You Love Me(You #3)(14)

I am the man you need me to be right now. Chill. Cavalier. “That’s too bad,” I say. “This could have been my very first Book Club.”

Your shoulders drop. “Well, I’d hate for you to miss out on your very first Book Club. One drink. One.”

No one means that when they say it and I open the door to the Harbour Public House and you walk in and we are a couple now. We make our way to a table and I tell you how much I really did like meeting your friends and you are puffed up. “Oh good! See, they’re nice, right?”

You sit in a booth and I sit on the other side. “And you were right,” I say. “Melanda isn’t mad. She followed me on Instagram…” White lie. I followed her first but she did reciprocate. “And she made me think about a lot of stuff…” Ha! “And her incubator sounds incredible…” As if her posters are doing anything for anyone but her. “You gotta love that, ya know?”

You gotta love me and you do. I’m in your circle, at your table. “Yeah,” you say. “She’s great, she has a powerful voice…”

“Extremely. Your people are good people.”

You smile. I smile. The heat between us is palpable and you look around and remark on how empty it is and it’s just us and a couple of guys in wool hats. Sailor types. Our jackets come off and it’s obvious you’ve been drinking and the barmaid approaches, a soft and pear-shaped pre-Mothball. I ask to see a menu and you look at me. “Oh,” you say. “I ate. I should probably just have a water.”

I smile, undeterred by another shouldprobably. “I don’t mind eating alone.”

You end up asking for a glass of tequila—frisky—and I order a Southern fried chicken sandwich and a local vodka soda and you promise to steal French fries again as you lace your fingers together as if you’re on a job interview. “So,” you say. “How’s the house coming along?”

“Shit,” I say. “So, it’s true. You really don’t talk about the book in Book Club. You talk about everything but the book.”

Your voice is loose with liquor but you’re nervous—it is a first date—and you’re babbling about Billy Joel—you’ve always loved “Italian Restaurant”—as you text your daughter and tuck your phone into your purse. You tell me about your Book Club, how my fecal-eyed neighbor Nancy picked apart the book. We agree that there is always a Nancy and I tell you about a reading I hosted in New York when a Nancy had notes for the author. We’re in flow. The talk is small, but we’ve never been like this, alone in the dark, at night, in a booth.

“Okay,” you say. “I have to ask. I know you were done with New York and L.A. But I’ve been thinking about you…” You said it. “And I feel like there has to be more. A single guy moves into a big house on Bainbridge. What’s her name? The reason you’re here.”

I groan the way any guy does when a girl wants to hear about his past and you plead. You endured three hours with a bunch of women you’ve known since high school, most of whom are married to men or women you’ve known for aeons.

“Come on,” you say. “Tell me why you really bit the bullet. Who are you running from?”

It’s the dream—you want to know everything about me—and it’s the nightmare—I can’t tell you everything about me. I learned the hard way, with Love, but there is no way for us to move on unless you learn why I am the way I am, handsome, available, good.

I start at the beginning, my first love in New York. I tell you that I fell hard for Heather (RIP Candace). It was lust at first sight. I saw her in a play—pretty as Linda Ronstadt—and I tracked her down at the playhouse.

You wipe your glass with a napkin. “Wow. You went all out for this girl.”

“I was young. It’s different when you’re young. You get obsessed.”

You give me a yeah and you are jealous, the idea of me obsessed with another woman. I sip my drink while you picture Linda Ronstadt on top of me and I tell you what you need to hear, that Heather broke my heart. You perk up. You want to know more and I tell you about the day she dumped me. “I’m checking out this apartment in Brighton Beach because I think we’re gonna move in together,” I begin, remembering that day on the beach, Candace. “It was a hot summer night. I’ll never forget the smell, the gnats…”

You’re happy because this girl made me unhappy and you pout. “Please don’t ruin New York for me, Joe.”

I laugh and I tell you that Heather dumped me over voicemail while I was in that apartment and you gasp—no—and I laugh defensively, lovingly, the way you do when enough time has passed and you’re ready to love again, in a way you never have before. “Yep.”

My chicken sandwich arrives and you pick up one of my French fries and you chew. “Wow. You lost the girl and the apartment.”

I take a bite of my chicken and you reach for another fry. We are clicking. You want the bacon, I can tell, and I pull it out of my sandwich like it’s a block of wood in Jenga and you pick it up. Crunch.

“If you think Heather’s bad, oh God, let me tell you about Melissa.”

You rub your hands together and this is fun. It’s cathartic for me to tell you about Melissa (RIP Beck). In this version, I was a waiter at a diner on the Upper West Side and Melissa came into the restaurant, sat in my section, and wrote her number on the bill. You take a big sip—Well, that’s aggressive—and I say that Melissa was too young for me. Your cheeks turn as red as the Red Bed. You like that I’m the anti-Seamus, that I want a woman, not what our youth-obsessed society would call a trophy.