“I need a clip of you at the end. It would just be better, more romantic if you were at the airport. I mean, if it’s a pain, I could always turn it into a video about me surprising you, and we could film me knocking on your door.”
Luke shook his head. “I’m not sure my acting skills are that good. You should have caught me at the studio. Doesn’t it bother you that most of that is fake? I saw how sick you were when you got here. And you told me how miserable things have been at home with your dad, which we still need to talk about properly. Like, don’t you feel like a fraud?”
Willow looked at him as though he’d just slapped her. “It’s my job. To curate aspirational content. I think of it like acting, to be honest. Each week I build a script, then I find images that fit the script.”
Luke glanced down at the app she was using on her laptop. Days of the week, content titles, boxes for images and videos. And he’d noticed in her bedroom a whole heap of camera equipment and ring lights that seemed to have appeared while he’d been away.
“I can’t fake it, Will. You either need to catch it while it’s happening, or I don’t think I’ll be able to do this. I can’t be something I’m not. I think that’s a boundary for me.”
“Okay. I’ll try to work within that,” she said, but not before he saw a flicker of disappointment in her eyes.
Goddamn.
No, he wouldn’t yield. He’d feel like a bell-end standing in Manchester Airport pretending to be surprised to see her while people watched them.
“Good. First, the paint store.” He grabbed his wallet, sunglasses, and the keys to the van.
“Wait,” she said, pulling her phone out of her pocket. “Come stand next to me. The light’s good.”
Luke rolled his eyes but did as she said.
Willow angled the camera, but instead of taking a photo, she pressed record, stepped up onto her toes and kissed his cheek, then grinned. She almost knocked him over in her enthusiasm. He planted a kiss on the top of her head. “There. Can we go now?”
“Perfect. You’re a natural at this, Luke.”
“Whatever.” But one corner of his mouth turned upward.
Willow walked alongside him to the van parked around the back of the flats. She stopped dead. “This is your car?”
“Yeah. Carries all the band equipment.”
Her nose was scrunched up. “Don’t you have another car? Like a proper one?”
“It’s got an engine, a steering wheel, four tires, and a valid MOT certificate. I think that pretty much defines a vehicle.”
“But it’s so . . .”
“Roadworthy? Utilitarian? Cheap to run? Well maintained because Ben is a mechanic? We can’t all be wealthy child stars, flower.”
“Which is why as soon as you sign the contract, I can sort that out for you.”
Luke opened the door for her. “Get in, before I change my mind about painting.”
“But this is a fixable problem, Luke.”
He waited for her to climb inside. “It’s not a problem that needs fixing.” He slammed the door shut, then walked to his side of the van.
When he climbed in, he took a deep breath before he turned to face her. “We couldn’t be more different if we tried.”
Willow studied his face, and he wondered what she saw there. “I’m beginning to see that. Do you want me to just go?”
Luke shook his head. He was pretty sure that here was better for her than whatever she’d head back to. “I’m worried that what you want is superficial. A bigger place. A better car. A posh hotel.”
She sighed and rested her elbow on the window. “Don’t conflate what I do for a living with who I am.”
“Shouldn’t those two things be the same?”
“Maybe I should leave. It would be better to know now that this isn’t going to work than do this weird dance we seem to be doing, where I feel like you’re in until you’re out.”
“I’m thinking out loud. Exploring shit. Seeing what all this adds up to. I’m a simple guy, Willow. My life isn’t social media worthy. I don’t give a shit about aesthetics or a million followers. I’d rather be real with a battered van than fake with a Mercedes that I don’t own.”
She folded her hands in her lap. “I feel like this might be the reason you won’t want to do this three months from now—a life on display. I’m not a very good judge of people. I only just realised my own father ripped me off. I worry I won’t see the fallout with you coming when you figure out that me, the baby, this deal adds up to nothing. I worry that one day, months from now, you’ll let me down.”
Beneath all the worry was a sharp bite of loss. It would hurt if it all really added up to nothing. “I guess you’re just going to have to trust me that we’ll figure this out. I’m not out, Willow. I’m just trying to figure out how we both stay in.”
5
“I need a beer,” Luke said, slamming the door after the tenth and final trip from the van to the apartment. His hands were full of bags containing cushions and throws. “And I told you to put those paint cans down.”
Willow rolled her eyes. “I’m only moving them behind the table so they are out of the way.”
“They’re heavy. And you shouldn’t be lifting in your condition.”
In pure defiance, she picked up two cans of paint, one in each hand and moved them. “I’m pregnant, not incapable. I lift heavier weights than this at the gym. And it’s perfectly safe.”
The bottles in the fridge door rattled as he opened it. Luke grabbed a beer, popped the top, and drank half of it before putting it down on the counter.
“We’ve already walked a hundred miles today; not sure you need any more exercise.”
They’d gone to the hardware store for paint, where Luke had been way more involved than she’d anticipated. Being a painter and decorator before the band took off, he had strong opinions about primers and finishes and colour saturation.
She’d taken photographs. Luke facing the wall of colour samples. A video of the paint mixing. When she’d asked Luke to pose, he’d refused, but when he’d caught her secretly filming him, he’d winked.
Winked.
And she’d found it hard not to melt. Okay, so maybe she’d melted a little bit, because, let’s face it, Luke and his wink and his broad shoulders and his charming smile was the reason she was stuck in Manchester with a baby inside her.
Making her melt wasn’t the problem. It was the wondering if he’d done it for effect.
Willow could hear the huff of Luke’s exasperated breath. “I’m not saying you aren’t capable of lifting shit, flower. Just telling you that you don’t need to. Can I get you anything?”
“A signature on this,” she said, offering him a pen. “Make yourself useful. The contracts are there on the table for you to sign them.”
Luke looked over at them. “Didn’t your parents ever teach you to not sign anything without reading it first?”
Willow sat down at the table. “No, because if they had, they wouldn’t have been able to steal my money.”