Magnolia Parks (The Magnolia Parks Universe Book 1)

“I like this.” He tugs on my dress, coming up behind me. Black, Amiri Thrasher jeans (extra torn knees, obviously), black Vans and the black and white raglan tee from Givenchy.

I stare at my reflection in his bedroom mirror. Tilt my head, squint my eyes and pretend like I’m the only girl who’s been in here lately. I make sure the necklace with his ring on it is tucked under and away where no one but me and probably he later can see it, then flatten the Peter Pan collar of the red, blue and white floral, satin jacquard dress.

“Miu Miu,” I tell him, catching his eye in the mirror.

I love his eyes.

He nods coolly. “Slept with a Miu Miu model last week.”

I hate his eyes. I glare over at him for a second, swallow heavy to compose myself before smiling carefree. “I don’t care.” Our eyes lock and hold and I don’t just hate his eyes but all of him for a second—for knowing me how he knows me, for seeing through everything I say, for doing that with anyone but me. He shrugs indifferently.

He, being BJ Ballentine, my first… everything, really. Love, time, heartbreak. He’s the boy with the golden hair and the golden eyes even though his hair is brown, and his eyes are green, the most beautiful boy in all of London they say—and probably I agree. On his good days. But why am I explaining him to you? You already know who he is.

“I know you don’t care.” He runs his tongue over his teeth absentmindedly. He does that when he’s annoyed and I can tell he’s annoyed, but it’s just for a second because then his eyes soften like they always do for me.

“You had a boyfriend at the time, Parks—” He looks for my eyes but I don’t let him find them because I like to make him think he has to work for my attention.

“Right,” I blink as I tell him again: “I don’t care.”

“Yeah,” he sighs, fake-bored. “Shields up, right?” he says, under his breath. That’s a thing that the boys say to each other when they see my heart switch gears.

He gives me another look because he knows that I’m lying, and our hearts have a Mexican stand-off with our eyes.

I miss you, I blink in Morse code.

I still love you, say the turned-down edges of his perfect mouth.

Fairly top heavy, like somehow it always manages to get stung by bees. Once upon a time, he balanced my whole heart atop that lip.

“When, anyway?” I ask as I turn on my heel and face him, grabbing his wrist to cuff the sleeves of his black denim patch scarves trucker jacket, also from Amiri, without his permission. I can feel his eyes on me, watching me, waiting for me to look up and when I do, it hurts in the centre of me like it always does when our eyes catch. A fish back in water. A sore relief.

“What?” Beej asks, brows low, watching me closely.

I tug on the centre of his jacket, trying to work out if it’d look better buttoned or not. I do the buttons up. He shifts his head, still looking for my eyes and when I don’t offer them, he lifts my chin up to face him, holding it between his thumb and his index finger.

The physical distance between us is meagre, but somehow still a forest grows between. Pine trees of mistakes so tall we can’t see over them and rivers of things we didn’t say so wide we can’t get around. We’re nowhere near where we thought we’d be, we’re completely off grid, and I feel lost and alone for a minute, but I’m lost and alone with him. “I was just wondering when, is all.” I blink a lot. It helps keep the memories at bay. I undo the buttons. “Because you were with

me almost all of last week so I just don’t really know when you had the time to fornicate with some very,

very white girl whose eyeballs are undoubtedly too far apart.”

He smirks down at me, amused. Tall, that BJ Ballentine. Six feet, two inches.

“What?” I shrug innocently. “Ghoulishly white with googly alien eyes is undeniably Fabio Zambernardi’s aesthetic.”

BJ squashes a smile. “You had a boyfriend, Parks,” he tells me again, and I ignore him because that’s beside the point.

I jerk his jacket back together, rebuttoning. “But I was with you almost the entire time, so I just don’t understand like, literally when—”

“Do you want me to share my calendar with you?”

“Your sex calendar?” I ask sharply, but I wonder if I should say yes either way, because it’d probably be handy to have for organising what nights of the week I’d plan to wash my hair, and also knowing his general whereabouts which I like to know at all times but cannot—under any circumstance—admit to, so I just give him a look.

His eyes pinch. “I don’t have a sex calendar.”

I give him a look. “Well, you certainly don’t have a work calendar—”

“I have a job.” He rolls his eyes.

“What, taking your shirt off for your Instagram fan club?”

He scratches the back of his neck as he grins sheepishly. “I’m just trying to pay the bills.” He shrugs playfully. “Not all of us are sitting on a cool $800M, Parks.”

“Quite right, quite right,” I concede. “Say, how is that small island your family owns off the coast of Grenada—”

He licks his bottom lip, grinning. “You had to say small…”

“—Smaller than mine,” I cut in and he laughs.

He looks me up and down, his eyes dragging over me like his hands used to—he takes a sharp breath in and breathes loving me out—he looks past me at himself in the mirror. He shoves his hands through his hair. “Where’d we land with the buttons?”

I undo them again and he peers down at me, a grin playing about his lips.

“Always trying to undress me…”

I roll my eyes, but my cheeks go pink. “You wish.”

I pluck the sky blue Le Chiquito Noeud nubuck shoulder bag from Jacquemus from the fourth level of my handbag shelf.

“I do wish,” he concedes, then peers around my body. “Got any buttons that need undoing?”

I smack him away, laughing. “Fuck off.”

“Come on.” He hooks his arm around my neck, pulling me to the door. “We’re going to be late.”

“So, Parks,” BJ asks, small smile, eyes pinched, “what’s your number one pet peeve this week?”

“This week?” I frown. We’re sitting at a table with the Full Box Set, our closest friends but even still, sometimes a thing will happen and then all the world falls to black and all we can see is each other.

“Well,” he shrugs. “I know what it is of all time.”

I arch my eyebrows. “Do you now?” He nods and I drum my fingers on the table, waiting. “Enlighten me.”

We’re at Annabel’s, and next time you’re there I highly recommend getting a bottle of the 1995 Dom Pérignon Rosé.

That’s not what BJ’s drinking though. He’s drinking a Negroni. Always a Negroni, unless the night’s heading south and then it’s 1942 Don Julio.

“Your number one pet peeve of all time… when other girls pay attention to me. Obviously.” He does a little shrug with his mouth, as if to say, “so there.”

I scoff and shake my head vehemently. “No. That’s… not even remotely close.”

Though it definitely is, and is absolutely, one hundred percent correct.

He rolls his eyes, ignoring the lie. “This week then, go on—”

“Girls who announce they’re not wearing makeup on Instagram who are obviously not wearing makeup on Instagram—”

“Oh,” chimes in my best friend, Paili Blythe. “I hate that!” She tucks a piece of her platinum blonde hair behind her ear and her little button nose pinches in frustration. “What do they want from us, a Purple Heart?”

I give her a “thank you very much” gesture before continuing on.

“I don’t really understand why being intentionally unkept is a bragging point.”

“Some concealer, perhaps?” Paili offers. “A nice creme blush.”

“Oh, what’s that, Charlotte? You’re not wearing any make up today?” I ask no one. “Yes, I know—it’s terribly obvious when you have the gift of sight.”

BJ runs his tongue along his back molars, smiling. Sniffs a laugh, shakes his head.

“Not everyone rolls out of bed looking like a cartoon deer, Parks—”

“I—” My face falters. “Is that—is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“Absolutely.” He nods.

“Come on now,” says Henry Ballentine, my oldest friend in the world. Looks-wise he’s much like his older brother with the brown hair and the smile that might make you pregnant, but with blue eyes instead of BJ’s green, and occasionally in glasses none of us are entirely sure he needs to be wearing. He pokes his head into the conversation, “We all know Bambi was BJ’s sexual awakening.”

“Ey, Bambi’s a boy,” Christian Hemmes announces, his Mancunian accent coming through, as it always does when he’s amused. We dated once, Christian and I. Sort of. We wouldn’t say that now, but we did, I think. And it was bad. Bad for me, bad for him (especially bad for him), bad for Beej (especially, especially bad for Beej)—bad for everyone, really.

But he is beautiful, Christian. Golden-y hair, hazel eyes, heavy mouth. Angelic almost—in appearance, not action. He’s terrifying in action, actually. I try not to think about it, what he and his brother do… They think I don’t know. But I know. I know everything about these boys of mine.

Henry and BJ both look confused and perturbed by Christian’s revelation.

I give him a glib look and turn back to Beej. “So if I’m a deer, what are you?”

“A wolf,” he tells me without missing a beat.

I roll my eyes. “The lone kind?”

He shakes his head, eyes going the kind of soft they shouldn’t at a table full of people we know in a room full of people we don’t. “The kind who finds a deer in the forest who can’t reach the top of her medicine cabinet by herself, or change her engine oil, or—”

“She sounds like a very advanced deer,” Henry whispers to his brother.

“Well, she’s definitely a complicated deer,” BJ tells him and I frown. He grins.

“Without the wolf the deer probably couldn’t have done up that dress she’s wearing.” BJ nods at me. “Wouldn’t have fed herself since 2004—so the wolf sticks around out of the goodness of his heart.”

“I think wolves eat deer,” Henry interjects unceremoniously.

BJ rolls his eyes, but I’m worried Henry is right.

Perry Lorcan—slicked back brown hair, big brown eyes, bigger smile, dug-out cheekbones and completely gorgeous, completely fabulous, shakes his head from the other side of the table. “Henry’s confused. Bambi was my sexual awakening. BJ’s was Ariel—” He gestures to his chest. “The shell bra. He’s a sucker for boobs.”

I don’t mean to, but I glance down at my chest and when I look back up, BJ’s watching me. He throws me a subtle wink and smirks.

I do my best not to combust into flames on the spot.

“So,” Beej leans in towards me, brushing off a rogue eyelash that isn’t on my face… just any old reason to touch me, really. “We both know what your real one is”—I try not to smile at him—“but what’s your fake all-time pet peeve then?”

I try not to smile at him. “You know this one too.”

“Too?” He beams and I roll my eyes. He pauses for a second to think. “Roses and ranunculus in the same bouquet?”

I nod once. “Fucking disgusting. Completely distasteful.”

He laughs from the back of his throat and I love it when he laughs at the things I say, I want to make him laugh forever but I can’t because he broke forever and still I fight the urge to kiss him anyway. Jonah Hemmes, Christian’s older brother, stretches his arms up from the other side of the table—always in all black. Black denim jacket, black T-shirt, black jeans, black Cons but he’s very shiny on the inside though—precarious nature of his job aside. His hair could be blonde, but I think it’s brown, and his eyes could be green, but I think they’re maybe a brown or a hazel? All his angles are sharp: sharp jaw, sharp nose, sharp tongue. Except not with me, because I’m his favourite.

Jo cocks his head at me. “She talking about Monty Python again?”

BJ shakes his head at his best friend as I put my nose in the air, indignant about it all.

“It’s a scar on the face of British cinema and I won’t hear another word about it.”

“I know what we’re watching tonight, then.” Beej winks.

“Yeah.” I give him a look. “Me too. We left Jack Bauer in a very precarious position last night.”

Jonah swats his hand as he reaches over and picks up my drink. “That poor bastard’s always in precarious positions…”

He samples the cocktail, then pulls a face of disgust. Too sweet.

Henry elbows his brother. “Last night?” he probes in a quiet voice—they don’t think I can hear them. “How many nights this week, then?”

“Every?” BJ’s eyes pinch. “What’s it to you?”

Henry cocks an eyebrow. “Taking that break-up of hers well…”

BJ’s jaw sets, defensive. “She is.”

Henry gives him a look. “Because you’re staying over every night this week?”

BJ’s defiant. “I stayed over every night the week before when they weren’t broken up, so—”

“Not every night,” I butt in. “Just three out of seven.”

They both look over at me, a bit surprised, as though they forgot they were having the conversation right in front of me.

“Four,” BJ whispers so only I can hear him and our faces are so close I’m dizzy and my breath catches on a shard of my broken heart.

Four? No wonder Brooks Calloway dumped me.

I don’t know why that pierces me, but it does. Like an arrow.

The four nights thing?

He’s the only man I’ve ever grieved the loss of, the only love I’ve ever loved.

Before I even know I’m doing it, I push back from the table, feeling light-headed—spinny and panicked—but I’m not having a panic attack, because I don’t have those, those are for people who aren’t in control of their lives and I have a handle on everything, absolutely everything, especially my heart. It just comes and goes in waves, the grief of losing him. Rears its head at funny times, in peculiar places.

Like three years after the fact, at The Dorchester with him sitting right there next to me in the Amiri jacket I picked out for him an hour ago, all unbuttoned like my brain goes whenever he’s around me.

Did you think I was talking about my boyfriend from a week ago?

How silly of you. So optimistic of my ability to let go of the sinking ship my heart is chained to.

“Is that Magnolia Parks?”

“Where’s her boyfriend?”

“Is she here with BJ Ballentine?”

“Are they together again?”

“They’re never not together.”

“Doesn’t she have a boyfriend?”

“I like her dress.”

“I hate her dress.”

“Are they fucking again?”

These are some of the things I hear as I weave my way to the loo, trying not to faint before I get there.

The four nights thing—that’s not why Brooks Calloway and I broke up, by the way. Brooks doesn’t know about that. Or he does, probably, because everyone seems to know more about me than I think they do. Brooks doesn’t care, he’s never cared. In its crudest form and most secret, unspoken terms, we had a mutually advantageous relationship, Calloway and I.

I was his ticket to the life he wasn’t quite born into, and he was my last line of defence. A phenomenal deflection and a flimsy ruse to explain why BJ and I aren’t what BJ and I actually are. Something to hide behind and call upon when being just best friends with my best friend momentarily stops filling the void loving him made in me in the first place.

I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror, push my dark hair behind my ears, tugging on my Mizuki gold and pearl hoops like a tick. I wet a paper towel. I press it into my cheeks, which are darker than usual because Beej and I were down in Pentle Bay for a few days, and my mind can’t stop racing because he was only not with me three nights out of seven last week and he still managed to squeeze in a Miu Miu model? Where did they meet? Was I there when they met? How many times, I wonder? And where did they do it? A hotel? His place? Which place? Never his parents’, his mum would kill him. His place with Jonah? Was she there after I was there? Did he change the sheets? The idea of sleeping in BJ’s sex sheets makes my eyes well up in a way I don’t understand but am quite familiar with at this point because it happens all the time. This is what he does. Other women.

We’re not sleeping together, by the way—despite what you’ve read in the papers. You mustn’t believe everything you read online but you can believe this: once upon a time, BJ Ballentine was the love of my life.

He isn’t anymore. And right now, that’s all you need to know.

“Are you okay?” Paili appears behind me in the mirror.

“Hmm?” I spin around. “Yes. Fine.”

Her brows furrow and she doesn’t believe me. “It would be okay if you weren’t, you know,” she offers.

“I know,” I shrug, airily. “We really only just broke up—takes some time to get used to—”

“I meant about the Miu Miu model.”

I frown. “How do you know about the Miu Miu model?”

She gives me a hopeless, sorry smile. “Perry?”

My frown deepens. “How does he know?”

Paili looks helpless. “Whoever she is, she couldn’t hold a candle to you—”

I look away from her and back at my reflection.

“Obviously,” I pout. “I practically have diamonds for eyes.”

Paili suppresses a smile.

“I don’t care anyway,” I say with a shake of the head.

I can tell she doesn’t believe me. Fuck.

I pull out the perfect coral lipstick from my Alexander McQueen skull textured-leather clutch; the perfect coral lip that makes my brown skin browner and my light eyes pop right out of my head.

“That expression”—he loves my eyes when I let him, BJ Ballentine—“it’s from the 1600s, did you know? When an apprentice of a master craftsman might have only been fit to hold the candle up for him for light.”

My best friend gives me a knowing look; her face softens, and she looks sad for me and I hate it when people look sad for me but she’s one of the people I hate it from least.

She takes my hand, pulls me out of the bathroom and then we walk right into BJ.

“Hey.” He gives me a big, weird smile.

I give him a weird look. “Hi?”

He crosses his arms over his chest, casually blocking my way. “What are you doing?”

I look between him and Paili, confused. “Going back to the table?”

He purses his lips together. “No.” He shakes his head at me like I’m silly. “Nah. Let’s go back in the bathroom.” He starts pushing me backwards.

“What are you—” Paili starts. “Oh.” She stops. She sees something I don’t. “Yeah. Bathroom.”

BJ nods at me. “Have… you… seen… the new… Dyson air blades they have in these bathrooms?” BJ whistles. Paili nods along enthusiastically. “Wow.”

“Yes,” I nod at him, like he’s a crazy person. “I have. Just now, in fact.” I give him a look. “You also have the same ones in your house.”

“Yeah,” he nods. “Bit weird, don’t you think? Should I get them taken out?”

“Well, I mean, actually, yes, if you don’t mind because they’re quite loud, and Jonah has such a small bladder—he’s up four times a night and I can hear it through the walls. Also, I personally prefer those disposable non-paper, cloth-y linen, towel things but could we not just talk about this back at the table, because while we’re on the topic there are some other things in your bathroom I’d quite like to change—”

Just then, I see my ex-boyfriend of one week holding hands with some girl I’ve never seen before a few tables from ours.

“What the fuck?” I say much louder than I mean to.

I’m actually making my way over to him before I realise I’m making my way over to him. Like a little masochistic moth to an idiot flame. Brooks Calloway looks up at me with his big, stupid, dopey brown eyes all round and surprised.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, hands on my hips.

“Um.” He looks between me and the girl he’s with. “Having dinner?”

I give the girl he’s with a cursory glance. “Hello, I’m so sorry, I’m Magnolia—” And then I look at Brooks. “And what the fuck is this?” I ask, hands on my hips. “You’re here with another girl?”

It hasn’t even been printed in the society pages that we’ve broken up and he’s out dating other women?

“I am,” he nods, sitting tall.

“What the fuck!” I all but stomp my foot in protest. “That’s so rude.”

He looks past me to BJ, who’s standing close behind me. He gives BJ a considered look and me a long one. “Is it?” He squints. “Hello BJ.”

BJ nods once, tight smile. Never been a fan, really. “Calloway.”

“Um,” I say, pulling my head back in disbelief. “Sorry, but wait, people still think we’re together. You’re here with another girl.”

“Right. But you’re here with another man?”

“I’m here with several men,” I clarify.

“Much better.” He nods but I don’t think he’s being sincere.

“I’m here with my friends.”

“You’re here with Ballentine,” he tells me with a look that makes me wonder whether he was less pleased with our arrangement than I previously thought. He clears his throat. “Anyway. This is Hailey—”

“He gets manicures, you know,” I warn her. Hailey glances at him, unsure.

“Man-manicures,” Calloway clarifies.

“They’re the same thing—” I start.

“They’re not!” he interrupts. “Not the same thing!”

I shake my head. “It’s a buff, a shape—”

“And a clear polish at the end,” Brooks says, with an innocent shrug. “Why do you need any polish at the end?” I squint at him. “Brittle nails.”

“Ooh,” I fake-coo. “Sexy.”

He rolls his eyes at me. “Hailey and I have been seeing each other for the last three to four months.”

I stare at him for a few seconds. “We only dated five.”

Calloway nods cheerily.

“Come on, man,” BJ says and scowls.

And up Calloway jumps, almost like he’s been waiting for this. “So which are you tonight, her guard dog or her boyfriend?”

BJ shifts in front of me a little, gives him a tight smile. “I’m whatever the fuck she needs me to be.”

“Oh,” Brooks nods coolly. “So you’re her bitch,”

BJ’s head pulls back, surprised. “Do you want to go outside?”

Beej steps towards him, and a barrel of nerves rolls over Brooks like a wave. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of a fight with BJ in general, let alone if the topic pertains at all to me. He can’t see straight when it comes to me, Jonah says. I put my hand on BJ’s chest, trying gently to push him away but he yells over my head, “Try it—” BJ tells him. “You piece of shit.”

“Woah.” I shake my head at them both, reading the room, watching the phones come out.

And, honestly, I don’t quite know what Calloway’s plan is here—he’s mad dogging him or something.

“Come and say that to my face!” he calls to Beej and something about his fight stance reminds me of the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz.

He’s a bit poncy, old Brooks, and while he’s not literally rolling his fists in the air saying “put ’em up,” he might as well be. Meanwhile, Baxter James Ballentine could be anything from a rugby player to an Avenger—why Brooks is trying to pick a fight with him is beyond me and I feel uneasy about it either way. I’m uneasy too about BJ punching someone for me. Again. Uneasy about the headlines in the morning. Again. Uneasy about what they’ll say, about us, about me. They’re not very nice about me sometimes.

“I did say it to your fucking face, you knob,” BJ yells and there are camera phones flashing and the wait staff loom nearby, nervous.

“Funny you mention it, do you know who loved my knob?” Calloway starts, looking smug and my jaw drops.

My eyes pinch as I point a finger at him. “Don’t you dare say it—”

BJ gets a look in his eyes—and it’s a bad look. I know it’s a bad look because suddenly the other boys are around us.

I can already see the headlines: “Ballentine cuffed at The Dorchester”, “The boys go starkers for Parks!”, “Magnolia Parks loves a knob” (—that’ll be The Sun). Brooks is never in the papers without me, maybe that’s why he’s doing this? He cares about things like the papers. Beej gives Brooks a long look, daring him to finish the sentence.

It hangs there. And I have hope for a sliver of a second that Calloway has the good sense to retract it all—

“She did.” Brooks points at me.

“That’s factually inaccurate!” I announce loudly to the entire room, because that feels like the most important part to clarify. “Not true! That’s—it’s—well, I’m sorry to say, it’s actually somewhat underwhelming, to be honest with you.” I give the new girl an apologetic look.

“I’ve seen it,” she tells me.

“Of course you have.” I nod at her once. “My condolences.”

“Hey.” Brooks frowns.

I ignore him and turn to look at BJ. His jaw’s tight, fists clenched, ready to throw down for my honour any day of the week.

“Let’s go,” I tell him, but he doesn’t move.

Beej glares past me at Calloway and I take his face in my hand, turning it towards me, ignoring the flashes of cameras swirling around us and for a second I don’t care if the Daily Mail runs a piece on us because it’s all bullshit anyway. Everything is. They all go to black. All I can see is him.

I look for his eyes.

I find them and they soften as soon as I do.

“Take me home, Beej,” I tell him with eyes he can’t ignore. “Jack has a bomb to diffuse.”

He takes my hand in his, kisses the back of it. “Fuck David Palmer. Bauer for president.”