You (You, #1)

by Caroline Kepnes

my own little Natalie Portman circa the end of the movie Closer, when she’s fresh-faced and done with the bad British guys and going home to America.

Faulkner meant only to convince one-night stands that you mean it when you swear you never do this kind of thing.

You’re flirting and if I was the kind of asshole who Instagrams, I would photograph the F–K placard and filter the shit out of that baby and caption it: F—K yes, I found her.

Work in a bookstore and learn that most people in this world feel guilty about being who they are.

“Everybody is always striving to be better, lose five pounds, read five books, go to a museum, buy a classical record and listen to it and like it. What they really want to do is eat doughnuts, read magazines, buy pop albums. And books? Fuck books. Get a Kindle.

“But with no places to buy movies or albums, it’s come down to books. There are no more video stores so there are no more nerds who work in video stores and quote Tarantino and fight about Dario Argento and hate

on people who rent Meg Ryan movies. That act, the interaction between seller and buyer, is the most important two-way street we got. And you can’t just eradicate two-way streets like that and not expect a fallout, you know?”

“Are you a priest?” “No. I’m a church.” “Amen.”

Desperate Characters

A nursing home list is like, read The Western Coast and watch Pulp Fiction and listen to the latest Daft Punk album.”

You are Charlotte’s Web and I could love you.

112.

Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.

quintessential

I smell your Lean Cuisines if the wind is right and I hear your Vampire Weekend and if I pretend to yawn and look up, I can see you loaf, yawn, breathe. Were you always like this?

He’s in your mouth. He barks at you. He slaps at you.

Can we all be honest and admit we know #eecummings because of #Hannahandhersisters? Okay phew. #nomoreBS #endofpretension

Then one day, you became single and your friends “liked” your status in a way that leaves no doubt that you were the one dumped.

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 popped one doll in half and got another doll and popped that doll in half and got another doll and so on until the final doll that could not be popped in half, the only whole doll in the bunch. “Everything valuable must be hidden,”

I decided to like it more than Catcher in the Rye just to be unique.

You really do have a daddy complex,

“Every time,”

It’s been seven hours and fifteen days since you took your love away.

He is the daddy you try desperately to please, the daddy who leaves, no matter what you do.

look how much we share already and we haven’t even fucked

Candace’s brother was also puzzled.

The assholes are always puzzled when the order of the universe is restored, when they are held accountable for their cowardly, pretentious, loveless ways.

and your friends are sick of you bitching about Benji, using any excuse to bring up his name.

no wonder Benji never read any of his favorite books because most people don’t read anymore

she is so slow to realize that she doesn’t like Stephen King. She’s only buying it because of the crowds. It’s the original virus, this kind of shit.

I want to mount you right here on these steps, at this inappropriate hour, in front of the motherfuckers checking you out and the Rasta hawking hemp bracelets and the angry bitches going home to read Doctor Sleep on their iPads. I want you here, now, and I can’t get up when I’m this hard.

He said he read the first five pages of the book and loved it so much that he couldn’t read any more. He said he’s too sensitive to read, too moved, that he’s built for small doses. For someone so fucking sensitive he sure does take a long time to gargle the salt water.

Too many guys have slept with you. I know because they look past you; you’re a restaurant that’s easy to get into.

Brunch, a meal invented by rich white chicks to rationalize day drinking and bingeing on French toast.

through the worst sound system in existence

and our kids will be cuter and how does my anger with you always soften into love?

you pick up a red hunting cap like the one Caulfield wore in The Catcher in the Rye and you look up at me. “Please? It’s pretty much my favorite book of all time.”

We share the load and laugh at the customers and playfully argue about what kind of music to play and we are one of those 1950s couples, very sexist, because I am in charge and you like it that way. You toy with me, bending the rules on a daily basis and you live to push my buttons.

wondering when our chemistry will erupt into a marathon fuck session in your bed that I built. We are waiting to have sex because you say this is special. And it is.

Your daddy issues are intense, Beck.

chewing on it, slowly, begging for it, silently.

(dates too much, falls too hard, fucks too fast, flees too hard),

I splash cold water and I go on, just like Celine Dion’s heart did back in Bridgeport.

“This will hurt,” he says and when Jude Law said that to Natalie Portman in Closer he wasn’t kidding, and you aren’t here to hold my hand.

What a shame to be so angered by what you don’t have that you treat what you do have like it’s nothing.

She’s not grateful to have an extra home in a place where the biggest danger is Taylor Fucking Swift.

It is winter. Sad girls walk into the water to die. It happens.

“But nice guys always get with bitches. They don’t break up if you call ’em out on it. Give him time. He’ll dump her eventually.”

“Lies don’t pave the way to joy,”