“I love you,” I said.
“I love you, too. Get some sleep. I’ll call you when we get to Lima.”
In the morning, when I picked up Isabelle from Rose’s, she was not her usual chipper self. I expected tales of horror movies and late-night girl talk, but on the car ride home, she was solemn. It was becoming more and more customary.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. We were winding west on Sunset, approaching the 405. Isabelle was gazing out the passenger window, her face blank.
For a while she did not speak, and then, without diverting her attention, she said, “I don’t like people talking about you.”
“Are people talking about me?”
She nodded, quiet.
“Are yourfriendstalking about me?”
She didn’t answer.
“I’m okay with people talking about me, Izz. People talk. That’s what they do. And we live in a world, a city, obsessed with celebrity… and people talk. And much of what they say is not true. So we just ignore it, okay? I don’t care what they say, because I know who I am.Youknow who I am. And we don’t let them define who we are for us.”
I caught her out of the side of my eye, wiping a tear that had fallen on her cheek, her gaze still fixed out the window.
“Hey.” I reached for her, our fingers interlocking. “I’m okay. We’re okay. We’re going to be okay.”
If I said it enough, perhaps I would actually believe it.
She spent the afternoon in her bedroom reading. And the few times I checked on her she seemed so melancholy it hurt my heart. But I did not press her, because talking about it seemed only to upset her more. So I left her alone.
And then I went against Hayes’s advice and all the rules I’d laid down for my daughter and myself and I got online and searched my own name. Because I wanted to know. What I was up against,what they were saying, what others were consuming without my knowledge. I wanted to know the worst of it.
There was much to behold. Tabloid gossip and myriad blog posts and speculation. How we had gotten together, how long it had been going on, how serious it was, how many years there were between us.Daily Mailand Perez Hilton and TMZ. Fake Twitter and Instagram accounts with variations of my name spewing lies and filth. Fan-run websites and Tumblr pages with cruel memes. The one that would stay with me longest was “Solène Marchand: Mother, Fucker.” And photos. Far beyond the boat excursion in Anguilla and shots of us leaving the Edison Ballroom, we’d been caught a dozen-odd times. Outside of the Ace Hotel, the SLS, LAX, Bestia, Whole Foods, Nobu—places I did not even recall seeing photographers. And it had been going on for months. There I was: boarding the boat in Saint-Tropez, exiting the Chateau Marmont with him in my car, leaving the London, standing in the taxi line outside of the Grand Palais, waiting by the valet in Miami, returning from my run in Central Park. All those moments when I assumed I was still anonymous, invisible—captured.
And suffice it to say, the things they said—the fans especially—were not kind. Biting, caustic, insulting, offensive. Sexist, ageist, awful. I had to wonder which of these things Isabelle’s friends were repeating to her. And how long she could attempt to ignore it. Because, I gathered, she could only internalize it for so long before it destroyed her.
And I realized then that part of the problem with Hayes’s “no comments on his personal life” policy was that he would not defend my virtue. He had the luxury of living in his cocoon because the fandom would always protect him. They worshipped him. They adored him. There is no telling what they would do for him. And in the most extreme cases, I feared what that meant for me, and my family.
I flew down to Buenos Aires the following Sunday to meet up with the band. In my absence, they’d performed in Peru, Chile, andParaguay, with sightseeing detours to Machu Picchu and Chile’s Lake District. Hayes had been enthusiastic at the beginning, but his excitement had started to wane.
“It’s a little stifling here,” he’d said via phone, late Saturday night from Paraguay. “It’s been nearly impossible for us to get out because the crowds have been so deep. We go straight from the airport to the hotel and from the hotel to the venue and then back, and all the things that I’d hoped to see I’m not seeing. In Santiago, there were about seven hundred fans outside of the hotel and they refused to disperse. The other night they sang through all three of our albums, beginning to end. With Chilean accents. It was quite charming. But loud. And I got no sleep.”
“Métro,boulot,dodo,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a French saying. You get up, you go to work, you go home, you go to sleep. It’s kind of what the rest of the world does. Not what you signed up for, huh?”
He laughed at that. “I guess not, no.”
By the time I reached the Four Seasons in Buenos Aires, it was almost eleven-thirty on Monday morning and the guys had already departed for their sound check. It was just as well, because I relished the opportunity to take a much-needed shower and crawl into our bed and sleep.
I awoke some hours later to Hayes’s body sliding up against mine, his arm wrapping around my waist, drawing me into his warmth. Like being in a womb. His breath soft at the back of my neck.
“You came back to me,” his lips buzzed my ear.
“Of course I did. Liam.”
He laughed.
“Wait. Whose room is this?”
