You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(12)

This is all wrong. You seem like a reader, what with your messenger bag and your Woody Allen role-play and your writing, your beautiful, bold writing. “Oh. Okay. Cool.”

Cool and you shrug again, candy girl, TV girl. “So, Phil Roth…. Did any of his other books get made into movies?”

“Philip,” I say and FUCK YOU, MR. TONGUE.

You didn’t like that—don’t correct girls, ever—and the lights are dimming. The coming fucking attractions. My leg is shaking, and there are guns on the screen, blood. You elbow me and whisper. “How good does this look? That production design is whoa.”

Maybe Mr. Tongue was right, the way he tried to poke your eyeballs out from inside of your mouth. “It looks good. And Philip Roth…he’s…the man is a god.”

“Mmm. Speaking of gods, do you know Mira Nair? Such a visionary. Her films, all film…It’s everything to me. Everything. It sounds cheesy, but I love cinema…movies…I’m a visual person and oh my God, did I just say that out loud? I’m gross, I know.”

You’re not gross but my tongue is too big for my mouth—I freeze up—and you pick up your messenger bag and set it on your lap. A literal fucking cockblock. This is bad. Tense. You pout. “So, I guess you’re a book snob?”

You are sassy and love is war. We are sparring. You judged Mr. Tongue and you don’t know Philip Roth. I can do this, I can talk. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I’m just a book person.”

“Ah, well, just so you know…I’ve done that whole pretend-to-be-into-booksto-seem-deep thing or whatever. I mean, I like movies. I only went into that bookstore to pee.”

“Okay.”

“Truth is I actually…I kind of hate bookstores.”

“You what?”

“Oh, come on. You know the way people act in bookstores, around books, all pretentious and performative like they’re superior or whatever. Monsoon Wedding—the Mira Nair movie—it feels deeper than a lot of books. I mean, if it’s a choice between a museum and a bookstore and a movie, I am always going to the movies. Always.”

You cross your arms, and it’s confusing. You took a dig at me. But in the dark theater, where it’s almost just us, it’s hard to let go of the thing with feathers. Hope. You are pretty and you smell pretty, and I want you to love books. Me. Bookstores. “It’s okay, Vail. Seriously.”

“The last guy I dated would drag me into bookstores and drone on about…No. I’m sorry.”

I never dated anyone, which is probably why no girl ever told me what to do with Mr. Tongue. I don’t ask for more details about your ex, and I don’t launch into a defense of books.

You squirm. I squirm. We have nothing in common right now except the screen in front of us. It crackles. Another preview begins and it’s bad, the way your Polaroids go crazy, as if the screen is a fucking Poltergeist and you’re that little blond girl. Consumed. Enthralled. Possessed. You called them coming attractions, but that’s bullshit. Those are advertisements. They don’t make previews for books. My leg is shaking. Worse than Mr. Tongue, and you plunk your giant bag back in the chair. Was that your way of telling me to stop fucking shaking?

I clamp my hand on my leg. I thought I’d be holding on to you by now, your thigh.

And then you whisper in my ear. “He’s amazing, right?”

I don’t know who he is. “Yep.”

I can’t give up on you. Not yet. You showed up in a skirt. Maybe you’re not a Philistine. Maybe you just haven’t found the right book, the one that alters your soul and makes you want more. Who’s Philip Roth? I glance at you, but you’re still in it. Entranced by propaganda. I may as well be invisible. The last guy I dated…You’re a woman, and my most recent relationship started at an eighth-grade fucking basement party. Well, hello, Mr. Tongue. The darkness falls to a deeper level—Serendipity is upon us—and you clap your little hands and curl up into yourself, all your lovely bones. It’s almost like you came here to see a movie more than you came here to see me. If I made a run for it, you’d probably stick with Cusack.

The comedown is hard, a boner crusher. I was excited for you, for us. I thought of you in the shower this morning. I thought by this point we’d be knee-deep in conversation about Philip Roth, tempted to ditch the stupid movie so we could keep talking. I was a fool, naked with my Portnoy in my hand. But we are what we are. You can’t read, and I can’t kiss. This is not the ride of life, the beginning of my first love. It’s just the predictable prefab setup of a schlocky fucking rom-com. Boy meets girl. Boy plays it cool because boy knows better than to kiss her on the street. Fuck that boy.

Fuck you, Cusack. Fuck. You.





5


Bless you, Cusack. Bless fucking you.

I probably want you more than I should in the middle of a first date, but you want me too.

Fifteen minutes into the Best Movie Ever, Kate Beckinsale pulls a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera out of her bag.

You look at me, and I look at you. Sparks. Serendipity-do-do-zippity-yay.

I go in for a whisper. “Score one for books.” You knock your leg into mine. Zoinks! Beckinsale won’t give Cusack her number even though they have chemistry, but she will scribble it in her Cholera and sell it to a used bookstore. My man Cusack is aghast, exasperated. He just wants her fucking number. But she believes in fate. She says that if they are meant to be together he will find her Cholera and call her.