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There was only one account she followed on TikTok. It posted Wednesdays and Saturdays. No fixed time.
Wil’s TikTok.
She let herself wonder, just a little, like she did every time she opened the app to Wil’s channel, if Wil wondered if Katie watched her videos.
Because,because,what a completely ambrosial thought. Wil, posting, watching hearts come in, wondering if one of them was hers.
Katie knew, of course, that Wil had seen her movies. Everyone saw her movies. Diana liked to tell her what people said, and a few times she’d mentioned Beanie and Wil in the same breath in the context of what they thought of one of Katie’s movies, and Katie had imagined asking her mother a million breathless questions about exactly,exactlywhat Wil had said, but she never did.
It was more fun to imagine Wil watching. So many times, in so many audiences, Wil had been there, watching Katie.
Then, in Chicago, Wil was right there, and Katie had basked in the familiar feeling—right up until she got the first question about Ben. Then, Katie hated that Wil was there. Wil did not belong in a world that Ben had corrupted.
Wil belonged in her own sparkly world.
But this past year, for the first time, Wil had been sharing a part of her world with everyone else, which meant that Katie got to be a part ofheraudience.
Twice a week, Wil kissed someone. Never the same person twice. The camerawork, from a directorial perspective, left something to be desired. It would be close up and never pull back, or it would be six feet away and never zoom in. Katie assumed there was no one operating the camera, just a cell phone on a tripod, probably, set up wherever Wil and the person she was kissing today decided they wanted to put it.
There were no captions butWil + blank,with the other person’s name in the blank, followed by the person’s pronouns. There was no music.
There was sound, though.
The videos were edited into four fifteen-second segments that told the story of the kiss, beginning, always, with thebefore.Lingering in the moment where Wil and the person she would be kissing had to confront what was happening.
Today it wasDanya, she/her. Danya was small, a white woman with short frizzy dark hair and big dark eyes.
The people Wil kissed were not introduced. They just appeared, sitting across from Wil on one of two wooden stools or standing facing her, always in front of the same wrinkled white studio backdrop.
They looked at Wil, or they didn’t look at Wil, or they tried to figure out whether to look at Wil or not. Sometimes they held hands. Some of them talked.
I’m so nervous, do we just do this? How do we do this?
You tell me. Tell me what to do.
Are you filming?
Is this happening?
Today, Danya didn’t say anything. She put her hand at Wil’s waist, splaying her fingers over the soft blue of Wil’s T-shirt, and stepped close enough that Wil had to bend down. Wil was tall, at least a foot taller than this woman, whose face she cupped in her hand.
Then it just started. Their mouths met. Katie watched Wil’s fingers flex against Danya’s face—an involuntary reaction, surprise, or pleasure—and the intensity of the kiss shifted.
Katie felt heat race up her chest and neck.
The film cut. Now Wil’s fingers were in Danya’s hair, spread out over her nape, and Danya’s arms had come up to wrap around Wil. Wil’s blond hair had fallen down over her eyes. Her body curved around Danya’s, one knee bent, and Katie couldn’t figure out what to look at, it was all so good. Wil’s hair and jeans and motorcycle boots, Danya’s short skirt rucked up a little bit, her top coming away at the waistband, her hands roaming like she couldn’t figure out what to do with them, what she wanted, what was next.
Another fifteen seconds, the same. The tension made Katie’s heart race. She’d never been able to watch porn, there was too much choreography and something she couldn’t put her finger on that felt like violence, but she’d had to make a rule for herself that she could only watch these videos one time, or else watching these videos would be the only thing she ever, ever did.
So she tried to memorize them. How Danya went up on her tiptoes and gripped the fabric of Wil’s T-shirt across her shoulder blades, pulling her closer. How Wil adjusted the angle of the kiss, took it deeper, until Danya made a muffled noise, and then the energy shifted again.
Katie was pretty sure Wil had a timer in her head that told her how long sixty seconds were. Because there was always this part—this part where she stroked her hand down the person’s head, or eased her hips back, or pulled away to smile, her nose against the person’s nose, her forehead on theirs, and maybe laugh.
There was always the last fifteen seconds, when they figured out how to pull away. How to go back to who they’d been before they started kissing someone they’d never kissed before, someone they didn’t know, or barely knew, or had never known like this.
It was the part Katie liked best of all. Watching two people figure out what they needed in the moment. Watching Wil tuck someone’s hair behind their ear, or run her hand over their shoulder, letting them know that everything would be okay.
They stepped apart.