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And Wil did. She talked for a long time about the years she’dspent in Green Bay with Beanie, about burying Jasper Greene and learning how to live without him, and about being a daughter and a friend to her mother through the worst of their grief.
What Katie understood when Wil was done was that the stakes of their bet were higher than Katie had thought, because Wil needed, badly, a push. Not into being fully an adult—Wil was already gloriously adult—but a push that would catapult Wil into stomping around in motorcycle boots and doing a montage of hot lawyer things in the Gotham City of her dreams while judges and other lawyers didn’t know if they wanted to fuck her orbeher.
Also, Katie had to very firmly cover the little light that came on in her heart as Wil listed the names of the schools she’d discussed with the power lawyers, as three of them were in Los Angeles.
“I can see why you avoided that meeting,” she said. “I think if I knew there were four strangers at Kettle’s who could easily assist me in attaining my heart’s secret desire, I’d avoid the fuck out of them, too.”
“Yeeeeah.” Wil exhaled. “A time-out, if you would.”
“Poor baby.” Katie leaned over and quick-kissed Wil’s cheek. Like a friend. Like they had when they were girls. The kiss landed between Katie’s legs in a way that surprised her. “We can discuss the investigation.”
Wil crinkled her nose in such a familiar way, it made Katie’s heart ache. “I’m not sure we have an investigation. I did manage to dig up an address from a cached PTO newsletter from 2013.”
“So let’s do a drive-by and then work on my script. My mom is making cabbage rolls for dinner.”
Wil started the truck, laughing. “I know. Beanie asked me to bring two home for her with mashed potatoes.”
“Our mothers know everything. My mom asked me what we were doing today.”
Wil stopped at a light. “Did you have to divulge the details of our investigation?”
“She meant ‘what are wedoing?’”
“Ohhh.” Wil thumbed the gearshift. Katie was pretty sure Wil was blushing.Katiewas blushing, too.
“Beanie hasn’t asked you?”
“Beanie’s been telling me to ‘stop by and visit’ since the party. But not asking anything.”
“At least Beanie trusts me,” Katie said, mostly to see Wil’s reaction.
She watched Wil process, the streetlights confirming a blush actually bleeding into her lip line, making Wil’s lush mouth look very seriously and painfully delicious. “What did you tell your mom?”
“I told her a lot of things. She reminded me that my life is complicated for other people, and she told me Beanie’s been worried about you for years. That’s Diana making sure I don’t impulsively fling myself at your hotness and then Justin Bieber you for the paparazzi with your dingle dongle out for the long lens to capture for the press.”
“Whha-at?” Wil downshifted but slipped the gear a little.
Katie laughed. “That’s unfair. It was a serious conversation. It made me afraid, actually, because my life isn’t easy. Not for me, not if someone else was in it who didn’t have to be. I’ve come of age in front of the world, which is horrible. I genuinely worry if my brain has developed properly.”
Wil looked at her, eyebrows raised. “Your brain is solid, Katie. You don’t have anything to worry about there.”
“Sure, okay, but she talked about what you’ve been through lately, and she told on you about your testing.” Katie held her breath, not sure if she should have said that, except that she felt like Wil had given her an opening when she told her about what her dad had wanted for her and why it meant Wil hadn’t moved on.
Mostly, the more time she spent with Wil, which was barely any so far, the more she mourned all the time in the last thirteen years theyhadn’tspent together. It was a little scary, since their tacit agreement seemed to be to spend as much time together as was possible while Katie was here, and Katie wasn’t sure how many more feelings she could feel about Wil without exploding.
Or how she was going to go back to LA without her heart in a very pulpy and raw condition.
“Right,” Wil said. Katie watched her swallow.
She waited, but Wil didn’t say anything more. It made her heart squeeze to think about Wil being worried for so many years, and that made her reckless enough to say, “Also, I told her that when I was eighteen, that spring, I was in love with you.”
Wil did slip the gear then, in the middle of a roundabout, and tried to restart the Bronco’s engine, which was running, so the truck stalled. “Fuck.” Wil frantically waggled the gearshift and turned the key. “Fuck, fuck.”
The truck started. Wil put it into gear as a sedan blew around them with a loud blast of its horn. But just when Katie expected Wil to pull the Bronco back into the flow of traffic—just when her heart was racing and she felt breathless and full of regret for surprising Wil with such an ill-timed confession—Wil’s shoulders dropped, and she blew out a breath and looked over at Katie.
Just looked at her with her serious blue eyes, all her scary intelligence and intensity, for one long, suspended beat.“Fuck,”she whispered.
“I’m sorry,” Katie said. “I shouldn’t have.” She wasn’t sure what she meant that she shouldn’t have done. If she meant she shouldn’t have said it, or if she meant that she shouldn’t have loved Wil.