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Katie’s breath hitched, and Wil thought of the hospital bed in the living room of the house she’d grown up in. The hospice people had cleared everything out so quickly, but there had been a span of time—it could have been ten minutes or an hour—when Wil sat in the living room with that bed. The sheets stripped. Empty.
“I know what that feels like,” she finally said.
Katie picked up Wil’s hand and gripped it hard in hers. “For women, there are only two kinds of movie stars, did you know that?” Finally, she looked up. Her eyes were bright in a way that made Wil feel better. There was so much determinedKatiein her face.
“What are the two kinds?” Wil asked.
“Tragic and iconic.”
“You decided to be iconic.” Wil reached out to push Katie’shair behind her ear, but Katie captured her hand and laid it against the hot skin of her cheek. Her jaw flexed beneath Wil’s palm.
“I decided to be beyond any type or category.” Katie reached for her hair and pulled it over her shoulder. Like always.
“So that’s all.” Wil smiled.
Katie shrugged, but then she smiled, too. It wasn’t a brittle smile. Wil was glad to see it. “To answer your question, I’m sorry I did this to you.” Katie made one of her gestures where just her hand somehow conjured up the paparazzi, buying a Nissan, falling most of the way off the edge into love.
“But.” Wil stretched out her legs and leaned back. “It wasn’t you. It was me.”
Katie raised her eyebrows. “Okay.” She made another gesture that saidI don’t believe you, but tell me this story.
Wil was ready to do that. It was part of her plan. “You’ve heard of ChapStick?”
Katie laughed. “I almost remember it. These days I only anoint my lips with the oil from rare alpine vegetation, of course.”
“Obviously. Remember Lynn, on my channel?”
“Yes! Wavy blue hair, tall, looks obscene in a tank top. Grabbed the back of your neck in a way that caught my thighs on fire.”
Wil sat up a little taller, pleased with this additional confirmation of Katie’s attention—pleased in a way that made her throat and cheeks warm. “I didn’t really pay attention, but right before I kissed her, I put on ChapStick. Most of the time I don’t even know I’m doing it. And I’m a slapdash video editor.”
“For the record, I always notice when you put on ChapStick.”
Katie smiled at her in a way that was very unfair and disruptive to Wil keeping track of this story, and Wil laughed. “Don’t distract me. The point is thatChapSticknoticed when I did it in that video, right before I kissed Lynn. And someone in the marketing or social media department at ChapStick had positive thoughts, and thesepositive thoughts led to my getting a DM inviting me to ‘explore opportunities with the brand.’”
“Ah,” Katie said. “Once, I accidentally started a three-year fad when I was photographed coming out of the gym with my barrettes clipped to my shirt collar where I’d put them when I changed and forgot to put them back in my hair.”
“That was you?” Wil smiled, remembering the inexplicable barrettes-clipped-to-collar fad.
Katie laughed. “Continue.”
“Right. So it’s a convoluted story, involving some interesting phone calls with ChapStick’s parent company, but I’ll leave that for another day. Right now, I’m telling you about it because what it triggered me to do wasn’t to explore a career as a spokesmodel, but to take a deep dive and make a lot of spreadsheets about influencer contracts, terms of service, and creator content rights.”
“Obviously. Because you’re Wil Greene.” Katie put her elbow on her knee and tipped her head into her hand, and Wil thought, in a sudden flash, that she could look at Katie looking at her like that for the rest of her life.
It made her heart go still and warm, slowing the whole world down for just a moment. A pay-attention moment.
Wil laughed, but she let the shift happen between them. She told herself it was okay. She had a plan now.
She had risked and lost enough to bear how she was starting to feel about Katie Price.
“My point is, if you’re leaving, I want to go with you to Los Angeles.”
Katie unfurled herself and sat up straight. Shook her head. “Wait. Yes. No. What?”
Wil stood up. Katie did, too. “I didn’t think I was going to say that, exactly. Yet. I jumped ahead.”
“But you said it was your point!”