Daisy Haites: The Great Undoing: Book 4 (Magnolia Parks Universe)

It’s about 2am, we’ve taken things inside and I can’t believe my fucking lucky stars.

Me and Daisy — I don’t know how. I don’t even really know what but I’m down for the ride.

We’ve been at it a good few hours now and Dais goes to the bathroom for a minute so I sneak out of her room to grab some wine from the cellar. I don’t want the night to stop.

I want her back.

It doesn’t seem like the time, really — her and her ex just calling it and shit. I’ll give it a bit, but I’m just glad to be here.

So I sneak down, grab her favourite bottle of red and creep back up. I don’t turn the lights on; I know these hallways even in the dark like the back of my hand. I’ve thought about them since the day I stopped being welcome in them.

I’m midway down the hall back towards the bedrooms when I hear a noise.

I turn around to spot the source, keep walking and bump straight into someone who starts screaming straight away.

I know who it is half a second into the first scream and clamp my hand over her fucking dumb-arse mouth.

Magnolia’s practically thrashing in my arms, freaking out in the darkness, smacking the shit out of me.

I turn her around and stare at her a few seconds, wait for her to realise it’s me.

“Motherfucker—” She covers her face, exhausted. “It’s you—! Oh—” She breathes out, relieved. “Oh my—you scared the shit ou—”

I look at my old friend, baffled. “I can’t believe you just said ‘motherfucker’ — Honestly didn’t think you had it in you—”

“I know.” She says, her hand on her chest, catching her breath.

“You fuck a gang lord for a couple weeks, Parks, and you get a real mouth on you.”

“I thought I was about to die — oh my God! Phewf—” She shakes her head, bending over, trying to catch her breath and then she pauses. “Hold on—” She stares at my lower body for a few seconds.

Worth noting that I am just in boxer briefs.

“Wait. Are you in—” She — Magnolia Parks — my boundary-less childhood friend, reaches down and plucks the band of my Calvins before gasping dramatically.

“J’accuse!!” She points at me like the idiot she is.

“Shut up—” I growl.

“Oh my God!” She whispers.

I give her a steep look. “Magnoli—”

“OH MY GOD!” she whisper-yells.

And then there’s this exchange of dialogue between us that’s maybe, in context of everything that happened before, miraculous. Also, it’s probably because of what happened before, because of the different ways we’ve known each other and the length of time our relationship has stretched that we can communicate at the rapid (and admittedly, ridiculous) speed that we do.

“You love her—” She pokes me in the chest.

“Shut up!” I poke her back.

“Just tell her!” She shoves me.

“Fucking stay out of it!” I shove her back.

“You’re being so stupi—” she tells me, smacking me in the chest a bunch of times and I shake my head at her wildly, right up in her face.

“Well, you’re always stupid and I never say anything.”

Her eyes go to slits. “Then you’re a terrible friend!”

“You’re a terrible friend!”

She smacks me in the arm about forty-five times. “I was voted the best friend in the whole grade when—”

I smack her back in both her arms. “We were nine!”

“You act like you’re nine!” She’s just hitting me now, all over, nowhere targeted or specific.

“What the fuck nine-year-olds are you hanging out with?” I ask, eyes pinched as I try to hold her by her head away from my body.

“I don’t hang out with nine-year-olds you stupid idiot!”

She tries kicking me. “I’m not a idiot, you’re an idiot—”

Then someone clears their throat and Magnolia and I freeze.

I have her in a headlock and she’s trying to backwards-kick me and has fish-hooked my mouth—

Both Haites siblings are standing there, frowning over at us.

Daisy’s in a t-shirt (mine) and knickers and Julian’s in a towel.

He squints over at us for a few seconds then says, “You two good, or…?”

Magnolia laughs nervously. “This isn’t what it looks like—”

“What does it look like?” Daisy asks, not smiling at all.

Magnolia does an over-exaggerated, dramatic shrug and I shake my head a lot. “I’m not still in love with her. At all,” I clarify.

“Right—” Daisy nods, not totally buying it.

“No, he’s right. He’s not. At all—“ She clocks Julian, eyes big and earnest. Like she wants him to know that part. “Like, at all.”

Interesting.

She clears her throat.

“I just think Christian’s being a bit of a—” She cranes her neck to stare at me for a few seconds. “…ninny—” I glare at her, she glares back.

Jules tilts his head. “Why’s that?”

“Because he won’t just tell Dai—”

And I clamp my hand over her mouth again and laugh loudly to muffle her.

“She’s drunk—” I say.

“No, I’m not!” She says, but it’s all muffled from under my hand. “I’m sober!”

Julian flicks her a look.

“Well, not sober.” She concedes, mostly to herself. “But not drunk. Sober enough to know—”

“Don’t listen to her—” I say loudly, then I realise I’m still holding her — our bodies practically tangled from fighting how we were. I make an uncomfortable sound and shove her away from me and into Julian’s arms who catches her without looking.

Magnolia gives me a stern look, pointing over at me. “I can’t say that I cared too deeply for that, Christian—”

“Oh no.” I roll my eyes.

Julian rests his chin on top of Parks’ head and pulls a face that’s both confused and probably amused.

And I reckon he knows because he glances over at his sister, one eyebrow up.

“What’s this, then?” He nods his chin at her. “Where the fuck are your trousers?”

“I took them off her.” I grin over at him, proud of myself.

He blows some air out of his mouth, uncomfortable, and Daisy rolls her eyes, turning on her heel and walking back into her room.

“We’re good, yeah? Parks? We’re fine?” I stumble to say to her, my eyes wide and pleading and I think she goes to say something, call me a name, tell me I’m weak and an idiot, but then she gives her eyes a little flick and breathes out of her nose.

She purses her mouth. “We’re going to have a little talk about that shove—”

“Right, okay—” I toss her a look. “Shaking in my boots.”

“Fine.” She stomps her foot. “Julian’s going to talk to you about that shove—”

He turns her around and leads her back to his room.

“I’m not,” I hear him tell her and she lets out a frustrated growl.

I go after Daisy, closing the door behind me. She’s sitting on her bed, eyebrows up and I laugh a bit nervously — I don’t know why.

Nod my head back at the door.

“Is he into her?”

“I don’t know — it’s hard to tell.” She purses her mouth, thinking on it. “He’s never had a girl around this long before, so maybe?”

“Never?” I blink and she shakes her head.

“Josette, when she flies in. Soleil when he’s in Paris — they never stay, though.”

“It’s been a few weeks now, hasn’t it?” I try to count backwards in my head, thinking back to when they started up. Daisy nods.

“But my brother doesn’t fall for girls—” She shrugs. “He doesn’t let himself.”

“I think he’s starting to…” I give her a look. “Magnolia—” I shrug like she’s a hopeless absolute. Maybe she is. Not that Daisy’s going to like that, and she doesn’t — she scrunches her face up and I feel like I need to tell her, even though I don’t want to.

“So, look—” I rub my mouth. “While we’re talking about her…”

Daisy looks up at me with these round, nervous eyes I hate to see on her.

“I kissed Magnolia.”

Her whole face folds in half, looks crumpled and I feel like shit. “What?”

“Not yesterday—” I shake my head quickly, and I think she breathes out, relieved. “In New York. Like, six months ago or something.”

“Oh.” She keeps frowning so I keep talking.

“I was sad. She was sad—” Shrug again, like Daisy’s going to give a shit that Magnolia fucking Parks was sad.

Daisy’s face has gone all pinched; she frowns uncomfortable and folds her arms over her.

“Did you sleep with her?”

My jaw goes tense.

“Almost.”

That looks like it winds her, shoulders slump a bit, the bend in her eyebrow goes deeper and I feel like shit.

“But you didn’t?” She swallows, eyes staring at me big and round.

I give her a look, confused. “We never have.”

Her face changes. “Never?”

“Nope.”

“Ever?”

My mouth pulls and I shake my head. “Never.”

“Oh.” Her mouth makes the same shape as the sound and her eyes drop.

“Yeah—” I duck so we’re eye-to-eye even though she doesn’t want to be. “I probably could have just clarified a bunch of shit for you if you’d just asked me—”

That doesn’t go down well as she glares over at me.

“Or you could have told me—”

“I’m trying to now!” I tell her, annoyed.

“Right.” She nods. Her mouth pulls as she flicks her eyes up at me. “Sorry. So what happened?”

I sit down on the bed next to her.

“Well, nothing, in the end—” I shrug. “A kiss in an elevator and some clothes coming off.”

“What clothes?” she asks without any hesitation.

I look at her, confused. “Like, literally what clothes?”

She stares at me and nods.

Fucking girls, man — they’re so dumb and weird.

“Uh — okay—” I toss Dais a face to let her know I think this is a weird exercise but whatever, I’ll oblige her stupid girl questions if it helps me win her back. I’d lop off my fucking arm if it’d help me win her back. “Her top… my shirt… buttons of my jeans.”

She’s staring at the corner of her room. “And then you stopped.”

“Then we stopped, yeah.” I nod.

She flicks her eyes over at me. “Why?”

I give her a big, dumb shrug. “Because of you— I love—” Fuck. I clear my throat. “I was — at the time—I was…” My voice trails off because I’m chicken shit.

Because I was in love with her then just how I’m in love with her now. I flash her an uncomfortable smile and she doesn’t give me one back. Shocker. She loves a good grump, this one.

“And I said that, and then Parks said she still loved Beej, and then it just felt…fucked—” I shrug again. “So we stopped.”

“Oh,” she says quietly. “Okay.”

I watch her, cringing a bit. “Are you… okay?”

She nods, not looking at me, and then she smiles quickly. “Yeah.”

“Yeah?” I lift up my eyebrows.

She lies back down on her bed, staring up at the ceiling.

She looks over at me,

“Thanks for telling me.”

I lie back down next to her.

“Just… happy to be here,” I tell her, trying to sound casual about it but I’m not. Only place on the planet I’d want to be and she looks over at me, best face I ever saw, with those honeypots for eyes and I don’t know what I’m doing, whatever just happened, what we’ve just started up again. I don’t care. Whatever it is, I’m in.