“This is home.” It was strange to have him in my space, his large frame filling the threshold. I had a flash of me and Isabelle dragging in our Christmas tree the previous winter and fretting it would not fit through the door.
Hayes made his way through the entry into the great room and its walls of glass. The Palisades, the Pacific, and points south dominating the view. Catalina rising like a purple phoenix at the horizon. “Bloody hell. I am truly speechless. You live here? You wake up to this every day?”
“Every day.”
“How do you manage to leave this paradise?” His eyes were green in the light. Oh, pretty, pretty boy.
“It isn’t easy.”
“No, I don’t imagine it is.” He turned his attention to the interiors,surveying the space: the Finn Juhl coffee table and Herman Miller Tuxedo sofa in the living room, the Arne Vodder table and Hans Wegner credenza in the dining area off to the left. “Is this your midcentury furniture?”
I nodded. “You know midcentury furniture?”
“I know you like it.”
“How do you know that?”
“You told me”—he smiled—“in Las Vegas.”
“You remember that?”
“I remember everything… especially the things you like.”
I might have blushed then.
“Did you paint all these?” His attention had turned to the myriad watercolors I had mounted and framed salon-style on the far wall.
“Most. A couple are Isabelle’s.”
He made his way across the room to better inspect them. A mélange of landscapes and figures and still lifes. Moments I thought worth capturing. “These are beautiful, Solène. Truly.”
“Thank you.”
“I want one. Have you sold any?”
“No,” I laughed. “It’s just a hobby. I don’t sell them.”
“I still want one. Make me one.”
“Make you a watercolor? I don’t take commissions, Hayes. I do it for myself.”
He did not seem altogether satisfied with that response, but he let it go and we continued on our tour. Down the corridor with the collection of mounted family photos. Most of Isabelle, a few of younger versions of me. We’d had to rearrange them all when we removed the ones with Daniel. It was not a painless process.
Hayes stopped before a black-and-white self-portrait I’d taken my senior year at Buckingham Browne & Nichols, when I was morphing from would-be ballerina to artsy Euro prep stage. An interesting phase, to be sure: long thick hair, oversized leather jacket, angst.
He reached out to touch the frame. “How old are you here?”
“Seventeen.”
“Seventeen,” he repeated, his finger tracing over the glass. “This. Fucking. Mouth.”
I smiled up at him.
“I dream about your mouth.”
“I dream about your dick. We’re even.”
He laughed, throwing back his head. “You can’t just say things like that to me. And then… Okay, hurry up and show me the rest of the house.”
