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Busy leaned around Katie to make big eyes at Wil. “Do you have anything to add, Ms. Greene?”
Wil laughed. “Yeah. Same.”
“And now?” Busy asked.
“Now,”Katie said, “we are kissing on your show, and that’s all you’re getting. The rest I will tell you on my patio with a lemonade, because, if Wil gave me a retirement kiss, this interview retires any national discussion of what is now my very amazing love life.”
“But I have questions!” Busy said. “So many questions.”
“You can ask two,” Katie said, and laughed at her own imperiousness. She’d probably give Busy almost anything she wanted. Busy was genuine and adorable and always had been. There was a reason Katie had come on her show a dozen times.
“I only get two?!”
“Look at your poor producers! We’ve made everything chaos, and we might go over time, and they probably still have Barbie Dreamhouses and cat trees to put together when they get home tonight!”
Busy and Wil both laughed, along with the audience. Katie loved this. It had been a long time since she’d had this much fun on TV. She’d worn a red dress with a white collar and tall black boots, just in case her plan with Wil worked out. She liked a theme, and Busy did, too. Santa was a solid theme, always. Now she crossed her legs and grinned at Busy, ready for the first question.
“Wil told me the part of the story she said was hers to tell,” Busy said. “What about you?”
Katie took a deep breath. She’d known this might be coming. She thought about what she’d prepared to say, what she and Wil had talked about. Scripted. Safe.
But then she remembered that Madelynn had asked her to speak from her big, expansive heart.
Her story belonged to her.
“You know, Busy, it’s Christmas,” Katie said. “So I’m going to level with you. It’s been nine years since I had a relationship with Ben Adelsward or said a single word in public about him, and just this morning, I saw one of those split pictures with my head on one side and his head on the other, and I’m just, like,really?” Katie cocked her own head to one side, her expression blending bewilderment with irritation. “We’re still doing this? Why are we doing this? Who wants to look at their head next to their ex’s head forever?”
The audience had gone completely silent, but they were listening, and their listening felt generous. They were leaning into her anger.
She hadn’t really let herself feel it. She’d needed more, something bigger, to contain it.
“Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.” Busy spun her finger at Katie. “Tell me more about that.”
Katie looked out at the audience. “I feel like you guys get me. I know I’m not the only person who sees these articles and this story just going and going and thinks,Come on!You guys have thought about this, right? Why someone may not want to talk about her ex who started ‘dating’ her”—Katie made air quotes—“when she was eighteen and he was thirty years old? How there are probably some legitimate reasons. Private reasons. Personal reasons.Real big reasons.But the most likely explanation probablyisn’tthat she’s jealous and immature and sabotaging? Because is that any kind of explanation? Ever?”
“If we’re talking about immature,” Busy said wryly, “I’d point out that his girlfriends aren’t getting any older.”
The audience bottomed out in applause and hoots and delighted screams.
Katie put her head down, but she smiled. “There can be a way where, if one person is telling a story, it feels true. It feels like thestory. But the minute I got behind the camera on Wil’s channel, you could see, right? That there was a completely different story that Wil hadn’t been telling on her channel.Hers.Her story. All it took to see it, and to understand it, was someone else looking at it.Mystory isn’t Ben’s. It never has been. You know who I’d love to be centered in my story, Busy?”
“Tell me.”
“Diana Price. My mom. She’s such a good mom! Because she drove me to all those acting lessons and voice lessons and dance lessons. It made her a little nervous. She worried I wouldn’t have a real childhood, and she wanted me to have a good life. But she believed in me when she might have kept me safer in Saturday soccer and Girl Scout camp. She sat through my auditions, and held me when I cried when I didn’t get the part, and when she probably would have rather I quit than put myself through all that, she told me that it had to be someone. Why not me?Shewas why I came to this town, and I made a movie, and I got nominated for an Oscar when I was nineteen years old. Diana Price. My acceptance speech, in case I won that first Oscar, was all about her. I didn’t get to give it, but I just gave part of it now.”
Katie looked out to the audience where she knew her mom was sitting. “I love you, Mom!” she called. She could just make out her mother’s pale hair and Beanie next to her, waving one arm so that Katie could spot them through the lights. Katie beamed in her mom’s direction. “You’re a good mom!”
The audience cheered, and Katie smiled, her heart so full. When it quieted down, she said, “So that’s part of my story no one has ever heard, and Wil told you the other part.” Katie looked at Busy, then out at the audience again. “Put it together.” She let her voice get firm, building slowly toward a crescendo so the audience would know to pay attention. “My first love, ever, was Wil Greene. My mom gave me my career. And there are good goddamned reasonswhy a twenty-one-year-old who moves out of their boyfriend’s house in the middle of the night—keep in mind, those are Ben’s words, not mine—doesn’t say anything about it, and it’s not because she’s sabotaging or jealous. It’s because she’sscared.” Katie looked at Busy. “Right?”
“Right!” Busy nodded. “A hundred percent.”
“And I’m not the only one with that story. We all have to remember to look at every part of a story, and if we don’t have the ability to because someone is quiet, or focused on something else, or may be hurting, I don’t know, maybe we shut our mouths?”
Busy got up from the sofa and pounced on Katie to give her a hug, and Katie hugged her back, laughing.
After the audience finished calming down, Busy sat on the sofa again. “I get another question!”
“Oh, yikes.” Katie laughed. “Two feels like so many questions now.”