You Love Me(You #3)(106)

“Oliver, for fuck’s sake, I didn’t post a goddamn thing about Mary Kay.”

“Ah,” he says. “But your MILF did.”

I take the hit and Oliver laughs and I hear Minka in the background. “See,” he says. “Minka says this is a double fuckup because your lady friend tagged you. Which makes it seem like you thought you were being coy, ya know, posting without posting.”

It’s no use fighting him because Oliver is right and Minka is right and I never should have let you throw us to the wolves. But I did let you do it, didn’t I? It’s not your fault for wanting to post a fucking selfie but it’s my fault for going along with it. You make me so happy that I got stupid. I did this to myself and I was doing so good. I did not kill Melanda. I did not kill Phil. I did not kill Ivan.

But I might have just killed us, Mary Kay.

The call ends and I can’t feel my feet and my eyes are twitching. I walk upstairs to our bedroom. You’re still sleeping but in the morning you’ll wake up and I won’t be here. I pick up a notepad on my nightstand. I grab one of your tchotchke pencils. Virginia Woolf’s head in place of an eraser. The absurdity of this moment. The horror. I don’t know what to tell you and my flight is in a matter of hours and I just promised to be here. With you. I scribble lies on a notepad—my bullshit words are sticks that will hurt you—and the last two are stones.

Love, Joe.

You know I love you, but you don’t know that I can’t avoid Love Quinn. I pull the covers back. I get into bed and you are in a deep sleep, but even in this state, you are drawn to me, moving into me as you make room for me. Such a good fit. The only true fit I’ve ever known. I hate that you’ll wake up tomorrow and realize that RIP Melanda was right all along, that men always let you down, that they bail on you because men do fucking suck. But so does Love, Mary Kay. So does love.





41





Bon Jovi said that true love is suicide and he was right. Love is trying to kill us, Mary Kay. I got off the plane and I got into the black car she sent for me and now I’m at the door to a honeymoon suite at Commerce Fucking Casino. She’s in the room. She’s listening to my George Harrison—Hare Krishna, Hare Forty—and I knock on the door like an ABC prime-time Bachelor-brained loser, like I want her rose. She opens the door and she is thin, thinner in person than she is on Instagram and she’s wearing a Pixies T-shirt, as if she likes the Pixies, and see-through panties. I smell kombucha and salad water and matcha and did I really love this creature or did I only love what it felt like to be inside this little creature?

She doesn’t kiss me. “Come on in, Joe.”

There are rose petals on the California king bed and the bathtub is full of Veuve and she thinks we can go back to that first night we fucked, in the tub full of pissy bubbles and I didn’t want that then, I don’t want that now, and I hate rose petals. I hate overpriced champagne and she doesn’t get me, not the way you do, and that’s when I feel something dig into my back.

A gun.

This is not a duel—I don’t have a gun—and Melanda was right—A GIRL IS A GUN—and if anyone should have a weapon it’s me. She stole my child.

“Ah,” she says, as she makes eye contact with me in the mirror. “So you don’t miss me.”

“Love, put down the gun.”

“Just say it. I know you. I feel you not wanting me. You don’t love me. You’re not excited to see me.”

“You have a fucking gun on me.”

“Oh please. That doesn’t scare you. Don’t forget, Joe. I know you.”

She doesn’t know me. She knows things about my past and I am not that man anymore and I slowly turn around and face the woman who made me a father. “Love, it’s a two-way street. Don’t forget that I know you too.”

She grunts. “Like hell you do.”

“Love, you don’t want me back. You can’t do what you did to me and then tell me that you ‘love’ me with a bed of fucking rose petals.”

She grunts. “You’re such a snob. You really are, Joe.”

“See that. There it is. All of this… I don’t know what it is, but it sure as hell isn’t a grand gesture and you can’t point a fucking gun at me and tell me that you want me back.”

“I’m just responding to you,” she says. “You started it. You don’t want me.”

“You paid me to go away. You…” I look around. I want him to be here—he’s my son—but I don’t want him to be here—she has a gun. “He’s not even here, is he?”

“Who?”

“My son.”

“Right,” she says. “Your son. See, it’s usually the girl who uses the guy to get the baby. It’s usually the woman who loves her kid more than her husband. But then, you’re not usual, are you?”

“What are you trying to say?”

“You fell out of love with me the day I told you I was pregnant.”

“That’s ridiculous. The baby was just as much a surprise for me as it was for you. Just because I was excited about becoming a father… Love, put down the gun.”

“No.”

“Well which is it? Rose petals or bullets?”