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Katie Price, who had ninety-five million followers on Twitter, an Oscar, an armful of Golden Globes, a shelf of Emmys and SAG Awards, and a Tony nomination, slept with her mouth open, sawing logs like she was building a cabin.
Which, Wil remembered, she always had. Why would she have stopped?
Katie’s arms and legs were still wrapped around Wil, and Wil wanted nothing more than to kiss her awake and touch her everywhere, taste her everywhere, but even in the dim light from the clerestory it was obvious there were purple smudges under Katie’s eyes, and her snores were long and slow.
Katie should sleep more if she could.
And Wil would be happy to be Katie’s sleep buddy, except that she was still on Green Bay time, and it was well past the hour she needed to get up and pee.
Wil extricated herself one limb at a time, ultimately swappingher warm pillow for her body in Katie’s arms as she scooted away, pausing between each removal so Katie’s breathing could slow down into deep sleep again.
Katie’s robe was on the nightstand. Wil belted it on. She knew that Katie’s room had an en suite through the walk-in closet, but she couldn’t figure out how to open the invisible door. She decided to creep down the hall to where she’d passed a powder room the night before.
All four cats thumped off the bed one by one and followed her out of the room. They were waiting outside the bathroom door when Wil finished, looking like a jury box, and then she was their parade leader into the kitchen, where Katie’s cats lined up where Wil assumed they must have their breakfast. They looked at Almond Butter with terrible envy, since she was already placidly crunching her special older cat food in the spot Wil had set up last night beside the floor-to-ceiling windows that had a view of the pool.
Sue meowed mournfully, and Phil and Trois followed suit.
“Okay, niblets,” Wil whispered. “Give me a minute.”
They watched her open and close smooth wood cabinets with a grain that looked expensive and rare until she found one full of different kinds of cat food and treats organized into clever trays and baskets. She couldn’t locate cat dishes, but she divided up the breakfasts onto the small plates she did find, trying not to think about how she might have just served the cats breakfast on appetizer plates that cost more, each, than the Le Creuset Dutch oven Wil had splurged on recently, feeling full of herself and grown up.
She opened the refrigerator that showed her what was inside of it on a big digital display, got out a fancy flavored water, and nearly drained it, standing in the kitchen while the cats ate.
Katie.
God.Wil hadn’t counted on… She didn’t know how she evercould have been prepared for that. Kissing Katie. Her body, the way she moved, the way she moaned. Her hands trembling. Her eyes on Wil, staying right on her the way they always did, like there was nothing else to look at in the world.
They’d both been nervous, or, if not nervous, they’d both been completely overspilling with a lot of different kinds of feelings.
Wil hadn’t felt that much of any kind of emotion since she lost her dad, and grief was so opaque and obliterating. It had dulled all of her senses and left her with one sharp, keening loss to stare at and stare at until she forgot there was anything else to look at or to feel.
The grief had been so preoccupying and steady, there was a way it stood in for her dad. She’d relied on it to keep her place, to keep her weighted to the earth, even as that was the only thing it did.
But how she’d felt kissing Katie, touching her, making love to her, was overflowing the way something fizzy overflowed. It was champagne. It was effervescent, with lots of transparent colors, with Katie’s deep blue eyes and blondy-brown hair and her skin washed over with pale flushes. None of Wil’s feelings had stayed put. She’d felt hot and sexy, then tender and shy, and then like she wanted to hold Katie down and suggest dark things they could do together right before they told each other everything in their hearts.
When everything was love.
When everything was whatin lovefelt like.
When everything was loving Katie.
Wil loved Katie.
Loving Katie was easy.
It was everythingelsethat Wil didn’t know how to do yet. Now, all by herself, it was a little intimidating to stand here in Katie’s beautiful, almost unreal house. The light wasn’t the same light they had in Green Bay in December, and the fact that it wasdancing over the water in the pool meant Wil wasn’t in the Midwest anymore.
Her fear felt overfull, like a bowl she held in both hands that she had to be careful not to spill. Wil had to keep reminding herself that she’d been afraid before. Last night, falling asleep, she’d told herself that in the past, when she’d done things that scared her, they often ended up being the things that mattered most.
She was glad for the cats. They helped.
She walked across a huge space, the floor a dark, swirly cork that was utterly silent to walk on, to a rough-edged wooden table. There was a laptop at one end, a little arrangement of succulents in a tabletop garden, and a row ofLos Angeles Timesnewspapers starting the day Katie left for Wisconsin.
Katie read the paper.
That was funny. Craig, Katie’s dad, had a big ritual around the newspaper. He got the Green Bay paper and read the whole thing every morning with his breakfast, and on the weekend he went to the cigar shop and newsstand, Bosse’s, to buy a copy of the Sunday edition.
Wil hadn’t known that Katie read the paper, but it made sense. She liked her little routines, her breakfast burritos and morning yoga. In high school, she’d carried a case in her backpack that contained her phone, six perfectly sharpened number-two pencils, a black pen, a red pen, a blue pen, and an immaculate pink eraser.