You (You, #1)

by Caroline Kepnes

And books? Fuck books. Get a Kindle.

You didn’t walk in here for books, Beck. You didn’t have to say my name. You didn’t have to smile or listen or take me in. But you did. Your signature is on the receipt. This wasn’t a cash transaction and it wasn’t a coded debit. This was real. I press my thumb into the wet ink on your receipt and the ink of Guinevere Beck stains my skin.

Is your Twitter bio your subtle way of announcing that you’re an attention whore who has no standards and will give audience to any poor schmuck who says hello?

Was I nothing to you? You don’t even mention the guy in the bookstore? Fuck, I thought, maybe I was wrong.

Maybe we had ...

You parade too much and it’s unsafe and it only takes one weirdo to spot you inside and decide to go and get you.

sit on the steps of the brownstone across the tiny, clean street that faces your building and I pretend to read Paula Fox’s Poor George or pretend to text my business associates (ha!) or pretend to call a friend who’s late and loudly agree to wait another twenty minutes. (That’s for the neighbor who always might be hidden away, suspicious of the man on the stoop; I’ve seen a lot of movies.)

What is wrong with him

Hopefully not, hopefully there is logic to this that you’ll explain to me when it’s time.

Why does she need to explain herself. Creep.

These people don’t want to touch my dick with a ten-foot pole. Your pussy, on the other hand, is gold.

spanking the kitty…

I have seen enough romantic comedies to know that romantic guys like me are always getting into jams like this.

Hardly

I’m

But no. You will give me water, but not a fucking plastic bottle as I’m hitting the road. When you quench my thirst, it will be after our first fuck, in your bed and you will bring me a glass of water and we will share the glass and it will be the first of many.

You drive me crazy and then. And then. Your lips were made for mine, Beck. You are the reason I have a mouth, a heart.

you start to pull away. But I pull your hair and bring your mouth to mine. I know how to leave you wanting more. And I do.

I won’t achieve definite status until you have the honor of receiving my cock.

“So we’ll get the pillow?”

Boyfriend.

And now, at last, you pet the red ladle in my hand and tell me the story of your red ladle. You were a little girl in a little bed, and the smell of pancakes woke you up on Sunday mornings. Your dad used a special red ladle on Sundays, just Sundays. He would sing along to the top-forty countdown, screw up the lyrics, and make you and your brother and your sister laugh, winter, spring, summer, fall and you couldn’t fall asleep Saturday nights, you were so excited for Sunday mornings. And then, he started hitting the bottle. And the Sundays went away and the red ladle stayed in a drawer and your mother’s pancakes were greasy and burnt or wet and undercooked and your father was gone but the ladle was still there and bad pancakes smell like good pancakes and he’s dead now so there will never be pancakes again.

I go all the way to your neighborhood and buy two cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery. They smell fucking good and I want them but I am a good boy, Beck, and I have ideas about what to do with all this icing.

I’d set my dick on fire if I could but we know that I’m a limp dick pussy.

I would hurl it at the window and pound my chest like a barbarian, like a thick-dicked alpha gorilla.

I don’t know what it would be like to be here without you inside of me, Beck. I do know that you are a lot to handle. I am tired.

I like having homework and I leave his office and find that the world is full of women. So maybe I do want to find out about life without you. I’d almost forgotten about girls.

Karen Minty

subway

I didn’t just pet this cat. I adopted it.

And then it happens, the most dreaded response in the world, more terse than any word, more withholding than a no, and strictly verboten for someone as in love with language and me as you claim to be.