74. willow
CHAPTER 74
WILLOW
UNTANGLED HEADPHONES
The following day was like the anticipation on Christmas morning and I knew when everybody saw King’s new look. Walking with Dan, I heard the cat calling, all the way from the second floor. I skittered to a stop and leaned over the railing.
"Panty dropper!" Adam yelled.
His teammates egged him on, and I couldn’t help the giddiness hitting me. King looked so good. The haircut wasn’t extreme, the clothes didn’t change who he was, but it cleaned him up, making him completely droolworthy.
Dan chuckled. "I should go and stop that…"
I grinned. "We could say it builds character."
Adam looped his arm around King’s shoulder and led him through, Ryan on his other side, with a dozen football players behind them. This was exactly what my boyfriend needed.
Besides, the moment everybody knew about us, I’d color-coordinate our formal outfits. Campus Barbie found her Campus Ken and his teammates needed to get used to him out of the threadbare shorts.
Dan cleared his throat. "Willow?"
"Hm?"
"Did you have a hand in that?"
"I…might’ve had an influence," I admitted, unable to keep the pleased note out of my tone. "It was a June and I combination. He has nice suits but everything else…I mean, look!"
"Ms. Basil’s been trying to get King out of those hoodies for years," he replied, amused.
Down below, Cleo double-backed. "What the hell? "
Oh, this is going to be good.
"King, you can’t let the other captains fall behind—oh my god. I’m not even working with the Romans right now! Why are you doing this to me? You make Ryan look like a bum!"
Even from a floor above, I could see King’s blush.
Cleo snapped her fingers. "Adam, don’t hold back."
"Oh, man." Adam rubbed his hands in glee. "Ryan, you look like why TLC wrote Scrubs. "
"Again."
"King, you look like his sponsor for Big Brothers, Big Sisters."
" Again. "
"You look like his mom’s new boyfriend, right after the divorce?—"
"We get it," Ryan groaned. "I’ll get a haircut!"
"I’m not even working for the Romans right now," Cleo snapped. "Why am I scheduling haircuts? Please. Don’t embarrass me!"
It was so hard not to laugh but I tried. I really tried.
"What is this? " Adam demanded, pulling something out of King’s backpack. "You’re wearing sunscreen? It’s cloudy!"
King grabbed it from him. "It’s good against cancer and sunspots and shit."
"What the hell is a sunspot?"
"I want to say it’s a spot on the sun…?" Ryan frowned. "That can’t be right."
I couldn’t stifle the giggles anymore. I pushed away from the railing and took a healthy distance before I laughed. I needed to get it out now because all I wanted King to see was how pleased I was that he let me play dress-up with him.
Dan’s bushy eyebrows were raised as far as they could go. "What are you doing to my boys?"
"Doesn’t he look good?"
"He looks like that jacket cost a hell of a lot of money."
"But he looks good ."
Dan peered over the railing. "He looks like a rooster for a state fair ribbon."
"So he looks good? You need to say he looks good."
He sighed. "Alright. The kid looks good."
"There we go!"
Dan snorted and the two of us walked along the railing while I kept stealing looks at Lawson’s boys, leaving together. King and I were so close to the official introduction, I could taste it. I bit my lip, glancing back at Dan.
"Do you know the dinner I asked your assistants about?"
"Uh-huh."
"There’s a reason I put it on the calendar. The boy I’m seeing wants to have an official introduction with both of you."
Dan's eyes flickered to mine. "Both…?"
"Yep."
"I—with me?"
"Yes."
"Well now." He straightened up a little. "Isn’t that something? Isn’t that something? It’ll be real nice. It’ll be a nice dinner, we’ll have a good time. And this is with…Comms Boy?"
"Mm-hmm."
"We’ll have a great time," he assured me. "That’s something you can count on."
After lunch with Dan and my mom, I met King outside of the training center for the drive to vagina therapy. Opening his truck’s door, I made sure he knew I heard.
"Panty dropper! "
King could try and hide the smile all he wanted, that didn’t change how damn fine he looked. His hand went to my thigh the moment we left Marrs.
"You look so good," I murmured.
He grinned. "I feel good."
"Yeah?"
"Hell yeah. I have a super-hot girlfriend. It feels great."
I laughed and set my backpack down when his caught my eye. A textbook poked out of the front pocket for one of his freshmen classes, with sticky notes hanging out.
I pulled it out. "What is this?"
"Intro to twentieth century poetry?—"
"No—why do you have it?"
"I’m shit with the abstract stuff," King admitted. "Whatever bad you’re thinking of, I’m worse. Your dad’s taking pity on me. We’re on Jack London right now—this is way easier to understand. I mean, I had to download a dictionary app for your dad’s. This book I can just read."
"You’re actually reading this?"
"Yeah."
With a start, I realized my dad stopped mentioning King in the phone calls. No more snide comments.
"When do you call him?"
"Before you’re awake," he chuckled.
His truck drove into the familiar parking lot, groaning as we pulled in. King muttered something about the engine, but I wasn’t thinking about that. I couldn’t stop thinking about how King was reading poetry to get closer to my dad.
"Do you…read poetry? Like, did you read it before?"
King snorted.
"That’s a no?"
"Did you know poetry is separated at the library from the rest of the books? It’s in its own section—?" He stopped himself. "Yeah, of course you know that. I didn’t. I spent ten minutes looking for a Yeats guy and the librarians had to explain it to me because he wasn’t in the Y section. They had a good laugh about it."
"Do you like poetry?"
"Uh…I like Gwendolyn Brooks. I like T. S. Eliot, but I don’t really get it a lot. I like Jack London, but we just started him, so I don’t know."
King pushed open his door but I stopped him. "Why are you doing this?"
His eyes flickered to the office. "Because you don’t have your car yet?"
"No, not driving me, why are you trying to get close to my dad?"
"He’s important to you."
My heart softened while I ran my thumb over the cover. That was the reason. The entire reason. When I visited my dad on campus, I used to sit in his classes before we grabbed lunch together. I heard all of his lectures about the poems in this book. It was one of his favorite classes to teach. Now, King was part of that too.
"That’s what you two talk about? Just poetry?"
"No." He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. "We talk about me. How I grew up. Mostly, we talk about you." He shifted back. "Your dad said he read to you every night."
"Don’t let him tell you that." I smiled, putting the book back in his backpack. "Sometimes he was touring. It wasn’t every night."
"Yeah but I didn’t have anything like that."
"Oh, I’m sorry?—"
He shook his head. "It’s fine. It’s just, I didn’t have that, and I thought that’d be a pretty cool thing to do with our—uh—" A flush crept up his neck. "The—my kids. That—that I’ll probably have. Might have. Could have. Maybe."
The longer I gazed at him, the more red King became, and the more my heart thrummed, all for him. He cleared his throat and tried to open his door again, but I touched his arm.
"Hey?"
"Mm?"
"How long are we going to be together?"
He paused. "Until…this relationship isn’t in the cards for us anymore."
"That’s a nice answer."
"Mm."
"It’s not the truth, is it? What’s the real answer?"
Silence.
"Until you get tired of me, and then I’ll grow a mustache or change my personality or something, and we’ll keep this going."
There was the truth. King wasn’t just being nice to my dad, he was preparing for the future. A future where he was part of my family. Where he was my family. My eyes dropped to my phone.
"Tattoos?" I hesitated. "I need to show you something."
It’d been creeping on the edge of all of my thoughts, but I didn’t anticipate plugging my phone into his stereo before vagina therapy.
Regardless, it was happening.
My words ziplined together, all in a rush. "Half of my shows I go with you, half of them I go with Kassie, and there’s this new song I’ve debuted since Austin. Kassie and Ryan have heard it. You haven’t. Because it’s another song about you."
" Mean Motherfucker 2.0? "
"Um…not exactly."
Not even close.
"You don’t have to like it," I hurried to say.
"I’ll like it."
"But if you don’t, I won’t be offended. It’s still a work in progress."
"What’s it called?"
" Untangled Headphones. "
King slipped out his phone, flashing the notes app for me to see. "I write down the lyrics, it helps with memorizing."
I couldn’t speak. I could only nod and start the song.
Here we go.
The first notes played, and I could hear the surprise in King’s voice. "You pulled out your keyboard."
I didn’t move while he jotted down lyrics. It was the most vulnerable song I’d ever written. It wasn’t like I didn’t write about sensitive topics, but I never did it knowing the person I was singing about would listen to them.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see King linger over his phone’s keyboard. For long seconds, he didn’t move.
No words.
Oh, god.
King put his phone in the cupholder and gazed at the radio.
A single song had never seemed so achingly, terrifyingly long. For three minutes and forty-two seconds, it was so quiet in the car, I was afraid to speak.
The song ended.
Neither of us said anything.
"It’s not done," I managed.
Nothing.
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. "It’s—it’s not finished."
King didn’t utter a word.
"I might scrap it, I don’t know if it’s exactly where I—I want to go with?—"
He picked up my hand and pressed it against his throat.
I could feel how shallow his breaths were. His heartbeat raced under my touch.
"One day, someone’s going to ask if I remember the first time I heard this song," he said, his voice hoarse. "I’m going to say yes because it’s the first time I told you I love you."
My gaze jumped from the radio to him. His eyes were already on mine.
"You know I’m in love with you, right, Willow? Because I don’t get how anybody could look at me when I look at you and not know I’m in love with you."
"I know," I whispered.
His Adam's apple bobbed. "Good."
I touched his jaw. "Do you know I love you?"
Slowly, he shook his head.
"How do you not know?"
"I keep thinking I’m going to wake up any second now," he admitted.
"I love you, King. I do."
Another songwriting moment. One of the endless ones I had with him because that’s what he gave me. That breathless, weightless feeling of being so loved. So cherished. So adored. But I really couldn’t see how he didn’t know I felt the same.
I tugged him closer and he dipped down to meet me, his dark eyes velvet like his voice, before I kissed him.