Mr. Nice Guy

by Jennifer Miller

  “I’m here,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “It’s all right. I’m just sitting in my childhood bedroom staring at my Green Day posters, regretting being here.”

  “You should never, ever leave New York,” she said, managing to laugh a little. “Unless you’re going somewhere exotic and far away.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I know that now.”

  “You had a bad Christmas, too?”

  So he spilled. About seeing Mel again and the disaster at the bar. Before he knew it, he was telling her all about his profile of Spragg and, finally, about Sofia—who, now that it’s over, he might as well admit: She’d been his sex coach.

  “You little cheat!”

  “Yeah, well, add it to my indignities.”

  Carmen seemed not to have heard, she was laughing too hard. “Honestly, I was wondering how you’d suddenly started performing so well.”

  “Wait, you admit that I’ve been performing well?”

  “Sure.”

  “But you’ve been writing all this—”

  “Lucas, it’s the game. You’re telling me that you’ve been honest this whole time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wow,” she breathed. “I guess I respect your integrity.”

  “But wait, so are you going to let everyone know about my sex coach?”

  “Nah.”

  “I’ve just given you deadly ammunition, and all you have to say is ‘nah’?”

  It was strange, Carmen thought, how she and Lucas had been physically intimate for all these months but had never had an actual conversation. Now, all of a sudden, with thousands of miles between them, she felt able to talk to him. “Sounds like you want me to let the cat out of the bag.”

  “No!”

  “Then I won’t. Anyway, the playing field has been leveled.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, Carmen Kelly speaking on the record!”

  Carmen groaned. “But Sofia’s gone. You’re on your own now.”

  Lucas was silent.

  “Were you in love with her?”

  There was a beat. Then, “I was—am—in love with her.”

  “It sucks,” she said. “But it’ll get better.” And she meant it. Though it was difficult to admit, she’d been in love with Jays. It must have been in love, because what other emotion could have cut her open so violently? Yet now, when she searched for that familiar searing pain, there was nothing. No wound even. All of the powerful emotion she’d felt for Jays—both the love and the anger—seemed to have never existed.

  “Better?” Lucas said. “Right.”

  “I’ve been there. You’ve got this darkness pressing in from all sides. You can’t see your hand in front of your face. But every day the darkness will recede a little, and then suddenly you’ll be able to see for miles.”

  “One day.”

  “Take heart. Everything worth seeing is out there right now, waiting for you to get your vision back. And all those people—new loves, friends, frenemies even—make Sofia seem as boring as a stock photograph.”

  “Frenemies? You wouldn’t, by any chance, be talking about a certain sex columnist?”

  Carmen chuckled. She liked this version of Lucas. Not the ambitious, indignant Lucas she sparred with on paper or the overeager, self-conscious Lucas she fucked, but the Lucas who was doing his damnedest to keep his head up.

  “Perhaps ‘frenemies with benefits’ is more accurate.”

  “Do you think—I mean, how would you feel if…” He paused, and Carmen, sitting on her couch, raised her eyebrows in anticipation of whatever was coming next. “… we were just friends with benefits?”

  “Oh, man, Nice Guy. That’s a loaded question.” What was she doing, flirting with him?

  “Carmen Kelly seems to like things loaded,” he said, which sounded vaguely like a playful innuendo. Though if Carmen asked him what he meant, she suspected he wouldn’t really know. Still, was he flirting back? This was starting to feel weird.

  “Yes, Lucas,” she said. “We can be friends.”

  “Détente!” he said. “The best news I’ve heard all week. Now, what’s next?”

  “Phone sex?”

  “Ugh.”

  “Why don’t we just make something up?” Carmen suggested. “Like we should have been doing all along.”

  “Isn’t that, I don’t know, kind of dishonest?”

  “We’re not exactly reporting on matters of national security.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Stuff in the magazine gets invented all the time. Like that stupid column ‘Ask a New York Barkeep.’ Where do the ‘reader’ questions come from?”

  Lucas sighed. “The editors make them up.”

  “That’s right. And the answers from the barkeep?”

  “The editors write those, too. I know, but—wait, hold on a second. Who’s that bartender in the photo they run?”

  “He’s an actor.”

  “What? But that guy looks so … convincing! Like he’s straight out of Central—”

  “Casting. Yup. He probably was. Did you know Central Casting is an actual company? And here’s another one for you: Jays’ editor letter? Housman writes it.”

  “Shit,” Lucas says. “That one’s just depressing. I’m a fact-checker at a magazine full of un-checkable facts! But still, it feels like someone’s got to stand up for honesty around here, and if it isn’t me…”

  “I’m not trying to pressure you. If you feel really strongly, we’ll keep going like before. I’m just saying that it seems we could both use a break.”

  “You think readers would buy it? You think Jays would?”

  “I do. I’ll write my column and send it to you. You can base your response on that.”

  “You’re going to show me what you say about me? How is this not a trick?”

  Because, she thought, for the first time since all of this started, the game failed to excite or even interest her. “Do you remember when you said you wanted the columns to help people? I know I shot you down. But I think you’re right. And I think if we really want to help people with their relationships and their sex lives, we should be working together.”

  “You really mean that?”

  He wanted to believe her; she could hear it in his voice. “I’m tired of fighting with you, Lucas.” She stood up and paced the apartment, waiting for his answer. For reasons she couldn’t quite explain, she felt a lot was riding on it.

  “All right,” he said finally. “I’m in. But let’s write the columns together, as a team. We can make them so hot that we’ll have half of New York coming in their cubicles.”

  Carmen laughed. “That’s the spirit! It’ll be a frenzy of sexual release. Then the city will pass out and finally get some sleep.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Nice Guy,

  Like many New Yorkers—that is, the people that moved here but are not of here, who call themselves New Yorkers as a badge of honor because they can afford to pay the rent—you are out of town visiting family for the holidays. I’m still here in the city, because I never leave. So this week, our assignment was to do what many New York couples do during the holidays: have phone sex. Which for you apparently means saying the words “suck my cock” over and over again, until you ejaculate into your pants. It was a pleasure, to be honest: For the first time since we began this sordid affair, there was no cock that I had to actually suck.

  People will be reading this while still on their holiday vacations, so I feel obliged to tell them what to do and what not to do, and we can use you as a cautionary tale. So let’s start here: Do not ask, “What are you wearing?” I know, I know: It seems standard. But it is a joke, Nice Guy. It’s a cultural joke, as cliché as it gets; whenever you get married, you’re also not supposed to walk up to strangers and say, “Take my wife, please!” (Though perhaps she’d be relieved.) Instead, you ease into it. You say something honest and a little jarring, something that makes a woman’s heart flutter. You say that you like imagining me
sitting there, that you wish you were there with me now. You take control. You tell me to start running my hand up my shirt. You tell me to breathe deeply; you like to hear my breath. You tell me it makes you hard.

  You do not tell me to take my clothes off. Come on, Nice Guy. I’m sitting here in a room all by my fucking self—what, I need to be naked on my couch, too? You’re supposed to be creating a moment, a fantasy we can both live inside while also, truth be told, just being turned on by thinking that the other one is far away, somewhere, their hand in their pants, thinking only of each other. There’s something powerful in that, isn’t there? To know: This person, in this room, is all alone right now, sliding their hand up and down their cock, thinking of me. Indulge in that, Nice Guy. Say you love picturing me there. Say what you’re doing, how it feels, how it really feels.

  “Suck my cock,” you said again. No. What was I going to do—say, “I’m sucking your cock”? I was clearly not sucking your cock, because I was speaking those words to you on the phone. And I was sure as hell not going to make some cock-sucking noise to you.

  “Do it, do it,” you said. I mean, Jesus, enough with the imperative! For a writer, you’re not very good at telling a story. Phone sex is literature, not a shouting match.

  Ultimately, I had to take control. And I know what men want: They want to be acknowledged. They want their sexual power to be noticed. “I want you to keep stroking yourself,” I told you, “as you listen to my voice. Go slow. Slow. That’s right. Touch yourself like that.”

  And so on. I think the slowness thing got you. It gets me, too, to be honest. People always picture passionate sex happening fast—bang, wham!—but slowness is underrated. You can feel small movements when you go slow. You can feel more intimate. You came on the slow stroke. I knew you would.

  But I will say this, my unfortunate, contractually obligated friend: For all its awkwardness, it was surprisingly nice to hear your voice. It made me realize how little we talk during sex. That’s surely my fault, at least in part. But voices are nice; in the heat of the moment, you can say things that sound silly in any other context, but that feel sexy just because you happen to be saying them while fucking. It’s a form of letting loose. Of giving in. We got a little of that on the phone, and I’d say we’re better off for it. I hope other New Yorkers do, too.

  Carmen

  Lucas finished reading the column and, for the first time since this project began, he felt genuine joy. He wasn’t reading this in the magazine or online, as he usually was. He was reading it in his inbox, because Carmen, true to her word, had sent it to him to review, along with a little note: “If we’re violating the rules of fact-checking, we can’t suddenly act nice to each other. People would notice. But I slipped in the word ‘friend’ there. Ignore the few words that come before it.”

  Now Lucas felt inspired. Some people read these columns for the judgments, sure.

  But some read them because they were undersexed schmucks like he used to be, and they genuinely wanted pointers. And Lucas was going to help them. Even though, well, he’d never actually had phone sex—with Carmen or, frankly, anyone else.

  Carmen,

  Let’s work our way backward. I think the last thing you told me before hanging up was, “I really need to wash my hand now.”

  When Carmen read this, she laughed out loud. Lucas was clearly ribbing her here, for all the times she made sex as un-sexy as possible. And then she laughed again because he was right: It was the kind of thing she’d have said. He knew her.

  And before that, I came. And before that, you were giving me instructions on jerking off—go slow, speed up a little, slower now. It was a turn-on, to be honest, although it also felt a lot like a live-action version of those “jerk-off instructions” videos you find on Pornhub. I’ll admit, I watch them sometimes. Some woman is sitting in a room, looking into a camera, making a jerk-off motion in the air as she sweet-talks a viewer into orgasm. Those videos are weird if I think too hard about them, but in the moment, with enough hormones flooding my brain, they’re just intimate enough to bring me over the top. I wouldn’t have thought you’d ever watch them, but I suspect now that you have. Carmen, you try so hard to seem organic, but I’m on to you. You’ve taken inspiration from the Internet, just like the rest of us. There’s nothing wrong with doing what works. If I like the porn, I’ll like it coming from you, too.

  Before the instruction manual, I think you came, but I just have no idea.

  I haven’t told you this before, but here it goes: I am genuinely, crazily turned on by a woman’s breath in my ear. That deep, sexual sigh, that small moan, that quickened pace. I once told a girlfriend about this, and she began putting her mouth up to my ear every time we had sex, which was great except for how quickly it made me come the first few times. I wasn’t prepared for such an overdose. Usually, those breaths only happen in passing.

  But the phone is a different beast. Your voice was right there in my ear the whole time. It felt more intimate, in a way, than your actual body. I wish you had indulged that intimacy. Carmen, you were so busy speaking, so careful with your words, that you forgot how impactful your wordless breath could be.

  In Lucas’s first draft of the column, which he emailed her, that last line wasn’t in there. Carmen wrote it herself and sent it to him. “It’s an artful insult,” she wrote. It felt strange, giving Lucas a weapon like that. But also, she was surprised to discover, it felt less strange than she’d expected. The columns had always been performative—both in the real sex and in the word fights that followed. If it was all an act at this point, why not perform both sides?

  And before that, I tried to walk us through a little fantasy. I pictured us together, here, in my childhood bedroom, trying to be quiet and not alert my family. I whispered instructions to you—to take your shirt off, to unbutton my jeans, to blow me. You didn’t seem that into it. I think the dialogue went like this:

  Me: “Suck my cock.”

  You: [silence]

  Me: “Yeah. Like that.”

  You: [silence]

  Hey, listen. I tried. I’m not really sure how I could have been more elegant without sounding like a bad erotic novel.

  Before that, we awkwardly talked about how we were going to start this thing. The transition from normal talk to sex talk is … not easy.

  And before that, I dialed your number and you said hello. It was the first time I’d heard your voice in days and it reminded me that I felt more lonely outside of New York than I’d been in a long while.

  Nice Guy

  Carmen had to hand it to Lucas: Since they started this thing, he’d become better at sex, better at writing, and now, it seemed, better at being an actual nice guy.

  CHAPTER 30

  It was New Year’s Eve, and Lucas was back in town—back in a city with no girlfriend and a still-evasive Nicholas Spragg. Tyler tried his best to cheer Lucas up, inviting him out for the evening, promising a “gentlemen’s night.”

  “Did Sofia tell you what happened?” Lucas asked. He was anxious that Sofia had been too forthcoming. But mostly, he was looking for any clue that her conviction might be flagging.

  “She thinks you’re great. I don’t think you should beat yourself up over this.”

  Lucas longed to ask Tyler whether Sofia had genuinely felt something for him. Just a week ago, he would have sworn his life on it. But now, without her around, he was starting to doubt himself.

  “I think maybe you got too close too fast,” Tyler added.

  “It wasn’t some casual fling!” Lucas protested.

  “I know I’m not your shrink, but would you permit me a moment of analysis?”

  Lucas shrugged.

  “You were with one girl for ages. You were engaged! Then you’re suddenly single. But all you know is Relationships with a capital R. So when you fall for someone, in your head, you’re right back in relationship mode—the place that’s familiar. You don’t know how to moderate your feelings, to check your emotional pa
ce with hers. Maybe you took off at a sprint, left her in the dust.”

  “You’re saying I rushed things.”

  “Well, yeah, that’s a simpler way of putting it.”

  “We dated for three months! We saw each other all the time! We were close, Tyler. In lots of ways. We opened up to each other.”

  “I’m sure you opened up to her—and I’m sure she listened. She’s a good listener. But what do you really know about her? I mean beyond the outlines?”

  “I know her,” Lucas said miserably. “I’m sure I do.”

  “Look, man, I’m sorry if I upset you.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Lucas said. “It’s all kind of raw.”

  “I bet. So look, if you want to come out, text me. We could go hunting for Nice Guy, and reveal his identity. I’d let you share the byline. That’d cheer you up.”

  When Tyler had gone out, Lucas shut himself in his room. He felt like crying, so he channeled his sadness into anger. It was time to wrap up the Spragg profile. Lucas was done chasing. He wasn’t going to let Nicholas tank this story. That’s not how journalism worked—the person being written about doesn’t dictate what’s written. Lucas opened an email draft:

  Dear Nicholas, I’ve been trying to reach you for some time now to discuss an incident that occurred between yourself and a young woman you knew during your senior year of college. I’m on deadline. If you’d like to talk about it, please call me tonight. Otherwise, I’m filing the story without your comment. Sincerely, Lucas.

  He hit “send.” He’d done his due diligence and now it was time to get to work. He began typing, barely looking up from his screen for hours. Midnight arrived with bursts of cheering and drunken revelry on the street, but the noise was drowned out by the clicking of keys and the voice in his head—as though some independent, maybe even celestial, entity were dictating the story to him. Not since that initial rebuttal to Carmen’s column had Lucas written with such conviction, purpose, and speed.