Chapter Twenty-One

Wil knew that as soon as they left Sam Rafferty and Robin Dahl's house, Katie would want to discuss Robin.

First of all,Katie had said after the first time they'd had dinner with the couple, she has Bambi eyes and falling-all-over hair like some kind of pearl dust–painted silent film star crawling out of a bed in lingerie.

From there, Katie had talked for a long time about Robin's rhinestone-bedazzled shot silk romper that she'd worn with Ziggy knee socks. Katie had said Hollywood would lick Robin Dahl off a spoon and ask for more.

Where do you find these people?Katie had wanted to know. This woman teaches at our old high school! I can barely stand it. Then Katie had been quiet for a few long moments, the Bronco rumbling, before she started up again. Also, also, she talks fast and sharp, like Katharine Hepburn's long-lost Wisconsin sister. She's luminous!

Wil would be jealous, except this was how Katie talked about a lot of things these days. She and April were surrounding themselves with incredibly talented people who had richly textured life stories, amazing ideas for projects, and it was clear that Katie was in a near-constant state of inspiration. More and more, she let herself react. She chattered and emoted and waved her hands around, making her incomparable gestures, even when there were stakes. Especially then.

It was so good to see. It was both a return to how Katie had always been and a new thing—an expression of how Katie was leveraging her position in Hollywood. When they were in Los Angeles, there were not a few dinner parties that ran late enough that Wil would have to beg off and find a quiet place to study, listening to the laughter and conversation from the patio, the dining room, or their sunken living room.

It was everything Wil had never let herself want.

Tonight, they were in Green Bay at the beginning of a three-week summer break from Pepperdine before Wil would start an internship at a law firm in Culver City that worked primarily with entertainment clients. Katie didn't actually have any time off at all, but she had habituated to herself to taking "vacation days" to line up with Wil's schedule. She treated Wil's law school breaks as sacred, given how little time Wil would have once she started practicing.

As if this were their long, last, senior year.

Katie had also come here with Wil to Green Bay because Robin promised that the next time they came to dinner, she would tell them a story that resolved, once and for all, an old and extremely important mystery.

They were at the coffee-and-dessert part of the evening, which was very chichi Wisconsin. Wil was snuggled next to Katie and listening to her eat the crème br?lée Sam had expertly concocted, making small noises that sounded like she was… kissing Katie, so Wil was nice and buzzed on that sound, and excited because Robin was finally getting to the good part.

"I started at East High when you guys would've been…"

"Our sophomore year," Wil said.

"Okay, yeah." Robin's hair was tamed tonight in two big buns on either side of her head, and she wore a green velvety top with huge swooping sleeves like moth wings underneath a pair of denim overalls. She sat beside Sam on their black leather sofa, her thigh tight against his. "The class load I had at first was mostly everything the rest of the social sciences instructors didn't want to teach. It was multiple preps, whatever, a nightmare." Robin waved her hands around frantically. "Doesn't matter. That's the kind of thing you're supposed to do when you're twenty-four years old and a woman because no one thinks you're real. The only advantage to that position, of course, is if you're not real, then no one is paying any attention to you, and that means that reconnaissance is an available hobby." She put an imaginary fedora on her head, squishing it down over her big hair with a sly smile that made Katie laugh.

"How could no one notice you?" Katie leaned forward. "I can't look at anything else in this room except you and Wil, and that's only because I'm in love with Wil."

Wil laughed. Katie's flirting made Robin blush, which just made her prettier. "That's a good question," Robin said. "You should ask Sam that question."

Katie swung her gaze to Sam, narrowing her eyes. "What did you do to her?"

"Jesus." Sam choked. "Go easy. You know I didn't tell her how I felt about her in high school and then didn't see her for twenty years."

Katie sighed. "And you know I have no argument against that excuse." She reached out her fist to Sam to bump. "Solidarity as ding-dongs."

Sam bumped it and smiled.

"But watch yourself." Katie pointed at Sam and hooked her leg over Wil's. "You're going to have to earn Robin Dahl every day for the rest of your life."

"That is actually my personal philosophy." Sam leaned over and kissed Robin's neck. "Carry on."

"So Andrew Cook was obviously in my department," Robin said. "I knew right away that he was the worst."

"Thank you," Wil said. "And a bully."

"Agreed," Robin said. "He doesn't mess with me anymore, and he's been put on notice more than once, but you'd be surprised how many times a mediocre white man can fail up."

"I wouldn't," Katie said. "I'd be more surprised if he didn't have a bunch of teaching awards and made the top of the pay scale."

"Point and point." Robin smiled. "So it won't surprise you to know that, yes, Andrew Cook managed to get the attention of two women."

Wil shook her head. "Standards can be so low."

"When I started teaching, he was married to Cynthia Cook. She's an executive assistant high up at Georgia-Pacific. At that time, their marriage was very seriously not doing well. Like, fighting over the phone in the breakroom, the principal having to take Andrew aside—that kind of not doing well."

"Cynthia Cook. The blonde?" Katie looked at Wil, her eyebrows raised. Her cheeks were flushed, and Wil put her hand over Katie's knee.

"Official Wife," Wil confirmed. Her heart was beating a little fast.

"That's right. But they had two kids. He actually complained about keeping things together for the kids, but I think that's what Cynthia was doing. Her job was very demanding, and she'd worked hard to get into an assistant position to the bigwigs over there. I got the sense she was concerned that if she had to try to co-parent with Andrew, she'd end up having to give up her job because he was so hopelessly incompetent."

"Good lord," Sam said, with genuine annoyance.

Robin hooked her arm through Sam's at the elbow. "So they were limping along, and then Andrew was suddenly happy. I was sus."

"No shit." Wil had to keep herself from leaning her whole body forward in anticipation. Beneath all the levels on which the Mr. Cook mystery had been a pretext for spending time with Katie, it turned out there was a level on which Wil quite desperately wanted to get to the bottom of it. "How did you figure it out?"

"There would be a moment, Wil," Robin said, leaning toward her with incredible magnetism, "that any fucking nitwit could figure it out. Andrew Cook is not wily, let's say. Kindly. But to answer your question, I followed him." She said this with satisfaction, as though any pure-blooded Midwestern high school teacher would have done the same.

"I love you," Katie said, with all sincerity. Wil laughed.

"I love you, too," Robin replied. "So I grabbed all my grading, and I told my husband at the time I'd be late, and I followed Andrew Cook across town and saw him having cozy drinks at one of those fish fry bars with Jess Heidelman."

"Brunette!" Wil said.

"That's right."

"So I'm the winner!" Katie said triumphantly. "It's an affair."

"At first," Robin agreed.

"A-ha!" Wil was laughing, but didn't even care, because Katie's hair smelled like Wil's own shampoo, which Katie had borrowed this morning, and it gave her feelings—rich and big and grateful and horny feelings—that Katie was claimed and cozied into Wil's life in this manner. Last night, she and Katie had hung out with Cy and Joel and Angela at Joel's farmhouse with all of Joel's foster animals. Wil had flirted outrageously with Cy, and Katie had told her later that she had been wrecked with delighted concupiscence the entire night over watching Wil's moves and coolness from afar.

Wil kissed the top of Katie's head, huffing her shampoo smell.

"So Andrew's happy," Robin said. "His teaching notches up from grossly incompetent to mediocre. His wife is happy, because Andrew isn't talking about divorce anymore and is probably a better dad, because men. And I hope Jess is happy. She's the one who can be most confusing to me, to be honest. But of course it isn't long before Jess and Cynthia figure it out."

"Not wily," Katie said.

"Not at all. My friend Carla was at Festival Foods one Saturday morning—she's a science teacher at East and my best friend—and she ran into Andrew. She was talking to him, as one does, and then Cynthia comes up, so she's talking to both of them. Everything's cool. Then she carries on, is in the frozen section, and she sees Andrew again. Pinching the ass of Jess. She's appalled—and I should say here that Carla has no filter and assigns all consequences to men—so she goes tearing around Festival, looking for Cynthia. Finds her. Tells her that she saw Andrew getting handsy with another woman. Cynthia raises one eyebrow, cool as a fucking beer stein, and says, I know."

Wil burst out laughing. "I'm so happy right now. Sam, I need another one of these." Wil held up her empty crème br?lée ramekin. Sam's hobby was baking, and he was magical at it.

Sam got up, collected glasses and plates and Katie's empty lemonade bottle, and disappeared into the kitchen.

Robin's eyes were bright with conspiratorial excitement. "Now, Carla doesn't have a chance to get the whole story, and we're left in the dark for a few years, you guys. I did my best. I'm ashamed I couldn't figure out more. All I can say is, if you can't figure something out, assume it's because a woman doesn't want you to, because men can't hide anything for shit." She pointed one finger at Katie. "Which, speaking of—and I've never mentioned this, but I can't not, because I'm all worked up talking about Cook—I'd been listening to Ben Adelsward talk about you for years and applying a very jaded perspective to his bullshit. Like, yes, Ben, keep telling me about how your eighteen-year-old girlfriend has failed to appreciate your unique qualities as a life partner. What was that again about how she left you in the middle of the night? Was she barefoot also? Did she have to crawl over broken glass, you massive, arrogant prick?"

"Move to Los Angeles," Katie said, laughing. "I can't be without you."

Robin grinned. "So say many. I'm pretty great. My point is just that I know it wasn't just me who felt that way about Ben. It was lots of us. Lots of us were waiting to hear you confirm what we all knew, and anybody who wasn't was being deliberately obtuse."

Katie wound a strand of hair around her finger. "Thank you for saying that."

"Anytime." Robin dusted her hands together. "All right. So it's also the case that Carla and I were being deliberately obtuse about Cynthia and Jess. They had to tell me the deal themselves. Then it was so obvious."

"How did this happen?" Wil's mind was racing with possibilities, and she almost wanted to ask Robin not to tell them so she could think about it until the next time they got together, just to enjoy the mull. Katie would never go for it, though. "Keep in mind, at this point, I would believe anything you said for any reason."

"I was at a conference, a teaching conference, in Minneapolis. The school had gotten some grant and was sending more of us around for professional development, so it was a pretty big deal. A hotel room, conference hotel, buffet—it takes so little to keep teachers happy, honestly. Andrew was at the conference too, and you could pay extra to bring your spouse. Cynthia was there. And then I ran into Jess at the hotel bar, late." Robin grinned.

"Oh!" Wil shouted, delighted with this plot twist. "Oh! Oh!"

"Yes. But wouldn't you know it? She wasn't meeting Andrew there. She was meeting Cynthia. I had parked myself at the end of the bar to monitor the situation behind a pillar, very Harriet the Spy, and Cynthia comes up. They hug, then proceed to have a drink, laughing, what have you."

"This really happened to you!" Katie said. "I love that this happened. I'm so overjoyed with this story. Tell us every single detail."

"Obviously, I can't stand it anymore," Robin says. "I walk over and am basically like, ‘I'm dying. What's the deal?'"

"That would be the only thing to do." Katie nodded.

Wil closed her eyes so she could savor the scene for a moment—Robin Dahl, in one of her signature outrageous outfits, stepping out from behind whatever hotel bar pillar she'd been hiding herself behind so that she could walk up to two women who were near-strangers and insist they tell her the details of their most private emotional and sexual arrangements.

Also, Katie Price saying, That would be the only thing to do, as though Robin's move hadn't been completely shocking.

Wil loved this. She loved Katie. She loved having clever, interesting friends like Robin and Sam, Cy and Joel and Angela, and of course Madelynn and April. Sometimes, when she took a hike in the hills behind Katie's house, she talked out loud to her dad, telling him the most interesting and provocative details of her new life with Katie, the ones that would have made him pontificate or roar with laughter. It just felt right to Wil, now, to make him a part of her happiness.

"At first they were kind of cagey," Robin said. "Understandably. But it's me, so eventually I get them to tell me. Turns out, Cynthia had found out about Jess basically right away. Because men, and because Andrew was so happy. And I mean happy. Like, his and Cynthia's marriage and indoor sports were better. There were moves happening in their indoor sports that he had not previously attempted or proved himself capable of. That kind of thing."

"Ew." Wil shuddered. "Just, ew."

"Mm-hmm. So she calls Jess, and at first Jess is denying it, but then they start talking. Really talking. They like each other. And Jess tells her that she had a horrible marriage, and a horrible divorce, and she never wants to get married again, but she likes the companionship and sex on her terms, and maybe the both of them can work out an arrangement."

"They are going to fucking time-share Andrew Cook?" Wil's bafflement was utter. "Like, anyone else on earth, fine. But Mr. Cook? What?"

"I can't account for anyone's predilections," Robin said. "Cynthia had almost finished raising two kids, she had the job of her dreams, and she wanted to focus on her own shit without dealing with men or dating. She wanted Andrew Cook to remain her husband so she didn't have to deal with the enormous fucking hassle he would be if he wasn't her husband. Jess was done with it all except for this one thing she wanted, but which she didn't want in her house permanently, ever, ever. What I am saying is, it was all less about Andrew, and maybe not about him at all, and more about these two women finding each other, understanding and believing what the other woman wanted, and realizing they had a way to give that thing to the other woman without a lot of cost to themselves. They saw that as an opportunity, and a rare one."

"Oh my God." Wil wiped suddenly at her eyes. "I'm crying."

It wasn't about Mr. Cook.

Of course it wasn't, because it had never been about Mr. Cook. Not for Katie, not for Wil. But also not for Cynthia and Jess, the two women who'd drawn Wil and Katie's attention so long ago.

It was about them. Their lives. Their big, important stories and how they wanted to live them.

Katie was sniffling. "Me, too! Crying. God."

"I also cried," Robin confirmed.

"And Andrew?" Wil asked.

"He's never found out. He thinks he's fucking James Bond."

Sam came back into the room with another dessert for Wil and drink refills. "What did I miss?" He sat down beside Robin and squeezed her thigh. "Why are you all looking at me like that? Oh, no."

"It's nothing," Robin told him. "I mean, it's something amazing, but you wouldn't immediately get why it's amazing, you'd ask too many questions, and I don't want to explain it to you." She kissed his temple. "But I will tell you that you look very handsome tonight, if that makes you feel better."

"It makes me feel like a sex toy, but I'm good with it."

They talked for a while longer. Wil took the opportunity to grill Sam about her course selections for her second year at Pepperdine while Katie learned everything she could about Robin Dahl and her life story, probably so she could write someone like Robin into a movie.

Katie's head was full of movies these days.

They stayed late at Sam and Robin's, probably later than they should have, until Robin was yawning and apologizing, and Sam mentioned that she had to be up early to teach in the morning.

Katie and Wil held hands on the way to the Bronco, parked on the street across from the house.

"Drive me around, Wil." Katie skipped ahead, then turned to face Wil and walk backward against the setting sun, so that Wil could see the outline of her body through her short floral dress. Wil had been wiggling into stiff, raw denim jeans that Beanie had bought her and were the exact brand and type Beanie had as a young wife. Wil had always thought those jeans were very cool in old photographs of her mother, how they were broken in by her mom's body. It was a little warm to wear jeans, but she knew Katie liked the way she looked in them, and that was an incentive.

Wil got in, opened the door for Katie, who crawled in, her dress hiking up over her thighs.

"Do you want to park?" Wil asked. Because yes.

"I do. Don't you feel like this Bronco hasn't been properly christened? Like, there is all of this intense energy inside of it, but the energy is unconsummated. It needs to be consummated so that the Bronco will be comfy on its trailer being carried to our love nest in Los Angeles."

Getting the Bronco out to LA was the last stage of Wil's move. On earlier trips back to Green Bay, they'd packed up Wil's things at her rental house, and Wil had said good-bye to her landlord—an unexpectedly tearful coffee meeting at Kettle's, since Brenda had been accepting Wil's rent checks for eight years, and it turned out they'd grown closer than either Wil or Brenda had realized.

"I know a place." Wil pointed the Bronco toward the bay, and they drove past their old high school, past the new mural in the area the city was trying to turn into an arts district, past the neighborhood where Diana and Craig used to live and Beanie still did, and to the new neighborhood where Diana and Craig had their big house. But instead of following the road to Katie's parents' driveway, Wil made a series of turns until she had to put the Bronco into a low gear to navigate driving it over a bumpy field that was well behind the house, though you could still see Diana's kitchen lights were on.

A couple of big construction vehicles were parked near a square hole, not so big, really. Just big enough that with two stories, there could be a bedroom that looked over the patch of forest, and a main room downstairs to put the mallard sofa, a TV, and lots of cat trees.

Green Bay wasn't Jackson Hole or Aspen. It wasn't a ranch outside of Austin. But what it lacked in glamor, it made up for by belonging to them. This was where they'd met and grown up. This was where their families lived. Sometimes they came back and soaked in nostalgia. Other times, like tonight, they made new memories.

Big and messy and glorious memories.

"Oh!" Katie clapped her hands. "Look at what they got done today!" She peered out the windshield. "They moved around more piles of dirt!"

"I'm sure they are very important piles of dirt." Wil couldn't honestly tell if anyone had been here recently. But she was sure Craig had this project well in hand, since it was mostly what he talked about on the family group chat. A lot of long, dry texts about footers and when Brown County would be putting various lines in.

Wil smiled at Katie. "I love you."

"Come here," Katie said.

Wil pulled her legs up on the bench seat and crawled to Katie on her hands and knees, then kissed her neck.

Desire washed over Wil in a warm rush. She let Katie bite her a little, stroke her hands over Wil's shoulders as she settled in next to her, and then Wil did what she'd wanted to do when she was in high school, more than once, even when she couldn't admit it.

Which was kiss Katie Price.

Wil thought the energy in the truck must have been breaking up, because as she kissed Katie and let her feel how much she wanted her—kissed her until they were both finding places to touch each other that they knew the other liked—she felt a little of what she might have felt back then.

If she hadn't let Katie go, not for even a moment.

They fogged the glass. And so, panting, Wil rolled down the window Katie was leaning against, and the cool air of a June night in Wisconsin came rushing in. The fabric of the bench seat's upholstery was rough on her knees when Wil shimmied out of her jeans, so there was nothing but her underwear and a tissue-thin T-shirt between her and Katie, who had impatiently shucked off her dress several kisses ago. There wasn't so much room, but that felt correct, amplifying the illicit feeling of being out late somewhere they shouldn't be—at least, not doing this, sliding fingers beneath Katie's panties, finding ways to touch each other that made them both rock and gasp, made Wil moan against Katie's neck.

When Wil came, she remembered their last sleepover before she went to Chicago, the night in the tent when Wil had looked at Katie in a new way and whispered her name, their faces close together, and Katie had said You can and made Wil's heart pound so hard, she could barely breathe.

She'd been so afraid, but there hadn't been anything to be afraid of.

Only what she wanted. Only this.

It took them a while to come down. The cab started feeling cool, and the noise of insects was loud. Katie had been so still, Wil wondered if she was asleep.

"Katie?"

"Yes?" She turned her head toward Wil and smiled, her hair everywhere and her neck shining with sweat.

"I have something for you. A present."

Katie sat partway up and opened and closed both hands at once. "Give it to me right now."

Laughing, Wil reached down to find her jeans in the dark wheel well and pulled her present out of the back pocket.

She handed it to Katie.

Her bracelet. Her Katie Kat bracelet.

Katie started crying.

Wil kissed her forehead and helped her put it on. "It's not the very same one. I tried to remember what the colors were, and I think I got it? Beanie still had my kit with all my thread, and this was one of the last bracelets I made, and because I was a teenager, the skeins I used were sort of shoved on top of everything else. There's even the same button, because when I bought them, there were two." Wil smiled at her. "Don't cry. Look, it's on."

"I have to cry, because right this moment, I am literally feeling the whole universe button into place," Katie said. She held her wrist to her heart and closed her eyes. "Now we're bracelet married."

"Katie." Wil laughed and kissed her. "If that's true, we're also Bronco married."

"Absolutely we are. I'm not kidding." Katie examined her bracelet again. "I can't even with this, Wil. You are the most romantic person on the fucking earth. When did you even find the time?"

"You've been writing until late, and you have to do it in your study because you use the voice app, so once I got my little kit in the mail from Beanie, that's what I've been doing while I read law. Reading law and knotting embroidery thread and starting over ten thousand times because I've suffered some skill slippage in the past thirteen years." Wil's voice sounded thick with emotion even to her own ears. It was only an embroidery floss bracelet, only a small gift to say she'd been thinking of Katie, but of course it meant something big.

As big as the foundation of the home they were building together.

As big as the whole future.

"Are you ready to head to my parents'? Or to your mom's?" Katie's voice was rough with feeling.

They'd been dividing their time between Katie's suite in her parents' basement and Beanie's spare room. The media had no idea they had ever stayed with Beanie, or possibly even imagined that Wil had a mother, so it was an unexpected respite. Wil often wondered if Beanie had done some kind of nationwide string-pulling to make her home invisible to the media. She wouldn't be surprised.

"Your place," Wil said. "Your mom will have chicken and dumpling leftovers in the refrigerator. Consummating the Bronco burned off my pasta and crème br?lée."

"Yes. Let's go there, and that way we don't have to gather up the cats. I think there's still some apple crisp. We can get a giant plate of chicken and dumplings and a bowl of apple crisp and eat all of it naked in bed."

"That's the dream, Katie." Wil put her hands on Katie's face. "I love you."

"It's my dream. I have a lot of them, actually. You're in all of them because I love you so much."

Wil kissed Katie, trying to make it as good as she always did, trying to give her everything that she needed and wanted. In this kiss, and later.

And forever.