Magnolia Parks (The Magnolia Parks Universe Book 1)

Full Box Set dinner at Seven Park Place. It’s a favourite of mine, gaudy wallpaper aside. Tonight, I’m in the Gucci Intarsia wool sweater, red tweed buttoned mini skirt from Miu Miu, and Marmont fringed, logo-embellished, leather platform pumps from Gucci..

I do my makeup in a way I know BJ likes, which is barely any (that he knows of). Flushed cheeks and stained lips. He doesn’t realise it, but he likes it because it looks like I’ve just had sex.

We’re at a round table, the same one we’re always at, Beej on my right. Black shredded Amiri Shotgun jeans, grey Zenga Fear of God tee, the black wool Teddy Varsity bomber from Saint Laurent and black Con hi-tops. His arms slung around my chair. Not around me, around my chair. It’s not touching. We’re touching around touching. That’s how we touch most of the time, especially in public. It’s hard going from what we were: teenage love unbridled and set on fire, to what we are now: fucked if I know.

I have missed him though. I’m glad his arm is on my chair. I’m angled in towards him. If I were to lean back—which I won’t, but if I were—I’d be leaning back into him.

The dinner’s going fine, everything’s coming up roses. And then a song starts to play.

You know when you hear something and you recognise it, but you can’t place it, you look off to the side, far away, peering back into your past lives to find the memory? Christian and I both do this at the exact same time, and it is not lost on BJ. Nothing about me and Christian ever is.

It was an accident. Us, happening. I never meant for it to happen.

I was a wreck when Beej and I ended. Not one of those wrecks you slow down to peer at, just… pure carnage, keep driving, cover-the-eyes-of-the-children kind of wreck.

It wasn’t just what happened, it was an absence of him and the way my life had grown around him, like ribs around a heart.

My whole world felt off-kilter, and me and BJ breaking up caused the sort of breakdown you’d expect in a friendship group like ours. He got the boys; I got the P’s. But it was hard because those boys were mine as much as his, I’d loved them as long as he had. Longer, in some ways actually.

I hadn’t just lost BJ when I couldn’t be around him, I lost all of them.

Anyway, about ten weeks or so after Beej and I had broken up, I was having breakfast one morning by myself at Papillion, Christian saw me through the window, sat down with me, ordered breakfast, and then we accidentally spent the day together.

By the time he dropped me home that night, the strangest thing had happened: I realised I hadn’t felt sad all day.

It was unbelievable, really. Since BJ and I had broken up, I’d been shattered, all day, every day. Then one day accidentally spent with Christian Hemmes, and I felt a little bit like a human again. Like someone had taken me off the conveyor belt of my breakup.

So I texted him the next day, and we hung out again. And again, and again.

I don’t know at which point we morphed from friends into more than that; one day we got caught in the rain on Regent Street and we ran into a phone booth, and I was freezing and my hair was wet and ruined and sticking to my face, and he was laughing at me as he peeled it back, and it was like his hand on my cheek was the jumpstart one of us had been waiting for, because his hand slipped behind my neck and pulled me in towards him—our eyes caught before our lips touched—a tacit “are we doing this?”—then he kissed me.

I felt guilty when he did, but it was good. It was a good kiss. The kind you feel through your whole body. I liked it and I liked him, and I knew probably I shouldn’t like him, and I knew that me liking him would have killed Beej, and that made me like him more.

Christian was pretty torn up about it all, that was fairly obvious from the get-go.

The more time we spent together, the bigger an elephant it became. Me, him, and BJ; the ghost that followed us around everywhere.

Sometimes he’d try to justify it—all the ways we weren’t doing the wrong thing; I liked Christian first. BJ poached me out from under his nose. BJ cheated on me. Christian and I were friends before me and BJ were friends—but sometimes the justifications weren’t enough and he’d call it off. He’d bubble up with guilt, couldn’t believe he’d been hooking up with me—of all people. If BJ knew, he’d kill him. Christian would tell me he was sorry and it had to stop and we couldn’t see each other anymore. And actually, it happened so many times when we were together, practically weekly he’d end it; and I wouldn’t fight it, I’d just put on an episode of Outlander, and he’d be back before it was over.

It was maybe only a month into us that BJ and the boys found out, that horrible night where Jonah and BJ beat the living shit out of him, Henry dragging me out of the club, finding out on the way home the real reason BJ and I broke up.

Henry helped us sneak around after that. It was stressful and heightened and Christian is so handsome and so strong and so stoic, it was curious to me, and I loved not being alone. I loved spending all my time with someone, filling my rib space with someone else.

We ended a few months later anyway.

It was fun and tender and I liked him, I maybe even loved him, but I was completely still in love with BJ.

Christian knew it and I knew it, and he’s no one’s place holder, he told me and then he ended it.

I place the song around the same time Christian doesn’t at all disguise the small smile that appears on his mouth and I catch it unfortunately right when BJ spots us and his eyes go dark.

“What are you two smiling at?” He looks from me to Christian.

The table shifts uncomfortably. I shrug it off. “Nothing.”

“Nothing, man.” Christian swats his hand. BJ doesn’t say anything. His brows are low, his eyes go from me to Christian.

“Nothing?” he repeats. The P’s exchange nervous glances.

“Yeah.” I shrug airily, smiling up at him like I’m breezy, not at all like I’m a tiny bit afraid. He stares at me for a long few seconds then moves his arm from around my chair.

BJ looks at Christian, eyes full of resentment. “That wasn’t a fucking nothing smile, mate—”

“Beej—” I touch his arm.

BJ stares down at me and his eyes won’t budge. “What the fuck was that smile?”

He gets extra in his head about Christian and me when he’s not sober and he is not sober.

“When we were together, we went up to Gwynedd. It was raining like crazy. We got bogged in the mud. Only thing around for miles was a chippy, we went inside. They were playing this song—that’s all.” That’s what Christian said but there were two problems.

They were the bare bones facts, zero flesh, and we all know the flesh is the tastiest part.

That night we slept in the back of his G Wagon, and to this day it remains one of the sexiest nights of my life, and we didn’t even have sex. We never had sex, actually. It’s a bit telling, I suppose. We almost did, lots of times. But that night, I don’t know whether it was us slow dancing in the chip shop or us freezing in the back of his car, our breath fogging up the windows of the car we were stuck in ’til morning when roadside assistance arrived. Needless to say, he was very resourceful.

The other problem with what Christian just said is he didn’t take his eyes off me once as he said it. Also not lost on BJ. He glares over at his best friend’s brother. They’re not best friends themselves tonight, I can tell you that much.

“BJ—” I hold his arm, shake it so he looks at me. “It was so long ago—”

“Yeah, and you’re over everything I did ages ago too, hey?”

I frown, shaking my head. “That’s not the same thing.”

He pushes back from the table, looking from me to Christian. “You can both get fucked.” He looks back at me. “I’m going to.” Then he saunters to the bar.

My hands are on my cheeks from both stress and embarrassment. Paili reaches out, touches my hand. “Are you okay?” she whispers but I don’t answer.

I’m counting the shots he’s taking back-to-back. One, two, three, four.

Four. Shit. I know what happens next.

It takes him all of twenty seconds to pick a girl. Super long (probably hair extensions), platinum blonde hair, ultra-straightened. Deep red lipstick. Dark eyes. Tight dress. He leans in, boozy and dreamy, and I can see in her eyes: she’s in. Of course she is. How could she not be? They have another shot, this time together.

I look over at Christian, distressed.

“What are you doing later?” I ask him, mostly joking.

He looks at me a fraction longer than he should. “Fuck you,” he says, angry. I wasn’t expecting angry. I pull my head back, surprised. “Like, genuinely, fuck you.”

Then he grabs his drink, sinks it, stands, pulls out his phone and walks out. Jonah sighs, shoves his hand through his hair.

Henry looks over at me. “Nice one.”

I frown, confused. Perry dabs himself with a napkin. “Fuck me, the Daily Mail’s going to have a field day with this one.” Paili elbows him.

I look back at Beej at the bar—his whole routine, it’s always the same. He points to their eyes. “Are they real?” he’ll say. Even if they’re the plainest pair of brown eyes you could ever imagine, he looks into them in a way that makes you think he means it. Then he shakes his head, incredulous. How could eyes be that beautiful?

Did you have braces? He’ll nod at her mouth. But he does this so they’ll look at his mouth, because once you look at BJ’s mouth, you’re a goner.

He’ll bite down on his bottom lip and grin at you, and by then, you’re done for. You’re having sex with him in the back of a car or in a toilet cubicle. You won’t make it home. You can’t wait that long. You don’t have the will power. No one has the will power.

He’s up to the point in his routine with the lip bite, and my chest feels like someone’s sucked all the air out of me and it could cave in on itself. This isn’t new. He fucks around. That’s what he does. It’s why we’re not together, he’s done this before, he’s done this a million times—in front of me—and it never feels good, and I usually feel like I’m dying some, but tonight feels different.

Tonight, him doing that, being like this, feels frightening. Like he’s far away? Like he’s adrift? Or maybe I am? And it doesn’t matter normally, we’re anchored in the same port. I don’t know what port it is, but we always find each other there, but I miss him, and my eyes feel wet and before I even really know what I’m doing, I’m walking over to him, and then I’m standing there.

He glances at me, eyes bleary, now quite drunk. “Parks.”

“What are you doing?”

“You know what I’m doing,” he slurs.

“Beej—” I shake my head. “Stop.”

“It’s fine, Parks.” He shrugs. “Me and…” He trails. Touches the girl’s arm. “And…”

“Ivy,” she offers.

“Ivy.” He nods too heavy. “Are just going to have a couple more drinks and piss off.”

I shake my head. “You don’t need a couple more drinks.”

“And you know what I need?” He glares at me a bit.

I push some hair from his face, and I’m see-through. “Yes,” I tell him softly.

His face changes a bit.

“Now,” I stand up straighter, straightening the collar of his shirt. “Do you want to go home with her”—I ignore her—“or me?” His eyes flicker from me to her to me, then he nods his chin wordlessly in my direction. “Come on,” I pull him up, and he’s a bit woozy. I look over at our table, signal that we’re going to leave, and pull him outside, into the town car.

“Home please, Simon,” I tell my driver.

“Yes, Miss.” He nods.

BJ’s slumped against the seat, staring out the window. I’m sitting in the middle to be closer to him, not because he needs me, just because I want to. He looks over at me, tired eyes all raw with things he’d never say out loud if he were sober.

“He still looks at you like he wants you.”

I shake my head. “No, he doesn’t.” Though I don’t know, if I were to be entirely honest, that that’s entirely true. BJ doesn’t buy it either.

“I don’t want him,” I clarify.

Beej looks back out the window for a minute or two, thinking drunken thoughts. “It killed me when you were with him,” he tells the window.

I wriggle closer to him, rest my head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry.” He takes my hand in his, then lifts it to his mouth, kissing it mindlessly, then keeps it there.

I hope he keeps it there forever.

09:42

Paili

Is everything okay?

We’re good.

I think.

I think we’re okay?

It sort of seemed like you & beej were… together last night?

It sort of felt like it?

!!!!!!!!!!!😵☠️

Stop..

Holy shit. Do you think?

Is this happening?

Hahaha

I don’t know. Maybe.

Maybe not? I don’t know?

😑

13:02

Jonah

Man. What the fuck happened last night?

Nothing.

I went home with Parks.

After she cock blocked you.

Definitely cock blocked me.

Bro it was heavy couple vibes???

Hah.

I guess.

We’ll see.

You know her. Spooks easy.

Why don’t you try talking to her?

And not shagging a random this week?