You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(14)
“You never have to ask if you can ask me something.”
“How old are you?”
Fuck. “How old are you?”
You squint. “Mmm…I asked you first.”
“True,” I say and I have to get a fucking fake ID. “But it’s kinda like books.”
“Oh boy. I guess I did sign up for this with NYC Bookstore Babe….”
“The page count doesn’t matter, Vail. It’s the style, the pacing. A Dan Brown book…You fly through it at ninety miles an hour. But you get your hands on some Joyce, same number of pages, and it’s a whole different thing. You take your time. You go slow.”
For a second there, our second date is scary, the way you don’t mount me. But then you burst out laughing in the good way, with me, not at me. “Well played, Cusack.”
I wipe my forehead, and we are in it now, trading stories about our lives. You talk about your time at U of M and the angst over doing the undoable…moving to Manhattan. You share a tiny two-bedroom with crazy, slutty Cynthia in…New York. You leave it at that, vague, but I Know What You Did Last Week. It’s a good thing when a girl keeps a secret. Like Mooney says, The best strippers take it off one piece at a time. You don’t know what you want to do with your life. Sometimes you want to be in the industry, but sometimes you think it’s ridiculous. You love dinner mints—there’s a sea of them in the bottom of your messenger bag—and your parents blah blah blah, because I don’t fucking care.
We’re moving fast and my mind is a happy broken record. I like you, Vail, I like you. You notice I’m not drinking my coffee and leap up to go get more cream. You pour and tell me to say when. You stroke the back of my head as I take that first, second sip. And then you rub your hands on your thighs. Jeans this time. Blue and tight. I like you, Vail. I like you. You sit. “So where were you on September 11?”
I cough. I hate it; I hate that I have to lie to you. “You first.”
You scratch your little nose. “Well, it’s more about where you were before, right?”
I was locked in a basement, and it’s almost like you relate. “Totally.”
“See,” you say. “I think of 9/11, and I go back to September 6. I was at the VMAs dancing my ass off to Britney Spears…Everything about it, the boa and the song. It felt like life was about to become this nonstop dance party, you know? ‘I’m a Slave 4 U’ is just…”
“I prefer ‘Nothing Compares 2 U.’?”
SHUT THE FUCK UP, GOLDBERG, but you smile like you care, like you know that I know that that was a lot. “Anyway, you know how it is, Joe. You’re living your life. A few days later, I’m pissed at Cynthia for bringing a random home from Passerby and the next morning…”
“Everything changes.”
“Yes, Joe! The three of us sat there staring at the TV. It felt like no one’s ever gonna dance again, and I hated myself for thinking about dancing when people were…. Kinda the loneliest day ever.” Your smile is a baby and a mother all at once. “So, where were you, Joe?”
I was hoping you’d forget about me, and I don’t want to lie to you about something like 9/11, but what choice do I have? “I was in the bookshop.”
“Yeesh, you guys open that early?”
I won’t go there in my head. I was locked in the cage, in the basement. The only person in the whole fucking city who didn’t know about the big bad day. “Well, we weren’t open for business, but I was supposed to sign for some packages and do deliveries and…”
You pull lint off your cape; no girl is perfect. “And that never happened.”
We go silent and I get scared. Is my secret gonna ruin us? But then you say you didn’t mean to go there, that you’re not that girl who talks about it nonstop or dwells.
And then you don your cape and I guess that’s it. Off we go, outside, and was it good? Do you like me, Vail? Do you like me?
You rock back and forth. “So here I go again. Speaking of another big day…”
“New Year’s Eve.”
“Joe, honestly, I despise it. And I actually still can’t drink right now, so if it’s okay…can we skip it?”
“Absolutely.”
“I mean, I would say that we could hang out and watch movies or whatever, but I don’t want to do that to you. Every year I get really blue and I just…”
“Vail,” I say. “You don’t owe me an explanation. And I fucking hate New Year’s Eve. It’s amateur night.”
“Totally.”
“Can I kiss you?”
You come a little closer. “Totally.”
The second-date kiss goodbye is better than our first-date kiss hello, and it’s the next milestone in my Moleskine.
#5 MR. TONGUE DIDN’T FUCKING CHOKE
The second date was so good that we meet for coffee on New Year’s Eve, before the shitheads take over the city. You are late and frazzled, and you do most of the talking. You are blue, as promised. Preoccupied with the enemies in your life. Slutty Cynthia. I might have to put a padlock on my door because of the rando creeps in our house. I have to move out, I do. Bossy Barry is no good either. If I do become a director, I will never sexually harass the girl who gets my wife’s dry cleaning, and in 2002, so help me, I will quit. It’s only the third date and already I am the shoulder for you to cry on. It’s not third-date sex, but it is third-date progress.