KDBookOnline
Share Us
And evidence that there wasn’t anywhere on her face that wasn’t good to look at.
“Sometimes I do. More and more sometimes. But it doesn’t feel possible anymore. Just a scattered, diffuse, regretful feeling.” Wil said this while rubbing her hand over her throat.
“Is that where you feel it?” Katie reached over and touched Wil’s hand.
Wil smiled. “Maybe.”
“Something I’ve learned to do is think about where I feel something in my body. It’s so you can take care of that part of your body, regulate it, and maybe be able to safely address the feelings.”
Katie thought about Wil’s Altoids habit. Her kissing. Always having someone around to talk to. Her mouth. Her throat. Places Wil was trying to take care of in the absence of not giving them what they needed.
A voice.
This time, she reached out and touched Wil’s throat directly with the tips of her fingers. It made Wil laugh, just a small laugh, and look away again, thinking.
That was okay.
Katie adjusted herself in the seat to have a better view of theschool. She’d never been back after graduation. East High was a massive early-twentieth-century brick fortress with honest-to-God statues on the rooftop. Looking at it made Katie wonder why she’d had to let go of everything, absolutely every part of her life, when she left Ben.
Hadn’t there been a way to keep more than just her parents and her career?
They were quiet until Wil’s phone made a series of chimes, and she pulled it out of the back pocket of her jeans.
“What is it?” Katie asked after Wil had been tapping and swiping for more than a few moments.
“I’m sorry. It’s just that the video I shot this morning posted, and there’s always a bit I have to do when it goes up.”
It was Wednesday. Traveling had made Katie’s schedule feel slippery.
God.
There was something completely unanticipated happening to her, knowing there was one of Wil’s videos up while she was sitting next to Wil. Talking to her. Looking at her. Thinking about her.
She must have gone silent for too long, because Wil finished and then looked at her—looked at her in a way that Katie couldfeel,even though she was trying to keep her gaze trained on the school building.
“Hey, Katie?” Wil asked.
“Yeah.” She said the word the way she felt it, wrapped up in nostalgia, longing to get back what she’d lost.
“Do you want to watch it with me?”
Chapter Five
Wil put her arm along the back of the Bronco’s bench seat and scooted closer to Katie, who smelled like Diana Price’s house, some kind of holiday potpourri that had baked into Katie’s sweatshirt and was releasing now in the blast of the Bronco’s overenthusiastic heater.
Cinnamon and nutmeg and oranges.
Wil had known this outing would be a trip down memory lane, but she had failed to understand what a trip down memory lane would feel like, which was like her throat had shrunk to half its size, and her middle wouldn’t stop flipping like the times on a train station arrivals and departures board.
Time kept crumpling and buckling in a way that was fucking her up.
Katie had pressed her shoulder against Wil’s chest, the side of her head so close that Wil could smell Katie’s skin instead of Christmas potpourri. Soapy and herbal and warm. She was moving restlessly, and if Wil’s body hadn’t perfectly recalled the sensation of Katie constantly adjusting and readjusting herself, then Wil would have thought Katie wanted her to give her some room. But Wil also knew that if she moved away, Katie would complain,hook a leg over hers, and pretend to pout that they weren’t going to cuddle.
Wil enjoyed this about Katie. She liked people who were a bit of a show. She liked physical contact of all different kinds, obviously.
So she knew perfectly well that the hand that was currently on her knee, drawing an idle pattern, wasn’t meant to make the skin on her chest hot. Even though it did.
“So youdowant to watch it with me,” she said, mostly curious what kind of reaction it would elicit from Katie.