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Everyone always apologized to Katie, as though somehow it wasn’t Katie who had done this.
“I had the best morning ever,” she told Wil. “We will figure this out, and I will see you soon, because you are the very best one.”
Wil laughed, but Katie meant it.
The best.
The one.
Chapter Thirteen
The Nissan electric SUV whirring down I-41 was hushed, quiet. Nothing like the Bronco, with its oversprung bench seat and rough engine. The reliquary of her family’s unspoken feelings.
But Wil didn’t have even a small yearning for the Bronco, not when this shiny black SUV was gloriously anonymous, pointed toward Katie’s house, and she had, for the first time in a long time, aplan.
Wil had a plan. She had a goal, a set of steps lining themselves up in her mind and in her chest that she hadn’t even realized had been lining themselves up for a long time, as silent as the electric motor of this car, but also, delightfully, as efficient and detail-oriented as Wil had always been. They were easy to follow.
The first step,Katie.
Wil hadn’t talked to Katie. She was trying to trust that Katie had meant it when she told Wil she’d see her soon. She knew that Katie was still in town. She knew Diana would feel too guiltynotto give Katie Wil’s new number, but maybe notsoguilty that she would give it to Katie right away.
Wil had been forced to change her number within a few hours of the paparazzi showing up at her house. She was getting so manycalls from the media that at one point, her phone had buzzed itself off the table.
She’d also had to decamp to her mom’s house after hiding the Bronco next to Noel’s car, then talk a cheerful Noel through changing his number after he DM’d to ask “how in the Good Pete he could keep these folks from bothering him and everyone else.”
It turned out that Noel was not only a good kisser, but also a great person to be involved in this sort of situation. He didn’t say whether he’d known it was Katie Price behind the camera the whole time, but Wil thought he must have figured it out. He hadn’t seemed surprised by the revelation. He hadn’t commented on it at all, in fact, except to express a lot of shock that “Hollywood” wouldn’t let someone have Christmas with their family, “for Christ’s sake.”
Then he’d reminded Wil she could call him for gutter cleaning anytime.
Noel told Wil that someone in “Katie Price’s office” had contacted him to arrange for a “branding package” for his gutter cleaning and landscape services so that what had happened might help his business and not hurt it. He didn’t think it was necessary, since he was more a word-of-mouth guy, but it couldn’t hurt.
Wil had smiled and teared up because Katie’s Christmas was getting actively stomped, but she had still taken the time to bolster Noel’s business prospects. Because Katie.
Wil had held off on posting Noel’s video. Even though she had Noel’s blessing to put it up on her channel, she wanted Katie’s.
She wantedKatie.
But Wil could appreciate that Katie had a series of fires to put out. Wil was a problem solver. She understood that problems required time. Patience. Creativity, even.
Wil exited the interstate and made one familiar turn after another until she got to a turn she’d never had to make before. Beaniehad told her about it. She found her way to the chain-link gate at the very back of Craig and Diana’s place, which blocked an access road barely visible due to a line of white cedars.
There weren’t any other cars or photographers. They would be in the front if they were here. Unless there were drones, they wouldn’t know Wil had come to this road.
She hopped out, her boots sinking in the wet snow, and yanked open the gate. Her heart was beating so fast that she made herself take a few slow, deep breaths of cold air before she got back in the driver’s seat and found the switch to turn off the lights.
Wil rolled slowly through the gate. Stopped. Hopped out and closed it.
Then she drove toward the back of the Prices’ garage, grateful for the quiet electric motor and for all of the good lighting on the Prices’ property.
Grateful, too, for their security cameras, because as soon as she parked and got out of her car, there was Katie, tromping over the snow beside the path to the garage, laughing.
“You should have heard my mom’s voice when she called down to me to say you were here.” Katie’s breath swirled in big white puffs in the cold air. “‘Katelyn, you have a visitor.’” Katie did aremarkableimpression of an annoyed Diana Price. “Tell me this is your new car.”
“It’s my new car.” Wil felt better. She was shocked at how much better she felt, just seeing Katie in her falling-off, cat-hair-decorated black T-shirt and leggings. Her glorious movie-star smile. Her freshly washed hair, which had dried without being styled, and which looked so much like her hair in high school, it made Wil’s heart pinch. “What are you doing?”
“Packing.” Katie smiled again, but it wasn’t as bright. “A little bit. Mostly, talking on the phone. Talking on FaceTime. Texting. I think I got a telegraph.” She dropped her voice into an imitationof an old-fashioned newsreel announcer. “‘Katie! Stop. This is an emergency! Stop. Tell the world exactly how you’re feeling. Stop. Maybe a nude? Stop.’”
The“Wil” Katie Price Finally Get Kissed?clickbait had started rolling before Wil was even alone in her house, dark in the middle of the day with all the blinds shut. The pictures weren’t anything more than a series of shots of Wil and Noel side by side, talking to each other, and Katie a bit behind them, in the wig, looking down. It was easy to recognize Katie in the pictures. Frozen in a photo, Katie’s profile, the shape of her chin, and her mouth were all there. The ways she changed how she moved, her accent, her expressions and gestures, washed away.