Page 40 of Everyone I Kissed Since You Got Famous

Wil hugged Katie tight, spreading her hands over her back so she could feel how her ribs connected to her backbone, feel her breathing.

“People should hug more,” Wil said. “This is so good.”

“Right?”

Wil inhaled against Katie’s neck, pressing her nose into warm skin, smelling whatever Katie’s soap and shampoo were perfumed with. When Katie wiggled closer, Wil let her arms band around her so she could feel Katie pressed against her everywhere.

All of the stress melted out of Wil’s body. The only muscles engaged were the ones she needed to keep holding Katie, which meant her brain shifted all of its awareness to skin, and warmth, and Katie’s cheek against her ear, and how Wil’s lips were resting, now, against the spot where Katie’s neck curved into her shoulder.

“God,” Wil said against Katie’s neck. “That feels…”

Katie scratched with all of her nails, lightly, from the back of Wil’s scalp down her neck. “You like it?”

“The things my body is feeling right now don’t belong in the ‘like’ file.” Wil couldn’t help it, she kissed, just a little, Katie’s neck. Talking against it with her mouth was practically kissing anyway.

Katie’s hands stilled in Wil’s hair. “Do that again, but ten percent dirtier.”

Wil’s heart stilled. She hadn’t really, exactly, meant to make a move. Part of the pleasure of the hug was sense memory. They had hugged all the time back then. This hug had swept away the last cobwebs obscuring their old intimacy.

But Wil made her brain stop thinking about it so she could get away with kissing Katie’s neck, just in case Katie was thinking too much, also. Only thetiniestbit of her tongue.

Katie moaned, actually moaned like they were in bed together already, but then eased back, running her hands over Wil’s arms as she did. They were still only a few inches apart.

Wil loved this part of kissing people, how she could look at them close in, look at how kissing changed their face. Katie’s mouth was soft and relaxed. Her eyes looked different, not so alert, just calm and present. It made Wil unexpectedly tender.

But they weren’t kissing.

Katie’s face shifted again. She smiled, her eyebrows raised. “Whatcha doing?”

Wil breathed in and breathed out a laugh. “It’s just that it comes to me so naturally at this point. You’re there, three inches away. I’m here, extremely on board and dedicated. I can tell that you wanted to, which tells me we’ve been driving in that direction.”

“Kissing, you mean.” Katie looked highly amused. “Tell me something.”

“Sure.” Wil was not sure.

“When did we start driving toward this particular moment, Wilifred? Give me the rough date.”

“Well.” Wil eased the rest of the way apart from Katie, checked her parking brake, and leaned back in her seat. “Not when we talked about it at the party. That’s implied. If we had to make a bet to ensure youwouldn’tcome on my TikTok and kiss me, it’s fair to say we’d both entertained thoughts.”

Katie smiled. “So many thoughts.”

Wil grinned and then couldn’t hold Katie’s gaze, which was too much with her smile and the heat racing up Wil’s neck as memories fitted themselves into place, one after another, to make a picture she’d never really let herself see before. “There’s one moment I can remember.” She managed to keep her voice teasing, but she was sure the color in her face gave her away.

“Tell me, and I’ll stop you if I remember it, too.”

“We took that super long walk toward Luxemburg because you wanted to try out your new digital camcorder.”

Katie laughed. “Stop.”

“If I stop, who’s going to finish the story?”

“Hmm. I’m not sure, because I have this feeling neither one of us has told this story, maybe even to ourselves.”

“Of course not. You were my good friend Katie Price who I had never remembered not knowing, including the time you barfed Kool-Aid onto your birthday cake in kindergarten.”

“So keep going.” Katie circled her index fingers around each other and grinned.

“Fuck. Okay. So we’re walking to Luxemburg along that skinny county road next to the barbed-wire fences that keep the cows in—you filmed a lot of cows, I seem to remember—and I had just gotten Beanie to capitulate on buying me a Roxy puffy vest, which I insisted on wearing with a shirt instead of a coat, so I was freezing.”

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