You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(126)

I will know when it is time to pick up the knife and cut the cord. I am unbearably sweet. My sweetness terrified you. So much that you ran out of my apartment and smack into a bus. You didn’t think you deserved it, so it doesn’t matter that you did deserve it. I still love you, Vail. I still sit in this bookstore and tell you that I wish you had come back to The Shop Around the Corner instead of enlisting our old friend Craig. I still wish that we went to Serendipity on Day Fucking One, and there’s all the small stuff too.

Angus Kaplan is dead, Vail. And no, it wasn’t an overdose. His heart went on strike, and did I ever tell you about Cynthia? She came by our loft a few days after you went under the bus. She was the last girl to be in our place. It didn’t feel right, having her in there, eyeing the space, eyeing me. “First Dick and now Vail…. I have to leave because if bad things come in threes…Anyway, do you want to get a drink?”

I said no. Same way I said no to Vagina when she called to check on me. Remember her? And what is it with you women? Why do you want us when you know we don’t want you?

Anyway, Mooney caught Vagina with her hand in the cookie jar. She stole a shit ton of money and offered to pay him with her extra hole. He fired her, and she left, kinda like Schlitz, who couldn’t handle New York City without Dick. He moved back home to Wisconsin.

It really is like none of it ever happened, like everyone in our world went poof. That’s the thing about writing to you like this.

I am keeping you alive. And I know, Vail. My Portnoy is healing. I need to live my life. I need to let you go.

I ring up books and I dust shelves. I let my mind wander like a toddler on a lawn. No dad on a mower to worry about. I remember when I diagnosed myself with cancer of the heart. It makes me laugh now. The drama of it all. I was a bit over the top, but that was me then.

I have a new lease on life. You wouldn’t recognize my dick if you saw it in a Polaroid, and see how hard it is? There I go again, thinking about you. Time to go home, time to move on, but four fucking years and still I don’t look at the girls the way I used to before you, before love. It’s the upside of surgery. I can’t look at women. There’s an invisible rubber band tied around my dick. A temporary castration to protect me from all the women rendered loveless by all the cold, hard dicks. I cannot, must not be a spoon. Not yet. And it’s comforting when the physical matches the emotional, when the carpets match the drapes.

At home, I pick up The Lovely Bones and touch the page you dog-eared. Little criminal. No attention span. Who dog-ears the third page of a fucking book?! Why do I love you?

I stomp down the stairs and set the book on the stoop. Within minutes, a woman in tight jeans bends.

“Are you giving this away?”

“Yep.”

“Well, hello, universe, and thank you!”

Something shifts, Vail. My Portnoy twitches. It hurts, but it’s not quite as bad. Did you see that? Did you feel it? The Lovely Bones was sitting on my nightstand for four fucking years and now The Lovely Bones is gone. It’s like it was never here and holy shit, Vail. Lift things up and put them down. Dick of all people to the rescue, once again, and I think that’s it for us.

I think we’re done.

And it’s okay. It’s been a while since I gave away a book, and I forgot about the high of letting go. Some books are yours for life. Some books are meant to go in one ear and out the other. Sometimes you reach the last page and toss it on the stoop for someone else and you never think about it again. I loved The Lovely Bones. But I don’t need to own it.

A couple of days later, and I really do miss you a little less. I don’t write to you anymore. You tried to love me, but you failed, same way some books fall apart in the last few chapters, and that was you, wasn’t it?

Pizza for lunch. At the counter by the computer. No AOL Instant Fucking Messenger and no more writing to a dead girl who can’t write back. I get it now. The computer is a strip club that never closes, always tempting, but I am a lucky guy, Vail, a broken record, I know, but I need to focus on the positive, right?

At least I am not, never will be on fucking MySpace.

My shift ends and I walk outside and there’s a neon-pink flyer on the dirty sidewalk. A band called Martyr is playing tonight, and the lead singer is blowing a kiss to the whole city. I panic. It’s not time. The pain, it still comes and goes. Truth is, I think I trusted the wrong doctor and I don’t really believe I’m ever going to heal. I fear that every woman who sends Pop Rocks through my system is going to kill me, but life is a surprise, a thing with feathers and…

Whaddya know? It’s another first. Blood flows inside of me, and at last, no more pain.

I fight a smile and walk down stairs to catch a train. Life is fast at times. A sucker punch in the dark of a warehouse. Now that I am healed, I see things as they are, as they were. And honestly…I feel a little guilty about the past few years. I’ve been haunting you, clinging. Things are different now, and it’s out of my control. I don’t need you anymore and I know that I’m gonna talk to you a little less every day. It’s a little sad, a little unbearably sweet. But it’s the nature of all beasts, things with feathers, and I feel it in my bones. The truth surfaces; the subway shimmies.

The dog tags in my back pocket are pressing. It is time.

You were my first love, but it doesn’t count, not really. I was your child. You and Dick weren’t perfect. You lied to me and abused me at times. But like all parents, you did the best you could. First love is notoriously dangerous, and yes, you fell for the wrong man, a louse who refused to fall with you, for you. It happens, Vail. People come together and they can’t make it work, so they have a child. That was you and Dick. And that was me. Your na?ve first and only son. I can either spend the rest of my life turning red with shame or I can let go. Move on. Put it all behind me.