Strike a Pose (Blame It on Fame #1)

44. Riley

Riley

“ My family wants to meet you,” Willow murmurs as we stroll through a shadowy Central Park, our own protective shadows following us. She looks over at me. “I knew you’d make that face.”

“What face?” I ask.

“That one. You’d think I said that I wanted to take you to the gallows.” She shakes her head with a small chuckle, taking a bite of her banana pudding.

“That’s not true,” I insist. “This is my ‘wow I’m so excited I was asked to meet my girlfriend’s family’ face.” We pass a streetlight, and her blue eyes and blonde hair momentarily shine underneath it before dimming, once again blurred by the moonless night.

“Mhm,” she tuts disbelievingly.

“I’m serious. I would love to meet them. Say the word, and I’m there.”

“They wouldn’t scare you?”

“Oh, they’d scare the shit out of me.” I chuckle. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to meet them. They’re your family. I want to meet them. ”

“You’re handling all of this surprisingly well,” she muses.

“What do you mean? You and me?”

“Yeah. I would have thought you’d have run away screaming by now.”

“I’ve told you, Willow, I’m not going anywhere. Remember when you said that it was every woman’s dream to have a ‘hot, tall, broad, muscular, sexy, musically talented, hilarious, magnetic, strong, confident, charming cowboy’ stand up for her?”

“I don’t know if those were my exact words.” She giggles. “But yes, I remember that.”

“Well, isn’t it every man’s dream to be photographed with the world’s most kind, caring, funny, beautiful, radiant, gorgeous, dazzling, alluring, show-stopping woman on his arm?”

“I suppose that’s me?”

“You’re damn right it is.”

She smirks at the compliment, then says, “But nobody likes having their privacy invaded.”

“Willow, baby, my privacy has been invaded for the past eight months, ever since ‘Moonlight and You’ blew up. And I’d rather have my privacy invaded with you than have my privacy invaded alone, wishing I was with you.”

“Has anyone ever told you how romantic you are? You’d make a great songwriter.”

“Once or twice.”

She exhales a sigh of relief. “I’m glad to hear that you haven’t changed your mind. I knew you were okay with the idea of the paparazzi following us everywhere, but to have it happen in real life is a completely different thing. I was worried they would scare you off.”

“Change my mind? Scare me off? When I have a prize as great as you, I don’t think anything could change my mind or scare me off. As you once said to me, I’m keeping you, Willow Jordan.” I pause pensively. “Well, actually, I think one thing could scare me off. Your dad. Would it be weird to ask him to sign a Bloodied Waters hat for me?”

“Yes, that would be weird. You could try it, though. At the very least, it would throw him off his rhythm, maybe disarm him a bit.”

“This is after you ask him to be nice to me, right?” I tease.

“I’ll tell him. But I’m sure he’ll attempt to be all macho with you anyway. But don’t mind him. He’s all bark and no bite.”

“Has he ever met one of your boyfriends before?”

“Nope. To be honest, I’ve never seriously dated anyone before,” she confesses, avoiding eye contact by staring at the path ahead of us.

“What about Arm$trong?”

“What do you think?” She chuckles. “It was never more than a fun time between him and I. No real feelings involved…at least, not on my end.”

“Willow Jordan, you heartbreaker,” I tease. “That poor guy.”

“What can I say? I can’t help it if every man falls at my feet.”

“I guess I’m no better than the rest of them.”

“No, but the difference is I want you to fall at my feet. I’m already at yours.”

“Does this mean you have a foot fetish?”

“Don’t ruin a perfectly sweet moment, Riley.”

“Fine. To make it up to you, I’ll turn that into a song on my next album. You know, the one titled Willow ?”

“So you’re going to make it up to me by plagiarizing me?”

“Exactly. Isn’t naming the album after you credit enough? ”

“No, I want royalties, too. In the form of more of this banana pudding.”

“Fine, but you’ll have to do a little more to earn that banana pudding money. Will you sing a duet with me?”

“No way. I sound like a dying whale. It would tank your sales.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“It is.”

“Prove it?”

“I don’t think so. I finally got the guy, I’m not going to scare him off now by singing.”

“You’ve heard me sing. A whole concert, in fact. And I serenaded you,” I point out. “You owe me.”

“I’ll sing to you when we’re married. That way, you can’t run.”

“Well, I could still divorce you if it’s that bad,” I joke. Willow gives my arm a playful shove.

“Nope. I’ll have it written into the prenup that you can’t divorce me on the grounds of my terrible singing voice.”

“But I can divorce you for any other reason?”

“Why? Have you already started thinking of a few?”

“Oh, shut up, Willow.” I laugh, wrapping my arm around her shoulder. She’s the perfect height for me. “I won’t divorce you.”

“But you’d marry me?” she asks, throwing her empty pudding cup and spoon in a trash can, then wrapping one arm around my waist to steady herself against me, intertwining her other hand with the hand I have resting on her shoulder.

“Are you proposing?” I answer her question with another question.

“You wish,” she says, squeezing my side. “How is every part of you rock hard? I’m going to break my hand just trying to hold on to you. ”

“Every part, huh?”

“Shut up.”

“Never. And to answer your question, I think I would marry you, Willow Jordan. But I want to be the one doing the proposing. I think I’m going to need a huge rock to entice you, anyway.”

“I don’t think you would.”

“No?”

“No. But a huge rock would certainly be nice.”

“I knew it.”

“I’m not superficial. I’m just… a little-ficial,” she jokes.

I kiss the top of her head. “One of the many reasons I find you so alluring.”

We spend the next hour or so weaving our way down the dark park paths, drunk off wine, the ephemeral late-spring breeze, and a feeling neither of us is brave enough to name.