You know, in case we get married.” He kissed me. “I’m going to go warm up in the shower. Don’t hesitate to join me.”
I watched him make his way back into the bedroom. His broad shoulders in flannel, his jeans clinging to his ass. How the fuck had I gotten so lucky? How, in this great world, had we found each other? And how, I wondered, when the time came, was I going to let him go?
I made my way eventually to the master bath. Hayes was in the steam shower. I could smell his soap, his grapefruit body wash. He traveled with his own toiletries because he said he spent so much time in hotels, it was his way of holding on to his identity. Of remembering who he was.
He turned when I opened the glass door, his eyes brightening. I’d removed everything. “Hiiii.”
“Hi yourself.” I stood there, drinking him in. All of him.
And feeling everything.
And then I said it. “I love you.”
Hayes froze, a confused look on his face, water streaming down his long torso. “Are you saying that because I’m naked?”
“No.”
“Are you saying that because it’s my birthday?”
“I’m saying it because I love you.”
He was quiet, weighing the moment. And then he smiled, wide. “What took you so long?”
I laughed. “I was just making sure it was you, and not the idea of you.”
“Come here,” he said, pulling me under the stream of water. His hands pushing my hair from my face, his mouth on mine, his penis stirring against my groin. “Would you mind saying that again so I know I didn’t imagine it?”
“I love you.”
“Yeah.” He smiled, all dimples. “That’s what I thought you said.”
On Saturday morning, Hayes awoke early to go to the gym before we hit the slopes, his body still on Greenwich Mean Time. I watched him dress from the comfort of the bed: his shorts, his girlish headband holding his hair off his pretty face, his #BlackLivesMatter T-shirt.
“Hayes Campbell, political activist?”
He smiled, grabbing his headphones from the dresser. It was stilldark out. “Hayes Campbell, concerned citizen of the world. Your country, as much as I adore it, can be a bit fucked up when it comes to race…”
“You don’t say?”
“I do. That’s one of the things I love about you: that you’re giving these artists a voice.
“I read an interesting piece inThe New York Timesthis week on Kehinde Wiley—is that how you pronounce it? And he’s kind offascinating. But it just made me proud of you. And I know I gave you a hard time about theInvisibleinstallation, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot since our conversation in New York—about how we value some art more than others—and really, I think what you do is amazing.”
I lay there staring at him. Every time he opened his mouth, I liked him more. It had taken Daniel much longer to not view my work as some kind of self-indulgent charity project. In many ways, I’m sure he still did.
Hayes made his way over to me then, leaned in, kissed me. “I love this mouth. I’ll be back in a bit.”
“Oliver said something interesting the other night…”
“Did he?” He tensed.
