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Although she didn’t regret either.
“Don’t be sorry,” Wil said. “I’m pretty sure I was in love with you, too.”
Katie clasped her wrist, twisting her fingers around it like the bracelet Wil had sent her.
The loss of that bracelet was still the easiest thing for Katie to feel angry with Ben about. Her rage when she thought of him taking it—hiding it or throwing it away because he knew it was important to her—was utter.
Katie had loved that fucking bracelet.
She hadloved.
She wished it had been easier—it had even been possible—to understand her own feelings when she was eighteen years old.
She wished she’d known that itmatteredhow safe she felt sitting in Wil’s bed, her feet on Wil’s lap, laughing and talking for hours. That itmatteredhow her stomach tightened and she got grayed out when Ben kept her late at summer stock for extra coaching, when he stood too close behind her and whispered in her ear and she couldn’t see him, could only feel his muscled forearm banded around her stomach, holding her motionless, and his voice telling her what she was bad at, what she didn’t understand, what she still needed to learn and he would teach her.
“I didn’t mean to never see you again.” Katie was a little surprised to hear the strength of her feelings making her voice tremble. “I’ve never avoided you. I know my mom has been protective. I think—No, I know, for sure, that I put my feelings for you away somewhere that I didn’t have to think about missing you. There wasn’t any way, when I first was in California, with Ben, to make space for anything that had been important to me before.”
The roundabout had emptied of traffic. The road they were on wasn’t a busy one. Wil got the truck moving again. She took a deep breath. “When I turned eighteen, I felt like the life I had been living had run out. That’s the age you get tested. Before, I didn’t have to worry about it. But also, when I had that birthday in April,youwere there. I was hanging out with you. We were spending allof our free time together, and so it felt like I was getting this extra time. I still had my dad.”
“You waited more than ten years after that.” Katie didn’t worry about how this would sound, she just let herself say it. She felt as though she were sitting on that trestle under the bridge with Wil. They used to be able to talk about anything, everything, without worrying how it would sound. Katie couldn’t worry about this conversation. It had been waiting so long for them to finally be ready to have it.
Wil signaled and turned left into a neighborhood that Katie hadn’t been to before. She drove a few blocks, quiet, and pulled over at the curb.
“My dad got me to Michigan,” Wil said. “Pure ambition and how badly I wanted to make him proud got me graduated, even after he died. Also.” Wil cleared her throat, hard. It made tears fill Katie’s eyes. “I felt like I was in this race to get as much done as I could before I started having symptoms. The minute I rested, the summer after graduation, it was like I ran out of something.”
“Wil,” Katie said softly. “Of course you did. You know that, right? That you had to rest?”
Wil looked over at Katie, the rims of her eyes red. “Maybe not?”
Now Katie cleared her throat to keep it from closing up. “Our mothers were correct to worry about us both so much,” Katie said. “Possibly, they still are correct.”
Wil gave a tight nod, looking at Katie. “Thanks.”
Katie knew what her gratitude was for. It was for saying the thing. It was for how easy this reunion was, and how hard. It was for the Katie and Wil thirteen years ago and their confused, perfect, vulnerable hearts.
Wil smiled and pointed through the windshield at a house ahead on the right. “That’s where he lives. Or where he lived a decade ago. He might have moved.”
“No one ever moves in this town if they can possibly help it. What if you sold your house and the horribleBearsfans that bought it turned around and sold it a year later for twenty percent more after tearing down the Packers green-and-gold wishing well that your dad made for the front yard? Could you stand to let a Bears fan steal your investment after you were the one who updated the furnace and paid for that new roof?” Katie sat up and leaned forward. “Turn off your lights. There’s a car coming.”
Wil barked out a surprised laugh, but she cut the ignition and lights. “It’s pulling into the drive,” Wil whispered.
“Oh my God.”
They watched the silver sedan slowly turn into the drive, where it idled. Both the passenger’s and driver’s-side doors opened.
“Holy fuck, Katie. That’s Brunette.”
“It is! Wow. She is holding right up. Look at her ass!”
“Shh!”
They watched as Mr. Cook and Brunette met at the trunk. They leaned toward each other. A light in the front yard cast a shadow over the couple where they stood, and Katie couldn’t tell if they were kissing or talking close to each other’s heads.
“Are they?” Wil asked.
Katie scooted closer to Wil, reaching over to grip Wil’s thigh. “I can’t fucking see, but do you do whatever they’re doing with a friend? Or a colleague?”
“Your hand is on my thigh, Katie.”