You Love Me

by Caroline Kepnes

  You: Yeah. This bed is good. Do you have the same kind?

  You’re in my guesthouse but you want to be in my house and the Meerkat is asleep and your rent check cleared and I tell you to come see for yourself.

  Three minutes later, you are knocking on my door and I am opening the door.

  You pick up Licious and promise him we’ll do something about that god-awful name and he wriggles free and that leaves you with free hands. A free body. A free night.

  You walk up to me. Slowly. “I’m not here.”

  I walk up to you. Slowly. “And you’re not allowed to sleep over.”

  Our mouths are close. We are close. Your daughter will graduate from high school in a matter of weeks and that’s a big goalpost for us. You’ll be one step closer to freedom from being the good day-to-day mom. You tremble. Sore from moving all those boxes onto my property. “And you’re not allowed to tell anyone I was here.”

  You lean into me and bring my hand to your Murakami and you send me to your Lemonhead and you missed me. You want me. I kiss you on the neck. “Mary Kay,” I murmur. “How could I tell anyone that you were here when you’re not here?”

  You wrap your legs around me and I carry you to my bed—YES—and you wiggle out of my arms and jump onto my bed and you bounce. You feel the mattress with your hands and smile at me. “You’re such a liar.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Joe,” you say. “Your bed is much nicer than the one in your guesthouse.”

  First you want me on top of you and then you want to be on top and you grab my hair. “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you kidding? I’m not complaining.”

  I am inside of you and I am holding you and you hold on to me. “I just want all of it,” you say. “I want all of you all at once.”

  * * *

  Sneaking around is fun and we’re good at it, Mary Kay. You “loved” the first night that we got back together, but you’re right. It’s too risky for us to be in my bed when the Meerkat is right next door. So we improvise. You come home for “lunch” and you go to work and “forget your phone” so that you have to rush back home to me and you always let Nomi go to Seattle to visit Peggy and Don because Peggy and Don have so many pictures of Phil and so many stories about him. Their shop was a shrine to Phil before he even died and I agree that it’s good for Nomi to be with people who loved her father.

  There’s truly nothing sleazy about our sneaking around. We’re looking out for Nomi. I’m happy. You’re happy. Hell, even Oliver is happy—When Minka and I have a kid, I’m gonna pitch this whole two-house setup—but the Meerkat is having a hard time, she is. And I get it. She misses her house, she misses her father—she’s been wearing the same Sacriphil T-shirt since the two of you moved in—and sometimes, like right now, you get nervous. One minute ago we were laughing, but then the dark clouds roll into your eyes and you sigh.

  “I’m worried she knows.”

  “Nah,” I say. “She doesn’t know. And school’s not out for another hour and twelve minutes. I set an alarm.” You smile at that—you like me—and I tickle your leg but you pull away. I stop. I pull away. “Do you want to stop?”

  “Yes,” you say, as you caress my fucking leg. And then you bang your head on my leg and groan. “You know I don’t want you to stop but I’m her mom…” And I’m her stepdad. Almost. “She just lost her dad. Maybe she’d be okay with this, with us, but if she wasn’t okay with it and it made her feel worse than she already does… Well, Joe, I would feel like such a fuckup that I wouldn’t even want be with you. I’d hate myself too much.”

  “I get that, Mary Kay. And if it’s easier to stop until she goes to school, you know me. You know I’d be happy to wait.”

  I offer to wait and you respond by straddling me right here in the living room, as if the mere notion of us breaking up is so terrible that we have to fuck it out of our systems. After we finish, you button up—so cute—and you stop at my front door. “You want to know my dream?”

  Yes. “Yes.”

  “It’s pretty simple. No more changes for Nomi right now. She gets a few months where it’s all status quo. We stay in the guesthouse, she has a nice summer, and she goes off to school. Then, before she comes home for Thanksgiving, I tell her about us and she has time to process it before she has to see us together.”

  I kiss your right hand. I kiss your left hand. “I promise your dream will come true.”

  You leave and I’m a man of my word and a couple hours later there’s a knock on my door. It’s the Meerkat.

  “Nomi!” I call. “Come on in.”

  “Can I use your oven?”

  “Of course you can,” I say. “And I meant what I said. You don’t have to ask. I know the kitchen in your place needs work.”

  “You can say that again,” she says, carrying a Pyrex container of brownie mix. “The fridge is loud and the windows are fogged over and I know the cats don’t go in there but it really smells like they do…” Her father just died. Let her vent. She gulps. “But it just feels weird barging into your house so I’m gonna knock first, okay?”

  “You got it, Nomi.”

  The kid’s not wrong about the guesthouse. It’s in rough shape because I thought I had years before Forty would show up. The main house has three bedrooms and you and the Meerkat could live in my house—and you will soon—but right now, we’re all about boundaries, and that’s why I love you, Mary Kay.

  Nomi preheats my oven and sighs. “Why do you have so many books?”

  “Well why not?”

  “My mom hates when I say that when she asks me something.”

  I pull out a copy of The Road. “You ever read this?”

  She takes the book. “I saw the movie.”

  “The book is better and it does really help after you lose someone you love.”

  “Who did you lose?”

  I look at the oven and nope, not hot enough just yet. “My uncle Maynard.”

  “Who was he?”

  In truth, I only met my “uncle” Maynard once. I asked him if I could move in with him and he said he would pick me up the next day and I packed a suitcase and he never showed up. He just ghosted me and then a few months later he was dead but I know the kid wants to picture me with a family. “Well, he was a ghostwriter. Pretty cool stuff.”

  “Was he nice?”

  “He was the best. We’d go to bookstores and he taught me to play pool and he had this harmonica. You would name a song and he could play it. And he wrote books for famous people who wanted to tell their stories but couldn’t do it on their own.”

  The lie makes me feel good, as if I really did have an uncle like that, and the lie makes the Meerkat relax. The oven beeps and I’m closer, so I put the brownies in and set the timer and Nomi sighs. “My favorite ghost story is about this hotel in Concord where there’s one room that’s haunted and it used to be a slaughterhouse downstairs.” She gets distracted, fucking phones, and loses all interest in me, in ghosts, and asks me to text her when the brownies are done and this is rude, but this is good, less crap for me to remember in case you ask about my “uncle” and she’s gone and I text you: Hi

  You: Hi

  Me: Later?

  That’s code for “Do you want to fuck in the Whisper Room?”

  You: Well, I don’t know. What did you just say to her? I REALLY think she’s onto us.

  I never get impatient with you because you have an active imagination. And I love how much you care about people, even when it’s a little fucking annoying.

  Me: I promise you. She doesn’t know. She was just here and believe me, I can tell.

  You: I don’t know… I think I was wrong. It makes me too paranoid. We have to stop.

  That’s not fair.

  Me: That’s fair.

  You: You’re really okay with it? I feel bad… You know what I said, I don’t want to stop but ahaahhaha. I can’t live with this paranoia.

  Our relationship is your mug of piss and i
t takes every ounce of empathy in me to appease you. I know what I said. I know I said I would wait. But this is fucking ridiculous and we are adults and the buzzer goes off. I forgot about the Meerkat’s brownies and I did nothing wrong—she doesn’t know and if she does know it’s not because of me—and I grab a pot holder and I take the brownies out of the oven and how the fuck are we supposed to make it through a whole summer?

  And then my door opens.

  It’s the Meerkat but you’re right behind her and you’re not smiling and why are you here? If you really do want to stop sleeping with me then you shouldn’t tag along when the Meerkat comes to pick up her brownies and you barely look at me and the Meerkat barges into my kitchen and picks up a knife. You stay by the door and the Meerkat holds the knife but she does not slice into the brownies.

  “Honey,” you say. “Don’t burn yourself.”

  I reach for the pot holder and offer it to Nomi but she just holds on to her knife. “I’m fine.”

  Your hands are on your elbows and your eyes are on your feet and no, Mary Kay. No. This is not how you play it. You don’t come in here and act like you’re fucking mad at me—what better way to confirm that we are fucking is there?—and I told you she doesn’t know about us and I promised she won’t find out. But her eyes are sharp like the knife in her hand and all those knives are aimed at me. “Do you think I’m stupid, Joe?”

  “Of course not, Nomi. I think you’re exceptionally smart.”

  She digs the knife into the brownies and you’re still by the door, as if you already got your punishment. I reach for a pot holder and she hisses. “Don’t dad me, Joe. We all know you’re not stupid either so you should know why I’m pissed. How long did you think you could pull this off?”

  “I swear to you, Nomi…” No, Joe. Don’t fucking lie. “I’m sorry.”

  She is shaking the way kids do when they’re forced to think of their parents as sexual beings and she clenches that knife, my knife.

  You walk into the room now, as if on cue. “Nomi, he said he’s sorry.”

  You’re looking at her, not me, and she drops the knife in the sink. “No, Mom. I want him to tell me. I want to know how stupid he thinks I am. My dad just died and that’s bad enough but you guys run around together behind my back and now he wants to stand here and lie about it.”

  You rub your forehead—bad sign—and Nomi’s shoulders are shaking and is she crying? I made your daughter cry and you’re never gonna forgive me and I need your help and I look at you but you’re…

  Laughing.

  The Meerkat turns around and she wasn’t fucking crying. She’s laughing too and she raises her knife and winks at me. “Gotcha!”

  You. Fucking. Bitches. “Wait,” I say. “Did I just get played?”

  You are bowled over by the door, possibly peeing your pants, and the Meerkat picks up the pot holder and carries the brownies to the table. “Mom, omigod, I swear, you almost ruined it with your little ‘don’t burn yourself.’ ”

  You are Red Bed red and you are kissing me on the cheek. What the fuck is happening? “I know,” you say. “I don’t know why I said that.”

  “I’m a little confused,” I say, because of the kiss, because of the laughter.

  “Well,” Nomi says. “I’m not retarded.”

  You sigh. “Nomi…”

  “Sorry,” she says. “But anyway, I asked Mom about you guys… not that I needed to ask, but she told me and I was like… okay. What’s the big deal?”

  I look at you. You smile. “Outta the mouths of babes.”

  You’re happy because your kid is happy and your kid is happy because she pulled off a prank on me. We’re not gonna be like the fecal-eyed bores next door. We’re gonna have fun.

  You check in with me—Sorry if that was too much—and I tell you the truth—You guys got me—and we’re in flow, Mary Kay. This works. This isn’t the dream—your dream was unrealistic, like most dreams—and this is real life. Real us. So much fucking better and this is what it means to be part of a family. I get the plates and the Meerkat cuts the brownies and you pour milk into glasses and we sit around my table like the family that we are, going over it and over it, how funny it was, how good you were, how stupid I was to fall for Nomi’s little trick. This is love. This is love I never knew and we stuff our faces with brownies and you sigh. “What a relief.”

  “You’re welcome,” Nomi sasses. “I mean no offense, but you guys are so stupid. I will say, though, it was kinda fun watching you think you’re so sneaky and I am sorta gonna miss it.”

  It occurs to me that the Meerkat might be covering her real feelings with her snarky, no-fucks-to-give jokes and I look at you—Is she really okay?—and you nod at me—Yes, we talked. You smile at me and I smile at you and the Meerkat looks at you, she looks at me, she looks at the brownies, and she sighs. “I think I’m gonna puke.”

  When you stand up to get more milk, you squeeze my shoulder and your touch is different now. Better. You love me openly, right in front of your daughter, and it’s the first surprise party of my life and it’s the best surprise party there ever was.

  “Okay,” Nomi says. “Can we please talk about something that’s actually important?”

  You nod. I nod. Such great fucking parents!

  “Joe,” she says. “I know I’m supposed to say it was nice of you to let us move into your guesthouse, but it’s also kind of not nice of you because I mean… have you been in there? It’s so freaking musty and it smells like old people!”

  “Nomi, it smells fine,” you say.

  “Oh come on,” I say, looking at you, looking at your daughter. “Why do you think I stopped working on the renovations? Part of me thinks we’re just gonna have to burn the thing down.”

  It’s our first collective plural and you laugh and Nomi clamps her hands together. “Okay so can we please, please, please stop this stupid charade and just move in here already? I mean if Mom and I stay in there, I feel like we’re gonna die of some fast-acting lung cancer or whatever. Please, you guys. Please.”

  We laugh like a family and Nomi gives us space to talk and you are the future cofounder of the Empathy Bordello. “She’s being dramatic, Joe. It’s not that bad and please don’t feel like you have to say yes.”

  I too am the future cofounder of the Empathy Bordello. “Well, I was more concerned about you,” I say. “I won’t be hurt if you’re not ready to live with me just yet.”

  You punch me. Gentle fox. “Oh, please, Buster. You know I’m ready.”

  We call the Meerkat back inside—she gets the Whisper Room—and we pack boxes like a family and our first family hug happens naturally. It feels right. This is the story of life. People move on. After we move your things, we cook together and we eat together—burritos and salad!—and the Meerkat puts my cats on her Instagram—our cats, our house—and then the two of you hang out in the Whisper Room—women need to talk, about this, about me—and I’m not your codependent husband. I tidy up the house and I deal with the litter box and I turn off the light and get into bed to wait for you, hoping that you and Nomi aren’t sinking into some mother-daughter slumber party. And we really are in sync because I’m not in bed five minutes before I hear the door close downstairs and it’s real. That’s you on the stairs. This is you in my bedroom, our bedroom.

  “Well,” I say. “How’s she doing with all of it?”

  “I mean… she’s great. I don’t know why I was so worried.”

  “I do,” I say. “Because you care.”

  “Yeah,” you say. You stroke my hair. “I liked it when you looked at me at the table, when you wanted to make sure that it wasn’t just bravado on her part, that she really was okay about us being together.”

  I take your hand. “Well, I like it when you read my mind.”

  You air-kiss me and pick up a jar of face cream and rub cream on your neck as if you think we’re going to sleep and you gaze at my empty red wall. “I mean… can you believe this day? Can you believe we
’re actually here?”

  “You really had me going there for a second, so I’m doubly happy we’re here.”

  You rub some of that cream on my face and that’s more like it, Mary Kay. “Oh come on,” you tease. “We had you going for a full minute. You were scared.”

  I take that jar of antifucking cream and put it on the nightstand and I take your wrists in my hands. “If you must know, yeah, I’ve never been more scared in my life.”

  After we make love—this is our life now!—you wash your face and reapply your night cream and you are a woman, so you feel the need to rationalize your decisions. You tell me things I already know, that Patton Oswalt got remarried only a few months after his wife passed away, that he has a daughter, that no one gets to tell anyone how long the grieving process goes on. You take a picture of us and you crop the picture—we don’t need people to know we’re in bed—but we are Red Bed official and we are Instagram official and the Meerkat is the first one to like it and more likes are pouring in, so much love, and you like those likes and it’s our first night as a couple and the Meerkat texts you. She wants to know if she can take the blanket off my sofa and I tell you that she doesn’t have to ask.

  “This is our house, Mary Kay. My stuff is all of our stuff and you can both do as you please.”

  You kiss me on the cheek. “You’re my mind reader, Joe. I love you.”

  And you do. You do.

  39

  Yesterday I preordered two copies of a new Murakami because this is our life now. You’ve lived here with me for twenty-two sleeps in our house, where we make the rules and your books are all mixed up with mine. Your Murakami kisses mine and your Yates leans into my Yates and you are there, on the steps to the sunken living room, our sunken living room.

  “I don’t know if you know this, but we do have access to a library.”

  “No shit?”

  “You’re funny, Buster.”

  “Well, someone moving in… blending the books. It’s new to me.”

  There are times when I am a kid again, too young, and you are the Sassy creature who is too old for me, but then your hand finds the back of my neck. “Remember, we’re less than ten years apart so…”