I want to relax so I lock the door behind me. I kick off my shoes and peel off my socks and the mink area rugs—fucking mink—feel like heaven. The bed is a beauty, an ornate four-poster California king that sits center stage. Ralph Lauren sheets—I check—and mountains of Virginia Woolf books in the built-in bookcase, hardbacks, paperbacks, new, old. She’s run a million marathons. The ribbons are the proof, stuffed like bookmarks into the books at random. I run my hand over the bleached mahogany dresser and this is good stuff. What a shame. You can barely see the top because of the plastic forest of hair products. There’s a giant TV, but that’s a given in a joint like this.

I want to go out on the terrace but the door jams. I yank it, come on you bitch, open up, and it does. But I lose my balance and I’m grasping at plastic bottles of hair goo trying to break my fall. It doesn’t work and I’m splat on the floor. I knocked over a bunch of bottles and a well-worn copy of A Room of One’s Own and a bunch of photographs fall out onto the mink. I can’t believe my luck as I flip through all sixteen beautiful, revealing photographs, all pictures of you. Peach is quite the photographer, as it turns out.

But the mark of a true great photographer is an independent eye. A great photographer can photograph a gutter and find the right angle and turn that gutter into a steel prism. These pictures are lovely, but these pictures are not art, Beck. No. These pictures are fucking porn and I have to sit down because this is a lot to take in, to know. Peach loves you. Peach wants you. My senses are riled; an enemy lives here and now I realize that these pictures are smeared, loved, and sticky. Some of them have fingerprints. She doesn’t just love you, Beck; she’s fucking deranged with obsession. I look closely and see streaky layers of lady juice and that’s why they all have this filtered look. She touches herself and then you, herself and then you. It’s been eons and no wonder the girl is so angry, so pent. The pictures offer the history of your body (thank you, Peach), and I see you at eighteen, maybe seventeen, in a loose tank top, no panties, asleep on your back, in a bed. Light pours in from the beach in the background and you are an angel, eyes shut, legs spread. I see you in a bikini dipping one toe into the water. Your ass is, ironically, a ripe, delicious peach. I see you on a beach at night, mounting some dude, naked. Peach has a good camera because I can see into your eyes and your nipples pop like buttons.

I have to get onto the California king. These photos, Beck.

These.

Fucking.

Photos.

There is a lump under the comforter and I lift the comforter and find a mess of Peach’s soiled, dank workout clothes and bloody socks. I climb over the mess and toss another one of her shawls, great for hiding her invisible erections I now understand. I spread out these photos and thank Christ the bed is big. I want to fuck every single picture. The one of you in high school, with bangs and the one of you in college, with hips and the one of you mid-fuck, the black-and-white version of you riding some guy. That’s not me in that picture but it will be me and I’ll grab your neck the way you like, and you’ll cry for me and moan, Joe. I spew a tankload of hot cum into the nearest fucking thing I can find: a musty sports bra.

Peach won’t miss it and I have no choice but to shove it down my pants and tuck it into my boxers. I take pictures of the pictures before I tuck them away into their little Beck box and I smile.

When I calm down and clean up I head downstairs and find you both on the terrace. Everything looks different now and it’s a problem. Peach is in love with you and you’re mine and life is never going to be easy with her playing sick, playing victim, playing taken, playing anything to get your attention. And I’m different too now, afraid to look at you with the pictures so fresh in my mind. Peach is drunk and babbling about being stalked. I sit down on the arm of a chair the way a detective might sit and hold my chin in my hand. “If I may, Peach. I notice that you’ve run a lot of marathons. Do you run every day?”

“Why?” she snipes. She wishes I were dead. It’s not because I didn’t go to college. It’s because of the way you look at me.

“Well,” I begin. “If you run every day, it’s very easy for some creep to figure that out and stalk you.”

You wave your hands and the shawl falls onto your lap. “Omigod omigod Joe! Peach runs every day before daybreak through the park.”

“Not every day.” Peach corrects you, but she lowers the volume on Elton, all the better to hear you sing her praise.

“Yes you do, Peach. You’re amazing, fearless, I mean you run in the woods.”

Peach shrugs but you can see her committing those words to memory: amazing, fearless.

“That’s not safe,” I say.

“Well, I live outside of the box, Joseph,” says Peach. “That’s just who I am.”

You pick up the list of men you girls have been working on and I can’t listen because of the slide show in my head of you and you and you and you.

“Peach,” you say. “Can you think of anyone else? Some guy you dated?”

She shrugs. “Maybe that Jasper guy. We had lunch the other day and I could see that I dented his heart. Who knows? Maybe I broke it and didn’t realize.”

It’s a fucking lie but I have to be strong. “This Jasper guy, did he lose his shit?”

If I said the sky were navy blue, Peach would correct me and call it midnight blue, so of course, she objects. “In my experience, men like Jasper handle rejection quite well, actually. Men like Jasper have such rich lives that they don’t tend to be overly emotional about their personal lives.”

“So, you have a lot of ex-boyfriends?” I say and I know I should step off.

“We’re all still friends,” she snaps. “We’re not seventh graders, there’s no drama.”

“Good for you,” I say and I want to choke her. “I’m not friends with any of my exes, too much passion. I can’t just toss that passion aside and go out to lunch.”

She doesn’t have a comeback and I lean over to kiss you. “Be safe,” I say.

“Oh Joe,” you say and you don’t need to be so dramatic. “Thank you for understanding. I do need to stay here.”

Look at all the love in your heart. You are loyal, sweet, and you rise up to walk me to the door and thank me again for being so understanding. We kiss good night as Elton John sings louder, sitting like a princess perched in her electric chair. I tell you to go back to your friend. You do.

20

A 2008 study in Germany did pretty much prove that a “runner’s high” is an actual medical condition. Unfortunately, for me, I must be only part human because I have been tracking Peach for eight days now and I have yet to experience the “runner’s high” that she talks about incessantly. It’s been almost two weeks with you staying at her house, just in case the bogeyman stalker returns. Ha. I’ve only seen you twice.

The first time, seven days ago: You invited me over because you’d gone back to your apartment to gather your things. You packed and asked me about my Thanksgiving plans. I told you I eat with Mr. Mooney and his family and you believed me. You said you are staying with Peach’s family because Peach gets depressed when they’re around.

We started to fool around and you stopped me and rubbed your hand on your forehead. I thought my life was over but you put your hand on me.

“This is my shit, Joe,” you said. “I get weird around the holidays because of my dad. It’s not the same since he died.”

I told you I understood and I did and then we watched Pitch Perfect and you hit pause when Peach called and you took the call and apologized to me and sent me home.