You

by Caroline Kepnes

“I’m sorry, Ethan. Just give me another minute here.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry!” He sings, “You’re the boss!”

  Everything is an exclamation point with this guy, which is why it’s puzzling that his favorite book of all is American Psycho. “I love a good scare! Don’t you, Joe?”

  I prefer literary fiction and he wags his tail and I refresh your inbox and open Peach’s response:

  I just care about you, Beckalicious. Remember: boundaries! Also, I feel like I haven’t seen you in foreverrrrr.

  I put your phone away and quietly thank your mother for footing the bill. Ethan is still talking about the gerbil in American Psycho.

  He gushes and giggles and who the fuck is this guy? “I just love books,” he chirps. “I could talk about books until the cows come home! That’s the hardest thing about losing the job and the girlfriend. I miss talking. I love talking!”

  Ethan is the loneliest, most depressing man I’ve ever met in my life and at the same time, he’s saving me. And he’s perfect, just what I need. You will not be into this guy and next to him, I’m the man. I smile. “So, Ethan. Can you work weekends?”

  “Of course!” he chirps, not entirely unlike a gerbil. “I can work anytime!”

  When we stand I realize that he’s almost a foot shorter than I am. He has dandruff and he gushes with gratitude as I walk him to the door. “You know, Joe, I always had this feeling that I’d wind up with a fun job like this! To be honest, majoring in finance was my dad’s idea. Not mine!”

  “Well, that’s good, Ethan, this is good,” I say and he is the one with boundary issues. “You go have a beer and celebrate.”

  “I don’t really drink but maybe I’ll put a little rum in my Diet Dr Pepper!” he exclaims and when I watch him walk down the street, I feel proud like a teacher. I have done a good thing today.

  You write to Peach and wish her a happy holiday in the sun. You tell her you’re probably going to stay in the city because it costs so much to get to Nantucket and she responds:

  Sweetness, if you need a loan, you know I am here. . . .

  You write back NO adamantly and Peach is leaving to meet her family in St. Barts and rub organic sun block all over her grotesque body and think about you. Maybe she’ll find a native girl, fall in love, and let you be. I e-mail you that you start tomorrow and you respond right away, the right way:

  Yes, Boss.

  Later that night, you call me to clarify your start date. When I tell you about Ethan, you are confused at first.

  “I thought I got the job,” you say.

  “Well, it’s the busiest time of the year, Beck.”

  “Does this mean I won’t get as many hours?”

  “This means we might have a night off together once in a while.”

  You get it and you lower your voice. “Are you sexually harassing me already?”

  I don’t laugh. “Yes, miss. I am.”

  I’m a genius, clearly, and Peach can fuck off because we keep talking, like boyfriend and girlfriend. I tell you more about Ethan and you laugh.

  “He’s like the anti-Blythe,” you say. “She crosses out exclamation points in everyone’s stories. Literally.”

  “Damn,” I say. “I wonder what would happen if they were in the same room together.”

  “Omigod,” you say and I can tell that you just sat up. “We have to do that.”

  “Beck.”

  “We have to set them up.”

  “This kid is so innocent,” I say. “I don’t think I can unleash Blythe on him.”

  “Honestly, Joe,” you say. “Ethan might be just what Blythe needs. And vice versa. I mean, opposites attract, you know?”

  “Are we opposites?”

  “Well, we’ll see,” you say and then we move on to talking about Indian food and music and it’s one of those conversations that just flows, the kind you can only have after a dressing room.

  When we finally hang up, I send you Ethan’s contact information for Blythe. I write:

  Merry Christmas!

  You write back:

  It is indeed.

  27

  I love having you at the shop. Working with you has made me fall back in love with Mooney’s place. We are an adorable couple and a good match and you love it when anyone says so. There are no more dates. There is just us. You get here before your shifts start and kiss me hello. Dull, pedestrian couples get a dog to practice raising a kid, but we have a shop full of books together. We share the load and laugh at the customers and playfully argue about what kind of music to play and we are one of those 1950s couples, very sexist, because I am in charge and you like it that way. You toy with me, bending the rules on a daily basis and you live to push my buttons. We laugh easily. I bring my Holden hat to work and put it on when you’re not looking and you burst out laughing when you see me.

  “Omigod, Joe, you have to let me take that away.”

  I playfully fight you off. “You can’t take my Holden Caulfield cap!”

  You laugh. “No, what I can’t do is let you go out into the world wearing that thing. Clearly I was not thinking straight when I picked it out.”

  I like the reference to our time in Young Sluts and I let you grab my hat. I never even took the tag off and you are pleased to find it there. “Now I can get you something even better.”

  And I can’t believe how cheesy I feel, how upbeat, but it feels like the world is on my side; it’s downright happy in Mooney’s place! Ethan and Blythe are actually going on dates, which is amazing, and I go to bed wondering what you’re gonna wear to work the next day, wondering when our chemistry will erupt into a marathon fuck session in your bed that I built. We are waiting to have sex because you say this is special. And it is.

  Every day is Christmas and today you arrive in a slutty gray slouchy sweater that hangs off your shoulder and transforms your collarbone into a boner-inducing porno shot. You’re chomping on baby carrots. I tell you to go home and change.

  You talk with your mouth full. “You never said there’s a dress code.”

  “It’s implied.”

  “By what?” you sass. “Ethan’s baggy sweatshirts?”

  “Calm down.”

  “I am calm, Joe. I’m just asking you to tell me about this dress code.”

  “Think of it like school. You wouldn’t go to class in this.”

  You toss the carrots on the counter. You cross your arms. “I came from class.”

  “Just cover it up,” I say and I want to tell you this is why the guys in your class feel permitted to try and fuck you.

  “Cover what up?” you say and now I want to bend you over and teach you a lesson. Your daddy issues are intense, Beck.

  “Cover your collarbone.”

  “Well why don’t I put on your fleece?”

  I let you try on my black fleece and it drowns you and I’d like to pick you up by the collarbone and bring you to the F–K section where you went your first time here when you didn’t even know what you were looking for (me), and I can do that because I’m the boss and you want me to do that and I want to do that but I won’t. I like how much you want it now and it’s going to stay that way and I shake my head at you and motion for you to get out of the fleece and you piss and moan and your slutty sweater goes up along with the fleece when you pull it over your head and some pervert in reference books is looking and I reach over and yank at your sweater and pull it down.

  You startle and the radiator hisses and the soundtrack of Hannah and Her Sisters delivers instrumental old love songs and you brought me a coffee like a good girl and you hand me my fleece. I take it and sit down on the stool at the register and you bat your eyelashes at me and that perv is still looking and I have to take care of him.

  “When you come back,” I say, raising my voice, “you better be wearing a bra.”

  You blush and try not to smile and you slip into your peacoat and grab your bag of shit you dragged in here and you nod. “What color?”

&nbs
p; It can’t be long before we fuck and I shrug. “You pick.”

  “Red?”

  “Fine.”

  “Black?”

  “Go,” I say and you go and I look at the pervert and call him out good, cold. “Did you need help, sir?”

  “Uh, no, just looking.”

  “Well, if and when you do need help, I’m here,” I say, and I turn off the Hannah and put on the Beastie Boys and wait for you to come back, which you will, because you love it here with me and did I mention that this was the best idea ever? Your first shift, you were an arrogant disaster and you fucked up every sale you made and overcharged and undercharged and wore your fucking Brown University sweatshirt as if you needed everyone to know that you’re above this kind of shit and I told you no sweatshirts and you turned red because you know when you’re being an asshole. The perv in References asks if we have a bathroom and I tell him, sharp, cutting, “No,” and he doesn’t say good-bye when he leaves and I take the opportunity to go downstairs and beat one out because working with you and waiting for you to get here so I can smell you and see you and be near you every day has me worked up like a fucking eighth-grade kid with a slutty substitute teacher.

  My phone buzzes and you’re fast and you have texted me:

  Knock knock

  And there’s a photo and it’s you, in a red bra, and you text again:

  Is this appropriate for the workplace?

  And I write back:

  No

  And January is the deadest month in the world and I could stay down here reviewing bras all day and you know it and you come right back:

  Knock knock

  I type:

  Yes?

  And here it is again, you, no face, just your tits shoved into a pink lace bra and your nipples are hard for me and I can’t take it anymore and I finish and you text me again:

  ?

  And I refuse to give my dick to you in this way and you’re starting to figure that out and you text another photo of yourself. No bra. And I give you what you want. I text:

  Bad girl. Come here. Now.

  You text right back lightning fast:

  Yes boss

  No punctuation just yes, the universal euphemism for FUCK ME NOW, and boss, the universal euphemism for I SUBMIT, and I clean myself up and bound up the stairs and find the Paula Fox I’m pretending to read every time you show up and I take out the Beastie Boys and put on some Beck—it’s a regular thing now, a joke we have, we are that couple with a secret vocabulary of songs and books and looks and meals—and by the time you get here it’s almost time to close and I haven’t even checked your e-mail in days, that’s how into me you are, and you slip out of your peacoat and you’re in a fucking lace, see-through tank top and you smile at me.

  “Is this inappropriate?”

  I close Paula Fox and the Beck song “Sexx Laws” starts to play, an ode to handcuffs and illogically great fucking. You and I will make our own fucking song and I adjust so I’m facing you and the door is not locked and the sign says open and the streets are emptying out (a Monday in January) and the Hannah was foreplay and the texts were first base and you move toward me, slightly, and I spread my legs, slightly, and you are standing on your peacoat in your fuck-me boots and I can’t take it anymore and I break.

  “You’re late. We’re about to close.”

  “Sorry, boss. When do we close, boss?”

  “Now.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Yeah,” I say, and I’m a rock and you’re not wearing any panties under that skirt, you whore, and you tilt your little head and twirl your little hair and it’s amazing how the most generic shit in the world can be so hot: half-naked girl in a bookstore, reaching for a Twizzler, chewing on it, slowly, begging for it, silently.

  “Well, maybe there’s something else I can do for you,” you coo and I shake my head no and motion for you to come here now and you have the Twizzler hanging out of your mouth and you put both of your hands on both of my knees and lean in and dangle the Twizzler at my mouth.

  I bite it. Finally.

  28

  I have just fucked you for the first time in our lives and it was not good and it did not go on forever and you did not scream. Where was that Macy’s heat when I was inside you? And who’s to blame for our quick fuck? Was it because we weren’t in a dressing room or in front of an open window? Or was it me? Was I too hungry? Too eager? Did I hold you too hard? Maybe I’m better at eating you out than I am at fucking you, and that’s a horrible and unfair possibility. We’ve only done it once. Do I get to do it again? Do you want to do it again?

  You don’t want to do it again. You aren’t revving up as we recover on the floor of the cage. You are on top of me stroking my hair and I can’t see your face but I can feel the disappointment in your hands, in your touch, which is full of pity. The pads of your fingers go pat-pat and I can’t let go of you or you might back off of me and I might have to face you and I can’t do that. I lasted maybe eight seconds. Nine. I’m running over it in my head and I don’t know how this happened. Maybe I jerked off too much and maybe you teased me too much and maybe I should have locked the door.

  “No,” you said. “It’s so hot with the door open and the open sign up, right?”

  I should have been honest with you and told you that the lack of security would only make me nervous. But I didn’t want to disappoint you and I wanted to put your needs first. You wanted to go at it by the register, but I said no.

  “Let’s go downstairs.”

  “Really?” you said and you were lit up. You were. I’m sure of it.

  We got down here (my idea, I have the key, I am the boss), and I unlocked the cage and ordered you in there and I locked it and you smiled and I told you to take your skirt off and you obeyed (I am the boss) and you weren’t wearing any panties and I told you to touch yourself and you did and I willed the other Beck to shut the fuck up. You wanted the music on and so I left it alone (I am the boss and I am allowed to please you on occasion). You stood holding the cage door with one hand and working at yourself slowly with the other while I started getting undressed, and you watched me smiling one second, intent and ready the next. I told you to beg for it and you begged me to come in there and I took my pants off and you saw how badly I wanted to come in there and I told you to get down on your knees and you did and you reached for me (I am the boss, I am allowed to please you on occasion) and I unlocked the cage and entered. You took me in your hands and in your mouth and you kept looking up at me and I knew it was time to fuck you and let you know that it was time and you leapt at me, an animal, and straddled me and commanded me downward (I am the boss and I am allowed to please you on occasion), and then.

  And then.

  And then I was inside of you and I came. I blew it. I came so fast and so hard and you said nothing at first and you didn’t act like you wanted me to help you finish, you just went smack into gentle stroking my hair mode (the wrong kind of fucking touching), and you quietly told me:

  “Don’t worry, Joe. I’m on the pill.”

  And that was the moment I was most afraid of you and what you could do to me and not do to me because that was the moment that I realized that you are the boss, not me and you can please me on occasion if you want to. When we finally stood up we were both hungry and dizzy and there was an old man upstairs standing at the register and he looked at us, me all dressed, you in your bra and he smiled.

  “You kids have a good night. I’ll come back another time.”

  There was something deathly unsexual and anticlimactic and flattening in his words, his old man eyes and his pleasure at seeing us, young and hot and alive. He had more fun in that moment than you and I had in our first fuck and there was no getting around it and I wasn’t surprised when you said you should go check on Peach because she’s been really depressed. I wasn’t surprised that you didn’t suggest we go to your bed and fuck again. I was bad and you are the boss.

  But this is what surprises me.
A day later—you didn’t even wait a whole day—you texted me:

  Hey Joe, I can’t make it in today. Sorry!

  And that exclamation point was the beginning of the end of us and I made a mistake by writing back:

  Okay!

  And then you made plans to go out with Lynn and Chana instead of seeing me.

  You: I miss you girls. I have an emergency session with Dr. Nicky, but want to get late lunch and/or happy hour?

  Chana: Who is this? Haha. Yes. Fine.

  Lynn: I’m already in pajamas and Housewives mode. Have one for me!

  So this was it, right? The true end because instead of seeing me, you were opting to see a mental health professional and a girlfriend to talk about me. And when a girl likes talking about you more than talking to you, well, in my experience, that’s the end. So I was gonna fucking kill myself and everyone in the shop and take out the Eric Carmen CD and smash it into bits because I stopped believing in myself and our future. I wrote back to you, pathetic:

  Okay!

  It’s a good thing you knew that I was close to losing my shit because not five seconds after I shut off the CD—sometimes silence is the best sound—and sat down on the stool and thought about castrating myself like the perv in Little Children you wrote back again:

  But what are you doing tonight?

  And all was well in the universe because that smile was your gaping wet pussy that knew that I had more to give. And I was okay again. It was clear to me now that you were going to your shrink to talk about your problem, that you enjoy sex more when there’s an audience. And you were going to see Chana because you’ve been busy with me and she’s been away on vacation and you wanted to tell her all about the best head of your life in Macy’s. That emoticon was your way of saying that we don’t work together anymore. We fuck together. So I told you to be at my place at seven and you wrote back:

  See you then!

  It was 7:12 when I realized that the candles were cursed. Five little votive candles that I picked up at Pier 1 Imports because of some guy in the bookstore who stayed in my head for some reason. He seemed cool, like a guy I’d be friends with if I was on the market for friends, and he dumped a heavy bag on the counter so he could get out his credit card and he sighed. “Fucking candles. Women and candles, right?”