For You and Only You (You, #4)

by Caroline Kepnes

You can make one person love you, but you can’t make a group of people like you, not when they already have each other, when they are a “them” in a way that makes you a “you.”

You move his chair for him, and it’s amazing, how easily even the weakest of men turn women into handmaids.

It’s easy to stop writing, to whittle away the hours weaponizing rare fucking gems instead of self-isolating, killing your darlings in the privacy of your room.

And then Covid hit, and the CD Fucking C said what I’ve known for years: People are toxic, they can kill you, so keep your distance.

I have no idea what it’s like to be in your family, but also, I know it’s not your job to water your mother’s flowers.”

I take out my phone and open Twitter and check his feed. And then I die.

Just like me fr

Insidious oohs and aahs from our lookie-loo fellows and fuck, fuck, Goose. Am I cooked?

But all animals know when the predator is nearby. We sense it.

You’re doing it, dredging up all the people from my old life, the one that isn’t mine, not anymore. Sarah Beth is so obsessed that she wants to make a pilgrimage to the island and Sly’s eyes bulge with excitement. “Yes,” she says. “Field trip! So on theme with our kindergarten ethos. I love it.” I HATE IT and Sarah Beth says she’d have to run it by the hubs and I see the wheels turning in Sarah Beth’s head. There isn’t a mouse in my house. There are mice in my hice and fucking murder-obsessed women and Mats is on my side. He thinks it was a suicide, but Sarah Beth throws down the gauntlet.

You really have no idea that you’re about to lose me. You’ll go through a range of emotions and get sucked into the grisly rumor mill. But you are a Goodreads girl and you will read Me and fall in love with me all over again. That’s all I care about anymore. I don’t need to be published. I don’t need a million readers. I only need one, you.

Meta

But nobody cares about me or the Salinger. They all think the same fucking thing, that I am the guy who buys Salinger and you are the woman who is Salinger, and you pontificate about the mouse in your house—it’s mine—and you make it about your family, the time you guys found a literal mouse in your living room, and is this how you treat me? You take my beautiful metaphor and reduce it to lame family dramedy? You feed me undercooked oatmeal and steal my mouse and shame me for buying a little piece of history I didn’t even buy?

is it really possible to get fucked this many ways at once without a chance of an orgasm?

my poor book is sitting on Sly’s nightstand, crying for me—Help me, Daddy—and I tried, little book. I tried.

I sip my vodka soda and this is why people drink. To convince themselves they are having a good time when they are just trying to avoid solitary confinement.

She broke up with Stephen a hundred years and two kiddos ago—get a life, get a therapist—and she looks at me like I’m the one being weird.

Don’t fuck with me because unlike a lot of people on this planet, I fuck back.

I just so happened to be listening to the audiobook for this bit and I literally screamed

Let me tell you what it’s like to be me, to have monkeys on my back, mugs of piss and podcasts around every corner because Candace and Beck are not out there living their lives…” Do I mean that, Wonder? I don’t even know. “Don’t do it. Don’t give yourself a life sentence of looking over your shoulder knowing that at any second someone like you might come along and figure you out.”

Someone’s always gonna call you something, The best thing you can do, the only thing you can do, is tell ’em they got it wrong by showing ’em who you are.”

“Wonder, you’re missing the point. I did this for you. I killed the fucker.” “Joe, stop it. Stop lying to me. It’s not in your DNA. You’re not a freaking ‘murderer.’ ” My God, you are one sick little woman. You don’t believe I would do that for you. You have no faith in yourself, so you have no faith in me,

Typical Goodreads girl—you blame my book for your poor skills as a reader—and

clock that tea

You stare at the water like an impudent fucking child, and oh no, oh God, oh no. Don’t look at the water. The body is fucking dead. Look at me. I’m alive.