You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(59)

“Mmm,” I say. “I really think I’m better off with a studio.”

“No. You gotta level up. You dress for the job you want….” I guess she wants to be an extra in Cocktail. “You pick a home you can’t afford so that you work your tail off. My last boyfriend got a two-bedroom when he didn’t even have a job. He’s now killing it on Wall Street.”

It’s the longest day of the ice-cold winter that is my fucking life, and I go back to dusting books. I messed up. I went too far with my Mr. Big act. That’s another well-intentioned but misguided Dick trick. Learning your language backfired, didn’t it, Vail? I turned into a silent stoic Dickhead. I didn’t do what I wanted—I wanted to spoon you, I wanted to stay—and I never should have listened to Dick. I never should have been so optimistic. A fucking jealousy trap. What a waste.

Amelia Bedelia never learns, and neither do I.

Vagina props herself up on the counter and crosses her legs as if that turns me on (nope!).

“Can you not sit there?”

“I know where you could sit, Joey…”

STOP IT, VAGINA. “Ha. I just need the ledger.”

She shifts and lifts, forcing me to reach under her ass, and the next time she asks if her skirt is too short, I’m going to say yes. Get some fucking pants. I need a new job and a new apartment and a new HOW TO GET A GIRLFRIEND playbook and she’s doing it again. She’s trying to touch my neck.

I back off. She giggles like this is a game. “So does it hurt?”

It’s another thing. You left a love bite on my neck. I thought you were marking your territory, but if that were the case, you’d be here, like how killers go back to the scene of the crime. Did I compare you to a murderer? I am losing it. Slower. Faster. Not there…There. I was so bad that you had to give me DIRECTIONS and maybe you didn’t bite me in the throes of passion. Maybe you were just mad at me for being bad at a natural fucking act.

Vagina dangles a little tube of Neosporin, and I shake my fucking head.

“No, thanks.”

“Well, you know, Joey…hickeys can hurt…. Did I ever tell you I almost died from a hickey?”

I act like I want to know more, and I wish I could put Vagina in the basement. Not in a sick way. Not lock her up and starve her to death. Just force her to be alone so she can realize what a moving, living, un-tantalizing fucking mistake of a woman she is being.

“My hickey guy…his name was Peter….” Like Peter with the pepper mill dick in your show and is it that simple? Is my Portnoy not a pepper mill? “Or maybe it was Patrick.” Patrick, as in the alcoholic who Carrie dumped for wanting her too much. “Anyway,” Vagina carries on. “He tells me he’s a vampire and he’s so sexy that I believe him…. He was in this band that played at Don Hill’s and they were pretty big in Belgium…. Ever been there, Joey?”

“No.” Everything takes me back to you, Vail, and even Vagina has gone places, places I have never traveled. I miss you. I don’t know why I walked out on you. I only know that I really did that. I left. Vagina’s mouth is like my brain. It won’t stop. Ever. She pouts and I promise her I’m listening (I was not) and on she goes.

“So, we get together and he bites me like a lot…. Like a lot. And the next day I’m dizzy and my roommate is like omigod, Virginia, your neck is turning blue. So, he picks me up…I don’t weigh that much but it was still so sweet….” Her roommate was a guy, and all her stories are like this, full of men who touch her as if I’ll catch the drift and follow suit and WHY THE FUCKING FUCK DID I LEAVE YOU?

The window is closed. I can feel it. If I did call now, you would tell me to piss off. Right?

Vagina points to her neck. No scar. No hickey. Nothing to see here, folks. “Right there,” she says. “Peter-Patrick bit me so hard that he clogged an artery. I mean, he almost killed me, Joey.”

That’s what you did. You killed me. You bit me. And then I hear my name. “Joseph!”

I trudge to the back of the shop—I will live and die in Mooney’s, I really will—and he scowls again at my love bite. “This is a bookstore.”

“I know. I can get a scarf.” Not a red one, though. Not a scarf like your scarf.

“Do you not own a turtleneck?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, Joseph. Consider Virginia. That sort of scar makes a lady uncomfortable.” My jaw hits the floor. “Stop it,” he seethes. “You are in no position to judge, boy.”

“I know.”

“What is it that you know?”

“I know I should’ve worn a turtleneck.”

He motions for me to sit down, and that’s unusual. Lately, he doesn’t talk to me so much, but then again, lately I pun around in starched white button-down shirts. I don’t know who I am, Vail. I don’t know a devil’s doorbell. It’s like Samantha when she says she caught monogamy from you people. I caught something from you. Self-doubt. Stupidity. ’Scuse me while I kiss this guy. Speaking of which…still can’t read. I’m like the model in season 1 who brags about reading a whole magazine cover to cover.

Mooney glares. I forgot where I was. “Well?”

I missed it. Same way I miss a lot of things these past couple of days. “Could you repeat?”