You (You, #1)

by Caroline Kepnes

your jeans hang loose and you’re too sun-kissed for Stephen King

You sneeze, loudly, and I imagine how loud you are when you climax.

books? Fuck books. Get a Kindle.

I bet you take zinc the third day of a cold.

I press my thumb into the wet ink on your receipt and the ink of Guinevere Beck stains my skin.

The trouble with society is that if the average person knew about us—you, alone, orgasming three times a night, and me, across the street, watching you orgasm, alone—most people would say I’m the fuckup.

Twitter profile: Guinevere Beck @TheUnRealBeck I’ve never had an unspoken thought. I write stories. I read stories. I talk to strangers. Nantucket is my homeboy but New York is my homebitch.

Cringe

He’s married with two kids and he’s the paint-by-numbers parent of the family.

I wonder if you were this way in Providence, parading around as if you want your rarified neighbors to know you naked, half-naked, addicted to microwave foods, and masturbating at the top of your lungs.

Who tf does that damn

Rejection is a dish best served in a paper envelope because then at least you can tear it up or burn it. #notintoColumbia

I suppose that girls like to collect things, be it kale soup recipes or poorly worded, grammatically offensive daddy fantasies composed by desperate loners.

(girls get mad sometimes, even when the guy is Matthew McConaughey)

In your bathroom, when the door is closed and you sit on the toilet, you stare at a photograph of Einstein. You like to look into his eyes while you struggle against your bowels.

“Brooklyn makes me want to move to LA and buy a case of Red Bull and rock out to Mariah Carey.”

he’s a permanent man-baby, okay?

He and his club soda can fuck off

“I never thought about it that much. Benji. Ben Gee. Gee, Ben.”

The world fell out of love with love at some point

My middle school health teacher told us that you can hold eye contact for ten seconds before scaring or seducing someone. I am counting and I think you can tell.

I smell you. Pickles and tits.

“Thank you so much.” “Every time.” “I like that. Every time. Instead of ‘anytime.’ It’s pointed.”

I fold my hands under my head and tell the books all about you. They listen, Beck. I know it sounds crazy, but they do.

Wtf

“The only thing crueler than a cage so small that a bird can’t fly is a cage so large that a bird thinks it can fly.

If there’s any girl on Earth who would appreciate my power, it’s lovely, unpublished you in your little yellow stockings with your dream of writing something good enough to get you inside this cage. You’d drop your panties to get in here, to live in here, forever. I drop my own drawers and cum so hard that I go deaf.

What the fuckk

Sometimes I flipped back to the beginning just to rub my finger on Salinger’s signature. You had to pay $1,250 to do what I did. But I didn’t pay.

Four minutes three hours and two days pass before this bullshit stinks up my inbox:

His business is called Home Soda, a superior alternative to commonplace club soda because “while a club is exclusive, a home is the most exclusive place in the world. You can get into a club if you pay a cover. The same cannot be said of a home.”

all I can think about is our first kiss, which will likely take place in eighteen seconds nineteen minutes and three hours when we are both drunk in a cab on Bank Street and I get it now, why dudes jerk off on trains sometimes.

Damn

Food critics who are part owners of café-book hybrid places are, by nature, a clumsy folk.

I pick a “sexy” one and tweet it from Benji’s account. Two words accompany the photograph: #Beautifulovely #Yes You are meant to interpret this as Benji’s way of calling you #Inadequate #No

Lol

That’s how privileged people think: Lie unless you know that you can’t get away with lying.

Princess Benji wants a soy latte

I lock the basement doors and I text you: I got books to sell. Be on the south steps of Union Square. Center. 8:30 sharp. And I shut off my phone. I told you where to be and when and if you think you’re gonna get any more from me today when you get me all night, you got another thing coming.

Entitled

Doctor Sleep turns my shop into a fucking Church of Stephen and I have no room to think about you, prepare for you. We are inundated with Kingophiles,

freaks who highlight the bad parts

Me

The kid is allergic to gluten and peanuts and yeast and dust and sugar and Visine. I got him a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup and he went batshit on me and said the mere smell of peanut butter could kill him. Please. You know what the fucker is really allergic to? Real life.

“Nobody buys paper books anymore,” I say to customer number 4,356 who is a carbon copy of number 4,343 and all the others. “Unless they’re by Stephen King.”

crutch music you can talk about when you feel insecure—and

maybe Hector’s nervous too. You’ll meet them all soon, Beck, all the typewriters I collect because one day,

I’ll be the man with twenty-nine (and counting) beat-up machines

Too many u broke bitch

I sit down and pat the concrete and you plant your sweet little buns beside me.

Lmao

“You seem young,” you say and just like that I’m soft.

want to be more careful with my words and only say what I mean. Cut the fat out.”

“I was just gonna tell you about this album.” “I don’t wanna know about this album,” I say. This is me training you to treat me special.

This is your bullshit game. I’m not gonna kiss you, Beck. You’re not gonna tell me what to do with your body.

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.

Jesus

I motion for him to stand and he stands. Good dog.

you don’t get anywhere in this world unless you know how to blend in.

He said he read the first five pages of the book and loved it so much that he couldn’t read any more.

Lol

He grabs at his shaggy blond hair that’s darker every day—sweat.