You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(65)

It’s in the writing on the walls, literally. You bought me a calendar. You said adults have a calendar. You’re right. Even Angus had a calendar. You also bought me a snow globe like the one in Sex and I told you that it’s me and you in there.

“The Twin Towers? Joe, um…it didn’t work out so well for them, ya know?”

I lifted the globe and shook it. “It did in here, though.”

You kissed my hand and called me sweetness and you knew what I meant. Love is a hermetic seal. And come on. Would you be helping me turn my house into a home if you weren’t my fucking girlfriend? I don’t think so, baby!

I test the water. I call in (love)sick and dare you to do the same. You do it, and we go to the movies to see Crossroads. Side note: I’ve never seen so many movies in my fucking life. Ordinary People and Good Will Hunting and yeah. That’s some boyfriend shit right there!

And I know what the people around us see as we sink into our seats, Vail.

They see a hot, happy couple. Of course I am going to your fucking birthday party, the one you mention six hundred thousand times during the previews. You call it a “glorified girls’ night” that’s “no big deal.” You swear that you have no expectations of me, but I want expectations. I want the fucking pressure. The lights dim. We are holding hands in the dark, sharing plain M&M’s. By the end of Crossroads I am crying, and a couple fucking couples are giggling. You elbow me, gently. “Relax, Cusack. You know I love that you’re so sensitive.”

That’s what a girlfriend says to a boyfriend and now we’re walking to Benny’s. You run off to the ladies’ room, which is okay because I know what you want at our burrito place…because I am your boyfriend, me.

I know more things about you every day. I know about the ski trip your family took in sixth grade where you fell on a black diamond, the time you accidentally stole a pair of diamond earrings from a Macy’s only to find out they were cubic zirconium. It’s not just the facts, Vail. I am happy when you want to come home with me even after all the hours with you. I listen to you walk me through your life, the life that made you into the woman you are, a verbal free spirit with her bare feet in my lap, steering the boat as we travel down the river that is you.

“Tell me something I don’t know about you, Joe.”

I squeeze your little feet. “You first.”

“No,” you say. “We always talk about me. And it’s partly because of the quarter-life crisis thing where I’m hyperanalyzing every tiny thing, but I…I wanna know about you.”

Sometimes I can’t argue with you. You do that thing where you pull your eyes away and lock them onto something far away, the end table or the framed cheesy college girl Picasso that was here when I moved in. I go blank. Everything that pops into my fucking head is a fucking no. I look at your feet, at the freckle above your extra tiny toe. Most of my life is like that. It hurts to say it out loud.

“Vail, you kind of…You kind of know all my stuff already.”

“Not possible. C’mon. Tell me about your first kiss.”

My neighbor, the drunk older redhead. “This girl named Serena. In the cereal aisle at my bodega.”

“Adorable,” you coo, and I am doing it again, lying, but does it count? Is it bad? Carrie doesn’t do this to Big. She doesn’t drill him about his fucking past and that’s why I like Sex and the City. Nobody has old friends or fucked-up family, and everyone has a nice home like mine.

“It’s a compliment, Joe. You should be flattered that I wanna know more about you.”

I am good on my feet. Fast and creative. I rip off some shit from Roald Dahl’s Boy—this is where opposites attract, where it is good that you are not much of a reader—and I feed you tales of my adorable childhood in Bed-Stuy until you seem satiated.

The next day, it’s my lunch break at Mooney’s. Good day, aka no Vagina. We’re dead in March, so lunch is me and my Moleskine and a nice cold slice. I can’t wipe the smirk off my face and I don’t want to wipe the smirk off my face. I love having homework. I gotta write down all the stories I told you in the Moleskine in case you want to hear them again. Girlfriends are like that. They want their boyfriends to tell the same old stories over and over.

Mooney storms the invisible gates, disgusted. “Joseph.”

I drop my slice and close my book. “Hey, Mr. Mooney.”

“When you’re done writing in your diary I need you to clean the bathroom.”

The old me would drop my diary. The new me has you. Confidence. “I checked it earlier. It’s all good.”

“I did not ask you for your opinion, Joseph.”

“I know,” I say. “But I’m giving it to you anyway.”

It’s weird, Vail. Weird the way he doesn’t lash out at me or threaten to lock me up. Even he gets that I’m not the same guy, that I have a woman in my life. I’m growing, I am, and he doesn’t like it. He says there was integrity in the cardboard box. He says I’m different since I moved to SoHo, because SoHo is poison. Last night, in bed, you said I won’t be in the shop for much longer. I mean, why would you say that if I wasn’t your fucking boyfriend?

A boyfriend who’s got things to do!

I pop into Bloomingdale’s where I find the perfect raspberry beret. It’s soft and cashmere and you’ll love it and fuck it. Mooney said my bonus was for me, not you, but it’s my life, not his, not anymore. I go home to finish my Pop Rocks liner notes. We’ll listen to it after birthday sex—we’ll call it our mixtape; CD is a bad acronym—when you are wearing nothing but the beret, thanking me for the best birthday of your twenty-five-year-long little life.