You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(114)

“Ooh. Bold Joe…I like it. Okay! And remember, you can say no. Because before I even say it, I know it’s too soon. And also yes, I know I always say I want my independence, and I want to take things slow and do my thing while you do your thing and all that but we all have the right to grow faster than we kind of expected, and honestly…”

I am one step ahead of you. I didn’t just buy tools for Dick at the hardware store yesterday. I got something for you too.

“Ta-da.”

You take the spare key with both hands and you kiss me and the grumpy old waitress tells us to get a room and who cares?!

And what a day! We don’t waste any time. It’s what Harry says to Sally. You want the rest of your life to start now. I have come so far, and because of me, so have you. The world is ours. We part ways.

“Love you, babe.”

“Love you, Vail.”

You said it first—yes!—and I quit the Virgin Megastore and you tell Cynthia that you’re moving out and she’s relieved. She wants to live with someone like her, someone fully effing single. It’s the best first yet. It’s your first time moving in with someone. It’s my first time moving in with someone. I go to your place and roll up your posters and I would never say it to you—I am a gentleman—but it’s so much nicer when it’s clean. Too late now—hooray!—and we fill cardboard boxes with your panties and your jeans, your movies and your very small “collection” of books. What a joy, going up the stairs and down the stairs. Halfway down, you stop on the stairs.

“Joe,” you say. “I’m cheesy, but I have to say it out loud. I’m happy that you’re the first guy I’m gonna live with.”

“Me too, Vail. Me fucking too.”

We are, at long last, the people we were always meant to be and every little thing you do is magic. You keep your pale pink fuzzy slippers by your side of the bed. Two little piggies that feel like pets. You are a milk fiend. I knew that, but I didn’t know how far it goes. Because of you, there are always two cartons of 2 percent milk in my fridge. One open, one in waiting. I like living with you. You are prepared. You worry and you plan. You tease me about being a neatnik, and I tell you my name isn’t Nick and I tease you about being a slob. It’s playful. And you are what you eat, what you live with. I teach you how to use a broom—you grew up with a cleaning lady, and Beverly Hills, Michigan, may as well be in Cali-fucking-fornia—and you help me take a load off, Annie. I let my empty mug idle on the hardwood table. No coasters. Life is short.

Just ask Dick! Terrible, but what can I say? I’m happy.

We are there for each other. You fuck up your interview at the Carnegie Corporation, and I fuck up my interview at a bookshop downtown, but you trust me when I tell you it’s okay, when I tell you it was the first step in the process. And I, in turn, trust you when you tell me I’ll find my Shop Around the Corner—same way you found me, Cusack. I know you in a way I didn’t before we lived together. You don’t wash the tub after you shower and you wear the same panties for two, sometimes three days in a row. There are tampons next to my towels and you sleep in my mother’s Nirvana T-shirt and sometimes you want to sit alone and stare out the window.

“Are you sure I’m not annoying you, Joe?”

“Not at all. It’s perfect. I feel like reading.”

“And you don’t think it’s weird that this is like my version of reading?”

It is weird, but I’m starting to understand that you meant what you said on day one. You are a visual person. And I think that’s why we belong together. I am a words person. I need to turn the pages, whereas you need to see the world walk by. I know what it’s really about when you sit in that puffy chair. You are Miss Lonely, wondering where you belong, and there is only one thing in that big, cold city that fills you with confidence.

You are waiting for the Sex and the City tour bus to go by. You never tell me that you see it. But I see you, Vail. You grab the arms of the chair and sit up straight. When you see that bus, you get a shot of adrenaline. You came here. You made that. So what if your uncle threw his weight around? You got in, you learned about pinks. You believe in yourself, and you remember that you did something with your life. Then the bus glides on by, and you go back to sitting like a normal, anxious twenty-five-year-old girl who shacked up with her unbearably sweet teenage boyfriend.

Unbearably sweet.

That’s the way you described me to your mother. I didn’t keep it a secret. I told you that I overheard you on the phone and it was unbearably sweet, the way you turned red and sputtered on about how wonderful it is to be with me, to know I’d never cheat.

You run your hand through my hair. “Who are you?”

“Joe Goldberg. Seventeen and twenty-one. Did you hit your head and forget?”

“Well, how are you this sweet? I’m serious, Joe. I’m curious…. Your mother is, like, so close and she never calls and you never mention your dad and I just…How are you so sweet with me when no one was ever so sweet with you?”

I kiss your hand, the one that was just on my head. “Easy. I have you.”

And then I check my watch. We are late. One of your eighty zillion semi-friends is acting in a play a thousand miles off Broadway. They’re doing Closer, and it’s your favorite play, so we’re going. I’m nervous, Vail. I like it in our cocoon. And things are so good. Do we really want to ruin it with a botanical garden of jerks in an undoubtedly small, smelly black box of a theater? And yes, we do, which is why I don’t complain. I know you, Vail. I know how it is.