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The story was mostly supplied by imaginative supposition about Katie’s association with Wil-You-Or-Won’t-You, backstory copy about her career highlights, and fresh quotes from Ben Adelsward.
“I’m so sorry,” Wil said.
“That’s my line, silly.” Katie waved Wil to follow her to the sliders that led to her suite. “Welcome to the Katie Price Show. This time with unwilling special guest stars.” Katie slid open the glass doors. “Madelynn, my publicist, told me you’re not returning her calls.”
“I’m not returning anyone’s calls.” Wil shucked off her coat and toed off her boots, looking around at Katie’s half-packed luggage and noticing that her heart had sped up again. The cats were in a cuddle pile on one end of the sofa, obviously trying to ignore what was going on. Wil could sympathize. “I changed my number.”
“You should talk to Madelynn, though. She could help.” Katie sat on the floor, then leaned back against the sofa. “She’s good at making things go away. I suggested some thin but adorable copy about visiting my old friend from high school who, of course,because we were friends, is extremely cool, and yes, you got me, she has ‘theTikTok’”—Katie made air quotes—“and her gutter guy had stopped by with an estimate.” Katie wrinkled her nose. “Harder to make plausible or adorable. Although Noel would receive more bookings than any gutter guy in the entire Fox Valley if we ran with it.”
Wil sat on the floor across from Katie, shoving one of the suitcases aside to make room. “That’s an interesting angle. Also a lie.”
Close up, Wil could see the strain at the corners of Katie’s eyes. There was a red place on her lower lip where she’d obviously been worrying it.
Katiedidn’t look like she had a plan. She looked like she was trying to make the best of a situation that had spiraled out of her control.
Wil put her hand on Katie’s knee. “Hey.”
“Yep.” Katie rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry I haven’t called you. I’m sorry about all of this. I’m just…” She dropped her head so that her hair fell forward, a curtain that hid her face. “I’m having a hard time.”
“Tell me about that.”
Katie shook her head. “I usually do a better job. I should have prepared you. I should’ve told you what would happen.”
“You did. You said my life would be divided into everything before I kissed you on TikTok and everything that happened after.” Wil made the same gesture Katie had made at her mother’s holiday party, one side of her life to her left, the other side to her right.
“That was flirting. It wasn’t honestly warning you what this would be like. I didn’t”—she swallowed, her voice thick—“I didn’t think hard enough about what this would be like.”
Wil pushed her hand through her hair. “Neither one of us could’ve known what this would be like.”
They didn’t mean dodging the media.
Katie sighed. “I’m sorry.”
Wil felt the solidity of the sofa behind her back, the tightness in her shoulders. She didn’t want an apology. Katie’s apology meant something had gone wrong that Wil couldn’t fix. It meant they’d come to the end of the road.
Wil wasn’t interested in endings. For the first time in years, she wanted to think about what came next. She wanted to know where she was headed instead of where she’d been. “You keep saying that, but I’m not clear on what you’re sorry for, Katie Kat. What is it that you think you’ve done wrong?”
Katie didn’t answer the question, but that was okay. Wil was pretty sure she already knew the answer. She’d had time, last night, to really think about the conversation they’d had in her bed yesterday.
Ben Adelsward was quoted in every single story about Wil and Katie being photographed together. He’d been the primary focus of the stories about Katie’s appearance in Chicago—at least at first, maybe until Katie’s publicist found a way to spin them away from him.
Late last night, sitting at her desk with Almond Butter in her heated bed beside Wil’s laptop, Wil had done a deep dive into Katie’s press from the last few years, reading and taking notes and thinking until she finally felt the pieces of what she’d observed and what Katie had told her—their conversations, their past together—begin to click together.
Katie in high school. That day she’d picked her up in the Bronco. Maneuvering Mr. Cook to save the class. What Katie had told Wil about Ben.
Katie walking onto the soundstage in Chicago under the bright lights, the catwalks, with her styled hair and beautiful jewelry, heels and signature pink lips. Confident and untouchable.
Honor Howell.
The rumors about Katie’s production company.
Diana. How much Diana loved her daughter, and how fiercely she protected Katie’s privacy.
“You have to be perfect, don’t you?” Wil asked.
Katie looked away again.
It was cold in her suite. The silence felt cold, too. Heavy. Finally, Katie picked at the knee of her leggings. “I can remember this one night, a few months after I was in my house,” she said. “My mom had gone back home. I was alone. It was the first time I’d been alone when I saw a headline. Ben had told the press a secret, what I’d thought of as a secret between us. It was so ugly. The media had gotten really ugly about me. It made me feel like I didn’t exist. I wasn’t a person. I was twenty-two, and I couldn’t understand how it was that I’d been such a singular, brilliant genius when I was eighteen, nineteen, with Ben, but now everyone hated me. I remember thinking I wished—really, really wished—that I could go home. But I couldn’t.”