Chapter Twelve

Katie felt like every visceral part of her body, her blood and bones and organs, were light and fizzy at the same time. She had retrieved her wig and hat from the coat tree. The wig today was lank, shoulder-length hair that had a very grown-out-looking pink and fading dye job.

"Ready?" Wil was at the door.

"Yes."

She had traded an appearance in a small cameo role with an emerging independent director in exchange for Chichima's agreeing to teach her techniques for filming with an iPhone. Katie hadn't had plans for what she wanted to do with these skills other than the joy of learning and knowing something about them, but now she was grateful.

In the part of the living room where Wil had her photography backdrop, Katie set up a tripod with a miniature camera track that could move her phone steadily in four directions with a little joystick. She snapped on a magnetic wide-angle lens and checked the shot.

She did these things methodically, one after the next, the same way her mother sprayed and wiped down the kitchen countertops after she had a bicker-fight with Craig, because Katie's head was stuck on the conversation upstairs.

It had always been easier for Katie to know how she felt than to put her feelings into words. Her feelings weren't words. Her feelings right now were a whirl of relief mixed up with old shame, the hard pinch of grief beneath her ribs, and a crack through the middle of everything with light pouring through.

The light was Katie's understanding that when she'd told Wil about Ben, what she didn't feel was anything like worry that she might be telling it wrong, making Wil uncomfortable, or spinning the story in a way that wouldn't play for the press. It wasn't like talking to Madelynn or April, it wasn't like trying—haltingly—to open up to Diana.

It was just Wil, listening.

It was just Katie and Wil, like it had always been Katie and Wil.

Rosy pillows. Someone who listened to her and heard nothing but what she said. Someone to come home to at the end of a long day who would only, always, be for her. Whose someone Katie could be.

When she left for Chicago, all those years ago, she'd thought there would be more time. She would leave Green Bay, and Wil would leave, too, but they would both come home again. They'd see each other. They'd have more chances.

It hadn't worked out that way.

It wasn't going to work out now. Because Katie wanted Wil to have everything. She wanted that in a very simple and easy-to-feel way.

Everything for Wil.

She positioned her two lights and a portable boom, and then she was ready, standing with her hands open, her posture loose, when Noel came in with Wil.

Wil had told her she met Noel in the fall when she went to a home on the west side of town to take pictures of the homeowner's car, which had been struck by the homeowner's own garage door when she was backing out and accidentally activated the door remote in her purse. Noel was there cleaning the gutters. He'd climbed down from his ladder and stood in the driveway, his hands in his back pockets, listening to the entire exchange, then followed Wil down the driveway to the street, where she'd parked her car, and given her his card.

In case you ever need your gutters cleaned,he'd said.

So of course Wil had asked him, Would you like to kiss me?

He looked like every youngish Wisconsin white dude who had ever come to Katie's mother's house to do work on it, which was to say that he was medium height, with medium brown hair, blue eyes, and a snub nose that put him firmly in the cute rather than the hot category.

Although there was something hot about his directness. Noel was a dude without layers. He shook Katie's hand, barely looking at her because he was busy peering around the living room and asking Wil questions about whether the house was a rental, did she know how old it was, what kind of shape was the roof in, and did the basement ever get water in it.

Wil had told her she hadn't heard from Noel until recently, when he called and said he'd still like to do her "show." His latest ex-girlfriend had told him that he was terrible at kissing, and he wondered if she had a point. He'd confessed to Wil that he thought this would be a good way to find out, like when you take your car to the dealer to run computer diagnostics.

"Noel?" Katie changed her voice to a higher register, letting her vowels flatten into a Great Lakes accent. "Would it be okay if I went ahead and started filming?"

"No, yeah, sure," Noel said. "Go ahead."

While Katie set up the equipment, Wil and Noel had been talking in the entryway, and Wil had gone through a lot of information related to consent. Katie and Wil had debated last night whether Noel should know that Katie Price was filming him. Even though they didn't plan to release Katie's name or whisper a word of her association with the video, they'd decided to let Noel know that the person filming them was someone who, if her name got out, his video would be viral, probably forever.

Possibly, Noel would have guessed who Katie was. But possibly not. Katie had overheard Noel telling Wil that if the video became famous, it was for sure the only chance in his life for such a thing to happen, and maybe it would help the Packers.

Katie was grateful for Noel's disingenuous, pure Green Bay heart. It meant she had the opportunity to film the video, which was something she could do just for Wil. A sixty-second love letter that had all of her best in it. The thank-you she'd never sent for her bracelet.

Katie pulled the stool she'd taken from Wil's kitchen in front of the iPhone, watching the screen.

"So?" Wil smiled at Noel. When she'd taken off her sweater in her bedroom upstairs, Katie had nearly died, because Wil was wearing a white T-shirt, a little loose except across her breasts, where you could see her black bra right through it. The way her hair was cut meant that it was always halfway between messy and curly, and it did things to Katie's insides the same way Wil's heavy denim jeans did. "Sitting? Standing?"

"Let's sit," Noel said. "I'm a bit shaky." He laughed.

"Sure." Wil sat down on the stool she had in front of the backdrop, and Noel took the other.

Katie moved her phone with her joystick to capture how Noel perched on the edge of the stool, one foot fully on the ground, the other up on a rung with his knee bouncing. She zoomed in just a little on how he was rubbing his thumbnail with the tip of his index finger.

But his eyes were on Wil's face. She hadn't looked away from him and hadn't joined his laughter at himself. Katie let the camera see how Wil's gaze and her energy were calming Noel down, second by second. It made Katie's breath hitch.

Before, she'd only ever seen this part in an edited fifteen-second clip. Here, now, the preamble to the kiss spooled out at its own pace, the pace that worked for Noel and Wil, the pace Noel needed to get easier inside his body, for his foot to drop down to meet the ground and his weight to shift forward as he started to think about what he wanted to do instead of how he was afraid he might fuck it up.

That was when Wil slid to the front of her stool, letting her legs interlace with Noel's. Their knees touched. She smiled at him. He smiled back, laughing again, but not so much at himself this time, and he put his hand on Wil's knee. "Okay," he said. "Okay."

Wil put her hand around the cap of his shoulder, bringing her face closer, giving him permission to initiate the kiss, and Katie started to zoom in again slowly at the moment she felt him decide.

She took in a slow, deep breath, watching the screen as Noel's mouth met Wil's gently, softly, and he drew back a little and then came in again, his hand flat against her collarbone as though he needed to feel what might happen next, whether she was moving toward him or away from him, whether he wanted to grip her shoulder or ease his hand down to her waist.

Katie let the camera be her eyes. She kept her gaze on the phone. This didn't scare her. She wasn't afraid to look. She trusted what she felt about Wil, and she trusted Wil, and most of all she trusted what was in the room right now, which was a lot of expansive, beautiful generosity from Wil making room for this almost-stranger to try something that scared him so he could have something he wanted.

Katie trusted. Because Katie was in love with Wil.

She knew that now, watching her kiss this man so selflessly.

Wil put her hand on his face, angled her mouth, and the kiss deepened. Katie pointed the camera where she'd always wanted to look, watching the tension melt out of Wil's face, but not until the camera had already seen Noel's shoulders come away from his ears, his hands ease, his eyes crinkle with a smile that ended the kiss.

Wil had done that.

"You're a good kisser, Noel," Wil said, pulling back.

You're a good mom.That was what Diana had told Katie she'd needed to hear, that she'd learned how to tell herself because it wasn't something the world told her often enough. You're a good mom. You're a good kisser. You're a good person.

Katie watched the gratitude fill Noel right to the top. Katie reached up and wiped away the tears that were falling down her cheeks.

Wil Greene was such a gift to the world.

Katie was sorry that she would never get her chance to kiss her.

"Ah, thanks, then," Noel said. He stuck out his hand, and Wil shook it, laughing.

He squinted over to where Katie was, behind the tripod. "Thanks."

"Yeah! Of course," Katie said. She touched the floor switch that turned off the lights, then the boom, and hit the big red stop button on her phone.

"Let us walk you out." Wil touched Noel's elbow. "Do you have any questions about posting the video?"

"Nope, you explained that pretty well and for pretty long, too. I got the form in my email."

"Once you send it back, I'll post, then."

"All right." He smiled. Katie noticed that he looked a bit taller and more at ease. Wil walked next to him, Katie behind them, and as Wil opened the door, a swirl of cold wind wrapped around all three of them on Wil's stoop.

"Katie!" a man shouted. "Look over here!"

She didn't think. Her head moved automatically, pointing her face down and away from the voice. "Hey, Noel, could you come back inside with us for a minute?" Her tone was calm but very firm.

"Sure, sorry." He turned around with Wil, confused but compliant, and Wil shut the door against the knot of men on the sidewalk in front of the house.

One week since Katie landed at the Green Bay airport. Three days since the party at her parents' house. That was how long Katie had thought she might have, because that was as long as she'd ever managed to keep her presence a secret anywhere in the world.

She could never really come home. She'd known that, but Katie had never been more sorry to be right.

She'd never felt more keenly the size and shape of the gap between the life she had and the life she wanted.

It took an hour before her parents made it to Wil's house. While Katie waited, she arranged a rental for Noel and explained he'd have to come pick up his car in a few days when things calmed down.

Her dad borrowed Noel's keys and pulled Noel's car into Wil's garage.

Noel called his brother to pick him up from the back alley behind the house and take him to the rental agency.

Katie's dad drove his car back home. Diana waited for Katie.

By the time they were ready to go, Katie knew, one or more of the men outside would have run Noel's plate and figured out his name, probably his phone number, certainly his social media.

It was what they did. It was how this worked.

Before she stepped through the door to leave, Katie put her hand on the back of Wil's neck, her forehead against Wil's. "I'll let you know when I know, okay?"

Wil smelled like mint. Her skin was warm, so warm that Katie wanted to lean into it.

She closed her eyes as she felt Wil's breath on her mouth, then opened them, even though she was too close to see Wil's face. It was close enough. Close enough for Katie to feel what it would be like to have this.

To have Wil.

"I'm sorry," Wil said.

Everyone always apologized to Katie, as though somehow it wasn't Katie who had done this.

"I had the best morning ever," she told Wil. "We will figure this out, and I will see you soon, because you are the very best one."

Wil laughed, but Katie meant it.

The best.

The one.