“Lunch here would be divine.”
Hayes wasted no time calling up our order, and then joined me at the railing, drinking in the view, the smell of spring, the sun. There was something so comfortable about being near him in that space. Bumping up against his tall frame. His closeness, now familiar.
“What would happen if we blew off the rest of the day and spent it together?”
“Your management would not be happy. And my partner, less so.”
“But think of the fun we could have.” His eyes lit up. They’d gone from green to blue in the sun. Mutable, like water. “Getting into trouble. Running amok in New York…”
“It’s not like we could leave. You’re like…Rapunzelup here. Locked away in your castle… with all yourhair… Hayes Campbell, the new-millennium Rapunzel.”
“Rapunzel of the Four Seasons…” he said.
We laughed.
For a moment, he held my gaze and I felt that distinct rush. The realization that this attraction had ceased to be just physical. That somewhere I’d crossed over. That I liked him.
“When I was ten, I came here for the first time with my parents. We stayed in a hotel in Times Square and we visited the Statue of Liberty and did all these touristy things. We went to see Ground Zero and they were just starting to build again…”
I realized that this, what he was talking about, was only ten years ago. That I was living in Los Angeles by then, still somewhat happily married, and with a two-year-old. Our references were so far off. When the Towers came down, Hayes would have been in the equivalent of the third grade.
“There was this one afternoon,” he continued, “that we spent up in Central Park. Just walking around. And there was so much going on. These huge Latin families picnicking and playing music. People roller-skating. Blokes playing football… soccer. It was so alive and full of energy andhappy. And I remember feeling it was wicked that for one afternoon I was a part of that.
“I was talking to Rory this morning, and I was telling him how brilliant it was to lose a day walking in Central Park because he’s never been. He’d never been here before the group. But then I realized,we can’t do that. I can’t do that anymore. He may never have the opportunity to do that. Which is weird, yeah? It’s a trade-off…” He was quiet for a moment, looking out toward the greenery. His stunning profile. His beautiful bones.
He turned in my direction suddenly, pressing his back up against the railing. “I’m rambling, aren’t I? Sorry. I just get going sometimes and—”
Hayes’s lips were still moving when I kissed them. This warm, wide, inviting pool that beckoned. I could not resist the bait. His youth, his beauty. And everything, everything about the moment, was wonderful.
“Oh-kay,” he said when he finally allowed me to pull away. “I didn’t seethatcoming.”
“Sorry. I just… Your mouth.”
“Really?” He smiled. “It wasn’t the hair?”
I began to laugh.
His large hands circled my waist, drawing me into him. “It wasn’t me waxing nostalgic about my childhood holidays? Because this one time we were in Majorca…”
“Shut up, Hayes.”
“You know this means I win, right? Because I held out longer.”
“I didn’t know it was a competition.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t know itwasn’t.”
“That’s because you’re twenty.”
“Yes, well… You seem to like that.” He stopped talking andleaned in to kiss me again. Deliberate, intense. God, I had missed this. This exploration of someone new.
Eventually, he withdrew, a grin plastered across his exquisite face. “Soooo, lunch?”
Our meal passed all too quickly. Time bending and behaving in unpredictable ways. And him, sucking me in.
“Where’d you spend your childhood holidays? France?”
“Mostly.” I was watching his finger trace the lip of his glass. He had barely touched his sandwich. “Christmas in Paris with my dad’s mom. And summers in the South with my mother’s family.”
