You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(100)

I smack him upside the head. “I’m a nice fuck. What the hell is wrong with you?”

That last jab got him and whaddya know? There might be something like a soul in there after all. But then he lifts his chin. “You’re not just a little bitch, Goldberg. You’re a hypocrite.”

“Bullshit, Dick. Nice try, though.”

“You’re the asshole when it comes to girls, Goldass. Hell, I’m bad sometimes but you…You just compared your so-called girlfriend to a fucking hamster.”

I did but I didn’t and I sink to his stupid level. “Fuck you, Dickwad.”

He eyes me like he has access to his hands, his fists, and if I could have that ego for an hour. I cling to his stupid bar mitzvah fucking dog tags. If.

“Buddy, Joe…it’s cool. We’re cool. You got your revenge and I get it. I overstepped. I’ll back off Vail, I’ll lay off the high school girls, and it…it really is cool. I been through worse.”

I hate when people say things like that. Pudding is nothing without proof. I run this town. Not Dick. I raise my fist and he flinches. I drop my fist. I win. “What have you ‘been through,’ Dick? Enlighten me.”

“You saw the IMs. I tried to push Vail off before she started up with you and she’s…. stage nine. The cling is real. I stopped going down on her like the second time we hooked up, told her she tastes funny. I told her to get that rank-ass toe chopped off. She drunk-dialed me the same night, begging to come over.”

And still you like him. Still.

“So if you really don’t want her, and it was all just Seduce and Destroy for kicks…. I mean, what do you want? Why do you have to be like this?”

He shakes his head, and it’s sad. It’s scary. “Gimme a bump, son.”

I give him a bump. He shrugs. “You gotta stop reading into things. Shit’s not that deep.”

“But you chased Vail. You went to her on September 11. You talked to her today and you expect me to believe you’re not in love with her?”

“Everyone shacked up after 9/11, kid. None of it was real. It was just really easy to get laid. And Christ, dude…Are you stupid? Don’t you get it? She comes…back…to me.”

I wish the DARE to stay off drugs campaign didn’t work so well on me because I don’t like this, Vail. I could use a bump. “Well, just so you know, she lied about stuff, about me.”

He grins. “Oh yeah?”

“She posted the Missed Connection, Dick. That was all her.”

“No shit, Goldberg. Everyone lies when they’re trying to get laid. Dog tags, or you know…age…”

Will I ever have the upper fucking hand? “I wasn’t trying to get laid. I was—I love her.”

“Enough with the love crap. We all lie. It’s nothing to freak out about. It’s like when the chick in the office sends herself flowers so all the guys think she’s taken.”

“Excuse me if I never worked in an office.”

His phone rings; it’s his mother.

“Man,” he says. “You’re telling me that no girl ever took you in her basement to watch Clueless while you finger-banged her on a mangy plaid sofa?”

I don’t know how to get out of this, Vail. Everything turned upside down and I’m the victim, cornered into feeding him bumps off his dog tags. I have no plan—I wanted to sit shiva—and I am Clueless about him, about us. I never would’ve lured him in if I knew there was no dead brother and you can’t teach a high young dog new tricks. You can’t leave him, and I can’t leave him—for very different reasons—and why is it so hard to walk away from people?

“All right,” he says. “This is played out. And I need a beer.”

I look at him. That smirk that is a stain, a spot out of fucking Hamlet…Macbeth? Fucking Shakespeare and I snap. “Why do people…Girls…Everyone…Why do people like you so much?”

Dicks love compliments, so he sighs. “Shit,” he says. “I gotta call my mom back. Seriously, Goldbitch.”

“Your mother can wait.”

“You don’t know everything about me, kid. My mom’s a worrywart and when I don’t pick up she goes into panic mode and calls the Beanery and if they don’t know where I am….”

He’s lying, right? He has to be lying. There’s no chocolate at the center of the Tootsie Roll Pop. He’s just…a fucking dick. His phone rings again and it’s you. You’re doing it again, calling him when you should be calling me. I never should have let him get this close to us. Gym guys are bad guys, because the world is full of problems. Schools that need construction. Women tied to the railroad tracks who need saving. But guys like Dick…What do they do?

They lift things up and put things down.

“Dude,” he says. “I’m not a threat. I don’t want to be somebody’s ball and chain.”

“Everyone wants it.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but, like…what happened to you, Goldberg?”

I am the one with the keys to the handcuffs and still he has to neg me. Swing his fucking dick around. I won’t let him get in my head, and there is nothing wrong with me. I am not the pervy pig on Instant Fucking Messenger. That’s him.