“Oh.”
“Although, I probably could.”
I scowl at his baseless confidence.
“You forget,” he adds, “that I’d probably be able to communicate with air traffic controllers and flight instructors over the radio, so with proper guidance it wouldn’t be that hard to—”
“Fine, what should we talk about, then?”
Riff tightens his grip a little, which almost makes me shiver. “I don’t know. Something real. If we need this to look real then we have to makesomeof it real, right?” He pauses like he’s considering. “How has your week been?”
“How has my week been? You want to know about my week?”
He shrugs. “Yeah. We haven’t seen each other since the daXx party. What have you been up to?”
I guess I should just be glad we’re glossing over the kiss situation. His text about it right after was plenty for me and he seems to think so too. Great.
“I’ve been working on a song called ‘Take Up Space,’” I offer. “Recording some rough demos at my home studio to iron it out before I send it to my producer. I also met with Elizabeth Arden’s people to talk about partnering on a perfume deal, which was wild because I’d never thought about designing my own scent before. Then I did a photo shoot for my album. Then I invited some girls over for a movie night—that’s when I watchedMake Your Move. And … that’s pretty much it. What about you? I heard you went to a convention.”
I saw the online banner ads for West Coast Country Con, some of which specifically mentioned Riff Hurley as a celebrity guest. No doubt the algorithm has adapted to show my more recent interests.
“I did,” he says. “I was invited to be on a couple of panels and to introduce a speaker. It was a … good experience.” He hesitates. “Well, some of it. They ask tough questions on those panels. But I got to meet ACKER at a mixer.”
“The country trap artist?” I ask. Also brought to me by the algorithm recently. I listened to a whole album the other night and all I could think was, “If more country sounded like this, I’d listen to more country.” Not that I haven’t been listening to country left and right between hanging out with Daisy and trying to get a sense of Riff’s career as a whole.
Riff nods. “He was great to talk to. Really got me thinking.”
“Yeah? About what?”
“About fighting harder to do things my way.” Riff sort of laughs pensively to himself, then looks over at me and suddenlygets all serious. “Please tell me you’ve figured out by now that country wasn’t actually the plan I had for myself.”
I chew my lip. “It has come to my attention, yes.”
He huffs. “Oh good.”
“But … how, exactly, did you end up in country, if that’s not what you wanted?”
We reach the end of our way and Riff leads me into a turn so that we’re headed back to where we started. I catch a glimpse of the photographer up on the bluff.
“I was doing a show few years ago at a small venue in Santa Monica,” Riff explains. “Kind of an indie/folk scene there, really chill, good energy. It was ‘classics night’ and they let me perform a few songs, so I picked James Taylor’s ‘Fire and Rain,’ Jim Croce’s ‘I Got a Name,’ and finally—either my biggest mistake or the most brilliant choice I’ve ever made—John Denver’s ‘Country Roads.’”
Despite not being well versed in folk music, I can already tell where this is going.
“A label rep was there,” he continues. “Happened to be out for drinks with some friends who liked to go there sometimes. Said she loved my voice and my stage presence and wanted me to go in to meet with A&R. The only thing was, they were specifically looking for country artists to round out their talent. I told her that was great, but that I didn’t do country. She said sure, but some of that old folk music ‘rides the line’ between folk and country, and that that had been enough for her to hear the potential I had for it.”
“So … you agreed?”
“I agonized over whether I should go audition for them. It was obviously a major opportunity, but I also didn’t want to be there under the pretense that I would be working in a genre I wasn’t really interested in. Don’t get me wrong; I appreciate a lot of my predecessors and my peers, and I’m always glad to be singing, nomatter what it is. That’s the only way I’ve been able to do what I’ve done. At the time, though, I was cautious about what I’d be getting into. In the end, my brother convinced me that it would be a good idea regardless, because all I really needed was a foot in the door, and eventually I might be able to do the kind of music I wanted to.”
“Except one thing led to another …”
He nods. “It was, ‘Record a few country songs,’ to see if anyone liked them. Then it was, ‘Just do this one album.’ I was lucky enough that everything I made sort of … took off, only …”
“Only … your heart wasn’t in it.”
“Yeah.” Riff sighs. “Next thing I knew, I was two albums deep, with a handful of number-one hits and an offer from Glambam.”
“Wow.”
