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“Um.”
“You have to understand, right now,out thereis trained on Green Bay, waiting for more. More of me. That’s why I was packing. I was planning to ask April to get me out of here without tipping anyone off. If you come with me, it gives us more time. For… this. Without… all that.”
Tension had made its way into Katie’s expressive face and dulled it. Her flush had gone hectic.
“College visit,” Wil said, trying for humor, trying not to feel like she’d invited herself somewhere she wasn’t really welcome. “Isn’t that why high school friends fly out to stay in guest rooms on the other side of the country?”
Katie put her hand around the back of Wil’s neck, her thumb under her ear, and pulled their foreheads together. Wil felt Katie’s breath against her face as a heartbeat between her legs. “This is the worst idea ever, and we are going to get into trouble.”
“We never had the chance before,” Wil said. “It’s about time.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Fuck,” April said. “This is good.” She pulled off her heart-shaped glasses and looked up at her webcam.
“Yeah?” Katie asked. “I wrote and edited all day today. This is it. The first draft. The one I thought I needed at least a month to write, but apparently getting this done only required fifteen to twenty thousand calories of my mother’s food, a come-to-Jesus talk from my agent, the realization I’ve been suffering under thirteen years of longing, a Category Five media storm, and a very Intro to Composition writing lesson that I could’ve gotten from any tutor anytime in the last eight years.”
Conscious of how fast she was talking, Katie made herself take a breath. “But now you have to tell me if it works,” she said. “I think it does, but I might have lost perspective. Mainly for all of the same reasons I was able to write it in the first place.”
“I’d give this script to you to read, is what I’m saying.” April smiled. “Even if there wasn’t a lot of money.”
Katie closed her eyes. That was good to hear. She trusted April’s judgment more than her own wobbly instincts as a writer of screenplays. “I’m so glad. I know it will need revision, but it does feel like I’m really doing it.”
“You’re really doing it. Green Bay is good for you, TMZ’s crash of your idyllverymuch excluded.” April put her glasses back on and picked up the script, which Katie realized she’d not simply printed out but actually had bound. It was covered in green ink where April had taken notes. That, more than April telling her it was good, made goose bumps sluice from Katie’s scalp to the tops of her legs with joy and pride and interest in making something, herownsomething, and seeing it come together.
It meant even more to see that marked-up script in April’s hands, hear the sound of her turning the crisp pages, and listen to April’s sharp and incisive notes, because literally everyone around her was having such a hard time ever since Wil’s TikTok had posted and set the entertainment news on fire.
Katie hadn’t done any of the things she normally would have done. She hadn’t circled her wagons, met with her team, or prepared a statement that contained the exact right amount of detachment. She’d been writing. She was letting these chips fall.
But all day, her mom kept bringing her snacks, checking if the basement suite was a comfortable temperature, and pointedly not asking the questions that were filling her eyes with so much worry.
Madelynn had reached out to Katie again, full of rage and ready to lay in wait behind Ben’s favorite specialty cigarette shop in Brentwood so she could tear his throat out with her bare hands to present to the Academy.
April put the script down. “What I think is that you give this one more pass, and then we show it to the people who were interested when we bought the option.”
“Honor, you mean.” Katie’s belly went tight with thoughts she hadn’t let herself have for the last twenty-four hours since Wil posted their kissing video. Thoughts about how she had strayed wildly from the original plan she’d made with Madelynn, the one that led to theHollywood Reporterprofile of Katie in a director’schair and a luscious, dream-making investment from Honor Howell. Thoughts about Honor saying,I wonder how ready you are for work out of the spotlight.Madelynn had warned her. Honor wanted evidence that Katie wasn’t actuallyseekingthese stories about Ben. She needed to know that Katie was more interested in work than in fame. What Katie had done—what she’d had no choice but to do—might have made it so that it didn’t matter, as far as Honor Howell was concerned, whether April thought the screenplay was good.
April stretched her arms over her head. The sleeves of her oversized cardigan sweater dropped past her elbows, and gold bangles glistened on both of her wrists. “A script with this much of a vision adapted from a book no one could stop talking about is one of those unicorn first projects for a new production company,” she said. “With the right cast, it could mean major profit, distribution, and awards buzz. Especially since your vision for this is cheap—and for that I thank you—so it gives us room to spend money on talent. I’d love to show this to Alison so she can start thinking about casting. She’s a vault as far as leaks. She won’t even tell you if you have spinach on your teeth.”
Katie pressed her hand against her belly. Alison Cornelius was one of the biggest casting directors in Hollywood. Katie had taken more than one very important call from her. April was already talking about spending money. Location. Meetings.
Katie told herself that even if their studio didn’t get funded,she’dfund this movie herself. She could convince April to let her. She didn’t think about how she’d fund Marisol’s picture. She couldn’t let herself imagine how she might have let Marisol down, and how Marisol would be reminded of it every time she looked at the news. The internet. Social media.
“When will you be here?” April leaned back in her chair. “I’m assuming you’re not taking the rest of your month, given themaelstrom. Are you staying for Christmas, at least? Tell me it’s not so bad you can’t do that.”
April must have seen something in her face. Thesomethingthat meant there were photographers camped at the end of her parents’ drive, and the police had made the call to say there wasn’t much more they could do, sorry, and her dad was checking and rechecking the security system and doing a lot of mumbling under his breath.
It wasn’t the same something in her mom’s eyes.Thatsomething was about the TikTok video. It was about how Katie hadn’t talked to her mom about it first, or at all, and Katie never failed to tell her mother about decisions she was making, where she was traveling, or who she was meeting with.
Thatsomething was about Wil. Who had used the back gate to come and see Katie without calling first. Who had moved, for Diana, from the category of “safe person” to a different category Katie didn’t entirely understand from her mother’s perspective.
“Wil—” She stopped. She hadn’t even exactly, totally, completely confirmed Wil was coming with her to LA. Her soul had said yes, and someplace that was between her throat and heart had said yes, and her eighteen-year-old self had done many, many dances in the middle of the room and in the shower and for the cats, excited as she could possibly be, but it still wasn’t something that felt possible.
April leaned forward and grinned. “Can we talk about Wil?”
“I don’t think so,” Katie whispered.
“Okay. Fair, although I’m putting a giant pin in that. A pin you can see from space. But can we talk about Wil-You-or-Won’t-You’s post yesterday?”