“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
Desmond stepped out of the pharmacy just then and started toward the car. The stocky, tattooed ginger fellow in head-to-toe black. Desmond stood out in the Hamptons.
“Can we discuss this later?” Hayes asked.
I did not respond. Later we would have sex again and again and again, and he would manage to make me forget that at this moment I was angry.
By midafternoon we were out by the pool drinking sangria in the heat. The D’Amatos’ cook had mixed a few more pitchers at our request, and Hayes, Ol, and I plowed through them with ease, while Desmond and Fergus played video games inside and Charlotte napped.
“I think I could be happy with a house in the Hamptons,” Oliver said at one point. We were all three sitting in the spa, and the millennials were discussing multimillion-dollar real estate like middle-aged men in Brentwood.
“You’d never get to use it. I’m thinking London, New York, Barbados, Los Angeles,” Hayes said. His pronunciation ofAngeleesalways made me smile.
“I might just move in here with Dominic andMrs. D’Amato,” Oliver teased. “I like what she’s done with the place. Solène, did you see the Hirst in the dining room?”
“I did.”
Hayes’s eyes traveled back and forth between the two of us. “How did you know that?”
“Because my mother collects art, you idiot. What does your mother collect? Right, ponies.”
“Fuck you, HK,” Hayes laughed, splashing Oliver on the far side of the spa.
“Hayes Philip Campbell is not the culture vulture he makes himself out to be.”
“Solène”—Hayes tightened his grip around my waist—“do I make myself out to be a culture vulture? Or do I mostly just sit in awe when you talk about art?”
“You mostly just sit in awe.”
“Thank you.” He beamed before turning to Oliver and sticking out his tongue. Lest I forget I was dating someone half my age.
“What are you? Twelve?”
“Sometimes…”
“All right,” I laughed, “I’m getting more sangria.”
I was already out of the spa and wrapped in my towel when he called out to me. “And see if they have any more crisps, please.”
“Yes, Your Highness. Oliver? Anything?”
“I’ll help.”
Oliver followed me up to the house, snatching a towel and wrapping it around his narrow hips en route.
“I didn’t know your mother collected art,” I said as we headed beneath the loggia and through a set of French doors leading to the kitchen.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
I stopped then, turning to look at him. Golden hair wet and swept back off his brow, hazel eyes piercing, serious mouth. He was beautiful, in a certain unattainable way.
“I suppose that’s true.”
He slipped into the pantry to find a bag of “crisps” then while I headed across the kitchen to one of the two Sub-Zeros on the far wall.
I was grabbing the pitcher of sangria from the refrigerator when I felt it: a cool fingertip tracing the span of my back, from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. And then it was gone. For a moment I could not move, and when I finally turned around he was on the far side of the room, bag of chips in hand, heading out.
