Chapter Six

Katie was looking at an upside-down Phil while Sue pushed the All. Done. Mama. buttons over and over again.

"I am trying to get my yoga on, my babies. Sue, cool it. Phil, move." Katie held the pose, breathing in through her nose. The hem of her T-shirt started slipping out from where she'd shoved it into the waistband of her underwear.

"And… scene." Katie slowly curled out of the full inversion onto her feet, just as she flashed her cats, and put her hands in the air as if she had stuck a landing. "Now I can have coffee. And phone. And a half a foot of Mom's coffee cake."

Katie was feeling herself this morning. She'd only slept five hours, which was not great, but the reason she'd slept five hours was the best, best reason, and she woke up excited to tackle this Green Bay Thursday like it was her actual job.

It was her job. One of the perks to being Katie Price was that when she wasn't in front of a camera, being Katie was her job. She was done with squandering this enormous privilege on self-doubt and frustrated backspacing. Wil Greene had never stopped being the smartest person Katie had ever met, and if Wil said that it would be no problem for Katie to write this script, then it was no problem.

But first, before breakfast, she did her Katie Yoga, which was yoga, but only the poses she liked, performed in her underpants. Her feet were really fucking cold now because her parents turned down the sixty-two-degree thermostat to fifty-two at night as though they were personally responsible for defeating climate change, but the rest of Katie's body felt amazing. Because, because, beyond her new confidence that she would write this script, and it would be as good as she wanted and needed it to be, there was also the fact that at some point between when Wil dropped her back off at the slider doors to her suite and when Trois jumped on her face at six in the morning, Katie had figured out she'd been in love with Wil Greene when she was eighteen.

It made her feel so good to know that. It meant that Ben was not her first love and hadn't been her only love.

Katie had sat straight up in bed when she'd figured this out, turning on the bedside lamp so that she could be sure she wasn't dreaming. She'd taken a long drink of water and interrogated herself thoroughly.

It was true. She'd loved Wil. She hadn't known.

Also, she had figured it out at what was an inconvenient moment, because now, now, now, Katie was attracted to Wil. She wanted Wil. She wanted to kiss her, she wanted to touch her all over, she wanted her own body to be touched by Wil all over, she wanted to figure out what she liked and didn't like and really, really, really liked with Wil. And it was not a good idea to layer what she had realized about her girlhood self over a very grown-up emotion, which was horniness. That was how people got hurt.

That was how she could get hurt.

Still, Katie could not help but be fascinated by her own attraction. She had never felt this way about anyone real. She'd felt this way about characters. She'd felt this way while she was playing a character, but it wasn't the same, it turned out. Desire was much more insistent than Katie had thought. It did too good a job of making her feel invincible. It had a lot of very palpable suggestions that weren't interested in reason.

But, all by herself, in this moment, with sweet coffee cake in her mouth, Katie didn't have to make a plan. She wasn't going to fuck anything up or say the wrong thing or be impulsive. She could just want Wil. Privately. Very much. With a lot of very good mental images.

Though, even logistics-wise, she was thirty-one years old, and thirty-one-year-old rich, professional, desirable women were permitted to meet their desires with a partner. It couldn't be that hard. No one knew she was here yet except April and Madelynn. Possibly someone at the party would leak, although they had been asked not to. Her parents had been very clear, and the guests were people she and her parents had vetted, and there was a reason she'd joined the party completely as her most private self, reminding everyone that she deserved a private self. She deserved to be able to be Craig and Diana's daughter, home for the holidays.

Given all of that, Katie guessed, if she indulged her pessimism, she had about four days before she started seeing paparazzi, as much as she wanted to believe she had a luxurious month. She might have had a month, but then she'd asked her mom to have that party. She wouldn't have asked, except that she'd seen Wil in the audience in Chicago. If she were just anyone, she could've asked someone on her team to get her Wil's number. But if she did that, it would have definitely leaked. Maybe not right away, but at some point, probably at a moment when it would make a very not-cute anecdote.

Diana would have given her Wil's number, but there would have been questions, or, minimally, concern. No, thank you.

But! A lot could happen in four days. All those kissing videos told Katie that a lot could happen in one minute. Wil knew all about it. Wil had almost made Katie come in the truck when she'd pressed her fingers into her upper arm at the same time Mandi's tongue finally, finally touched Wil's in that video.

Katie was walking back into her suite after using her multi-head shower when her phone chimed with a text, and her heart stuttered.

Because Katie didn't text much. Only Katie's parents and a few friends had her direct number.

She went through her mental list of who did have her real number at the moment. Her team, but they knew not to text. Her friends, but most of them were on California time, and busy anyway with holiday travel of their own.

That left Wil. Who didn't even know that Katie didn't text, because Katie hadn't told her.

So Wil had broken the rules already and texted her. It made Katie's entire pelvis literally go hot inside of her body.

She tiptoed over to the coffee table where her phone was lying screen-up. When she saw the text still illuminating the lock screen, she had a brief flash of her hand curled around her purple flip phone, shoved under her pillow, just in case Wil texted her sometime in the night or Katie wanted to text her.

Why the fuck hadn't they always had each other's numbers?

But then Katie remembered when she and her mom were staying in the hotel that Katie had fled to from Ben's, after she left in the middle of the night with nothing. The first day, Diana had gone out for a few hours to get Katie some things she'd need, and she'd come back with a brand-new phone that had a brand-new number. Her mom had sat at a desk in the suite and programmed her own number and Katie's dad's number into that phone, and then she'd told Katie that it was going to be important that she be really, really careful who she gave her new number to.

That expensive, shiny phone, feather-light with only two people who could reach her, had given Katie such a sense of safety and freedom after years of Ben knowing where she was and what she was doing at every moment, making her FaceTime him with the background captured in the camera so he knew she wasn't lying, getting calls in her car if the phone tracking didn't line up exactly to where he thought she was supposed to be, and being certain that no matter what she was doing, whatever he wanted would be more important.

The phone her mom gave her had been a magic phone.

Katie forced herself to delay gratification. She ran into the bedroom to get dressed. She put on jeans, a very big flannel, and snow boots. Taking her time, she put product in her hair and braided it into two very tight tiny braids.

None of this was how she dressed in Los Angeles or how she was ever photographed. When she went out in Green Bay, she would put on a hat and a big coat her mom had bought her at Kohl's. She didn't wear her signature winged liner and pink lippie in Green Bay. Or jewelry. She moved her body differently.

Katie could act so that people thought she was shorter, her body shape different. Familiar, but not famous, even when they looked right at her.

It was necessary, but also, a little bit, it was hard.

If she had gone to Winston-Salem, if she'd done all of those student films and crashed Chicago Groundlings auditions, taken road trips for pilot season in LA, started a YouTube channel of acting reels and impressions, Katie might still be an emerging actor, or she might be well-known and famous but in a way that was utterly embraced by her hometown because they had watched her knuckle through Hollywood. Or maybe she would have discovered how much she loved directing sooner, and she would have been, right now, on the cusp of running a show or getting a dream project greenlit.

When she left for Chicago, Katie hadn't known exactly what she wanted, only that she wanted to make stories for audiences. She was eighteen. How could she have known more than that?

But Ben had decided to introduce Katie to the world.

He'd set the terms, he'd taught her how to "deal" with the media, he'd taught the media how to look at and think about and talk about her. It meant that Katie hadn't had a chance to make any decisions for herself about what she wanted until after she broke up with Ben, and by then, there were patterns established that she didn't know how to change.

It was one reason why, when she talked to someone like Busy Phillips, Katie preferred to talk about her cats.

No matter how long this trip home was, it was supposed to be about admitting that she was ready for more. Katie had thought more meant professionally.

Maybe more was more.

Once she'd finished getting dressed, she sat on the sofa, her babies arranging themselves around her, and picked up the phone, smiling.

I'm not supposed to text you

But I had an idea for you to try today, with writing, and keep things very low-pressure

So forgive me

If you're interested, lmk

Katie smiled.

Yes, she texted back.

She held the phone in her cupped hands like it was a baby bird, waiting. Then the three dots swooped up.

I want you to pick something on TV to watch. Something short. Then tell me what happened, first by writing it down, then by using this

There was a link.

Then tell me which summary you like better Wld you feel comfortable sending them both to me when you're done?

Yes, Katie replied. She added a heart, then tapped the link. It was to an app, which she downloaded. The app was simple. She pushed the green button and talked, then the red button when she was done. The app transcribed what she said into a document that she could zwoop to Dropbox.

An assignment! Katie loved assignments and constraints of all kinds. She wondered if Wil had guessed this or if she was just very lucky.

She scrambled to the basket where her mom kept the remotes and found the one for the flat-screen, navigated to Netflix, and scrolled around until she found an episode of Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts.

Katie let herself be completely absorbed in the story and animation, petting her lapful of cats, and then when it was over, she considered if she wanted to write or talk first. She decided to write and extricated herself from the cat pile, apologizing profusely, to get her laptop from the teeny breakfast bar. Having opened a new document, she did her best to explain everything that had happened. Then she opened the app, talked about the episode, and uploaded the much longer transcription document that the app made.

She sent both to Wil before she sat back down on the sofa. She chewed her thumb, waiting.

Tell me which summary you like better

Oh! Right! Katie was embarrassed she'd forgotten. She went back to the breakfast bar and pulled up both documents.

She reread them both and then realized she was scrunching up her entire face.

Can't

Okay. Give me three words about each one

Wil was the best teacher she'd ever had.

Dry, short, boring

Feelings, tmi, long

Good!

Katie squeaked. Yay!

Do you want a script assignment?

Katie thought about it and realized that she did want a script assignment. She wanted Wil's script assignment.

Yes xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

Use the app and describe what you want in your movie. We'll look at that doc later. Then open the long Kipo doc and set a timer for 30 min and take out things and correct things until you like it even a little or the time runs out. Then nothing else today

K, Katie wrote, with another heart.

She scrolled up in their chat thread to the list Wil had sent her last night and opened it.

After reading through it twice, slowly, she went upstairs and asked her mom for Beanie's number. She promised she would use the landline. Back downstairs, she called Beanie with a few questions about what Katie had decided would be Wil's first mission from the list.

Because that was what Wil had asked Katie to do. She wanted Katie to make her do things from her list. Katie didn't entirely understand yet why Wil needed to work through her stuck place in this manner, but she had no objection to meeting anyone where they were at.

Excited again, she texted Wil.

FaceTime me

Give me a minute

K

Katie paced around with the phone until it started ringing.

"Wil!" Katie gasped.

"Katie." Wil smiled. She was wearing what looked like a white button-down under a very plain light-blue sweater with a V-neck. Imagining Wil wearing work slacks with that sweater-shirt combo made Katie horny, which had to be proof she wasn't fooling herself about this inconvenient but privately delicious attraction to Wil.

"So I have an assignment for you," Katie said.

Wil wrinkled her adorable nose. "Okay."

"You have to take a late lunch today and do the Kettle's thing."

"Katie." Wil sighed.

"You have to, have to. Because I called your mom."

"You talked to Beanie? Oh my God." She looked away from the phone, then back at Katie. "I can't do the Kettle's thing today. They wouldn't even be expecting me."

"But they are! Beanie's telling her friend."

"Oh." Wil said this with a hint of frustration. "That is…" She looked at the ceiling.

"Do it," Katie said. "Would it help if I flashed you right now? As encouragement?" Katie heard a mental tape rewinding in her head, her Reasonable Katie brain horrified, and her neck went hot.

"I'm at work." But Wil was grinning. She already looked 40 percent less irritated, and also like she completely knew Katie was joking.

Which made Katie want to not have been joking.

"Your being at work is what makes it hot." Katie unbuttoned one button of her flannel, watching Wil. Even if she was toeing the line of this teasing exchange, she was an actress, so her body was, in part, an instrument. She hadn't expected anything would happen to her, doing a quick flash to make Wil laugh or maybe blush, but now that her flannel was unfastened and her breasts were naked just under it, Katie felt heat race up from her belly button to her throat, and she almost couldn't breathe. "But I'll only do this if you'd enthusiastically like for me to flash you over FaceTime on a Thursday morning."

"Katie," Wil said, softly. "You don't have to." Wil's smile was lovely.

"Now I really want to, for real." Katie was shaking. She hadn't ever done this before. She'd managed to dig her heels in when Ben requested she do things like this, suspicious of what he'd do with any images, and toward the end he'd taken pictures of her that he shouldn't have without asking, making her glad she'd never given him anything like that.

Trusting someone, wanting to, made her skin so hot.

All reactions that belonged to her.

She slid the flannel off her shoulder and felt the cold air of the basement on her bare skin. "Would you like me to?"

"Katie," Wil whispered, then looked at the ceiling. "Yes."

Katie slid one side of the shirt back, just enough, shuddering when the placket grazed her nipple, then pulled it back into place. "I'll see you later. Go to Kettle's. It's been a long time since I went. Maybe they have something edible there now."

"They don't." Wil smiled. Her cheeks were bright red.

Because of Katie.

Because they had both just admitted something to each other.

She really, really hoped she had a month.

Katie disconnected and collapsed on the love seat. She closed her eyes and felt Trois jump onto her stomach, three hard feet pressing in. She petted her cat and thought about herself as though she were a character, the morning she'd had, the day spread out in front of her.

It wasn't, maybe, the kind of story she could tell Madelynn or April. But Katie liked this story for herself.

She spent the rest of the morning pleasantly doing her homework, talking to her phone about the screenplay, editing her Kipo document with the timer going, eating delicious chicken enchiladas that her mom had made while thinking about whether Wil had gone to Kettle's, imagining Wil pushing through the door into that coffee shop, imagining her not doing it, sitting in her parked Bronco at the curb, pulling out of the spot and driving through for fast-food lunch somewhere alone, annoyed with herself or with Katie.

There were things she liked about all of what she imagined, but she hoped Wil had gone inside.

"Katie, honey, can I ask you something?" Diana Price scooped another enchilada onto Katie's plate and leaned on the big honey granite countertop, her matching bob swinging forward.

Katie liked looking at her mom, both because she loved her and because she was looking at herself, older, and she had a lot to look forward to. "You may."

"What are you doing with Wil Greene?"

"Ha! That is such a loaded question." Katie spent a moment cutting her enchilada into perfect bite-size pieces and dolloping crema on each one. "Counterquestion. What are you doing with my team?"

Diana raised her perfectly shaped eyebrows.

"Don't"—Katie pointed her fork at her mother—"give me that look of innocence. It is effective, but it is false. Cookies for April? Seroogy's chocolates for Madelynn? I'm guessing there were little notes as well. Veiled, Midwestern-style threats to keep your daughter safe, but in perfect handwriting on holly-and-candles paper."

"I went with wreaths this year." Diana's mouth tightened very slightly. "And I know all of those people and care about them. It's Christmas."

Katie nodded. Nodded some more. "April and Madelynn are worth all of the care. Family is a strong word, but it's one you and Dad taught me the value of, and it's one of the things I feel with those two women."

Diana was silent for a long moment. She folded her hands on the table, her face set in the neutral expression she used to keep Katie from reading her mind. "So you're saying yes on cookies and candy, but I should put a lid on the imperious expectations of duty."

"If you would. As far as Wil goes, if we were in a scene together and you asked me, ‘What are you doing with Wil Greene?' the audience would lean forward in their seats with absolutely no idea where this scene was going next. Will they fight? Will they confess things and cry? Will the mother tell the daughter to stay away from the dangerous internet-famous high school friend, or will she be glad the sheltered starlet has someone to talk to?" She smiled at her mother.

Diana poked her. "You are being very extra right now."

She was. Katie could hear it in her voice—a little bit too much pressure, a feeling like she was reading lines too fast. She knew she shouldn't be irritated with her mother. It was just that she'd wanted to hang onto the good feeling from seeing Wil on FaceTime a little longer. "I know."

"I like Wil very much. I love her. I've known her for her whole life." Diana's tone was apologetic. They didn't fight, or at least they hadn't, not for a long time.

Katie had needed her mother too much to fight with her.

"Yes. I know you do. I also know that there's a but. As in, but I am only home for a short time, and I am a celebrity, and Wil is not a celebrity but has become internet famous in a way that could have consequences for my public image. And also I could hurt her. Or she could hurt me. That's enough things to be worried about that I should, minimally, think about what I'm doing with Wil Greene."

Diana had gone still. "It sounds like I'm not a very kind voice in your head."

Katie's gaze dropped to the countertop. She could hear her mom's hurt, and she didn't want to see it. "You're the voice of survival in my head."

"Katie—"

"It's okay." Katie nodded at her plate. "It's okay. I'm not upset. But I mean that. You were the only person I could call. I was sitting in that hotel room with nothing after leaving Ben, and I knew how to survive. I could survive if I called you."

Diana blinked rapidly and looked away, shaking her head back and forth. "You have so much." Diana's voice was soft. "What else do you want?"

Katie made herself listen to that roughness in her mother's voice and feel her heart pounding for a long moment.

Her mom meant, How else are you going to be hurt?

Katie didn't know how to find the right words, the right feelings, to express the way she was already hurting. She didn't know how to explain to Diana Price that despite having survived, despite years of therapy, despite all of the awards and accolades she'd earned and having so much, so much, she was not okay, because she needed more. Wanted more.

Katie Price was not supposed to want more.

"Did you know that I liked Wil my senior year?" she asked, turning this conversation her mom had started about Wil into something with lower stakes.

"Wil? Did I know?" Diana laughed. "Beanie and I suspected. Before Wil, you didn't date anyone or even go to a dance, even with a friend. You were so hardworking and dedicated, I don't think I thought much about that until maybe around your junior year. I had been a bit of a late bloomer also. But your senior year, yes. I could tell that there was something different between you two."

"I was in love with her."

Her mom gave her a look that Katie couldn't interpret. "Did you know that at the time?"

"Nope." To chase away the discomfort, Katie stabbed two bites of enchilada to make a perfect enchilada and crema sandwich. "I didn't. I just wanted to spend all of my time with her."

"Did you figure this out because of how you're feeling about her now?"

It was the worry, Katie realized, that created a small flare of irritation every time her mom talked about anyone new in her life. "Not exactly. I was mostly so happy to understand that Ben wasn't my first love."

Her mom blinked, hard. Then she turned away, reaching up to swipe her face with her hands, and got out of her chair to begin unloading the dishwasher. It was Midwest for, That is as much as I can talk about this right now.

Katie smoothed her hand over the frustration in her throat. She wasn't even sure where she was going with this conversation except that she didn't want to feel like her life was a twenty-four-hour vigil against crisis.

She looked out the arched window opposite the kitchen. The house sat on a broad expanse of lawn with a beautiful wrought-iron fence around the property. Her parents hadn't wanted to move. They'd already had their forever home, the cozy two-story stucco they'd bought when Katie was a baby, but Katie's celebrity had made it unsafe for them to live so close to their neighbors, and now they had this beautiful fortress with an unlisted address and a state-of-the-art security system.

She wanted to be proud that she'd been able to earn this beautiful house, the green lawn and the patch of woods in the back that her dad liked to walk around in, but it was hard for Katie to think about the house without thinking about it as something her fame had done to her parents.

It was hard not to think about Ben as something she'd done to her parents.

"I know Beanie so well," Diana said apologetically. "I can't pretend not to know that Beanie's been worried about Wil. She was so close to her dad. Did you know she put off getting the genetic testing to find out if she has Huntington's until this year?"

Katie shook her head, her heart turning to ice so fast, she had to push against her chest to ease how sharp it was. "Does she?"

"No." Diana's eyes filled with fresh tears. "But it was fifty-fifty if she would turn out to have it. You know that Beanie and Jasper didn't know Jasper had it when Beanie got pregnant with Wil?"

Katie nodded. "I think so."

"Jasper's mother had him young, and she still wasn't showing symptoms when Jasper and Beanie were married. Her symptoms came on late and took her down pretty quickly. They didn't have the genetic test for Huntington's yet, so it was a big surprise. If Beanie and Jasper had known, they wouldn't have had Wil. But they did have Wil, and then the testing became available, but Wil didn't want to know. She really, really didn't. I think she felt that it honored her dad somehow. Or she was very scared. I can't pretend to understand what a decision like that means to a person. Beanie had to beg her, finally."

Katie wrapped her arms around herself. She thought of Wil's list, and of Beanie helping with it. Of Wil staying here, not moving on. Not going to one of the best law schools in the country.

Wil wasn't stuck. She literally hadn't known if she had real choices to make.

Huntington's was 100 percent fatal and completely, completely awful. Symptoms usually showed up in people's late twenties or early thirties, and then they had ten years left, fifteen at the outside. Katie had done a few campaigns, lending her face and her celebrity presence to fund-raising efforts that Beanie told Diana could make a difference.

But Wil hadn't been tested until recently. Sometime around when she started her stranger-kissing TikTok.

All of which meant that right now was maybe the very first time Wil could make choices, or that she felt like she could.

Katie's life, how she had to live, took away a lot of choices.

Diana broke the silence. "I was just thinking that Beanie and I are really good moms," she said. "I have been telling myself to trust, because both you and Wil are lovely people, and the kind of people who will make good decisions. One of the things that always feels the best to hear as a mom, and that moms hear the least, is just, ‘You're a good mom.' A long time ago, I figured out that I needed to remember to tell myself that. It's a powerful thing to hear. It's a powerful thing to say. Especially when you have a child who is interesting, exceptional. Like both you and Wil are. When you're a mom who has kids like you and Wil, there's a way that you never feel like you're doing the right thing. But Beanie is such a good mother. And so am I."

Katie rubbed her hands over her knees, then admitted the thing she'd been trying to avoid thinking, even to herself. "I don't know if what I want is good for Wil right now."

Her mom closed the dishwasher and looked at her with kindness in her eyes.

Katie was glad she'd see Wil soon. She needed to, and that was an old feeling she understood. She knew that as soon as she saw Wil, she'd be a little less afraid.

For a little while, maybe it could just be Katie and Wil.