KDBookOnline
Share Us
Because he didn’t want to interrupt their meeting. He felt that their meeting was important enough not to be interrupted.
This was a very intelligent person, here, making time to talk to her. And he was correct. Wil had enjoyed talking to Delilah at Pepperdine very much. “For real, I didn’t come for a pep talk, but yes. Okay. There is clarification.” Wil schooled her movements while putting on her jacket and slinging her bag over her shoulder, even though she felt shaky.
She hadn’t told them that two of the people she’d talked to also knew whoWilwas. For her paper and for her TikTok project. They’d been equally delighted about both, which was surprising. Their delight brought into focus what Wil had been thinking about lately—how she would like to use the gifts her parents gave her alongside the ones she had been developing herself, even sometimes without realizing it, for years.
Tackling this project was making her feel more whole, more integrated. It made her feel more like she’d always been heading for something, not running away, not ducking an invisible monster—and thatwassurprising.
The ambition was surprising.
The future was surprising, all by itself. Even after Wil had learned she had one, in the basic sense that her heart would keep beating, her breath would sustain her, she hadn’t considered yetwhat it looked like, could feel like, could contain. Or that she, in any way, was its designer.
Last night, Katie had said her screenplay was going well. She’d told Wil that she’d recently had a private showing of a special exhibit in the Los Angeles Public Library of Carrie Fisher’s papers. Katie had spent her entire time looking at how Fisher had doctored and revised scripts. Important, famous scripts. She’d said that learning from Wil how it was that she could write, what she could get on the page, how vision and editing worked together, was the first time she’d understood that she could be capable of something at the standard of Carrie Fisher.
That was what Wil had done for Katie.
But Katie had done something a lot like that for Wil, too.
Later, after Wil had finished talking with Cord and Sam, she climbed into the Bronco and started it up. She stared at the small mountain of snow that the plow had made at the edge of the parking lot outside Sam’s office, smelling Katie’s perfume in the cab of the truck, or maybe what she used on her hair, something ambery and faint that made sense for Katie and the way her hair shifted color from gold to soft browns. She thought of what it felt like when Katie’s attention was on her, the dip above her upper lip and her arched eyebrows arrowing right into every word she said.
Thoughts like these introduced problems.
As she was pulling into own driveway, she got a text from Katie to pull up more because Katie was right behind her. Katie touched her dad’s Highlander’s bumper to Wil’s Bronco and dropped out of the SUV with a big FedEx box, wearing another wig, the big coat, and a slouchy beanie hat.
“Hello!” Katie smiled. “I am extremely early for your TikTok shoot.”
Wil took a deep breath of the cold air. The TikTok shoot. Right. “You are! But you’re a professional.”
“Yes. And I wanted time with you in your house. I’m starting to be very much over my suite. The whole time I’ve been here, they’ve had it at icy-cold conservation temperatures. Or maybe menopause temperatures, I’m not sure. Then, today, somebody really cranked it up. But their Nest thingy or their Alexa thingy, whatever they have, refuses to recognize my impression of either Diana or Craig, both of which areexcellent,and I can’t find the manual thermostat. I’m sweating through my coat as we stand here in twenty-degree weather.”
“Do you want an ice cream sandwich?” For whatever reason, Katie’s nervous ramble regulated Wil’s heartbeat.
“Yes.”
Wil toed off her boots off and shrugged off her jacket to hang up on the coat tree beside the door while Katie watched her somberly.
“I really, really, really want to erase this day and pull you into your bedroom and not come out until Christmas morning,” Katie said. “But I understand that isn’t the thing to do here.Canwe go in your bedroom, though?”
Wil felt everything low in her pelvis swoop and thud. “Should we eat the ice cream first?”
“No, we should eat the ice cream in bed.” Katie took her big coat off, then slid her wig and beanie off together to hang both next to Wil’s coat. Her hair was in double French braids, a style Wil hadn’t seen since they were in high school, and she wore a huge black sweatshirt with a bit of cat hair clinging to its front. She’d put on baggy jeans. She shouldn’t be so beautiful, but she was. She was.
Katie followed Wil into the kitchen, looking around while Wil tried not to be self-conscious. The house she rented was very ordinary for Green Bay: a big Victorian four-bedroom with squeaky wood floors that needed refinishing, a collage of windows thatmostly worked, and lots and lots of woodwork. None of the furniture matched, all the art was from different eras of housemates, and when it rained, it smelled like the incense a housemate from five years ago had liked to burn.
Wil tried to remember that she found her house comfortable, even cozy, but it was hard not to be self-conscious with Katie looking at where she lived and possibly comparing it to her unimaginable home in Hollywood. While Wil pulled the paper-wrapped ice cream bars out of the freezer, she made herself think instead about why Katie wanted to go to her bedroom.
And why Wil wanted Katie in her bedroom.
They made their way up the stairs, Katie already unwrapping her sandwich. As she led Katie into the bedroom, Wil mentally thanked Beanie Greene for imprinting her with tidiness. Almond Butter rose up from her nap at the end of the bed and arched into a perfect stretch to meow at Wil.
“Almond Butter!” Katie put her hand out, and Almond Butter very obligingly rubbed her head against it, meowing again before flopping to her side and demanding a full pet. “Oh my God, you perfect baby.” Wil watched as Katie put her ice cream sandwich down on the bedspread to scritch through Almond Butter’s fur with her full attention. “She still makes air biscuits when you scratch her armpits! She did that when she was a bitty baby widdle kitten!” Katie leaned over and kissed Almond Butter’s forehead. “You are an elder cat now. You must know so many cat mysteries.”
Almond Butter looked at Wil over Katie’s shoulder with a vaguely accusatory expression, as if realizing Wil could have been showering her with this kind of attention all along. Even though Almond Butter slept curled around Wil’s head when she wasn’t napping in her heated cat bed or perched on top of one of the three cat trees in Wil’s room, contemplating the view out the windows or the oil painting of herself that hung over Wil’s desk.
Katie climbed onto Wil’s bed, her ice cream back in hand, to lean against Wil’s pink cabbage-rose-print pillows. She patted the spot next to her.
Wil peeled off the sweater she’d put on to meet with the lawyers and crawled into her bed with Katie.
“Scout’s honor, I won’t take advantage of you,” Katie said as Wil lay next to her on her side. Wil wasn’t sure how to feel. Even though she hadn’t forgotten that Katie was coming over to film the kiss today, she hadn’t exactly been thinking about it, either. She’d been preoccupied with law schools, her dad, the future. This plan she’d made with Katie just a few days ago had snuck up on her.