You Love Me

by Caroline Kepnes

  I want to storm into your office and dive into your Murakami because sexual frustration is poisonous.

  Sweetie Carl’s here so I have to go but honestly… I was moody that day at the diner. You like him. He likes you. Deal with it. xoxo love youuuuu

  Melanda’s right, Mary Kay. You like me. You do need to fucking deal with it and I know how to force you to deal with it. There’s a seminar in one of the glass-walled conference rooms. It’s a setup for disaster—Mothballs teaching Mothballs how to operate their iPhones—and you forced Nomi to help out but she’s the only one in there under sixty. She’s not even doing her fucking job, Mary Kay. She’s holding her phone, forcing one of our patrons to look at her pictures. “See,” Nomi says. “This is the shed at Fort Ward. The moss on the roof is like the floor of a forest for Barbies. When I was little I wanted my dad to steal it.”

  I know Phil’s her dad but ugh and the Mothball glares at me and Nomi clocks me and grunts. “So my mom roped you into this too? Nice. Real nice.”

  “Not at all,” I say, rolling up my sleeves and wiping belVita fiber cookie crumbs into a napkin. “I’m here because I want to be here.”

  Nomi makes room for me at the table and Mrs. Elwell remarks on your Meerkat’s demeanor and I am a pro, defending your daughter without excusing her behavior—I love to play both sides!—and before you know it, we’re in a groove. We help Mrs. Elwell “connect” with her family on Facebook—remember when slide shows were universally acknowledged to be torture?—and Nomi is softening her approach, learning to be more patient, more like me. She’s not the fastest learner and she snorts when a Mothball in a sweater set can’t access her Budussy books. But I catch her eye—Be nice, Nomi—and what can I say, Mary Kay?

  I’m good with kids. I’m selfless. I know my way around a cell phone and I’m paternal but not patriarchal and you have a front-row seat. You see me and I see the wheels turning in your head as you remember that I’m not just a good kisser. I’m a good person. And I don’t rest on my laurels because I had one hit song twenty years ago—get over yourself, Phil—and when it’s over your Meerkat sighs. “Well,” she says. “We survived.”

  “Oh come on,” I say. “You had some fun. I know I did.”

  Nomi won’t admit it—that’s kids—but when I’m packing up to go home, she cracks a Budussy joke. You see that we bonded—another score!—and I wave. Friendly Joe! Well-adjusted Joe! “You guys have a great holiday! Gotta go meet some friends in the city!”

  Sure enough, you send a text to Melanda while I’m walking home.

  Okay he’s good. It’s like I almost forgot how smart he is because it was so surreal to be so open with him about the other side of things and… okay. Okay wow. Aahahhahah.

  Melanda’s busy with Carl, and she is jealous at heart, so she just likes your text. And you don’t text again and that’s just as well because I may not have friends and I may not be unhealthily attached to my family that I secretly hate—I’m talking to you, my fecal-eyed neighbors—but I do have Melanda in my basement—and you know what, Mary Kay? I’m actually happy she’s there.

  This has never been a good night for me. When I was a kid, I wrote letters to Santa telling him I’d be a good boy and wait for next Christmas, when things would be better—ha!—but now the lie of my childhood is true. I have a future with you and this really is the last shitty Christmas of my life, the darkest hour before our permanent dawn. I won’t make it worse by giving myself a body to deal with when everyone else on this rock is opening their fucking presents so I warm up some fried chicken I had in the freezer and I grab a gallon of ice cream and head downstairs. She sees me. She smells the chicken. And before I even ask, she handcuffs herself to the bed and tosses the key at the door. Such a good dog suddenly, and I enter the Whisper Room and she does a little upper body ladies’ night kind of dance on her futon.

  “Oh honey, I love fried chicken!”

  I hand her the tray and she tears skin off the chicken and pops it into her mouth. “Scrumptious,” she coos, as she licks her fucking fingers. I know what she’s doing, Mary Kay. She’s playing me. As if she thinks this is the first time I’ve been cornered into quarantining a dangerous, unstable person in my fucking personal space. I play right back. “Well, you seem happy.”

  “You know what? I actually am happy. And omigod, I really did forget how much I loooove The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  She eats more skin. She licks her fingers. “It does make me kind of sad though…”

  “Oh yeah?”

  She tears the lid off the ice cream and digs her fork into the gallon. This is part of her game. “Yeah,” she says. “I feel like you think Mary Kay is the Bridget Fonda, the Annabella Sciorra. You buy her barn jacket demeanor and the whole holier-than-thou good woman thing…” You are a good woman and Melanda smacks her gums. “Sweetie, you should know that Mary Kay is just… Well, she’s not what you think.”

  Poor Melanda. If only she knew that you and I had a banner day. I tell her to hold that thought and I go upstairs and make us two mugs of hot cocoa and by this time next year, I’ll be doing the same thing, making cocoa for you.

  Melanda claps when I return to the Whisper Room. “Ooh, yes. I miss carbs so much.”

  You’re allowed to have this one last nuclear holiday with your unchosen family, same way Melanda is allowed to have a sugar high. The steam turns her skin red and she purrs like one of my cats. “Mmmm,” she says. “Yummy.”

  “So you were saying…”

  She puts her mug on the end table and she picks up the remote and pauses Anything Else and it’s just me, Melanda, and Jason Fucking Biggs. She picks at the GUN on her shirt. “So I got pregnant in high school.”

  I remain calm. I am the fucking key master. “Is this another lie? Because I know that Mary Kay never said I’m a bad kisser.”

  She bats her eyelashes, what’s left of them. “I know,” she says. “I said some really icky things when I was detoxing…” Always with an excuse. “But you were right…” Stop trying to mind-fuck me, Melanda. I’m too happy to be stupid. “And you should know why I was really in the woods the other night.”

  I sit in the chair and sip my cocoa. “Well, go ahead.”

  “So I was fifteen and I barely knew the guy and I took care of it.”

  “Okay.”

  “And Mary Kay was amazing, totally there for me, real hard-core best friend stuff.”

  “Well, that’s no surprise.”

  She dips a finger into the melted vanilla. “True,” she says. “And I was there a few years later for her. When she got pregnant.”

  “And…”

  Melanda flaps her wings. “And she was older. It wasn’t dramatic…” You’re not a drama queen. A drama queen wouldn’t have been so responsive to all my good doings in the library today. “And I go to the hospital the day she goes into labor. I’m in the room with her holding her hand because Phil… well, I mean, he wasn’t that kind of guy…” There’s one true thing. “So Nomi arrives and she’s beautiful. Perfect. This feels like our baby, you know? And MK looks at me and goes, ‘Thank you, Melanda. If you hadn’t showed me how hard it was to give up a pregnancy, I might not have my baby.’ ”

  Very well played, because as a man, I can’t say anything. “That’s a lot to take in.”

  “So she put Nomi in my arms. I held that little girl and I was fine with my decision. I have no regrets. I did the right thing at the right time…” I know the feeling. “See, I was in the woods that night because Nomi is part mine. Mary Kay knew what she was doing when she put Nomi in my arms, when she found a flaw in every guy I ever even tried to date. Yes, I’ve had my moments. Maybe I’m not the best friend at times…” Ha! “But Mary Kay uses me, Joe. I’ve been the one looking out for Nomi. In The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Annabella Sciorra practically lives in that barn jacket. Like Mary Kay in her tights. But that’s the male director’s gaze for you. In reality, no woman wears that barn j
acket every day. You should know that you’ve put yourself in jeopardy for a woman who only exists in your head.” She looks at the TV. And then she looks at me. “You look like him, you know? Jason Biggs. A handsome version, obviously.”

  I don’t look like Jason Biggs and she licks her fingers and goes back to watching her fucking movie and I do not wish her a Merry Christmas. She was supposed to see what’s wrong with her but instead she’s trying to make me think there’s something wrong with you.

  I go upstairs and I am fuming, trapped, fucked. Ho Fucking Ho and everyone on this rock is asleep except me and Melanda. I read my stupid horoscope on one of her astrology apps—no, Joe, no—and I go to Love’s Instagram and watch Forty open his fucking presents again—no, Joe, no—and I miss my son, my son I never met and right now the bitch is right.

  You really aren’t here with me. You only exist in my head.

  But then my phone buzzes. It’s you: Merry Christmas Eve, Joe. Just thinking of you.

  I needed you and you knew it—our connection is like me, it exists—and I settle into my sofa and my cats gather and romp. I spend the rest of the night texting with you about Christmas stories and the Bukowski you bought for Nomi and it’s calming and cozy—you send me a picture of your bare legs, your fuzzy sock slippers—and our phones are magic. We are magic and we light up the wee hours of the long, heavy night but eventually you do have to get some sleep—big day today—and I wish you sweet dreams. I am content. Loved. It’s almost like your friend Melanda ceases to exist, like Santa Claus finally did me an overdue solid and schlepped into this house and dragged your friend out of here, onto his fucking sleigh.

  Almost.

  17

  It’s the day after Christmas and I’ve been living in a fantasy, texting with you when you manage to squirrel away from your family. This power imbalance wouldn’t work with anyone but you, Mary Kay, constantly empathetic—I hope you don’t mind me only having a minute here and there—and though we don’t say it, we both know that this is the last holiday we’ll spend apart.

  My present to Melanda was giving her exactly what she wanted: no fucking food. But it’s been almost two days and I don’t want her to starve to death—that takes too long—so I’m on my way downstairs with a bowl of food—she really is like my dog—and lucky for me, she’s asleep. No more film school today because she’ll make up more stories to stay alive. And it’s not entirely her fault for thinking she has a chance. Last night, I told you about how I gave the fecal-eyed family a wreath and you said I’m too nice for my own damn good. And you’re right, Mary Kay.

  I am. But I’m also a fucking procrastinator. I know I have to kill Melanda. But I just keep putting it off.

  It’s not just me, Mary Kay. Most “normal” people in America are in the same boat right now, torn between wanting to save the people they’re stuck with and wanting to fucking kill them. I don’t know if her story about you is true, but I know that I don’t care. So what if you had a callous moment in the delivery room? You had just created a child with Phil. We’re animals. Animals eat other animals alive. That’s the way the system is designed. And so what if you manipulated Melanda into being your unofficial co-parent? You were stuck with Phil and mothers do crazy shit. Love lets my son chew on Christmas lights—I don’t even let my cats do that—and the fact is, motherhood is the hardest job in the world. I love the person you are now, Mary Kay—you wished me a Merry Christmas, you wished me a Merry Christmas—and if someone from my past attacked you, well, you might hear things about me that would put you off.

  I’m a lot of things, Mary Kay, but I’m not a hypocrite.

  I’m on my way to the library when Melanda’s phone pings in my pocket.

  Christmas wasn’t the same without you. Hope you had fun with Carl! Would love to see pics!

  LOL no pics cuz his kids were with his wife and we were pretty much naked the whole time bwaahahahahha

  Well that’s great. I can’t stop thinking about Joe… We’re talking nonstop like teenagers.

  I pump my fist. Well, not really, but I want to.

  Sweetie don’t think. Just do! Lol love you! Hope you guys had a fun holiday too!

  There’s a big difference between telling someone that you hope they had fun and asking if they had a good time. You know it too, and you don’t write back to Melanda. Good. You’re right. We have been texting like teenagers and we’re not in high school and it’s time for you to step up and make room for me. I get to the library before you and I am shelving Richard Scarrys by the Red Bed when I hear your voice.

  “Hey,” you say, and what a rush, to finally hear your voice out loud in person, to see your face. You murmur now, as if things changed for us over the past few days, because they did change. “I am… I have a little something for you.”

  You’re holding a white box and there is a red ribbon wrapped around the white box and you motion toward the door and I follow you outside, where it is gray. Drab. As if January can’t fucking wait to get here. We didn’t go more than two hours and twelve minutes without talking over the last five days but now we sit on our love seat like strangers on a bus.

  You hold your box. “Is this weird?”

  “Only if there’s a bomb inside.”

  You laugh. I always make you laugh. “Yeah… I got you a little something…” Because we bonded over Christmas. “You were so great with Nomi the other day and that meant a lot to me.”

  “Well, that was nice of you.”

  You nod. You’re still married and you feel guilty, which is why you can’t speak the truth and I get it. We’re at work. We have to pretend the last few days never happened, not because someone might be eavesdropping—we’re alone out here—but because you too are procrastinating. You look down at the box that sits on your lap. A corduroy skirt today. Black tights.

  “So how was it? How was Christmas with the family?”

  You look at me—you can’t fucking believe how good I am—and you crack a smile. “Well, it was our first Christmas without Melanda. So we didn’t have a buffer.”

  You really do believe it’s her texting you and I smile. “And how was that?”

  You rub the ribbon on my box, my box that is your box. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. It doesn’t feel fair.”

  “We’re just talking. And I do care about you. You know that.”

  “Yeah,” you say. “I guess it’s that thing where even when someone is like family, which Melanda really is, well it’s still company. So you dress up a little, you know? You have a guest. And it was different without her. There was this moment, after we ate. Phil…” You gulp. “My husband’s playing his guitar, blasting his music, and Nomi’s wearing her headphones and reading her Columbine and I almost…” Got in the car to come see me. “Well, open your present already.”

  You hand me the box and a car passes by and the windows are down and Sam Cooke serenades us—Darling you send me, honest you do—and Love sent me away but you send me and I send you. You nudge me. “Well come on. Open it.”

  I pull the ribbon and I open your box—if only—and I count six red strawberries, all of them doused in chocolate and I bet Phil didn’t get any fucking strawberries. I look at you. “I wish I had something for you.”

  Your cheeks are flushed and your eyes are glued to me and you missed me. “Yeah,” you say. “I wish a lot of things lately…”

  I want your Murakami and I want your Lemonhead and we both stare at our tree. “I don’t want to be selfish, Joe.”

  “You’re not being selfish.”

  “Well, that’s not what Phil says…”

  I can’t be the one you talk to about the rat and you’re the one who made the rules. I nod.

  “See, Joe, I think Melanda’s mad at me. I think that’s why she blew me off at Christmas.”

  I can’t talk about this either and my heart is pounding. Melanda. “Why do you say that?”

  “It’s ancient history, but in high school… God, I’m too old to
start stories with that sentence… Anyway, when we became friends, she told me that all these people like your neighbor Nancy… Well, she told me they hated me. And then one day I go into the bathroom, and I overhear her telling Nancy that I hate Nancy.”

  So that’s why you stole her rat and that’s why you weren’t exactly sensitive about her pregnancy when you got pregnant. And you don’t know she’s in my basement. You really don’t. Do you? “You never told her you overheard her?”

  You shake your head. “It’s weird to miss her and yet not miss her, you know? She might not even come back for a few months…” I know. “Melanda” texted you that. “She’s gonna start this new job. She met this new guy… I’m not so good with change. And it’s strange to feel almost jilted, as if I was being ‘possessive’ or something when I know I should just be happy for her and I know we were both dragging each other down. But it stings in some weird way, to feel… left.”

  RIP Beck… RIP Candace… Love. I nod. “It is,” I say. “But ultimately, the distance gets you to a more honest place, you know?”

  You’re contemplative. You need me because I’m the first person in your life that really fucking listens. I give you the silence you’ve been craving and you want me so much that you’re shaking. “Come on,” you say. “It’s getting cold.”

  You open the door—you’re not cold, you’re hot, hot for me—and you look at the Red Bed and I look at the Red Bed and you blush. “Have a good rest of the day!”

  I have a great rest of the day because of you. You love me and I oughta buy Melanda some chocolate-covered strawberries—ha!—because look what she did for you, for me, for us—and I carry your box under the crook of my arm and Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me” is on repeat in my head and the world would be a happier place if more people would lift their souls with music instead of ugh-inducing podcasts. I make it into town and I take off my headphones and there is music in the café today—Bob Dylan in Pegasus—and there really is revolution in the air, strawberries in my hands. I get the chills.