Chapter Thirteen

The Nissan electric SUV whirring down I-41 was hushed, quiet. Nothing like the Bronco, with its oversprung bench seat and rough engine. The reliquary of her family's unspoken feelings.

But Wil didn't have even a small yearning for the Bronco, not when this shiny black SUV was gloriously anonymous, pointed toward Katie's house, and she had, for the first time in a long time, a plan.

Wil had a plan. She had a goal, a set of steps lining themselves up in her mind and in her chest that she hadn't even realized had been lining themselves up for a long time, as silent as the electric motor of this car, but also, delightfully, as efficient and detail-oriented as Wil had always been. They were easy to follow.

The first step, Katie.

Wil hadn't talked to Katie. She was trying to trust that Katie had meant it when she told Wil she'd see her soon. She knew that Katie was still in town. She knew Diana would feel too guilty not to give Katie Wil's new number, but maybe not so guilty that she would give it to Katie right away.

Wil had been forced to change her number within a few hours of the paparazzi showing up at her house. She was getting so many calls from the media that at one point, her phone had buzzed itself off the table.

She'd also had to decamp to her mom's house after hiding the Bronco next to Noel's car, then talk a cheerful Noel through changing his number after he DM'd to ask "how in the Good Pete he could keep these folks from bothering him and everyone else."

It turned out that Noel was not only a good kisser, but also a great person to be involved in this sort of situation. He didn't say whether he'd known it was Katie Price behind the camera the whole time, but Wil thought he must have figured it out. He hadn't seemed surprised by the revelation. He hadn't commented on it at all, in fact, except to express a lot of shock that "Hollywood" wouldn't let someone have Christmas with their family, "for Christ's sake."

Then he'd reminded Wil she could call him for gutter cleaning anytime.

Noel told Wil that someone in "Katie Price's office" had contacted him to arrange for a "branding package" for his gutter cleaning and landscape services so that what had happened might help his business and not hurt it. He didn't think it was necessary, since he was more a word-of-mouth guy, but it couldn't hurt.

Wil had smiled and teared up because Katie's Christmas was getting actively stomped, but she had still taken the time to bolster Noel's business prospects. Because Katie.

Wil had held off on posting Noel's video. Even though she had Noel's blessing to put it up on her channel, she wanted Katie's.

She wanted Katie.

But Wil could appreciate that Katie had a series of fires to put out. Wil was a problem solver. She understood that problems required time. Patience. Creativity, even.

Wil exited the interstate and made one familiar turn after another until she got to a turn she'd never had to make before. Beanie had told her about it. She found her way to the chain-link gate at the very back of Craig and Diana's place, which blocked an access road barely visible due to a line of white cedars.

There weren't any other cars or photographers. They would be in the front if they were here. Unless there were drones, they wouldn't know Wil had come to this road.

She hopped out, her boots sinking in the wet snow, and yanked open the gate. Her heart was beating so fast that she made herself take a few slow, deep breaths of cold air before she got back in the driver's seat and found the switch to turn off the lights.

Wil rolled slowly through the gate. Stopped. Hopped out and closed it.

Then she drove toward the back of the Prices' garage, grateful for the quiet electric motor and for all of the good lighting on the Prices' property.

Grateful, too, for their security cameras, because as soon as she parked and got out of her car, there was Katie, tromping over the snow beside the path to the garage, laughing.

"You should have heard my mom's voice when she called down to me to say you were here." Katie's breath swirled in big white puffs in the cold air. "‘Katelyn, you have a visitor.'" Katie did a remarkable impression of an annoyed Diana Price. "Tell me this is your new car."

"It's my new car." Wil felt better. She was shocked at how much better she felt, just seeing Katie in her falling-off, cat-hair-decorated black T-shirt and leggings. Her glorious movie-star smile. Her freshly washed hair, which had dried without being styled, and which looked so much like her hair in high school, it made Wil's heart pinch. "What are you doing?"

"Packing." Katie smiled again, but it wasn't as bright. "A little bit. Mostly, talking on the phone. Talking on FaceTime. Texting. I think I got a telegraph." She dropped her voice into an imitation of an old-fashioned newsreel announcer. "‘Katie! Stop. This is an emergency! Stop. Tell the world exactly how you're feeling. Stop. Maybe a nude? Stop.'"

The "Wil" Katie Price Finally Get Kissed? clickbait had started rolling before Wil was even alone in her house, dark in the middle of the day with all the blinds shut. The pictures weren't anything more than a series of shots of Wil and Noel side by side, talking to each other, and Katie a bit behind them, in the wig, looking down. It was easy to recognize Katie in the pictures. Frozen in a photo, Katie's profile, the shape of her chin, and her mouth were all there. The ways she changed how she moved, her accent, her expressions and gestures, washed away.

The story was mostly supplied by imaginative supposition about Katie's association with Wil-You-Or-Won't-You, backstory copy about her career highlights, and fresh quotes from Ben Adelsward.

"I'm so sorry," Wil said.

"That's my line, silly." Katie waved Wil to follow her to the sliders that led to her suite. "Welcome to the Katie Price Show. This time with unwilling special guest stars." Katie slid open the glass doors. "Madelynn, my publicist, told me you're not returning her calls."

"I'm not returning anyone's calls." Wil shucked off her coat and toed off her boots, looking around at Katie's half-packed luggage and noticing that her heart had sped up again. The cats were in a cuddle pile on one end of the sofa, obviously trying to ignore what was going on. Wil could sympathize. "I changed my number."

"You should talk to Madelynn, though. She could help." Katie sat on the floor, then leaned back against the sofa. "She's good at making things go away. I suggested some thin but adorable copy about visiting my old friend from high school who, of course, because we were friends, is extremely cool, and yes, you got me, she has ‘the TikTok'"—Katie made air quotes—"and her gutter guy had stopped by with an estimate." Katie wrinkled her nose. "Harder to make plausible or adorable. Although Noel would receive more bookings than any gutter guy in the entire Fox Valley if we ran with it."

Wil sat on the floor across from Katie, shoving one of the suitcases aside to make room. "That's an interesting angle. Also a lie."

Close up, Wil could see the strain at the corners of Katie's eyes. There was a red place on her lower lip where she'd obviously been worrying it.

Katiedidn't look like she had a plan. She looked like she was trying to make the best of a situation that had spiraled out of her control.

Wil put her hand on Katie's knee. "Hey."

"Yep." Katie rolled her eyes. "I'm sorry I haven't called you. I'm sorry about all of this. I'm just…" She dropped her head so that her hair fell forward, a curtain that hid her face. "I'm having a hard time."

"Tell me about that."

Katie shook her head. "I usually do a better job. I should have prepared you. I should've told you what would happen."

"You did. You said my life would be divided into everything before I kissed you on TikTok and everything that happened after." Wil made the same gesture Katie had made at her mother's holiday party, one side of her life to her left, the other side to her right.

"That was flirting. It wasn't honestly warning you what this would be like. I didn't"—she swallowed, her voice thick—"I didn't think hard enough about what this would be like."

Wil pushed her hand through her hair. "Neither one of us could've known what this would be like."

They didn't mean dodging the media.

Katie sighed. "I'm sorry."

Wil felt the solidity of the sofa behind her back, the tightness in her shoulders. She didn't want an apology. Katie's apology meant something had gone wrong that Wil couldn't fix. It meant they'd come to the end of the road.

Wil wasn't interested in endings. For the first time in years, she wanted to think about what came next. She wanted to know where she was headed instead of where she'd been. "You keep saying that, but I'm not clear on what you're sorry for, Katie Kat. What is it that you think you've done wrong?"

Katie didn't answer the question, but that was okay. Wil was pretty sure she already knew the answer. She'd had time, last night, to really think about the conversation they'd had in her bed yesterday.

Ben Adelsward was quoted in every single story about Wil and Katie being photographed together. He'd been the primary focus of the stories about Katie's appearance in Chicago—at least at first, maybe until Katie's publicist found a way to spin them away from him.

Late last night, sitting at her desk with Almond Butter in her heated bed beside Wil's laptop, Wil had done a deep dive into Katie's press from the last few years, reading and taking notes and thinking until she finally felt the pieces of what she'd observed and what Katie had told her—their conversations, their past together—begin to click together.

Katie in high school. That day she'd picked her up in the Bronco. Maneuvering Mr. Cook to save the class. What Katie had told Wil about Ben.

Katie walking onto the soundstage in Chicago under the bright lights, the catwalks, with her styled hair and beautiful jewelry, heels and signature pink lips. Confident and untouchable.

Honor Howell.

The rumors about Katie's production company.

Diana. How much Diana loved her daughter, and how fiercely she protected Katie's privacy.

"You have to be perfect, don't you?" Wil asked.

Katie looked away again.

It was cold in her suite. The silence felt cold, too. Heavy. Finally, Katie picked at the knee of her leggings. "I can remember this one night, a few months after I was in my house," she said. "My mom had gone back home. I was alone. It was the first time I'd been alone when I saw a headline. Ben had told the press a secret, what I'd thought of as a secret between us. It was so ugly. The media had gotten really ugly about me. It made me feel like I didn't exist. I wasn't a person. I was twenty-two, and I couldn't understand how it was that I'd been such a singular, brilliant genius when I was eighteen, nineteen, with Ben, but now everyone hated me. I remember thinking I wished—really, really wished—that I could go home. But I couldn't."

Katie's breath hitched, and Wil thought of the hospital bed in the living room of the house she'd grown up in. The hospice people had cleared everything out so quickly, but there had been a span of time—it could have been ten minutes or an hour—when Wil sat in the living room with that bed. The sheets stripped. Empty.

"I know what that feels like," she finally said.

Katie picked up Wil's hand and gripped it hard in hers. "For women, there are only two kinds of movie stars, did you know that?" Finally, she looked up. Her eyes were bright in a way that made Wil feel better. There was so much determined Katie in her face.

"What are the two kinds?" Wil asked.

"Tragic and iconic."

"You decided to be iconic." Wil reached out to push Katie's hair behind her ear, but Katie captured her hand and laid it against the hot skin of her cheek. Her jaw flexed beneath Wil's palm.

"I decided to be beyond any type or category." Katie reached for her hair and pulled it over her shoulder. Like always.

"So that's all." Wil smiled.

Katie shrugged, but then she smiled, too. It wasn't a brittle smile. Wil was glad to see it. "To answer your question, I'm sorry I did this to you." Katie made one of her gestures where just her hand somehow conjured up the paparazzi, buying a Nissan, falling most of the way off the edge into love.

"But." Wil stretched out her legs and leaned back. "It wasn't you. It was me."

Katie raised her eyebrows. "Okay." She made another gesture that said I don't believe you, but tell me this story.

Wil was ready to do that. It was part of her plan. "You've heard of ChapStick?"

Katie laughed. "I almost remember it. These days I only anoint my lips with the oil from rare alpine vegetation, of course."

"Obviously. Remember Lynn, on my channel?"

"Yes! Wavy blue hair, tall, looks obscene in a tank top. Grabbed the back of your neck in a way that caught my thighs on fire."

Wil sat up a little taller, pleased with this additional confirmation of Katie's attention—pleased in a way that made her throat and cheeks warm. "I didn't really pay attention, but right before I kissed her, I put on ChapStick. Most of the time I don't even know I'm doing it. And I'm a slapdash video editor."

"For the record, I always notice when you put on ChapStick."

Katie smiled at her in a way that was very unfair and disruptive to Wil keeping track of this story, and Wil laughed. "Don't distract me. The point is that ChapStick noticed when I did it in that video, right before I kissed Lynn. And someone in the marketing or social media department at ChapStick had positive thoughts, and these positive thoughts led to my getting a DM inviting me to ‘explore opportunities with the brand.'"

"Ah," Katie said. "Once, I accidentally started a three-year fad when I was photographed coming out of the gym with my barrettes clipped to my shirt collar where I'd put them when I changed and forgot to put them back in my hair."

"That was you?" Wil smiled, remembering the inexplicable barrettes-clipped-to-collar fad.

Katie laughed. "Continue."

"Right. So it's a convoluted story, involving some interesting phone calls with ChapStick's parent company, but I'll leave that for another day. Right now, I'm telling you about it because what it triggered me to do wasn't to explore a career as a spokesmodel, but to take a deep dive and make a lot of spreadsheets about influencer contracts, terms of service, and creator content rights."

"Obviously. Because you're Wil Greene." Katie put her elbow on her knee and tipped her head into her hand, and Wil thought, in a sudden flash, that she could look at Katie looking at her like that for the rest of her life.

It made her heart go still and warm, slowing the whole world down for just a moment. A pay-attention moment.

Wil laughed, but she let the shift happen between them. She told herself it was okay. She had a plan now.

She had risked and lost enough to bear how she was starting to feel about Katie Price.

"My point is, if you're leaving, I want to go with you to Los Angeles."

Katie unfurled herself and sat up straight. Shook her head. "Wait. Yes. No. What?"

Wil stood up. Katie did, too. "I didn't think I was going to say that, exactly. Yet. I jumped ahead."

"But you said it was your point!"

"My point was more supposed to be that I'm not stuck. I was wrong about that. When you got here, I'd already started getting unstuck. First, it was just solving people's problems in a simple way as an insurance adjuster. Then I was doing my TikTok, and that sent me into my obsession with fair terms for creators, and that led me to the list that Beanie and I made so I would get unstuck, which meant I went with her to Chicago to see you. Remember, one of the things on the list was ‘spend time outside Green Bay.' And then because I'd done that, when the reporter asked you about Ben, I was thinking about everything you wanted and how the whole world was conspiring to keep you from getting it, and how I didn't have that excuse. Not really."

Wil stopped and made herself look at the drop-ceiling panels with their perforated dots. The words were coming out sure and fast, and it felt good to finally be able to say something that felt so completely, utterly obvious and true.

"I tried to keep myself out of the whole world after I lost my dad so I would never lose anything ever again—or that's what one of my therapists said, talking about why I was in Green Bay. But it wasn't exactly right, because I did start that TikTok. Over and over again, I kissed people one time and let them go. I let myself feel everything I could possibly feel about them, and about myself, and about everything they needed and wanted, and then I let them go. Over and over. The thing is? I never got to do that with my dad, Katie."

Katie put her hands on her heart, one on top of the other, and Wil noticed how fast she was breathing. How intently she listened.

"I never got to go to Michigan Law," Wil said. "I didn't have a chance to get halfway into some important appellate court clerkship and realize it was my dad's dream, not my own, and then talk to him over Thanksgiving about it on the front porch swing with a blanket over us and have him hug me and tell me it was okay to have my own dream. I missed out on that, that whole part of my life. I had to figure out a different way to have it. Does that make sense?"

Katie nodded. Wil could feel her pulse in the palms of her hands. Her heart pounding.

"And you missed out, too!" Wil said this with a quaver in her voice. "Not with my dad, but how you were supposed to get your start. All this perfection you can't let go of because it's kept you safe? It's good that you were safe. I'm so thankful for the decisions you and Diana made to keep you safe, but there's always been something you wanted, Katie, and it wasn't safety. Always. So my point is, I knew you. I've always known you. And I let you go too soon. We already did that once. Right now, it's too soon again. If you go back to LA right now and this ends, it will be too soon for whatever this is that's not just a bet, or kissing on TikTok, or flirting with feeling all those might-have-been feelings, but what and who we are now."

Katie made a noise in her throat, somewhere between a sob and a laugh, smiling at Wil.

"And maybe we'll say good-bye to each other anyway." These words came out of Wil more slowly, with more solemnity. "Maybe we'll let go of all of this anyway. Maybe there will be a whole bunch of news stories about how we broke up and someone takes a picture of me crying at a cafe and it's circulated around the world. But even if that happens, you didn't do anything to me. I was the catalyst. Me. All you did was remind me how big I am, and now I want to remind you how big you are. Just you. The original you, the real you. Because if you have to be beyond reproach for the rest of your life, it's going to kill you, Katie Price, and it's just as unsafe as Ben."

Katie had both of her hands against her cheeks, her blue eyes wide. "Wil."

"Unless you don't want me to." Wil's voice was hoarse. "By the way, I didn't plan that speech."

"I haven't heard you make a speech like that since you got valedictorian, when you directly imaginary-addressed Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and told him that he was the worst coward who had been walking a tightrope over the true heart of America his entire career."

Wil grinned. "That one got away from me, too. You know it has twenty thousand views on YouTube? I like to think that he's seen it."

Then Wil could breathe again. So she did that for a minute while they looked at each other, and the words Wil had just said settled down between them as one more thing that had happened, dividing the past from the present.

Then and now. Before and after. That kind of division didn't actually make any kind of sense of how Wil felt about Katie Price.

It was like Wil had told her. She'd always known Katie.

Always.

The cats began to meander closer in the silence. Trois rubbed against Wil's leg, and Wil kneeled down to pet the top of her head.

"Where's the video?" Katie whispered. Then she cleared her throat. "Did you get the edited file I sent you?"

"I did. I wasn't sure if it was still a good idea to post it. I didn't want to step on the toes of whatever you and your people decide the message should be. So far, what the media's decided to think about you and Noel being at my house is kind of intense, you know?"

"That's because of Ben."

In one viral video from an entertainment site, Ben had been getting out of his car, walking up to some coffee stand. He said he knew that Katie was "obsessed" with Wil-You-or-Won't-You. The implication was that Katie had sought out Wil's account in her hometown to prove she was still desirable and relevant—to push up her star, break up the cat lady stories, contribute to her enigma.

Ben had made that angle sound desperate.

His statement made it difficult for Wil to be sure Katie wanted the video posted. She wanted to know what Katie wanted. It didn't matter if the video went up or never did, as long as Katie was calling the shots.

"Did Noel say it was okay?" Katie picked Sue up off the floor, where she had been shamelessly stretching out her entire body against Katie's leg. She kissed Sue on the top of her head. "I had such a good talk with him. I really like him. I don't want him hurt."

"Noel signed a release form just a little bit ago that took into account everything new. He told me if you wanted to post it, then you should post it." Wil gave Trois one last scratch and stood.

"Right now, either we're in a throuple with Noel, I'm imminently going to be posted kissing you on TikTok in a desperate bid for publicity, or you took on the challenge of going where no one has gone since Ben because of your obvious erotic powers."

"That last one, I thought, was pretty good." Wil couldn't stop trying to lighten the mood, even as her heart had been racing since she'd come through the door.

Katie rolled her eyes, smiling. She set Sue down on the floor. When she straightened, she stood opposite Wil, close. She put her hands on her hips and looked at Wil with all the power of an A-list celebrity tossing out directives to her team. "I want you to know that I'm making this decision for myself. Because, first, the video is good, and if I don't release it, no one will ever see it. I can admit my ego is invested. And second, it's true."

Katie bit that bright red worried spot on her lip.

"It's true," she said a second time. "I filmed your kiss with Noel. So if you put out the video with my name attached, it isn't a story. It's just what happened. I don't know what happens after we do that, and I haven't even talked about this with my people, but I didn't talk to them about filming a Wil-You-or-Won't-You video, and I should've. Not because of me. Because of you. Because you made something incredible and huge and emotional and sexy and real, and I wanted to and loved being a part of it, and I should've told my team about the opportunity I had to do it. So now, I am going to tell the world how lucky I was to get to capture those sixty seconds. In the caption, credit me as the director and cinematographer."

When Katie pulled her hair over her shoulder again, Wil saw that she was flushed along her collarbone. Wil remembered what it was like to have that skin against her mouth. What it was like to feel Katie hot against her thigh.

"Do you want me to tag you?" Even to herself, she sounded far away.

"Tag the fuck out of it." Katie stepped closer, until their noses were inches apart. Too close for the closeness to be for any other reason than the impulse to slide their hands into each other's hair and bite whatever part of them presented itself first to the other.

"I do have a question, though." Wil's voice was a faint rasp.

"What is your question?" Katie whispered this to the corner of Wil's mouth, her eyes closed.

Wil did not have a question. She didn't have a single thought in her head, but she needed to do something to defuse the tension and keep herself from kissing Katie, or Katie from kissing her. Wil had enough experience with kissing to know how close it was to happening. In fact, she'd been in this place with Katie many times more than she would have ever thought, so she was particularly experienced in what it was like to almost kiss Katie.

Wil's desire to kiss Katie Price was becoming an all-consuming problem. Kissing Noel had been an exercise in figuring out how to be present enough to kiss Noel when mostly what Wil wanted to do was kiss Katie.

She would post the TikTok, but Wil didn't have anyone lined up for Wednesday. She didn't have anyone lined up, ever, at all.

It was time for the next thing. She hoped Katie would be a part of it, but if she wasn't, Wil was starting to believe she could do the next thing no matter what.

But they definitely weren't supposed to be kissing. Kissing was part of Wil's plan, but they hadn't gotten to that part yet.

Okay. There was the question. "What do you think is our next move with the mystery of Mr. Cook?"

Katie blinked. "I think we're operating with too many unspoken constraints." She sounded like she had that first day at Diana's party, when she was trying to out-flirt Wil. "I love constraints, don't get me wrong, but limiting ourselves to detection that can be accomplished in the Bronco means our progress is slow. Do you have any ideas?"

"We could ask someone who might know the score." Wil said this to Katie's lower lip. Her mouth was slightly open. It was killing Wil.

"Like who?"

"I mean, we've never talked to anyone about this, so, anyone? Like, literally any adult in our circle of acquaintance, for a starting place? But I have someone in mind."

"Hmm. Is that cheating?"

"The better question is if it's cheating to use a bet to give ourselves what we want if we could give each other what we want without it."

Katie leaned her head back and laughed at the ceiling. "You mean that we want to kiss each other. And our bet has been smashed apart by circumstance, reality, and the fact that it was a thinly veiled excuse to see each other as many times as we wanted to while I was here."

"Yes."

"Our real problem, then," Katie said, "is everything that our mothers are worried about." Her teeth dragged over that spot on her lip again. Worry. Worry, worry.

Watching Katie worry released Wil the rest of the way from the kissing spell she'd nearly fallen into, because Katie's worry meant there was something going on there that she didn't fully understand and that wasn't part of her plan.

Wil had been slightly behind Katie and Noel when they stepped out onto the porch and the photographer called Katie's name. It had meant that when Katie turned around—her face shielded from the flashing lights and the sudden tumult on Wil's normally peaceful street—Wil had seen, clearly, Katie's unschooled expression.

Devastated. That was how Katie had looked. Utterly devastated.

And even though she'd pasted a new expression on immediately, tossing a practiced smile at Wil, keeping her tone breezy as she walked Noel through an explanation of who she was and what he was witnessing, something about her had changed.

Or maybe what Wil was seeing was how Katie always was. How she had to be when she wasn't Wil's Katie.

"If our real problem is our mothers," Wil said, "then it will only freak them out a very unsurprising amount more when we tell them I'm going with you to Los Angeles."

"That's really what you want?" Katie's perfect eyebrows drew together.

"I wouldn't have—"

Katie put her hand over Wil's mouth. "I just realized I don't care as much as I should if you're sure. Because yes, God. Please come with me. Post the video, and we can hole up in my house together and hide from the aftermath."

"Um."

"You have to understand, right now, out there is trained on Green Bay, waiting for more. More of me. That's why I was packing. I was planning to ask April to get me out of here without tipping anyone off. If you come with me, it gives us more time. For… this. Without… all that."

Tension had made its way into Katie's expressive face and dulled it. Her flush had gone hectic.

"College visit," Wil said, trying for humor, trying not to feel like she'd invited herself somewhere she wasn't really welcome. "Isn't that why high school friends fly out to stay in guest rooms on the other side of the country?"

Katie put her hand around the back of Wil's neck, her thumb under her ear, and pulled their foreheads together. Wil felt Katie's breath against her face as a heartbeat between her legs. "This is the worst idea ever, and we are going to get into trouble."

"We never had the chance before," Wil said. "It's about time."