Chapter Fifteen

Cy Newhouse, the unbearably beautiful and extremely famous bisexual placekicker for the Green Bay Packers, sat across from Wil in one of the leather seats of the private plane he shared with several other Packers players, including just-as-beautiful, just-as-famous former Packers quarterback Joe Starr and his increasingly famous girlfriend, Angela Goossens. Who were also on the plane with Katie. And Wil.

Surreal.

Cy Newhouse and Joe Starr and Angela Goossens were not flying to LA. They'd just come out to see Katie while the crew got the plane ready, to "visit," Katie had told Wil, as though she were describing Diana dropping by Beanie's house with a plate of casserole for ten minutes of conversation, barely worth mentioning.

That was what Katie was doing now, visiting with Joe and Angela in a separate bank of seats. Catching up with her friends.

Wil had never been on a private plane before. She had also never met one of the Packers, unless you counted standing in line behind a recently drafted running back at the Chipotle near the stadium, which she did not. She had certainly not anticipated meeting Cy Newhouse, ever. Or Joe Starr. Her father's favorite player.

Wil's father's favorite player had told her to call him Joel. That was his real name. Wil had known that already, because it was something the color commentators liked to mention during the games, and therefore something her dad also liked to mention.

Her dad would have been so interested to hear everything about what was happening to Wil right now.

"I had my agent call you!" Cy leaned forward and put one finger on Wil's knee. He smelled amazing. His eyes were just as blue as they looked in photos, and his dimples were a crime. Why did a six-foot-tall man with gorgeous brown skin and blue eyes and broad shoulders need dimples? What for? Killing her with? "How did that not work?" he asked.

Wil had no idea. She'd like to think she'd answer any kind of call from anyone representing one of the most photographed sports heroes in the world if it meant she'd get to kiss said sports hero, who looked like he knew how to excavate several layers of eroticism out of a sixty-second kiss.

"I get a lot of people contacting me about the channel," she said. "I can only think that I didn't believe it was real. There are a lot of prank calls from inside Green Bay."

"Sure." Cy nodded. "You have to protect yourself. What you're doing is powerful, and that means assholes are going to notice." He put his hands on his cheeks. "But Wil Greene. Wil Greene. I've been wanting you to kiss me for almost nine months. And now you're in my plane, but you're with Katie. My life isn't going my way."

Wil could feel her heart beat in her throat, and in her palms, a good kind of ache—but that ache wasn't about Cy's direct gaze and what he said he'd wanted from her. It was that he'd said, You're with Katie. She wanted to ask him if he'd seen something between her and Katie that had told him, Wil's with Katie. Maybe whatever he'd seen, he'd taken a picture of, or could describe to her, so she could keep it no matter what.

No matter what.

"I feel like it can't be true, what you just said," Wil replied. "I'm thinking your life goes your way more or less all the time."

Cy grinned at her. "It's pretty good, but I want to complain about this." Cy turned his attention to Katie, pointing across the plane at her and raising his voice so she'd hear him. "Katie Price! You've known this woman the whole time!"

"Yes and no," Katie said. "It's complicated."

"No," Cy said and laughed. "It's not."

He met Wil's eyes, and Wil did, in fact, at least feel what he had seen. Because even though this was Cy Newhouse, and she, along with millions of other people, had been arresting on the vision of his oiled, naked body in athletic shoe ads for many years, what she'd found out in the last half hour was that he was amazing to talk to. Insightful, kind, and funny.

Cy was very good friends with Katie. In fact, he and Katie had already made New Year's plans, as they did every year when Katie was home and the Packers' schedule put Cy in Green Bay.

Wil hadn't known that. But she liked it.

Even more, she liked realizing that she, herself, would love for Cy Newhouse to become a friend.

In the years since she'd moved back to Green Bay, Wil had grown close to Beanie. She had a big network of hometown people from growing up who were glad to see her or meet her for a drink. She'd had housemates—so many housemates—who had been the usual mix of fantastic and cringe, and a lot of them were still people to grab a meal with or catch up with periodically. Doing her job, she often met people she liked, and she had coworkers she was friendly with. But she, Wil Greene, famously social, hadn't even tried to make real friends. Deep friends. Ride-or-die friends.

What's more, it hadn't been on her list.

Yet it turned out Cy had been wanting to stand across from her in her living room and let her kiss him.

Wil would have absolutely kissed Cy Newhouse. Before.

The entire last thirty-six hours had felt like no time and endless all at once. Then she was in a car with Katie, being driven to a private hangar at the Green Bay airport while finishing a conversation she'd barely started with Beanie over text in which Beanie was trying to be supportive and not worried while Wil was also trying not to freak out because Katie wasn't herself.

Or, at least, she wasn't the Katie who Wil was familiar with. Maybe this Katie was perfectly herself, and Wil hadn't met her yet. Which was fine. Except the tight feeling in her belly didn't think it was fine. It thought Katie not being herself was a reason to be as worried as Beanie that Wil was flying with Katie to Los Angeles because it was the only way to know if…

It was the only way to know what they needed to know.

All of that was a lot to keep up with, and they hadn't even closed the plane door yet. But Wil kept checking in with herself, and except for being worried about Katie not being entirely Katie enough, Wil kept discovering she was good. Better than good.

She hadn't felt this interested in her own life for so long.

Looking into Cy's pretty blue eyes, Wil smiled. Cy had famously told the press he would leave the NFL when he met his true love, which had earned him the nickname "Cynderella."

"I hate to tell you this, but I don't think I'm your Prince Charming," she told him.

"Damn it." Cy studied Wil's face for a moment. "No, yeah, I think you're right." He put his palm over his heart. "Stings, though. I've been nurturing a serious Wil-You-or-Won't-You crush for ages. But fill me in." Cy leaned forward. "You've known each other and not known each other this whole time? Because if I'd had any idea there was someone out there who made Katie let down her guard this much, I would have played matchmaker so hard."

"We've known each other our whole lives. But parallel." Wil gestured a side-by-side trajectory with her hands. "Then, senior year, something happened."

Cy took Wil's hands and smashed them together. "Something like that?"

Wil laughed. "Then, we didn't really see each other or talk for thirteen years, until last week."

Cy leaned back and crossed his ridiculously long legs. "You two must have had a lot to say your senior year." He held up his hand when Wil started to try to fill in more. "You don't have to. This is the kind of thing I get. The media likes to play, but I'm serious. When I find my person, then That. Is. What. I'm. For. I don't want anything else taking first place." He aimed his million-dollar smile at Wil. "So what are you doing now that you've found her?"

"I'm making her take me home with her. I've cashed in all of my vacation, sick, and PTO time at work, but I don't think I'm coming back. To my job, I mean. I couldn't tell you, right now, what LA will be for me in any kind of long term."

"You're scattering her defensive line." Cy nodded. "It's not as deep as she thinks it is. But I think you already know that." He put his big hand on Wil's shoulder, squeezed it, and smiled.

Wil smiled back, but her heart had done a flip. He made it sound simple. He made it sound like the story of Katie and Wil was always going to end the same way.

She hoped so.

The flight attendant, an adorable, auburn-haired white person who had introduced themself as "Mace, nonbinary, they-them," emerged from the cockpit, and Cy waved and began sauntering in their direction. Katie and Angela were sitting together, their heads bent toward each other, looking at pictures on Katie's phone while Katie told Angela something about her California garden and an avocado tree. Wil watched as Joel Starr leaned down to kiss Angela on the temple and said something quiet in her ear.

Wil felt as though she was mostly handling the reality of Cy Newhouse and Angela Goossens on this plane, but she couldn't quite make herself look straight on at Joel-not-Joe Starr. His celebrity, combined with his extraordinary sandy-haired, full-lipped prettiness, like a young Robert Redford, was proving difficult for Wil to accommodate.

It did help that he kept getting out of his seat to kneel on the floor and talk to Katie's cats inside their cat carriers, poking his long fingers through the grates to pet their tiny faces. Joel was famously an animal lover.

When Almond Butter yowled from her carrier, Joel laughed and withdrew his finger. "All right," he said gently. "I was only being friendly."

"That's Almond Butter," Wil made herself tell him. "She's sixteen, and she's never been on a plane. I couldn't decide if I should sedate her? The vet and I decided no, not unless she started to seem distressed. But I'm a little bit freaking out."

"She's a beautiful cat for sixteen. She looks like she has a lot of years in her still."

"I hope so." Wil looked away for a moment. "I'm supposed to be planning for the end of her life, but I get mad when I try to. My dad got her for me. He died when I was in college."

Joel nodded solemnly. "It's very loving to plan for the golden years of our animals. It helps them feel like they still have a role, even if they don't get around the same way or like the same things." He spoke deliberately, with a beautiful honey-laced Southern accent. "I have a donkey who's quite elderly, Marianne, and she used to act as a guard for a group of goats that lived on a farm in Elmhurst. Marianne has arthritis and can't work like that anymore, but with medicine and a very warm stall, she's comfortable, and she's found that she loves treat puzzles. So I devise new puzzles for her every day and make it seem like it's very important for her to solve them. It means we both have something new to do and something new to learn about ourselves." He glanced at Wil a little bit sideways. While he spoke, he'd been looking at Almond Butter.

Because, Wil understood suddenly, she made him nervous. "That's an incredibly helpful perspective," she said. "I'm going to give that some thought."

"All right. What does she like?" he asked, eyes back on Almond Butter. "Not having her chin scratched."

Wil cleared her throat against how this conversation was making her tearful and tender and overwhelmed with the goodness of life. "If you hold out your finger, she'll rub against it if she's interested in claiming you as her own."

Wil knelt down next to Joel and showed him, and just like that, Joel Starr, Joe Starr, was making friends with Almond Butter, making kissing noises at her, telling her she was a good girl, and looking at Wil with delight.

Wil's heart lurched again. Not because Joel was gorgeous, or for how close she was to him, or because she'd looked over and seen Katie and Angela were sharing one chair, their legs hooked over each other, Angela touching Katie's hair, or because Cy was flirting with Mace so hard that Mace had just reached out to touch the placket on Cy's shirt and Wil realized that the two of them had some kind of history that was pleasant for them both.

Her heart was thudding and skipping because she liked how vulnerability had inveigled itself into new parts of her life since she'd connected with Katie.

And because these were Katie's friends. This was Katie's real life, a tiny slice of what Katie's life was like as Katie Price, Hollywood Triple Threat. And Wil liked it.

The part of her that was Jasper Greene couldn't be more thrilled to meet and talk to these fascinating new people.

The part of her that was Beanie Greene loved the idea of learning the ins and outs of a completely new way of life, synthesizing everything she learned, and filing it away, ready to deploy when the moment was right.

Mostly, though, it was the most Wil part of Wil Greene that loved sitting on the carpeted floor of a luxury jet, talking to Joel Starr about her cat. Because she'd gotten herself to here. Her life had. Her experiences. Her kissing project, even, for how it had taught her to meet new people exactly where they were at.

And Katie. Wil wouldn't be here if it weren't for Katie. It was talking to Katie, being with Katie, that had given Wil the gift of all this curiosity about her own life.

All of this hope.

"I hate to break up the party," Mace said, guiding Cy's hand from their waist to their hand and squeezing it. "But if you're not flying to LA, you'll have to say good-bye for now." Mace looked at Cy and winked.

By the time the flight took off, it was dark, with only a slash of sunset in the distance that the plane continuously chased. Katie was quiet once her friends left, and a rule-follower on the plane, and so was seat-belted properly into a wide leather chair next to Wil, obviously lost in her thoughts.

Wil kept putting her fingers on the window where that fading strip of pink and orange light wouldn't quite go, their westerly flight literally carrying them into the past. She imagined that if the plane could fly a little faster, and then even faster than that, it could spin the whole world around until she could hug her dad again.

Or take her back to the last night in the tent by the lake before Katie left for summer stock.

Wil had almost kissed her that night. It was the second time she'd almost kissed Katie, the first time she'd known what she was about to do.

They'd had a golden day together. They took a long swim in the lake as the sun began to set, the pinks and oranges of the sunset making Katie's skin glow, the gathering dark making her teeth flash extra white when she smiled wide at one of Wil's jokes.

A stiff breeze had come up off the lake, and they'd thrown their bodies out of the water, squealing with cold, their feet squishing in the sand mixed with fishy-smelling lake mud right at the shore. They'd sprinted to the outdoor rinsing station to blast the lake off their bodies with freezing water, exaggerating all of their reactions until someone at a campsite yelled into the twilight for them to shut up, already! Jeez!

Which had made them laugh more.

They made s'mores over a little spirit stove, too tired to try to figure out how to start a fire with the campfire wood bundle they'd bought at a Kwik Trip on the way, and then they'd collapsed into the tent. Wil could still remember the exact color of the air inside the yellow tent, how it mixed with the deep purple sunset and the cheap camp lantern to make their skin glow blue and the shadows go black.

Their swimsuits had dried, and in the cramped quarters of the tent, they didn't bother to really change, just hiked on their sweatpants and T-shirts and dove into their sleeping bags to talk.

Wil could still see Katie's face through the dim light when she'd turned off the lantern, and all she could hear in that sharp, crystalline, time-stopped moment was Katie's breath and the waves hitting the shore.

She'd known she wanted to. All day. And all day, it had seemed like they'd been one single gyre of energy, snapped together by a look or hand-holding or laughter like they couldn't move an inch out of the spin.

Your hair's gotten so long, she'd said, and she touched it, tracing it over Katie's shoulder with her fingertips until Katie shivered.

Goose bumps,Katie had whispered. She didn't have to whisper. The next campsite couldn't hear them have a conversation over the hum of insects and the lake.

Wil didn't know how long it was like that before Katie said it. You can.

She didn't know, either, why that broke the spell—Katie's admission she wanted the kiss, too—but Wil had found herself suddenly unzipping her sleeping bag and putting her arms around Katie, not to kiss her, but to lay her head on her shoulder and squeeze her in a hug even while she wanted to, she still wanted to, but not as much as she wanted something with Katie that would never end.

It had ended anyway.

Gazing out the window of the plane taking her with Katie Price to Los Angeles, it seemed to Wil that every single kiss of her life had been measured against that kiss that didn't happen.

She didn't want to wonder anymore how things might have been different. It wasn't an interesting question.

The interesting question was what kind of life she could make with Katie now.

When they landed, a van was waiting for them, and a driver ready to take on cat carriers and luggage. There weren't any photographers. Katie had said her agent, April, had made the arrangements so they could arrive in the city "without any fanfare," which Wil understood to be code for "without showing up on the celebrity gossip websites four minutes later."

The van traveled up into the Hollywood Hills, past landscaping lights and lights on gates marking the turns, until it pulled into a long, narrow, blond brick drive that widened to something that looked more like an exhibit in an Asian garden than a house, all glints of glass and twisting, miniature trees.

Wil had seen pictures of Katie's home, but they were pictures a mother would take. The pool. Pretty flowers in the yard. Stained glass in a door.

This was different. Dark. Shadows. A hint of glass. Very private and strangely still. When they got out of the van, a coyote yipped in the distance, and Almond Butter complained about it loudly.

Katie had been so quiet during the flight and in the van. But she hadn't let go of Wil—her hand, a loop in her jeans, her knee.

"This is where I live," she said. The front door responded to Katie's fingerprint on a complex security pad. She had Sue's carrier in one hand. Wil carried Almond Butter. There was a light on in the entry hall and flowers on a low table by the door. They smelled amazing. Wil could see straight down the hall, through what looked like it must be the kitchen and dining area, through an open door to the glowing turquoise pool.

The contrast to the incredibly nice basement suite Katie's parents had put in at their home in Green Bay couldn't have been more stark.

Who had Katie or April called to turn on the lights, buy the flowers, and leave the door to the pool invitingly open? There were lights floating in the pool, even, and a pitcher of something that still had condensation beading on its cool surface on a table by the pool with glasses at the ready.

Everything was very beautiful—colored glass and art, natural materials in magical layers that made it feel like they had stepped inside a millionaire's treehouse—beautiful in a way Wil had literally never seen or experienced in someone's home.

And this was Katie's home. Katie from East High School.

"Do you like it?" Katie put the carrier down. She pulled out her phone, tapped it, and it did something to the lights. Everything was suddenly bathed in some kind of perfect, warm-colored, after-dark indoor glow that made them both look like they were in a movie.

Wil almost laughed, and then she saw Katie's face.

It was a real question. Katie wasn't sure.

"Katie, it's objectively the most gorgeous house I've ever seen close up and in person." Katie wrinkled her nose. "But maybe it would be easier if you showed me the parts of it that you want me to notice. I heard you tell Angela you have a hundred-year-old avocado tree. Is this house a hundred years old?"

"Almost!" Katie beamed. "It's from the forties, but it had a big expansion in the fifties and got renovated again in the nineties. They built the conservatory around the avocado tree, or at least that's what the real estate agent told me. Let's get the rest of the cats, and I'll show you. I think Almond Butter will like the conservatory. She can pretend she's in the forest."

Then it was better. Katie showed Wil how the security system worked, they brought the cats inside, and Katie had Wil carry Almond Butter into the living room where there was what she called a "neutral area" that she felt would be a good place to make the introduction between all of the cats.

Sue came over and smelled Almond Butter and went to the credenza with her AAC buttons and said, Home. Mama. Mama. Home. Cat. Then she pressed another button that made a "Hmmm?" noise, indicating a question.

Sue approached and smelled Almond Butter again, this time with her tail in the air, until Katie told her, "This cat's name is Almond Butter. Would you like me to make a button for her?"

Sue returned to the credenza. Yes.

"Okay, my baby. I will get on that tomorrow, and a button for Wil, too." Katie pushed the buttons, Tomorrow. Yes. Hmm?

Yes,Sue pressed. She left the room. Trois, in the meantime, had already smelled Almond Butter all over, rubbed her entire side against Almond Butter's body, and run away, rounding the corner at a high rate of speed and disappearing into another part of the house.

Phil was perched in a window that looked out over the thickest part of the garden, taking in the night view.

Wil held out her hand to Almond Butter, who rubbed her face against Wil's fingers. "She seems good," Wil said. "She's met a lot of cats over the years because of my housemates, and she's always the cat who keeps the peace. But she'll need her heated bed wherever I'll be sleeping."

Wil glanced at Katie, her belly deciding at that moment to flip over and then make everything in her body ache.

"Come here," Katie said.

Wil stood, and Katie pulled Wil close. Her cheeks were flushed. There was still a mark on one of them where the seat belt in the van had pressed in when she'd used it like a pillow.

"Hi," Wil whispered. She reached out and put her hand at Katie's waist.

"Hi." Katie took a deep breath. "I have three guest rooms, Wil. All of them are ready, but I think if you took one of them I would"—Katie laughed—"I think I'd just invite myself in, probably half an hour after you went to bed. But I am a grown woman? You can have your own space. If you want."

Wil put her hand against the side of Katie's neck. Under her jaw. She rubbed Katie's jaw with her thumb. Katie closed her eyes, because it wasn't a neutral place to touch someone. It wasn't where your friend would touch you. It wasn't how a friend would touch you.

It was a touch that asked permission for something else.

When Katie opened her eyes, she took a quiet breath and laced her legs between Wil's so that she was close enough for Wil to feel her breath against her lips. Wil put her other hand on the other side of Katie's neck, feeling the goose bumps break out under her fingertips.

"I've seen you do this before," Katie said, soft. "On your videos. I've seen you hold someone like this."

Wil smiled. "Usually only if I'm pretty into them."

"I got that impression," Katie said. "Watching the videos. I always wanted to be the one you kissed who you held like this before you did it. Those kisses usually got pretty…"

"Interesting?"

"No. I mean, sure. But I was going to say ‘hot.' Like, very, extremely, horny hot."

"Can I kiss you, Katie?" Wil moved her hands gently, her fingers to Katie's nape, her thumbs over her earlobes. Because she was done. Done with their bet, which had only been an excuse for them to get close to each other anyway, and done kissing everyone she'd kissed since Katie got famous but not kissing Katie.

"You can," Katie said.

Wil's heart stopped.

Then Katie reached up and grabbed onto Wil's wrists to pull her the last half inch to her mouth, and Wil was kissing Katie, or Katie was kissing Wil, but either way, they both moaned at the same time like they'd been waiting thirteen years and seven days to kiss—which they had, exactly that long, and longer. Katie's mouth was so soft, and they kissed softly, just kisses, just three times, and then Katie was sucking Wil's bottom lip into her mouth and Wil was tasting her, and Katie let go of Wil's wrists so she could slide her hands up under Wil's shirt, making her shiver when Katie dragged her nails up her sides.

It had been so long, so long since Wil had kissed someone and it felt like this. Wil had felt tender and turned on and interested and surprised and hot and sexy when she'd kissed people for her channel, but she hadn't felt those things like they were for her, like she was taking something for herself, getting herself off and getting touched and letting go all the way, letting herself go and trusting that who she was kissing wanted her to let go and wanted to let go, too.

It was so fucking hot.

Wil was touching Katie everywhere now. Everywhere she had always wondered about. Her hips, then over her breasts, which were naked under her loose shirt. Wil was so wet, then wetter when her thumb against Katie's nipple made them both gasp into each other's mouths and made Katie move to Wil's neck, where her kissing slowed down and got very explicit just as she reached up and unhooked Wil's bra.

"God," Wil breathed, and laughed. "I'm actually dying, Katie."

"Not yet." Katie kissed Wil's throat and slid her hands under Wil's loosened bra to touch the sides of her breasts, which made Wil grab at Katie with no specific intent other than to prevent herself from puddling to the floor, broken by unmuted lust. "Don't die yet."

"Okay, but you're going to have to take me to a second location," Wil said. "I can't maintain any posture that's not helping me put all of my concentration on coming for the next two hundred years."

Katie laughed. "It worked! I am a kissing genius. That's good, because I didn't love the plan where I snuck into your bedroom."

But there was something in Katie's expression, something eloquent that made Wil think about the fact that Katie hadn't had partnered intimacy in a very long time, and she was also a very physical, and definitely sexual, person. What they had already done, on the prim HomeGoods love seat in Diana and Craig's basement, was one of the dirtiest things Wil had ever gotten herself into, and they had been fully clothed, and no tongues had been involved.

Wil might not actually survive making love with Katie Price.

Katie moved in again, and Wil kissed her. Kissed her more, let Katie crumple the front of Wil's shirt in her hand, which made Wil clench so hard that she almost touched herself, putting pressure where she needed it, but she didn't. She wanted to see what would happen if she waited.

Katie stepped away just a little and took Wil's hand. "Come on."

Wil followed her down the hallway, catching her breath.

Reminding herself of everything she knew about Katie, and had always known, and leaving room for what she didn't.