You First: A Joe Goldberg Prequel (You, #0)(67)

“Well, there it is.”

“There’s what?”

“Goldballs,” he says. “There is no fucking way you are going to that party.”

He says a terrible thing like that and then he disappears to make lattes and is he right? He’s always right. I have you because of him, because of Seduce and Destroy. And here it comes again, a nick from a bad rusty razor that bleeds when I pick at it, when I think of it.

I know you’re not my boyfriend.

Dick comes back swinging, as if he wanted to wipe the smile off my face. “Dude,” he says. “I told you to stop it with the mixtape. And you sure as hell can’t give it to her. Not yet.”

“But things are good. She practically lives with me.”

“Does she have a key? Does she pay half your rent?”

Grrr. I look out the window, and he grabs the bag from Bloomingdale’s and pulls out the beret. Are his hands clean? “Dude,” he says. “Are you trying to get a restraining order?”

I. HATE. EVERYTHING. I need to keep things to myself. Mr. Big doesn’t go to his friends for advice. Maybe your birthday will be a new start for me too. No more nay-saying know-it-alls. No more Dead-Eyed Dick and Misanthropic Fucking Mooney. “I gotta go, Dick.”

“Goldboy, don’t start crying.”

“Then don’t make it sound like I’m crazy. It’s not like I’m gonna march into Botanica with a dozen roses or some shit. It’s a mixtape and a beret.” And maybe a dozen red balloons, like Big got for Carrie, but at least I know not to say it.

“Real talk, son. You’re getting laid by now, yeah?”

None of his business. None. But also yes. “Duh.”

“You meet her friends?”

“I’ve hung out with her roommate a lot.”

“Roommates don’t count, son. She told you you’re not serious, so don’t you get serious. You’re not ‘with’ this girl. You’re banging her. There’s a difference.”

He pours a cup of coffee like we’re all done with me and starts to brag about some fundraiser for his film that will never come to pass. The last days with you are the best days of my life. You found me a home. You can’t walk away from me without dying a little.

Dick groans. “Christ. Are you still thinking about your little mixtape?”

“I did it all, just like you said, okay? I played it cool. I still do. I don’t pick up every time she calls. The Vagina jealousy trap? You were right. I set that trap. Worked like a charm. But we’re past that. I have to go to her party, and I’m telling you, Dick. She wants me there.”

“Vagina,” he says. “That’s what you do. You bring Vagina to the party.”

“I have a girlfriend, asshole.”

“No,” he says. “You want to know what it’s like to have a birthday girl girlfriend?”

Yes. “Does it matter?”

“You gotta make impossible reservations at some place they just have to hit up because they saw it on Page Six or in some fucking magazine….” You don’t want to eat alone with me. “And after you shell out the dough for dinner, because of course that’s on you, she’s your girlfriend. Well, then it’s on you to carry the cupcakes you bought at Magnolia. Because for sure she told you to get the cupcakes…” You did not ask me to get the cupcakes. “You gotta hold her hand in the cab on the way to the party, because chicks go apeshit on their birthday, son. She’s not walking in without her boyfriend. Especially when she invited every guy she ever met.”

“She said it’s mostly girls.”

I wish I didn’t say that out loud, but at least he lets it go. “Kid,” he says. “You do not have a girlfriend. And you won’t ever have a girlfriend unless you learn to back the hell off. You’re the catch. When it comes to Joe Fucking Goldberg, it’s all or nothing. Go broke or go home. Teach her that she doesn’t get the milk without the cow…However it goes.”

I don’t know how it goes with the milk and the cow but Dick might be right.

“Don’t be a little bitch,” he says. “Okay, I’m getting an idea…” He rubs his hands together and spreads his legs, but he’s not about to do those annoying standing push-ups. He claps. “Interior, Botanica bar…” I knew this would happen someday. Fucking film people. “Wide shot. The birthday girl holds court. Her gal pals know she’s banging some guy but it’s early, it’s new…Whole night, she’s watching the door, waiting. CUT to…midnight. She’s drunk. She told everyone about this great new guy, and this great new guy…Cut to the door. He’s a no-show. Midnight turns into one, and one turns into two. Cinderella’s fully fucking wasted. Not elegantly. Just wasted. Drunk-dialing, making zero sense. Four a.m. Interior, the bathroom. Vomit in the toilet. She looks in the mirror, sees a drunk, obsessive, clingy, desperate chick who’s old, getting older. She knows she fucked up. She hates herself. Exterior, Houston between Mott and Mulberry. Our hero Joe gets out of the cab. He walks into the bar. The music swells. The high-pitched scream of the girl who thought she lost the guy, the guy who knew that she needed to think she lost him. She runs across the bar. Jumps him as we fade to her bedroom, where she rides him like there’s no tomorrow because all she wanted for her birthday was…”