Your best friend Melanda is watching movies at Fort Ward.
Your husband Phil is snorting heroin in heaven.
Your brother-in-law Ivan is blogging about his new gambling addiction.
Your buddy Shortus is in hell doing CrossFit and your daughter Nomi is alive but motherless.
I play our Lemonheads song and I can’t believe I’ll never see you again and I wonder what you would think of the tabletop Centipede game by the back wall of the Bordello. But I’ll never know, will I?
Acid shoots through my esophagus, all that leftover love with no place to go.
I lug a barrel of empty bottles out back into the dumpster, where the air is thick as bread and Florida makes you believe in the ether, the unknown. Sometimes I get paranoid. I picture you haunting me from within like a ghost I can’t escape, the shark inside my shark.
But there’s no such fucking thing as ghosts. I’m getting older and you’re not and it will take some time to adjust to this living arrangement, the one where you’re dead and I’m turning on the TV because the music hurts but the news helps.
Naked Ocala woman urinates on customers at Popeyes
Broward County husband tells police: “My wife called my girlfriend a whore! It was self-defense!”
Father and son arrested for selling meth at school bake sale
And then an ad for a new show on Fox: Johnny Bates: The Man You Hate to Love
After you fell down the stairs and our family splintered, I thought about going to Ray, trying to get my son back. But I was right about Ray. He has cancer. And if there’s one thing I learned from my time with you, it’s that Dottie has enough on her plate right now. She’s taking care of my son. She opened an Instagram account and I followed her and she followed me right back and sent me one important message: Ssssshh.
She doesn’t post as much as Love did, but it helps to have an online family museum and I’m happy my son has more privacy now. I also have a Google alert for “Ray Quinn” and “obituary,” and that’s a thing that keeps me going.
The door of the Empathy Bordello Bar & Bookstore opens and it’s only 11:32 and we’re usually dead until noon—even in these parts, people are shy about morning juice—and I have a customer. She’s not a person to me yet. She’s a blur in the doorway and she holds the door open with her hip. She’s sending someone a text and I can’t see her face in the white light. The AC is on and the cool air is pouring out, driving our planet into despair. If I ask her to close the door, I am rude because she’s talking to someone—her boyfriend?—and if I let her stay there like that, I am complicit in the destruction of this planet, of my heart.
She moves her hip and the door closes and we’re alone in the dark that’s not as dark as it seems. My eyes still can’t get there and I’m blinking, squinting, as if your eyes cover my eyes, warping my vision. I want to see this woman—I am alive—and I don’t want to see this woman—They all leave me, they leave me behind—but it doesn’t matter what I want. Eventually, my muscles adjust—the holes in our faces have free will—and like it or not, I see the world clearly, the woman who just sat down at the bar in my Bordello. She says hello and I say hello and it defies all logic—I lost everyone I ever loved, everyone—but somehow my heart is intact. It ticks madly, just like hers.
Acknowledgments
A lot of people helped me put this book in your hands.
My editor, Kara Cesare, responds to my emails, my anxieties as well as my fears. I am so lucky to have Kara on my side, a psychic book friend who challenges me and nudges me and knows what I’m trying to say. I am also grateful for the wisdom and whip-smarts of Josh Bank and Lanie Davis. Thanks for pushing me onto a plane! I’m constantly happy to have the support of Les Morgenstern and Romy Golan. My attorney, Logan Clare, is both hilarious and helpful. I love being a member of the Random House family because of so many warm and compassionate people: Avideh Bashirrad, Andy Ward, Michelle Jasmine, and Jesse Shuman, among others. And I thank Claudia Ballard and her team at WME for their enduring belief in my work, plus all those gorgeous foreign editions.
A lot’s changed since I wrote that first draft of You in 2013. (I think it’s officially clear that Penn Badgley was the right one to play Joe onscreen.) One way in which I don’t change is that I still get butterflies when I realize that my imaginary “friend” Joe exists in a real, meaningful way for so many people. Case in point: Natalia Niehaus, a Bainbridge-based fan of You Netflix who acted as my Bainbridge tour guide and was excited about Joe’s new home. I put my hands together for the people who read my books and hang out in the Cage, in the Everythingship squad, and for all those who spread the word about books—I’m looking at you, Mother Horror—because word of mouth, whether written or spoken, is a special thing, an author’s dream.
I don’t just bug my editors with late-night angsty emails about Joe. I treasure my friends and family, the ones who deal with my incessant screenshots of this page and nerves about that page and are understanding when I disappear. They make me laugh and they make me feel like everything is going to be okay, even when it’s July 8, 2020, which it is right now and… well, if you’re reading this in 2021 or 2061, I hope our world is getting better and doing better.
Love you, Mom, Alex, Beth, Jonathan, Joshua. XOXO
More from the Author
Providence
Hidden Bodies
You
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CAROLINE KEPNES is the author of You, Hidden Bodies, Providence, and numerous short stories. Her work has been translated into a multitude of languages and inspired a television series adaptation of You, currently on Netflix. Kepnes graduated from Brown University and previously worked as a pop culture journalist for Entertainment Weekly and a TV writer for 7th Heaven and The Secret Life of the American Teenager. She grew up on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and now lives in Los Angeles.
carolinekepnes.com
Facebook.com/CarolineKepnes
Twitter: @CarolineKepnes
Instagram: @carolinekepnes
www.SimonandSchuster.co.uk/Authors/Caroline-Kepnes
ALSO BY CAROLINE KEPNES
You
Hidden Bodies
Providence
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First published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, 2021
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2021
Copyright © Caroline Kepnes, 2020
The right of Caroline Kepnes to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-4711-9188-6
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4711-9189-3
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4711-9190-9
Audio ISBN: 978-1-4711-9192-3
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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