Chapter Seventeen

Wil woke up like she usually did, with Almond Butter snoring in her face, except when she reached up to gently move her away from the top of her head, it wasn't Almond Butter snoring in her face.

It was Katie.

Katie Price, who had ninety-five million followers on Twitter, an Oscar, an armful of Golden Globes, a shelf of Emmys and SAG Awards, and a Tony nomination, slept with her mouth open, sawing logs like she was building a cabin.

Which, Wil remembered, she always had. Why would she have stopped?

Katie's arms and legs were still wrapped around Wil, and Wil wanted nothing more than to kiss her awake and touch her everywhere, taste her everywhere, but even in the dim light from the clerestory it was obvious there were purple smudges under Katie's eyes, and her snores were long and slow.

Katie should sleep more if she could.

And Wil would be happy to be Katie's sleep buddy, except that she was still on Green Bay time, and it was well past the hour she needed to get up and pee.

Wil extricated herself one limb at a time, ultimately swapping her warm pillow for her body in Katie's arms as she scooted away, pausing between each removal so Katie's breathing could slow down into deep sleep again.

Katie's robe was on the nightstand. Wil belted it on. She knew that Katie's room had an en suite through the walk-in closet, but she couldn't figure out how to open the invisible door. She decided to creep down the hall to where she'd passed a powder room the night before.

All four cats thumped off the bed one by one and followed her out of the room. They were waiting outside the bathroom door when Wil finished, looking like a jury box, and then she was their parade leader into the kitchen, where Katie's cats lined up where Wil assumed they must have their breakfast. They looked at Almond Butter with terrible envy, since she was already placidly crunching her special older cat food in the spot Wil had set up last night beside the floor-to-ceiling windows that had a view of the pool.

Sue meowed mournfully, and Phil and Trois followed suit.

"Okay, niblets," Wil whispered. "Give me a minute."

They watched her open and close smooth wood cabinets with a grain that looked expensive and rare until she found one full of different kinds of cat food and treats organized into clever trays and baskets. She couldn't locate cat dishes, but she divided up the breakfasts onto the small plates she did find, trying not to think about how she might have just served the cats breakfast on appetizer plates that cost more, each, than the Le Creuset Dutch oven Wil had splurged on recently, feeling full of herself and grown up.

She opened the refrigerator that showed her what was inside of it on a big digital display, got out a fancy flavored water, and nearly drained it, standing in the kitchen while the cats ate.

Katie.

God.Wil hadn't counted on… She didn't know how she ever could have been prepared for that. Kissing Katie. Her body, the way she moved, the way she moaned. Her hands trembling. Her eyes on Wil, staying right on her the way they always did, like there was nothing else to look at in the world.

They'd both been nervous, or, if not nervous, they'd both been completely overspilling with a lot of different kinds of feelings.

Wil hadn't felt that much of any kind of emotion since she lost her dad, and grief was so opaque and obliterating. It had dulled all of her senses and left her with one sharp, keening loss to stare at and stare at until she forgot there was anything else to look at or to feel.

The grief had been so preoccupying and steady, there was a way it stood in for her dad. She'd relied on it to keep her place, to keep her weighted to the earth, even as that was the only thing it did.

But how she'd felt kissing Katie, touching her, making love to her, was overflowing the way something fizzy overflowed. It was champagne. It was effervescent, with lots of transparent colors, with Katie's deep blue eyes and blondy-brown hair and her skin washed over with pale flushes. None of Wil's feelings had stayed put. She'd felt hot and sexy, then tender and shy, and then like she wanted to hold Katie down and suggest dark things they could do together right before they told each other everything in their hearts.

When everything was love.

When everything was what in love felt like.

When everything was loving Katie.

Wil loved Katie.

Loving Katie was easy.

It was everything else that Wil didn't know how to do yet. Now, all by herself, it was a little intimidating to stand here in Katie's beautiful, almost unreal house. The light wasn't the same light they had in Green Bay in December, and the fact that it was dancing over the water in the pool meant Wil wasn't in the Midwest anymore.

Her fear felt overfull, like a bowl she held in both hands that she had to be careful not to spill. Wil had to keep reminding herself that she'd been afraid before. Last night, falling asleep, she'd told herself that in the past, when she'd done things that scared her, they often ended up being the things that mattered most.

She was glad for the cats. They helped.

She walked across a huge space, the floor a dark, swirly cork that was utterly silent to walk on, to a rough-edged wooden table. There was a laptop at one end, a little arrangement of succulents in a tabletop garden, and a row of Los Angeles Times newspapers starting the day Katie left for Wisconsin.

Katie read the paper.

That was funny. Craig, Katie's dad, had a big ritual around the newspaper. He got the Green Bay paper and read the whole thing every morning with his breakfast, and on the weekend he went to the cigar shop and newsstand, Bosse's, to buy a copy of the Sunday edition.

Wil hadn't known that Katie read the paper, but it made sense. She liked her little routines, her breakfast burritos and morning yoga. In high school, she'd carried a case in her backpack that contained her phone, six perfectly sharpened number-two pencils, a black pen, a red pen, a blue pen, and an immaculate pink eraser.

Wil had always liked learning Katie's little routines. She'd bought the Twizzlers and the pretzels, she'd memorized the routes Katie liked to take between classes so she could walk with Katie during passing period, and even in the years she didn't know Katie, she'd seen all of her movies, watched her at the awards shows, and followed her press.

It wasn't going to be difficult for Wil to learn about Katie's life in Hollywood. It was going to be a pleasure.

Then she realized her cheeks were flaming hot, because her brain had fed Katie's cats and seen her newspapers and then wandered off, whistling, as though this was it. Her and Katie.

She took a deep breath. One thing at a time. The newspaper. Then, the three gazillion things before her and happily ever after.

Wil padded to the entryway. In the daylight, it was filled with a rainbow of different colors of light from the stained glass. The entry was a huge wooden door that was hinged to swing from the middle, and Katie had already shown her how to arm and disarm the alarm system, so Wil disarmed it and stepped outside.

It had to be in the high sixties and sunny. She could definitely get into that after thirty Wisconsin winters.

The wide part of the blond brick driveway where the van had parked last night was shaped like a giant kidney bean, surrounded with beautiful landscaping that set off the house like it was jewelry made of glass, wood, and color. She didn't see the paper anywhere on this part of the drive, so she made sure her robe was belted, then padded down the narrow part that came up from the street toward the wrought-iron gate at the bottom. She wasn't worried anyone would see her. The drive was long, and the landscaping, rock walls, and fencing created a secluded space.

The bricks were warm, and there were so many different kinds of flowers and plants to look at that she didn't notice the tight group of men clustered around one of the brick pillars of the gate at the bottom of the drive until it was too late.

"Wil! Wil! Wil Greene! Are you involved with Katie?! Wil! Did you spend the night? Are you—"

The shouts and the sounds from them were awful. They made Wil heat from the bottom up, made her feel completely naked, humiliated, like she had broken something expensive and everyone was looking at her.

She turned around and walked back up the drive, the photographers shouting, and as soon as they were out of sight, she ran to the door, shaking, unable at first to figure out how it opened until she remembered Katie had said that when the front door shut behind you, the alarm rearmed. She went to the display, but it didn't know her. It didn't know her fingerprint.

She could still hear them shouting.

She had to push the option to alert the homeowner. She heard the small electronic tick of cameras from the security system training on her. All she could think of was Katie, warm in her bed, sleeping, oblivious, her arms wrapped around a pillow she thought was Wil, getting some kind of alert and seeing Wil on the cameras in front of her house in nothing but a short robe, in obviously nothing but a short robe, panicking and trying to get inside.

Wil felt terrible.

The lock clicked, and Katie pulled the door open. When she'd made it through, Katie opened her arms. "Shh. Shh, it's okay. Good morning, sweet baby."

"I was trying to get you the paper." Wil's throat felt raw.

Katie squeezed Wil. "Oh, never change, you ridiculous Wisconsin dad. Were there a lot of them?"

"So many. Are they there every day?"

"Most days. At least a couple of them." All of the concern in Katie's face was for Wil—or, at least, that was how it seemed. But underneath, there was something Wil didn't like, something that made her think at least a small part of Katie was acting right now. "If there were a lot, that must mean either they were covering their bases, given everything going on, or someone tipped them off."

Katie said this more to herself than to Wil.

"How bad is this going to be?" Wil asked. "Am I going to be on the front of grocery store tabloids in this robe?" She glanced down. "Do I look good in this robe?"

"You look good in everything. Look at your tits. They're outrageous. If I had tits like that, I would never wear clothes at all. I'd just parade about naked all the time. But to answer your first question, I don't know. You will be on the internet. Whether or not you make it to print tabloids depends on what is most interesting between now and when they go to print."

Yes. Katie was definitely acting, or at least, smoothing. More than likely, she was doing it for Wil, trying to minimize whatever ripples or tidal waves what Wil had just done was going to create for her.

Wil's concern from yesterday rose up from her heart, tightening her throat. She could appreciate that Katie was a kind person. This was a kind decision. A little bit, though, it would've helped her to know how Katie really felt.

"Look," Katie said matter-of-factly, "there was always, always, always going to be public interest in you already because of your channel. You already had the prank calls, the disgusting offers. And I directed one of your kisses, so the world knows that we know each other, and if you've seen even a fraction of the chatter about it, you know the speculation is intense. I think your followers have quadrupled."

"I've been kind of distracted, and I didn't really look at anything from my channel after I posted. I think of it as running my TikTok in a very French manner."

Katie looked at her, brows confused. "French?"

"You know. Like I put up the video, and then Oui—" Wil mimed taking a drag off a cigarette and flicking it away.

Katie burst into laughter, and then laughed some more, crossing her legs and holding her middle. "Oh my God. Oh my God. Madelynn is going to love you so much."

"Madelynn?"

"My publicist, remember? Also, your publicist. Welcome to Hollywood."

"Oh, shit."

"Mm." Katie pulled Wil down the hall. "First shower, then strategy. I'm assuming you fed the cats."

"I fed the cats. I couldn't find your bathroom in the wall, so I used the hall one. I couldn't figure out the flush."

Katie stopped and wrapped Wil in another hug. "I promise it will get easier. You won't feel like this for long. I'm sorry I didn't show you how to find my bathroom. No one's ever slept in my room before!" She grinned, but Wil could see the strain behind it. "I will be a better hostess today."

Wil stopped. She almost spoke. Then, she shook her head.

She'd started to tell Katie that she didn't want Katie to be a hostess of any kind.

But wasn't that what Wil was, a guest?

And as Katie pulled Wil toward the bedroom, where Almond Butter was curled up in her cat bed again and the covers were still rumpled, Wil realized that Katie had stepped so quickly into the role of cheerful minimizer, into gentle reframing, that Wil almost hadn't noticed it wasn't like Katie at all. This was something she'd learned in the years they were apart. The Katie who Wil knew had always reacted, run through every scenario twice, exaggerated. She still did that, but only when the stakes were essentially zero.

It meant there were stakes here, and Wil didn't know what all of them were.

She and Katie needed to talk.

Katie pulled her through her massive closet, then into a bathroom that was legitimately bigger than Wil's bedroom. She worked another keypad that turned roughly three thousand showerheads on. They pointed in every direction inside a massive shower covered with tiny, pale holographic tiles. The light from the small windows around the room caught on the tiles and made them look like rainbows. There were shelves set in the shower holding plants, and one with a pristine row of fancy products.

"Wil." Katie put her hands around Wil's face. "Look at me for a second."

Wil did. It was a relief. Wil let her eyes wander around every familiar part of Katie's face, let herself remember that she understood this woman, and this woman had lived here for a long time and made this home. Wil knew that whatever Katie hadn't been able to share with her, she had shared important things, incredibly special things.

They trusted each other. They always had.

"I'm sorry," Wil said.

Katie shook her head. "If I seem like I don't think it's a big deal, it's only a coping mechanism."

Katie pulled her hair over her shoulder. Something unknotted in Wil's chest. "I'm actually glad to hear you say that."

"Tell me why." Katie stepped closer.

"Because I only want to be protected or handled if I've asked to be, or if I'm told you or someone else are doing so for reasons we've agreed on."

Katie reached out and touched Wil's hand, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. "I'm sorry. I actually have no idea how to… smash all of this together." And then she made one of her gestures, and it did, it did encompass the whole world they were living in right now.

Wil kissed Katie's forehead.

Katie closed her eyes. "They are scary. I think I rushed you through a few steps. Would it be okay with you if we talked to Madelynn? You can constrict the conversation however you want. We can only talk about how you want to handle the publicity with the video I directed. Or open it up to being in California with me. Or—"

"About Ben?" Wil unbelted her robe.

Katie pulled off her nightshirt, shaking her head. "Whatever he says about this, he won't know what he's talking about, and whatever he says doesn't have anything, for sure, to do with us."

Wil wasn't so certain.

Katie pulled her into the shower, and that helped, too. Nothing was too hot or too cold, and being massaged all over and getting clean was a real, solid feeling, and so was Katie as she turned Wil around and washed her hair, scraping her nails over her scalp.

Wil let Katie put some kind of conditioner in, too. She let her rub her with soap and a mitt that felt scratchy in an amazing way. Wil kissed her whenever she could, letting herself have what the kisses gave to her and what it did to her to touch Katie's body, sliding soap over it.

Then they were just kissing, touching, and Wil could focus on Katie, excited in a way that was safe, familiar, and known, loving her. Loving the way Katie's waist curved under her palm, the way she arched her back into Wil's hands, the way she opened her mouth for Wil, twined her arms around Wil's neck, thumbed over Wil's hard nipples, bit her neck, breathed and moaned and said yes, yes.

Just when Wil had backed her into the tiled wall, her thigh between Katie's, her hand between her own legs, the water stopped. Wil and Katie's kissing was suddenly loud in the tiled space.

Katie giggled. "My shower's on a timer for water conservation."

"Do you want to get out?" Wil kissed her again.

"I do not want. Keep doing what you were doing."

"What am I doing that you want me to keep doing?"

Katie smiled, but she was breathing hard. "Just—Wil-ing yourself all over my body."

"Do you want to—"

"Yes."

Wil laughed, gripping Katie's waist. "What was I going to say?"

"You were going to ask if I wanted to frottage myself on your thigh while you got yourself off? But also, yes to literally anything else."

"Can I try something?"

Katie nodded.

Wil softly ran her hands down Katie's body, getting on her knees. Something hot and slow and huge pulsed in her as soon as her shins touched the cool tile and she rested her forehead against Katie's belly. Katie put her fingers into Wil's wet hair.

"I've thought about this," Katie said, breathing hard, touching Wil's hair all over. "But I was the one…"

"Do you want me to?"

"Yeah, yes."

"Is there anything you like? Or don't?"

"Wil, I don't even know. What you're doing now is working already."

Wil smiled and then tasted her, the scent from her soap and Katie. Wil could tell that Katie felt shy at first, which was different, so Wil went slow, touched herself because she was incredibly turned on, and then Katie reached down and showed Wil something, and together they got it, a little of what this could be like for them, both of them getting there in a rough, fast, stumbling way that made Wil's feelings for Katie big and precious and good.

Katie came with the sole of her foot against the wall, talking nonsense to Wil, and how it sounded pushed Wil the rest of the way over.

The tall ceilings and the silence and the dripping water made everything feel more explicit. Wil just gave herself up to it, happy to have this simple thing, her immoderate lust for Katie, her delight in her body, in her Katieness, in her.

She rested her head against Katie's thigh until Katie tugged at her hair. "Come up here, gorgeous creature. I need a kiss, and then we have to put clothes on or I'll just drag you back into bed for the rest of the day."

"That's a bad idea?" It sounded like the easiest way for Wil to handle the day in front of them, and easy was an appealing endcap to good sex.

"Such a bad idea. We would get weird by two o'clock, probably I'd order a lot of food I didn't want to eat because I'd waited too long, and then I would pick a fight with you and cry. I do so much better as a human if I put clothes on and eat meals."

"That's good to know." Wil stood up and kissed Katie. "You pay attention to your body really well."

"If I don't, I have a hard time with emotional regulation. Can you do something for me?" Katie smiled. Her face was wet, water dripping from her eyelashes to her smile crinkles.

"Yes."

"Can you tell me one thing you'd like to do so that I can make it happen and feel a teeny-tiny little bit like I can offer you something one percent as good as your driving me around in your Bronco? Or buying a car so you can come over to visit me?"

Wil's heart pinched. "Can you find me one of those famous social media influencer nail artists so I can get my nails done LA-style?" she asked. "I've got a fresh mani, but I love those accounts." She touched one finger to Katie's mouth.

Katie squeezed her eyes shut and grinned. "Yes! Yes! That is exactly something I can do! Probably all of the nail artists in town want to do your nails, Wil, you know that, right? To be perfectly honest, you should tell your nail artist to move here and leverage all of those tags you gave her into big business." Katie pulled her out of the shower and then handed her a huge, perfect towel.

"Maybe I will. My nail artist works in the mini-mall by the Burger King, the Starbucks, and the automotive supply complex. She's nineteen years old. She probably would love to do that." Wil thought about D'Vaughn and wondered how big of a thing she could make happen for her.

It was a nice thought to have, a reminder of how much she'd liked meeting Katie's friends on the jet. Cy Newhouse had texted her when they landed and told her to tell him if there was anything she needed, and he'd make it happen.

Wil made herself balance that bright spark of something good against everything she couldn't seem to keep herself from worrying about.

After they dried off, Katie showed Wil where she could put her clothes, and Wil let her help her unpack, because Katie definitely wanted to do that. They looked around the house for a good spot to put Almond Butter's fluffy mat, which was where she liked to take naps in the afternoon, and they decided on a spot in the hallway near the conservatory that got a lot of late-afternoon sun but wouldn't be too hot.

Then there was breakfast, which Katie took out of the fridge and warmed up in a small countertop oven with another app. They drank fresh-squeezed papaya juice and tall glasses of flavored water with crushed ice and ate delicious rice bowls with tempeh and grilled Asian vegetables outside on Katie's poolside patio near the birdfeeders, where they could watch the birds come and go.

"Do you get used to it?" Wil asked. "Also, if you do get used to it, what's it like to not have it, to be living in a trailer on a set or sleeping in your parents' basement?"

Katie smiled and speared a piece of tempeh with her fork. "I don't know how to answer that. At least not how you mean. Some of this"—she waved her fork around—"is just Los Angeles. If you want a house of a certain size with a certain level of security in Hollywood Hills, you end up with a pool and beautiful landscaping and an indoor avocado tree, all of which are enjoyable to have, but they don't make me feel any different. It's more like how, if you go to Chicago, you eat deep-dish pizza."

Wil shook her head. "It's got to be more than that."

Katie put down her fork. "Yes. You're right," she agreed. "I don't mean to make light of it at all, because another whole part of it is about inequality, injustice, and capitalism, and whiteness. My accountability to that is a big part of how I think about what I want to do, how I want to try to make a difference or, if I can, change things for the better."

"I'd love to hear more about that." Wil watched a bird with teal feathers land on one of Katie's feeders. "Especially about whether you're thinking about breaking the system or making a new one, because, you know, millions of people—not your level of millions, but millions—have been paying attention to me for a year, and all I can think about is the system. Who's being exploited and who's doing the exploiting. I asked one question about ChapStick, and then I had so many more questions. It made me start thinking that trying to fix everything that's wrong from within the same system that made it is the worst kind of whack-a-mole. Not to mention a waste of time."

Katie took a sip from her juice glass, then looked out at the hills past the pool. "April likes to tell me that Hollywood isn't a good place to make movies, but unfortunately it's the best one. But I don't know, I think a fucking lot more good could be made with a system that didn't hurt people so much. I'd love to be part of a system that knew what was good in the first place, instead of only what's at the top of a killing, supremacist hierarchy." Katie bit the inside of her cheek, and a pink blotch appeared on her throat.

So Wil had understood correctly. Katie had gotten to the part of her career in Hollywood where she understood she couldn't fix it from the inside, or at least that trying to do that would be a waste of her time and talent.

Interesting.

Wil was glad to know it.

"The thing is, Katie, for too long, all of this was a thought experiment. But what's obvious to me now is that I want to start something. I don't want to whack-a-mole. I want to use the hammer thingy and let all the moles free."

Katie snort-laughed in surprise, which made Wil laugh. "You're mixing metaphors pretty freely, here. Like, in this story, the moles are exploited creators who you're rescuing?"

"Yes. But I think you must want to start something, too, something bigger than just your script, and you haven't talked to me about it. I'd love to know about that. I want to hear about what part of the making-or-breaking cycle you're in."

"What makes you think I'm really making or breaking? Maybe I'm fine with drinking fresh-squeezed juice in my trophy room and running off at the mouth about this town?" But Katie was smiling a very Katie smile.

"I saw your Oscar at your mom's house, first of all. There is no trophy room. There are a lot of well-organized cat treats. But also, you were glowing in Chicago, and the only thing that made you dim was that reporter. Ben."

Katie made a weary gesture.

Wil shook her head. "I'm pretty sure there's more going on than Ben. You know," she said carefully, "I've noticed that all you've done since we've reconnected is push me to get what I want."

Katie looked over the pool into the house, where Wil could see Trois pressing herself against the window, staring at the birdfeeder. She sighed. "It's what you said before. About perfection. And it's how I got started here, as Ben's girlfriend." Katie cleared her throat. "But you're right, it's more than that. There's a lot."

"That you're not saying," Wil guessed.

"That I've never done and don't know if I can do." Katie wrapped her arms around her middle. "I haven't figured out how to be a catalyst in my own life. Not without blowing everything up."

Wil put her hands to her face, which was hot. It wasn't the sun or a leftover flare from her excitement from talking about what she'd like to do with her life. It was realizing that everything Katie was afraid of, controlled for, protected herself against, was sitting across from her at this breakfast table.

Which was Wil.

Katie was afraid of the kind of life she imagined they could have together, even if she had no idea about the details.

Katie was afraid that what she wanted, what was good, would blow everything up.

And it wasn't that Wil didn't understand. She did. She'd protected herself, too, telling herself for eight years that she needed to stick close by her mother, that she was happy with her life as an insurance adjuster. Even the Bronco.

"Come here." It was the only thing Wil could think of to say.

Katie straddled her in the chair, and they put their arms around each other.

Wil hoped all of this everything, including all the everything Katie wasn't telling her, could smash together just like her and Katie.

Holding on tight so they didn't have to ever let go.