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Diana shook her head. “I can be a good mom and be wrong, especially about things that scare me when it comes to my kid. I can’t wait to see and be a small part of everything that’s coming your way, Katelyn. It’s not going to be easy, but you know what? I think it’s going to be a lot easier and a lot more fun than what you’ve been doing.” Diana looked over at Wil, who was making Beanie laugh. “She won’t let anything happen to you.” Her mom’s mouth got firm. “I can see that now. I like that. I should have seen it sooner. I know Beanie, after all, and she’s terrifying.”
Katie laughed. “Are you two meeting us at the house?”
Diana smiled in a way that made Katie’s cheeks warm. She raised her eyebrows. “Is that what you want, sweetheart? For us moms to come to your house tonight and make tea and start a batch of cinnamon rolls for tomorrow morning, and talk to you two for hours and then sleep in the guest rooms in the same hallway as your bedroom?”
“Hmm,” Katie said. “Hmm, hmm, hmm.”
Diana laughed. “No. I’m going back to the hotel with Beanie so I can call your father, who’s having the utterly silent and contemplative Christmas of his dreams, and is currently participating in an online Sotheby’s auction for rare baseball cards. He’ll flyhere sometime soon. Beanie and I both have midnight massages booked, and Beanie already marked up everything she wants to order from the room service menu like it was a particularly messy brief, so after our five-hundred-dollar breakfast tomorrow, we’ll come over for lunch and presents. If that’s okay with you.”
“Yes,” Katie said, and hugged her mom again.
Katie and Wil were led to a back door of the studio to get in their car, but of course there were photographers. Instead of looking down, she looked at Wil, who was looking at her, and they laughed and then tumbled into the car, the shouts of the paparazzi muting as soon as the door closed.
Every stop in traffic felt like it might actually kill her. She could hardly look at Wil, because when she did, Wil was being outrageous, sitting in the leather backseat of the car with her extreme beauty and hotness. She hadn’t changed out of her amazing clothes. Her skin glowed. Her tits were a crime. It was horribly rude and upsetting in every single way.
By some mutual recognition of the horny energy between them, as well as the lack of a divider between them and the driver, they were not talking or touching.
After almost a thousand years, they were going around the loop drive to Katie’s back gate in order to avoid the cameras at the front. Katie had never been more glad that she had her phone managed, and that Wil had changed her number, so their phones weren’t blowing up in their bags.
At least for a while, they could just have each other.
The car stopped. They got out by the back gate and walked through the pool area. Quiet and still.
“Hey, Katie?”
“Yes.” She looked at Wil.
“That was really something.”
“It was.”
“And it’s Christmas Eve.” Wil’s voice was serious, but she sounded happy, as though she couldn’t quite believe what they’d managed to pull off for themselves.
Katie couldn’t believe it, either.
“It is. Tomorrow is Christmas.” Katie pushed the door open and leaned against the jamb. “There’s no staff. Just us.” Katie grinned. “Until our moms descend on us earlier than they told us they would, and everyone starts calling me for ‘just one thing,’ even though it’s Christmas Day.”
“Good.” Wil slid her hand over Katie’s neck in a slow and illegally erotic way with a smile Katie wasn’t quite prepared for, and so she blushed, and instead of executing her devastating plan of stripping by the pool and diving naked into it, surfacing to crook her finger at Wil, she bustled into the house, snort-giggling.
Then Wil was right in front of her, all shadow and silver and glittery in the low light. So Katie said it, thinking about the thousands and thousands of times she would say it in the years ahead of them. “I love you. I never stopped.”
Wil smiled. “I love you. In front of a live audience and also right here in your kitchen.” She leaned forward, grabbing Katie’s dress, and pulled her closer.
This kiss was different.
Wil wantedher. That’s what this kiss meant. It meant Wil wanted her, and Katie really wanted Wil, and Katie felt like they should get a special present, because they had exploded Christmas into tinsel, into stars, into colored smoke.
She pulled away and looked at Wil from over her shoulder with the look she had imagined she’d give Wil by the pool. Wil followed her to her bedroom.
“Let’s take off all our clothes,” Katie said. “Then I want to do the thing I’ve been thinking about.”
Wil toed off her boots and started wiggling herself out of pantsthat if she knew cost $1,500, she would die. No one in Wisconsin owned $1,500 pants. Well, no one but Cy Newhouse.
“What thing?” Wil asked.
Katie shucked off her dress so she could watch Wil look at her. But she had miscalculated, because Wil was wearing the most miniscule thong she had ever seen in her entire life, and she had seen a lot of small underwear.
“Wil.” Katie pulled Wil to herself. “What the fuck is that thong?”