Page 21 of Everyone I Kissed Since You Got Famous
And until April guessed, Katie hadn’t talked to anyone, at all, anywhere, about Wil or about Wil’s TikTok. Both had been just for her.
“How?” The word came out a bit of a croak. “How did you guess that?”
“You said ‘Wil,’ you’re in Green Bay, my niece and I trade TikToks all fucking day long. That shit is hot. Is she repped?”
“You”—Katie pointed at her—“are both mercenary and alsoa lotfor me at this moment.”
“I bet. A lot of reality coming at you ifWil’syour plan, tonight, in the dark, driving around Green Bay, Wisconsin, the air cold, the cab of the truck warm, the radio softly playing.”
“Write your own script, April.” Katie pointed at her again.
“I am.” April’s grin was fully salacious. “I’m writing it, and I’m feeling it inside of my body, and I like it, Katie. I like this script. Also, give me the heads-up if you’re going to make out on her channel, and I’ll be the one to tell Madelynn. I feel like I’m a bit of a Madelynn whisperer, honestly. I can give her stuff like this and make it feel like a career opportunity. For her. That’s why she likes me.”
“Are you finished?” Katie tried for imperious, but it just came out resigned. April sounded and looked supremely pleased with herself, and of course she should be, given the enormity of what she’d just pried out of Katie.
“Not really. Also, you’ve noticed Wil is incredibly beautiful, right? Like, in the cartoons, where the tongue rolls out and the eyeballs pop and the horn goeswah-wah-wah-wuh. Her handle is hilarious to me, ‘Wil-You-or-Won’t-You’—of course I fucking will. There must be a line to her front door that backs up into Ohio.” April sighed. “Now I’m done.”
Unbidden, the picture Katie shouldn’t have looked at on Wil’s phone swirled into focus like ink dropped into water. Wil with both her hands on Emory’s nape, her tongue just past her teeth, Emory’s hand either pushing down into the front of Wil’s pants or dragging back out, their fingers pressed into the skin of her belly.
Fuck.
Incredibly beautiful didn’t completely cover it.
“Say hello to Meryl and Viola for me,” Katie said, referring to April’s cats. “Tell them that Sue, Trois, and Phil say hi from GreenBay.” She flashed the tiny, prim smile that meant she’d finished, and the conversation was complete.
April broke out into a grin. She was the one who’d taught Katie how to do that. Years ago, when Katie was reeling in the months after leaving Ben, she’d complained to April at one point that every interaction, every interview, seemed to end with someone getting more from her than she wanted to give them.
Stop fucking talking,April had said.You’re an actress. Act like it’s over.Then she’d made Katie show her what that looked like, trying on one expression after another until they settled on this one.
Katie’s victory smile, April called it.
“I love you, honey. Be careful,” April said, waving.
Katie stood up and stretched, then attended to her cats’ bedtime needs. Phil and Sue had medicine, Trois had eye drops, and their litters needed to be scooped. Katie talked to them with and without the buttons, watching them to make sure they were well settled in. They had stayed in the suite before and seemed unbothered. Katie made sure that she turned on all three heated cat beds on low so they would have a warm place to sleep. It was no small thing to acclimate to Green Bay’s winter.
Then Katie brushed her teeth and her hair, pulled on a sweatshirt because she hated coats and always had and it was only thirty-eight degrees—though that was balmy for a Midwest winter—and put Uggs on her bare feet. She turned out the lights and waited for Wil’s truck, watching out the back slider, her skin buzzing.
It was a familiar feeling, waiting by a door for the lights of Wil’s Bronco to sweep through the window.
By her senior year, Katie had maxed out the regional and local acting workshops. She’d learned everything she could from the instructors who would work with kids. She’d earned a lead in every local theater, which was as many leads as she was going to get, because no company in the Midwest was going to give the samechildtwoleading roles. Katie remained committed to doing the work for her dance and music teachers, but when she got accepted to summer stock in Chicago for the summer after senior year, she realized she wanted to do high school. She hadn’t even tried out for the East High School plays or the musical.
Diana was surprised, but thrilled, and tried and failed not to give Katie too much social advice as though she needed it, which she did, and in the end, the only advice Katie took on from her mother was to stick close to Wil Greene.
She’s very involved at East and could help you figure out what extracurriculars you might like.
The subtext was that Wil could also introduce Katie to the people Katie had only observed from a distance since kindergarten but had rarely talked to because Diana drove her to Milwaukee and Madison and even Chicago multiple times a week for acting obligations, and probably those kids thought Katie was horribly stuck up.
They did think that, it turned out. They told her as much in the hallway outside the theater the afternoon of the first rehearsal forSeussical the Musical,in which Katie had been given the role of the Cat in the Hat. Katie had tried to casually strike up a conversation with a few of the theater girls right after the rehearsal, and they told her she’d stolen the part from one of the girls’ boyfriends, who actually deserved it, and thereby ruined the musical, and probably Katie had only been given the part because Diana had agreed to make costumes.
Katie was snot-crying and walking on a cold September evening after this unfortunate event when Wil picked her up. After that, Katie didn’t really see the need to stick close to anyone else. Wil was everything she needed and a lot of things she didn’t realize she’d missed out on. Plus, Diana was right, as always, because everything got a lot easier after Katie and Wil were friends.
Nothing, nothing, had been that easy since.
The headlights on the Bronco lit up the backyard before Katie saw the truck pull in. Its orange and brown and yellow paint job filled her with so many feelings, she thought she was going to black out. She ran out to meet it after setting the alarm on the slider behind her.
Wil leaned over in the cab, and the door opened from the inside.
“Hi!” Katie climbed in. The woven fabric bench seat felt exactly the same. It smelled, like always, like wintergreen Altoids and the Aveda rosemary shampoo Wil used. Katie grabbed the seat belt and buckled herself in.
