You (You, #1)

by Caroline Kepnes

all I want is a Coke in a can and a text from you.

Real

When I fired her, I left her a note that her last check was in the bathroom. And I left her check in the toilet full of her asparagus-scented piss.

LMAO

There is no way we are going to talk about purses before we have sex so I pretend to be curious.

Peach speaks slowly, like I’m ESL.

you’re a restaurant that’s easy to get into.

Guys like Benji do all their homework in middle school so they never have to try again.

“Joe Joe mad.” He drools and his words are melted butter, like his brain.

“Today?” He laughs again. Fuck. “That’s cold, Joe. She won’t even give you a night.”

You pick up a silver ladle. “Fresh start,”

Peach won’t go somewhere if they have happy hour specials because she thinks drink specials bring out the riffraff.

and just plain ugh, you know?

Real

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,

Lol

we hug like cousins

What’s the only thing more sexless than lunch? Brunch, a meal invented by rich white chicks to rationalize day drinking and bingeing on French toast.

order their sexless green salads, fucking beans and dressings and scallions and onions (Red or white? Grilled or raw?), for fuck’s sake people, it’s a SALAD. Stop overthinking it.

I can’t smell you over the phone and I feel like a 1-900-Build-Me-Up hotline you call to feel good about yourself.

I’m your phone bitch and I don’t like it.

real

When I hug you I smell flowers and laundry detergent and pussy juice

Lace panties, dewy with you

I let you win; you’re a girl.

Ew

IT’S been less than ten minutes and already I’m getting that unpaid delivery guy feeling.

You could have eight games of Twister going at once in here.

If I said the sky were navy blue, Peach would correct me and call it midnight blue,

WHO THE FUCK CAN CUNT OUT OVER A BALLOON?

Small towns are scarier to me than cities.

concedes and points me toward the non-Dickensian, nonrefundable beards, which are in a box in the back marked JOHNNY DEPP/DUCK DYNASTY.

You’re not gonna want to introduce me to your father while I’m in pantafuckingloons.

that kid will be smoking dope and popping pills before his thirteenth birthday and everyone will think it’s so fucking glamorous because he’s popping pills in the woods off in Connecticut. I give him the finger. I give him a memory.

One of my typewriters is laughing at me, I swear, because of my costume. I pick it up and I throw it at the wall.

Oh?

destructing, cutting myself with sappy lyrics

“If he can pay for his new kids to eat organic candy apples then he should have to pay for his old kid too.”

“I found every single thing in here on the street,” I say, proud. “I see that,” you say, disgusted. You prefer new, sterile IKEA,

Eww omg

You tell lies. I hoard typewriters. We are different, hot.

We suck face

I could tell her that he is late every fucking shift and that he shits in the bathroom on a regular basis (rude),

“Wanna go for a ride?” you say and if you mean that you’re gonna go for a ride on my dick, then yes.

“I’m sorry, Ethan. Just give me another minute here.” “You don’t have to be sorry!” He sings, “You’re the boss!”

Hes so cute

Everything is an exclamation point with this guy,

Lol

“So, Ethan. Can you work weekends?” “Of course!” he chirps, not entirely unlike a gerbil. “I can work anytime!”

<3

“I don’t really drink but maybe I’ll put a little rum in my Diet Dr Pepper!”

Slay Ethan

Dull, pedestrian couples get a dog to practice raising a kid,

Me

The vase doesn’t crack. It just bounces onto the couch and I must be the limpest limp dick in the world. I can’t even break a vase

I lower my hand onto a candle and the fire is hot and my skin aches and I’d set my dick on fire if I could but we know that I’m a limp dick pussy.

If I had a folding TV dinner tray I would hurl it at the window and pound my chest like a barbarian, like a thick-dicked alpha gorilla. Yes! You miss me!

You can’t call it “LC” if you’ve never been there. Which you haven’t, right?

Oof

Please don’t hate on Peach. She’s going through a rough time. Chana: Her whole life is a rough time. Ugh. Next!

She is so me coded

Finally, the attack ends and I am not a man right now, just a collection of pulsing wounds.

The smallest Obama swipes my new Gap hat off the counter and pumps his fist. And. And. Holy fuck. I recognize those sneakers because I’ve asked Curtis to keep his dirty feet off the counter at least a hundred times. So this is him, his revenge.

I’m stuck with the radio and there’s nothing but Taylor Swift on every fucking station. She’s like a famous version of you, Beck (dates too much, falls too hard, fucks too fast, flees too hard),

Brutal

Well, fuck you, Taylor Swift, because I never felt further away from twenty-two in my entire adult life