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.”

I bought my couch online, alone, and these people have something in common. Never mind their careers. They were loved. Protected.

Wonder and Ani pumps a fist—“Go Sox!”—and you say you liked it better when they were the underdogs and O.K. lets her hair down. “My aunt has a box at Fenway, but the noise is a lot.”

That was a terrible thing to say and now they’re all vying to sum up George Fucking Saunders—Help me, I’m Bored—and Glenn cuts ’em off with a clap of his hands—good—but then he looks at me. “Actually,” he says. “Joe didn’t go to college either.” My lack of a degree is the opposite of an Obie and Lou might come in his pants. “No shit.”

You’re a writer. A true writer. Mercurial and solitary. You’re not a flirt like RIP Guinevere Beck—she would have been eye-fucking me by now—but at the same time, you’re too closed off for your own good. You’re letting them get to you, same way I did when I first arrived, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Yes, we’re the outliers, but Glenn was casting a season of Survivor and he did right by us—we have each other—and we need to form an alliance, same way we have to clap our hands every time someone finishes “humble” bragging.

You get a notepad out of your backpack, and you are earnest, noting all the books. You tell Lou that you already read his book—you won a galley in a Goodreads giveaway—and ah. You’re a Goodreads girl. You “love to read”—good—and you’re “all about freebies”—bad—and it’s my turn, and you look at me, but it doesn’t really count because everyone else does, too.

I chase you down because I have to chase you down. I sense something new with you. Something fresh. You’re my equal, Wonder. You’re not my married boss and you’re not impossibly, unreachably wealthy. You’re not a sociopath flirt or a social fucking climber. You’re gonna read the books that everyone read and that’s good, that’s part of it, but I want you to write. I see the future. You and me with RIP Spalding Gray reincarnated, laughing about how we met in a fellowship, the only two autodidacts in the room. I’m not saying we have to get married, but when everyone was my-husbanding and my-wifing you were quiet. You didn’t have an inborn support system—your parents were teenagers when they made you—and you need me. Who else is gonna push you to show up on time? You

See, this is again why I always give five stars. Let’s get some nuance up in here because no two people read the same book because no two people are the same person.

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.

Ethel died of Covid-related issues—she never would have been in my basement were it not for that pandemic—but her death was not in vain.

BREAKING: ELITIST MIDDLING WOMAN RIDES HER MOTHER’S COATTAILS TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE. “I didn’t know.”

You don’t like the way I called it a train, but I don’t like the way your people call it the T and we’re belowground, in the bowels of the station with the hardworking folks on their way home from normal jobs.

That’s the real Boston curse, the yearning to be a Wahlberg or an Affleck, and according to the Herald, Your Bobby was “discovered” by David O. Russell. That hothead director gave Bobby four lines and a SAG card, but even auteurs know when they’re wrong (sometimes), and lucky for us, Russell cut Your Bobby’s scene from the movie and the DVD extras.

I’m surprised that I can hear everything so clearly, but the acoustics are on my side, and Masshole men like Your Bobby and your father want the whole fucking world to hear everything they say, as if they’re hosting some morning radio show for dickheads.

You laugh—that’s a symptom of Stockholm syndrome—and he pokes you with a cruller and you take a bite of his cruller, a chunk of my heart, and he pops the rest of it into his mouth and this is the dark side of your people, you Massholes. You are smart. You know that origin stories are prologue, at best. Hell, you’re writing a book about becoming your own person, yet here you are being his person and why? Because you were born in the same fucking hospital? Because you’d be “faithless” if you went to work at a local place like Black Sheep, where you might acquire skills that would enable you to, gasp, leave?

Think, Joe, think. I could go the route of the grand gesture, barge into Dunkin’ and get down on one knee and remind you that we’re in this together. But I can’t do that. We haven’t even kissed, let alone fucked, and it’s not about me. It’s about men, the way you think about men.

It’s Tom and Jerry for wealthy white men with too much time on their hands, wives they need to avoid in order to preserve what’s left of the marriage. The saddest part is that Glenn doesn’t even fucking know this Kilroy guy and I can’t take it anymore. I won’t die in these woods.

Something in his little lecture set off a spark in the Walden Woods of my mind and the clouds of self-doubt parted. I got it, Wonder. I know how to kill Your Bobby, and it must be all over my face because Glenn is staring at me.

So I did it. I channeled my inner Casey Affleck and I called Mick and told him that his brother is pissing me off because I want to buy that house in Braintree but I haven’t even gotten to see it because Bobby’s giving me the runaround and I’m leaving town tomorrow. I was good—David O. Russell wouldn’t cut me out of his fucking movie—and Mick called his flaky brother and demanded that Your Bobby leave your house to come to Ro’s house as in his house as in this house.

Your family is the least interesting part of your life, the part you didn’t ask for, the people who got here before you. I pull away from you. I want to fuck you. I want to go so deep that you forget about your f-word on Sesame Street and I want to be your f-word, the one who comes first. I’m not myself.

When we get to my Tesla you take the wheel—this is your town, not mine—and you drive like a Masshole. No turn signals, no regard for life, and we are in this together.

“Scrap what I said about my ‘angst’ over Flour Girls. It was simpler. An act of love. Same way he’d scrape ice off the windshield for me because that sound always bothered me.” THAT’S CALLED BEING A BOYFRIEND and why do women reward men for being fucked-up? “Well, I guess you made it up to him.”

It’s a sinking ship—Tara is pregnant, she’s moving to the North Fucking Shore—and I hate it there, Wonder. The floors are sticky and keno is suicide and you’re smarter than this, you’re better than this,

“One that I didn’t tell Oprah…” Oh, fuck off. “After I wrote the last three chapters of Scabies, I went blind.” LIAR. “Wow.” “The physicians…” Just say doctors. “They blamed my screen time, the lack of sleep, malnutrition, but they were wrong.”

Generations of monstrous men have sat in this room and refused to apologize for their shortcomings, so why should I beat myself up for wearing a suit?

One nice thing about drunk people is that you can repeat yourself whenever you want.

The people at the next table laugh hard in that way that privileged people do, like they’re all activating their cores, not actually, you know, laughing.

“Can we just go?” “Don’t you get it? You trigger Glenn because he knows his wife is better, but her book flopped. That’s why he was so hard on you. It wasn’t about you. He’s a stereotypical fake feminist. He didn’t mean any of it. He’s just jealous, trying to get a rise out of you.”

when I go to Cherish’s Facebook and see you leaning into your roots, as if you like Canobie Lake Park, as if you had any business skipping Lou’s reading at the Coop to go to Tara’s fucking housewarming party.

But that’s life. It’s the line in that god-awful Masshole movie you made me watch, Jessica Biel licking an ice cream cone and taunting Sarah Michelle Gellar’s husband.

There’s a woman married to a cyclist. His dying wish is that she learn to ride. Months pass before she’s at ease on a bike and even then, she falls, she comes dangerously close to death, and the wind is against me—fuck you too, Mother Nature—and this boulder wasn’t here when I hiked this trail last week—fuck you, boulder—and my thighs aren’t there yet—I can only push so much—and I am fighting gravity—I didn’t have a bike when I was a kid—and the pine trees smack me in the face—Go back to the city—and I am dying—my lungs are a vital organ, same as anyone’s—and the clearing isn’t where it was last time—and who the fuck invented the bicycle in the first place? But then I’m here.

like it up here, Wonder. I still have cell phone service—it’s not that fucking high—but it’s like treading water in the middle of the ocean. The chirping birds and the soaring hawks, the bunnies and the foxes, the reminder of what death is, the most integral part of life. No matter what you believe about how it all got started, whether it was a big fucking bang or a bored fucking God, there is no doubt that we live in a world that calls for some to die so others may live.

On the way to the death party, you link your arm through mine and we are #BrahminStrong, all dressed up on a Tuesday in that way that makes sleep-deprived undergrads gawk at us, you in your J.Lo hoops, me in my Hugo Boss suit.

I’m in your house. I should be in your living room charming the shorts off your father—the man put on swim trunks to show his disrespect for me—and I should be popping Fireball nips with your sister—they’re her “candy”—and I should be playing Candy Land with your niece—she took a shine to me right away—but instead, I’m in your guest bathroom for the second time in the last ten minutes because Sarah Beth Swallows will not.

I have no reason to be jealous but they like him more than they like me. “Good,” I say, and my phone pings again, and your dad says what you said, that he hates cell phones and he wants a vodka root beer—gross—and

I was born to indifferent parents and like a lot of children, I fell prey to an abusive male authority figure who taught me that violence is a legitimate means of coping and then last night, one of our fellows drugged me and coerced me into confessing to a boatload of crimes. “I lost my phone.”

Imitation is the sincerest form of passive-aggressive flattery and you are the criminal but I am the judge, the jury. My hands are on your head. A simple twist would do it. But then again, yes, a simple twist would do it. I get a flash of us in the winter, in the future.

“What’s up, buddy?” Nothing is up and Kevin’s pants are both khaki and pleated and his cell phone is clipped to his belt and I bet he lost his virginity to Dave Fucking Matthews. Crash.

She has tapes…of me. 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.

don’t live on handles of fucking Tito’s. Then you laugh at something on your phone, and I liked it better when I was dying, when you were my nurse.

I didn’t say he could invite his fucking friends and he pounds his chest and sings and “Lightning Crashes” isn’t a “jam.” It’s a dirge. “Your buddies?”

Kevin is a human Motel 6 in Seekonk and I have to get the hell out of here now. Julie orders another round and Kev nudges me. His voice is low. Leering. “Just so we’re clear, it’s not like I’m gonna fuck her. It’s just a little harmless flirting, ya know?”

I might kill Kevin’s wife, so I honored his wishes and spent my money on you—I charged up—and it’s late, too late for texts, and the road is a black hole and it’s not snowing, but it’s not not snowing and my wipers are squeaking, and I need them, but I don’t need them, and I can’t deny it any fucking more.

She would write it that way. She would get off on my current situation, the grand romantic fucking gesture of it all, as I power through, at long last ready to say vows and eat your oatmeal and forgive your flaws, let you steal all my little stories, ready in a way I wasn’t when I had you, because of the most irritating and trite of all human truths. We don’t know what we have until we realize it might be dead in Seekonk. It’s

She knew I’d find her eventually. That’s what I do. I find people. I know people. I fell into her trap, same way you did, and we are too good for this world, for this fellowship, and I should run. Get in the car and hightail it to Maine, to Canada, skip out on the final test, the one that’s all or nothing.

but then it stops A scrambling noise. A tape rewinding.

A normal person would be happy to find out that you’re alive, but she’s…mad. “So let me get this straight. You thought I kidnapped her…amazing…and now you know that I didn’t. Joe, come on. Just tell me how you did it.” “I didn’t.” “Yes, you did. When the women push you away, you kill them.” “I love her.”

So insulting, as if real life is a fucking novel, and this woman must be stopped. “There is no such thing, Sarah Beth. There is no ‘getting away with it.’ 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.” I

This happens, the patient heals the therapist, but then she smiles and who the fuck am I kidding? Psychopath all the way. “You forgot something, Joe. The only ‘someone like me’ I have to worry about is you. And we both know that I don’t have to worry. Or wonder…”

“Wait, there is something here…In the past, you always catch them before they leave you and you kill them so they can’t leave you, but if you’re telling the truth…”