You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(56)

“Me too, kid.”

You giggle—that’s my last kid for a while—and we’re good. You say that Sarah Jessica Parker lives in this neighborhood and it’s easier now that I speak the language. You can’t believe I kissed your toes, and you sip your cosmo. “What is it about you, Joe?”

“Hell if I know.”

“Well, whatever it is…I do like tonight. I also like you tonight.”

You move the tip of your bare special foot under my slacks and you wink and, oh God, we are going to do it, aren’t we? Yes. We are those in-your-face fuckers making out in the dining area and it’s the best it’s ever been. We’re gonna make love until our bodies turn into Magnolia banana pudding and the waiter intervenes.

“Here’s your check. As it seems like you might be ready to leave.”

We die laughing and I pay the bill, and you can’t really walk in those heels and I can’t really afford this but WHO FUCKING CARES?! I sweep you off your feet and we look like we just left a benefit where we saw Charlotte and Trey and there is no back-and-forth, no where should we go. Not tonight.

Tonight, you want me. You pull on my lapels. “Take me home, baby.”

You want me to kiss you, but more than you want it, you want me to make you wait for it. I grin. “Abso-fucking-lutely.”

Your eyes. The lump in my throat. I didn’t just channel Big. I quoted him. A word from the pilot. Abso-fucking-lutely. It’s twelve degrees on the street, but it’s a million and a half degrees in my heart—Sometimes a girl needs a half—and was it too much? Are you mortified? Time doesn’t slow down. It stops. It ends. The Magnolia Bakery goes out of business, and I can’t take it back and you know. You know what I did. You know what I tried to do.

You lay your head on my shoulder. “You watched it for me, huh?”

“Guilty.”

“No,” you say. Your hand slides under my jacket and down my torso. “Innocent.”

You kiss me and you are ComelyCarrieSluttySamanthaShyCharlotteMatureMiranda and I did good. Very good. We’re in a cab and you can’t say it enough—I want you, I want you—and I tell you what you want to hear, what you need to hear—I want you, I want you—and we are better than Big and Carrie because they were actors. Only pretending. This is real, Vail. Those are your teeth digging into my neck and your home is not Carrie’s. It’s a two-bedroom shithole in a six-floor walk-up. It smells like incense and strange men—fucking Cynthia—and there are movie posters taped to the walls. No frames. Dirty panties in your overflowing laundry basket and my Portnoy comes alive. We’re surrounded by love stories. Posters. When Harry Met Sally goes to Manhattan to meet Swingers, and when I close my eyes, it’s just you. Your sweet skin. That wisp of hair that gets caught in my teeth. You close your door and lock it.

“I mean, I know it’s messy, but it’s mine.”

“I could say the same of you.”

You lunge at me with your husky, musky little body. You tease my foreskin—I am special, rare—and you are as shy as Charlotte, feisty as Samantha, cute as Carrie the way you call it my lovely boner. I am clumsy (I have a little Steve in me) and you are awkward (you are part Miranda). You bite me too hard; my touch is too gentle for you, but in time, we get there. I went to boot camp and I am ready for the battle and it’s about to happen.

You pull out a condom and wrap my Portnoy in latex and roll over and I enter you all at once and is that…Are you looking at me? You are looking at me. Is that good? Bad?

“Slower,” you say.

“Faster,” you say.

“Wait,” you say.

“Go,” you say.

“Right there,” you say.

“Not there-there. Right there. Sort of there…Okay, Joe…Okay.”

I follow every command—I will beat Mr. Big—and you make a new sound, and your fingernails dig into my skin and is that…I’m done. “Wow,” you say. “I really needed that.”

I roll over and stare at Harry and Sally. Wow can be a bad word, flat. Something is off. Wrong. “Me too.”

My mind is in overdrive and why? We did it. You trembled. You gasped. If it sounds like a duck and walks like a duck…But Miranda faked it for that lovable ophthalmologist and is that what you did? Did you fake it? Did you come, Vail? Did you? Do girls finish first? You don’t hug me like you want more of me, but maybe that’s because you really didn’t fake it. Maybe you are satisfied and spent. Then again, you’re breathing evenly and you’re not as sweaty as you were at first. I wish I was one of those guys who blacks out after he comes. I really needed that is not That was the best sex of my life.

I think something’s wrong with me, Vail. My brain won’t die the way a dude’s brain should after he gets laid. I don’t want to be this guy, this Woody Allen worrywart. I wish we had Saltines or cigarettes. I say it out loud. “I wish we had Saltines or cigarettes.”

You don’t laugh. “Ha,” you say. “If only.”

You don’t sound like a woman who had the best orgasm of her life, and I don’t feel like the man who gave you one. Did I? Did you? You yawn and roll away from me. Wait. DO YOU THINK I CAN FUCKING SLEEP RIGHT NOW? You’re out cold—Is that a good sign?—and I stare at the walls comparing myself to Billy Crystal and Vince Vaughn—Go away, fuckers—and eventually, the sun comes up. And then you.