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She’d known she wanted to. All day. And all day, it had seemed like they’d been one single gyre of energy, snapped together by a look or hand-holding or laughter like they couldn’t move an inch out of the spin.
Your hair’s gotten so long,she’d said, and she touched it, tracing it over Katie’s shoulder with her fingertips until Katie shivered.
Goose bumps,Katie had whispered. She didn’t have to whisper. The next campsite couldn’t hear them have a conversation over the hum of insects and the lake.
Wil didn’t know how long it was like that before Katie said it.You can.
She didn’t know, either, why that broke the spell—Katie’s admission she wanted the kiss, too—but Wil had found herself suddenly unzipping her sleeping bag and putting her arms around Katie, not to kiss her, but to lay her head on her shoulder and squeeze her in a hug even while she wanted to, she still wanted to, but not as much as she wanted something with Katie that would never end.
It had ended anyway.
Gazing out the window of the plane taking her with Katie Price to Los Angeles, it seemed to Wil that every single kiss of her life had been measured against that kiss that didn’t happen.
She didn’t want to wonder anymore how things might have been different. It wasn’t an interesting question.
The interesting question was what kind of life she could make with Katie now.
When they landed, a van was waiting for them, and a driver ready to take on cat carriers and luggage. There weren’t any photographers. Katie had said her agent, April, had made the arrangements so they could arrive in the city “without any fanfare,” which Wil understood to be code for “without showing up on the celebrity gossip websites four minutes later.”
The van traveled up into the Hollywood Hills, past landscaping lights and lights on gates marking the turns, until it pulled into a long, narrow, blond brick drive that widened to something that looked more like an exhibit in an Asian garden than a house, all glints of glass and twisting, miniature trees.
Wil had seen pictures of Katie’s home, but they were pictures a mother would take. The pool. Pretty flowers in the yard. Stained glass in a door.
This was different. Dark. Shadows. A hint of glass. Very private and strangely still. When they got out of the van, a coyote yipped in the distance, and Almond Butter complained about it loudly.
Katie had been so quiet during the flight and in the van. But she hadn’t let go of Wil—her hand, a loop in her jeans, her knee.
“This is where I live,” she said. The front door responded to Katie’s fingerprint on a complex security pad. She had Sue’s carrier in one hand. Wil carried Almond Butter. There was a light on in the entry hall and flowers on a low table by the door. They smelled amazing. Wil could see straight down the hall, through what looked like it must be the kitchen and dining area, through an open door to the glowing turquoise pool.
The contrast to the incredibly nice basement suite Katie’s parents had put in at their home in Green Bay couldn’t have been more stark.
Who had Katie or April called to turn on the lights, buy the flowers, and leave the door to the pool invitingly open? There were lights floating in the pool, even, and a pitcher of something that still had condensation beading on its cool surface on a table by the pool with glasses at the ready.
Everything was very beautiful—colored glass and art, natural materials in magical layers that made it feel like they had stepped inside a millionaire’s treehouse—beautiful in a way Wil had literally never seen or experienced in someone’s home.
And this was Katie’s home. Katie from East High School.
“Do you like it?” Katie put the carrier down. She pulled out her phone, tapped it, and it did something to the lights. Everything was suddenly bathed in some kind of perfect, warm-colored, after-dark indoor glow that made them both look like they were in a movie.
Wil almost laughed, and then she saw Katie’s face.
It was a real question. Katie wasn’t sure.
“Katie, it’s objectively the most gorgeous house I’ve ever seen close up and in person.” Katie wrinkled her nose. “But maybe it would be easier if you showed me the parts of it that you want me to notice. I heard you tell Angela you have a hundred-year-old avocado tree. Is this house a hundred years old?”
“Almost!” Katie beamed. “It’s from the forties, but it had a big expansion in the fifties and got renovated again in the nineties. They built the conservatory around the avocado tree, or at least that’s what the real estate agent told me. Let’s get the rest of the cats, and I’ll show you. I think Almond Butter will like the conservatory. She can pretend she’s in the forest.”
Then it was better. Katie showed Wil how the security system worked, they brought the cats inside, and Katie had Wil carry Almond Butter into the living room where there was what she called a “neutral area” that she felt would be a good place to make the introduction between all of the cats.
Sue came over and smelled Almond Butter and went to the credenza with her AAC buttons and said,Home. Mama. Mama. Home. Cat.Then she pressed another button that made a “Hmmm?” noise, indicating a question.
Sue approached and smelled Almond Butter again, this time with her tail in the air, until Katie told her, “This cat’s name is Almond Butter. Would you like me to make a button for her?”
Sue returned to the credenza.Yes.
“Okay, my baby. I will get on that tomorrow, and a button for Wil, too.” Katie pushed the buttons,Tomorrow. Yes. Hmm?
Yes,Sue pressed. She left the room. Trois, in the meantime, had already smelled Almond Butter all over, rubbed her entire sideagainst Almond Butter’s body, and run away, rounding the corner at a high rate of speed and disappearing into another part of the house.