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Katie narrowed her eyes. “You already know that. All of you”—Katie made a wild, circling gesture with her hand—“talk to each other, about each other,ateach other.”
“Yes. But Madelynntalkedto you.”
“April.”
“Katie.” April raised her eyebrow. “I want to get this thing out of first gear. To be clear, by ‘this thing,’ you know that I mean our company, your projects, your script. I want to get to the part where we’re not spending our own money. I want to take the meeting with Marisol Gonzales that she requested after Ben’s horribleVarietypiece, because on the phone, she definitely implied that her Emma Tenayuca biopic that Universal, New Line, and Columbia are fighting over would be a better fit for whatever we’re doing, and she wants to know how we could make that happen.”
Katie felt a hot flip of pleasure in her chest, followed immediately by sick self-doubt. “It’s much too soon. We need to have Honor completely on board first. Without Honor, there’s no way we could fund a period epic like that, with hundreds of cast, and get it right, really right, get it as good as what Marisol does. She’s seventy. She doesn’t suffer fools.”
“You need to think more about what it would feel like to walk into that meeting and less about what we would tell her. Marisol directed her last Oscar-winner with a one-point-five-million budgetat a closed hotel in Guatemala. She’s interested in our vision, not if we have the latest in camera drones and post-production compositing. This is what wewant. Right? This is what we’ve always talked about. Don’t shut us down before we get to one meeting. And I know I’ve said this before, but I really think if you let Madelynn do her job and skewer that hangdog-eyed starlet stalker Adelsward, you’d find that the world is a lot bigger and brighter than you—”
“April.” Katie shook her head, interrupting April before she could say more. Before she tried to encourage her to step through a door that opened into a freefall.
“Just let us keep talking, okay?” April said.
What she meant was,I understand that I just scared you, and I am backing down. I also understand you’re hiding right now, and you know I’m worried about that, but as long as you keep talking to me, I won’t push it.
“But I’ll talk to Latener, too,” April said.
Katie let out a long breath and tuned her body in to the feeling of Phil’s heavy weight on her lap. She felt guilty for putting her team in a place where they had so many concerns, and she felt even worse that she couldn’t make an immediate and clearer plan for what they wanted, but she couldn’t. She’d gotten this far considering every angle of every move. “Yes, that’s good. Talk to Gloria. See what it would look like to fit the project in.”
“Are you writing?”
“I am. Ish. I am writing in the sense that people on the internet, in their writing memes, say is writing. Meaning I am deleting. And making myself snacks. And reading other people’s writing and feeling bad.”
April laughed. “This part, I’m not worried about at all. You are the reigning queen of finding a way. Remember when Dick Mayhew stopped taking my calls because he said he wanted a lead who could pull off eighteenth-century Dutch? And he didn’t think thatcould possibly be you? And so then you followed him into that patisserie looking like a Vermeer with honest-to-fuck panniers under your skirt and ordered in a perfectly accented noblewoman’s Dutch? Surely writing is easier than that.”
“Wellicht,” Katie said, the Dutch forperhapscoming smoothly to her as soon as she thought of the character she’d played in that film, which had earned her a second nomination from the Academy.
April laughed again, and Katie had to admit she did feel a little better. “So what’s next this evening?” April asked. “Writing? Slipping into a food coma? Your mom sent me a box of cookies that I’ve proposed to.”
“I’m going out with an old friend.” Katie smiled.
April raised her eyebrows and did jazz hands. “Do you have a hometown fuckbuddy, Katelyn Rose Ellis Price?”
I wish,some version of herself, deep in her chest, whispered.
Except, first of all, she didn’t want afuckbuddy,never had, and, second, the idea of Wil Greene occupying a role so trivial wasn’t something that would ever feel true or possible. Even if it had been thirteen years.
Katie didn’t hide her smile, but she kept it cool. “She’s the daughter of my mom’s oldest friend. We went to high school together. We’re going to ride around in her truck and soak in nostalgia.”
“You didn’t answer my question. You used heteronormative assumptions to dodge my question, in fact.” April grinned, leaning back in her bright pink gaming chair, pleased with herself.
Katie looked away, but only to better sift through a few memories so she could tell something to April that was true, even if it wasn’t everything.
A tumble of emotion-tight images gathered somewhere in her chest. The way Wil would break out into laughter at the end of every cheer at games, jogging back to the sidelines with her poms at her hips, her high ponytail bouncing, and pull a motorcycle jacket overher uniform to stay warm, which was impossibly cool, and how Katie would feel the phone in her hands vibrate because Wil had sent a text, making Katie nearly explode with the delicious knowledge that the first text the head cheerleader sent from the sidelines after halftime was toher,Katie Price, when Wil was literally sitting right next to the most popular and interesting girls at school.
Wil Greene could drive a stick shift. Wil Greene wore a two-piece dress to homecoming that showed her belly button. Wil Greene got straight As in her AP classes but wasn’t stuck up.
ThatWil Greene had belonged to Katie Price. For a little while.
ThisWil Greene wasn’t hers, not anymore, but Katie couldn’t imagine her as anyone’s anything on the side. She was too big, too charismatic, too engaged when she listened, too… Wil Greene.
Katie decided to go with the scaffolding of the truth. “Wil and I hung out in a pretty intense way my senior year. Nothing happened. I’ve started thinking about her again lately because of something she’s involved with. When I saw her tonight, I wanted to see her again.”
April leaned forward. “This would be Wil-You-or-Won’t-You?”
Katie’s heart stopped, then started back up with a slow, blood-draining thud. She put her hand over her mouth. She probably shouldn’t have been surprised that April had guessed, or known, but years of guarding everything,everything,meant she was rarely caught off guard and hated it when she was.