You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(49)

It’s not Thursday. It’s Valentine’s Day. Fuck Dick. Fuck the “game.” I don’t want to play with you. I want to be with you.

“Cool. So how about Serendipity later?”

Big swing and Dick might fucking kill me. You sip your coffee. He hides by the espresso machine. You didn’t say no, not yet, and a lack of a no is the possibility of a yes. But then you touch your hair in the bad way. Flip-flip. “We’ll see. Crazy day, what with pinks and all….”

I’m an idiot. I should’ve stayed away from the one coffee shop where you know you might find me. I should’ve stayed glued to your side the other night. I should’ve called. I should’ve come here with the fucking mixtape instead of waiting until today to start making it. I’m losing you, and seriously. WHAT ARE PINKS? Silence is a weight, and I can’t lift it, can’t put it down. You fuss with your beret like you didn’t suck me off on the floor of a Meatpacking District glorified fucking dive bar.

“Okay, boys. I guess I’m out.”

Boys. No. I’m your man and this is my last shot. I flash my liner notes.

You smile. Girls are girls. You like stuff. “And what is that?”

“How about I show you at Serendipity?”

“You’re insane if you think we’re getting a table there tonight.”

You grin like you want me, like it’s finally okay that we both know the Pop Rocks were fucking stupid. “Well, maybe I am insane, Miss Gunderson. See you there at eight?”

“You’re funny, Cusack.”

DOES THAT MEAN YES? DOES THAT MEAN NO? “So is that a yes?”

Dick coughs because I sounded like a pick-me-up poster in Miss Frascatore’s office. You gather your things. No. Please don’t go, girl. I am frozen like hot chocolate. Impotent. I can’t do what I want, because I want to knock you over the head and keep you here. I don’t mean it like that. I stand because you stand and I trip and you laugh at me. “At ease, soldier.”

No eye contact, just a little wave of your hand, and that’s it. You’re gone.

Dick grabs his scalp. He groans. “Goldberg, what the fuck?”

“What do you mean, ‘what the fuck’?”

“You just asked her out on Valentine’s Day.”

“It felt right.”

“I don’t know where to start with you, kid. But I gotta say…you still don’t know what pinks are?”

“And you do know?”

“Christ,” he says. “Pinks are scripts. Revisions come in different colors, and that’s code and like…that’s a big part of her job.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I’m a producer.”

BULLSHIT, HE’S A BARISTA. “Well, I’m not a producer.”

“But you are trying to bang her, so you’d think you’d speak her language.”

He rubs his forehead like I need a dunce cap and then he swings his dog tags. He had a brother. A brother is a teacher. “Buddy,” he says. “Your girl works in production, yeah? She comes in here, that’s what she talks about…work. Don’t you guys talk about her work?”

“We don’t talk about my work either. I don’t expect her to know every author I like.”

He grabs my liner notes with so much authority you’d think he’s the manager of this bright white hellhole. “All right, kid. Time for a little test.”

“Fuck you.”

“First things first. She hardcore ditched you the other night, yeah?”

I say nothing. He knows the fucking answer.

“You good on hygiene, kid? You took a shower, yeah?”

No. Too depressed. “I’m not a pig.”

“Second things second. Did you clean your junk?”

Did I, Vail? Do I know how? It’s so rare to see one in the States. He tucks the pen above his ear (I hate that) and he starts doing push-ups off the bar, the kind where you clap between each one so that all the girls look over. “Did you give her a heads-up before you blew your wad?”

No clue. Can’t remember. “Of course.”

“As in you told her you were gonna come.”

Fuck you, Dick. I speak sex. “Next question.”

“Did you hold her hair while she was down there?”

I don’t know and his cheapo body spray is too much today and is that my problem? Do you want me to smell like a Duane Fucking Reade?

“All right,” he says. “Did you reciprocate?”

I look at him like he’s crazy, because come on. He knows where we were.

“Oh, right,” he says. “You kids never got outta the loo. Scale of one to ten, how was it?”

I will not rate our private life and I will not tell him about our Pop Rocks. “It was good.”

“Good how? Did you tell her how Daddy likes it?”

“Don’t be gross.”

“It’s not gross. Some girls are into that. You know what gets her off, right?”

I look at him like he’s stupid. You and I haven’t been in bed together. How would I know if you want to be Daddy’s little girl. He sighs. “Relax. I ask because it was kind of baller, putting her on the spot about tonight….” Kind of never felt worse. “But she spit and ran, and of all the places to wine and dine a chick on V-Day, you pick an ice cream parlor for little fucking girls.”