The last bit was like twisting the knife.
“Bisous,” she said.
“Bisous.”
“Everything okay?” Hayes asked when I sat beside him on the bed.
“Yeah.”
“Girl stuff?”
I smiled, nodding. “She woulddieif she knew you knew.”
“I won’t tell her then.” He reached up to stroke my hair, his movements slow, lethargic.
“Your friends are back.”
“Yeah. The match is starting soon.”
“I don’t think this is going to happen right now,” I laughed, awkward, my arms still across my breasts. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” He smiled. “It couldn’t be avoided. I’m sorry for Isabelle that you weren’t there.”
I felt my chest tighten then, and for a second I thought I might cry. “I’m sorry, too.”
“Come here.” He pulled me onto him. “Come lie down with me for five minutes. Before the madness…”
“The madness?”
He nodded. “There’s always madness.”
Hayes was right. There was a certain level of madness. Simon and Liam wereloud, crazy. They’d returned from their jet-ski outing with two girls. Apiece. I wasn’t certain whether they’d just met them or they were prior acquaintances. I did not want to ask. But I had this moment of “What the fuck am I doing here?” followed by “Where are these girls’ mothers?” And I felt an intense need to chaperone them all.
Much later, when I had the gumption to ask Hayes if it was typical of his bandmates to entertain two women at a time, he laughed, amused. “No. Usually they’re interested in one and the other is a friend or sister who tags along for moral support. A wing woman, if you will. Except for in extreme cases… like Rory. Or… Ibiza.”
For those who cared, the Netherlands v. Chile game was a nail-biter. For me, it was an opportunity to down rosé and oysters on the terrace while the others hooted and hollered and yelled indecipherable Britishisms in the salon.
When the match was over and Netherlands had triumphed, the gang descended on the lobster spread and then, after, engaged in an impromptu soccer game and frolicking on the lawn.
“Do you have everything you need? Are you all right?” Hayes insisted on checking in every ten minutes or so. He’d swept his hair back with a headband and changed into a jersey and shorts to play, and there was something so boyish about him that it almost felt wrong. Almost.
“I’m fine. Watching you and your friends have fun.”
“All right.” He kissed me, the sweet smell of sweat on his skin. “Let me know when you stop being fine, all right?”
At some point in the evening, Rory headed up to the terrace with the French sister wives and a guitar and began serenading them. By the time he launched into a startlingly good rendition of “Hotel California,” the lot of us had joined him, Simon and Liam chiming in with some impressive harmonies. I felt like I was in college all over again. Except these guys actually got paid to do this. I drank in the moment: Cap d’Antibes on a balmy June night. Close to ten and the sky a pale orchid, the immense stretch of green, the smell of the sea, the wine, and “a lot of pretty, pretty boys…”
I chose not to stay for the second match. Hayes insisted on driving me back to my hotel but did not press to come upstairs when I pled exhaustion.
“Come with me to Saint-Tropez tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll have lunch.” We were sitting in his Bentley Continental cabriolet, a rental, in a parking space on the Croisette, a few doors down from the Hôtel Martinez. Stalling. “It’s just going to be a handful of us on the boat. Much less madness.”
“I don’t mind the madness.”
He smiled, reaching out to finger my hair. “I do. You were stellar. We’re a lot to take on, I know. I promise tomorrow will be different.”
“Did I say I didn’t have a good time? If I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t be here.”
“I didn’t really give you a choice,” he laughed.
