Magnolia Parks (The Magnolia Parks Universe Book 1)

I plan it so we arrive fifteen minutes after the start of our reservation because I want the whole room to see us when we walk in, and boy, do they. Tom’s in a plain white T-shirt from Sandro Paris, the reversible, check bomber jacket from Burberry, the Gucci tapered, cotton-poplin trousers in indigo and the cornstalk and true white Old Skool Vans; Me—the gathered, floral-print, silk-satin jacquard mini dress by Magda Butrym, the fire-engine red, double-breasted cashmere and wool blend coat from Saint Laurent and the 105mm, bow-tie pumps from Aquazzura to match. Every single eye is on us—except BJ’s—as Tom and I walk into Le Gavroche hand in hand.

BJ’s not looking is intentional. Its intention is to infuriate me. It’s working.

“England.” Henry stands up to shake his hand.

Jonah follows. Christian just nods at Tom. BJ stands and hugs him. “My man,” he says, smacking him on the arm. “Good to see you.” He glances at me and nods. “Parks.” He looks so good. I don’t know why he looks so good. All he’s in is the black MX1 skinny-fit, distressed, leather-panelled, stretch-denim jeans from Amiri, black logo-print, loopback, cotton-jersey sweatshirt from Givenchy, and black Vans.

Bit of a nothing outfit, really. But still, my heart still goes funny.

Tom pulls my seat out for me, slides me in. Paili mouths at me, oh my god.

And I look at her like, I know.

I point to the P’s. “Do you know Perry and Paili?”

Tom shakes his head, then shakes their hands. “Heard a lot about you both though.” He sits down, leans back into his chair—the most confident man in the room, and he’s at a table full of men who could respectively be megalomaniacs, narcissists and down and out sex legend—so it’s really quite saying something.

He flips open the wine list, points to the 2005 Latour. “That’s the one I was telling you about.”

I lift my hair over my shoulders. “Oh, get it.” Tom orders it and he’s a jovial delight with the maître’d, which is usually BJ’s forte and he looks pissed. He’s avoiding my eyes.

“So,” Perry leans in. “You have to tell us—how did this happen?”

Tom stretches his arm around me and gives me a fond look and a small, covert wink. “Well, I was actually on the shittest date of my life the other night. Called it early, went to meet up with Gus at Raffles, and when I walked in, I saw her at the bar. Looked a bit glassy eyed—” He touches my face gently. He’s a very good foxhole. Meanwhile, BJ is not loving this story. He’s sullen and annoyed and muttering things under his breath to Jonah who’s occasionally elbowing him as subtly as possible. Tom pretends he doesn’t notice (or genuinely doesn’t notice because he’s a grown-up).

“We had a couple of drinks and I got a bit braver so I kissed her. To be honest, I’ve always fancied her a bit, but she’s always been otherwise… preoccupied.” His eyes dart over towards BJ just to annoy him. “It just happened that everything aligned that night.” He gives Perry a pleasant smile. BJ’s building towards something, I can see it in his eyes.

And then: “But you’re thirty and she’s twenty-two,” BJ pipes up. “So what, when you were twenty-three and she was fifteen, you were keen on her?”

“Shut up,” Henry whispers, looking embarrassed.

“No,” BJ shrugs innocently. “I’m just saying—it’s a bit weird.”

“You first felt her up when she was fourteen, man,” Jonah announces.

My hands fly to my cheeks. “Jonah!”

“What?” He frowns at me. “I’m helping.”

I scowl at him. “Are you?”

Christian chuckles, amused. Tom gives Beej a long, sobering look, then says, “Since she was of age.” He pauses, to give BJ another look. “I have always fancied her.”

“But you had a girlfriend then,” BJ tells him, in case he forgot. “So, once again, bit inappropriate…”

“Sure, yeah I guess. But sorry”—Tom pauses—“didn’t you cheat on her?”

Jonah makes a sound in the back of his throat and Christian’s now full-blown laughing.

BJ looks over at me, eyes all guilty, sorry, sad. His mouth goes tight, he nods once.

“So!” Jonah says loudly, commandeering the conversation, steering it into safer waters. “How’s being a pilot these days?”

Tom pushes his hand through his hair. “Yeah, good. Fun. It’s always fun. It’s never not fun to fly a plane, you know?” Then he glances at me. “Speaking of, I actually got put on a run to the Americas next in a few days. Do you want to come?”

I smile over at him, and my eyes catch BJ’s, who’s watching me altogether too closely, and his face looks a tiny bit afraid and I want to reach out and touch his face but I can’t, so I touch Tom’s arm instead.

“I wish I could—I have a work thing I can’t miss.”

Tom nods understandingly and BJ licks away a smile.

“So,” Tom glances between us all, “you’re all friends from high school?”

I nod.

He points to me and Paili, “Dorm mates?”

“Yeah,” Paili nods, gesturing between us. “But we’ve been friends since year one.”

Tom shakes his head, a little fascinated. “I kind of wish I went to boarding school. Mum would never send us away.”

“Oh, muffin—” I rub his arm with a sarcastic affection. “How terrible that your mother loved you so much she wanted to keep you around.”

He rolls his eyes playfully.

“It just always looked like fun,” he says.

“It was,” BJ says, looking just at me.

My cheeks go hot.

“There was a bizarre amount of independence given to us at such a young age,” Perry tells him.

“That developed into a co-dependency.” Paili laughs.

Jonah shrugs. “You’re in each other’s pockets all the time.”

“You kind of have to be though. Because you’re so disjointed from your family that you make your own hotchpotch one,” I tell him.

“Parks’ parents forgot her sixteenth birthday,” Christian says, nodding his chin at me

Tom looks horrified. “No?”

They did. It was sad and I was heartbroken, because even Marsaili forgot, which was so unlike her. Bridge remembered though, of course, and by the time we got to school, BJ and Paili had executed a redemption plan: Jonah procured the Hemmes family jet (their parents always asked the fewest questions), they all piled into the stretch my parents sent us to school in and off we flew to Paris.

I can’t even imagine how ridiculous we would have looked, the seven of us with our school bags in our uniforms, in the foyer at Le Bristol.

Beej squared up his shoulders and walked straight up to the concierge. “Booking for Ballentine. Three rooms.”

The woman’s gaze flickered from BJ to us all behind him.

“Is—erm, you ’ave an adult?” she asked, French accent.

“No.” BJ smiled at her, shrugging his shoulders.

“Erm.” She glanced around.

BJ slid his Coutts World Silk card across to her.

“Is this yours?” She picked it up, inspecting it.

“Are you saying I don’t look like the kind of person who would have a Coutts card?” he asked, giving her a playful smile.

She looked at him a little like a beetle—which never happens, because he was heaven back then, so she probably didn’t like men. “No, I think you look like a child,” she said.

“Here, take mine then.” I offered her my AMEX Centurion card, but BJ swatted it away.

“I can pay in cash, if you’d prefer?” he tells her.

The woman looked at us skeptically for a few seconds, then blinked, and began typing into the computer.

“Ballentine.” She pronounced it Bally-Teen. “Erm, you have requested—” She clicked her tongue in thought. “Two Junior suites and le Saint-Honoré Suite—oui?”

“Oui.” He nodded.

She ran his card through, then looked up and smiled at us as warmly as she could muster.

“Bienvenue à Paris.”

They all piled onto our bed that night. I cried a bit, happy and sad tears. “Parents are shit, Parks—” Christian shook his head, passing me a glass of champagne.

“Forgetting their first-born’s sixteenth birthday, shit?” I asked, eyebrows raised.

“All of our parents have sent each of us away to boarding school,” Paili reminds me. “They’re all shit.”

“Our parents don’t talk anymore,” Jonah offered, looking at Christian a bit uncomfortably. “They haven’t—not since—” His voice trailed.

Not since their sister drowned five years ago. Beej and Jonah held eyes, faces sombre. She’d been under the water in their family pool for more than fifteen minutes when they found her. They dove in and pulled her up. Jonah was too distraught, BJ tried to revive her, but she was gone.

Beej and Jonah were already best friends before that happened, but after it they were brothers.

“They can’t talk,” Christian downed a full glass of champagne before he continued. “If they do, they just blame each other.”

“Mum’s okay, she’s pretty normal still—like,” Jonah shrugged, “insane—she bought an octopus last week—but okay enough—she leaves the house still. But Dad—”

Christian pursed his lips. “He just sits and looks at photos of Rem in his office.”

“My parents still think I’m straight,” Perry offered. “I can’t tell them.” He told us before we could say anything—“My uncle’s gay. My dad won’t speak to him.”

“You’re their son,” Paili reminded him gently.

“I don’t want him to look at me how he looks at my uncle.”

BJ smacked him on the arm apologetically.

My eyes fell next on Henry, but he flicked his gaze to Beej.

“Erm.” He sniffed a laugh. “I don’t know—our parents are pretty great—”

“Well.” Christian rolled his eyes. “Fuck you, then—”

Hen and Beej laughed.

“My mum is pretty slutty these days,” Paili announced, despondent. “But only with younger men.”

“How young?” Christian asked.

“Like, university. First year.” She sighed.

“Your mum’s pretty hot.” Jonah shrugged. “Reckon I could have a crack?”

Paili smacked him in the head with a pillow before shrugging. “And I haven’t seen my dad in forever. He’s moved to Berlin with his new family.”

I remember looking around at the group of people assembled in front of me, piled on my bed in a hotel room I ran away to in Paris with my boyfriend, and thinking—maybe they’re what family actually is. Maybe they’re who have been my family all along. Maybe it was these people who had raised me this whole time.

It was Christian Hemmes in a stairwell when I was thirteen who told me what sex actually was. Not just rolling around under sheets and kissing.

It was Jonah that same year who first gave me alcohol, and then took care of me all night as I threw it up.

It would be Perry who, when he eventually did come out to his parents, taught me about taking pride in who I am, no matter what.

It would be from Henry that I’d learn about steadfastness and what it’s like to have a brother. Paili would teach me how to be selfless (a work in progress) and how to show up for the people you love.

And it would be BJ who would make me fearless and safe and hopeful all at once, and it would eventually be BJ who would strip me of those things one day also when he’d come home smelling like musk and orange blossom.

Tom gives me a sad look back in Le Gavroche. “I can’t believe they forgot your birthday.” It’s sweet how foreign an idea that seems to him.

BJ looks over at me, eyes too soft for this table. “We sorted her out.”

Tom gives him a small smile that maybe has seeds of genuine gratefulness.

“I like your friends,” Tom tells on the way home later that night. “It’s kind of special what you have.”

I nod, feeling proud of them.

“Even BJ?” I ask.

“Even BJ.” He nods. “Does the younger Hemmes have a thing for you? He was looking at you a lot—”

I swat my hands because I can’t right now. “He’s just a starer.”

Tom snorts a small laugh. He looks over at me. “So how’s the foxhole working out for you?”

“You did very well.”

“Yeah?” He grins.

I kiss him on the cheek as we pull up. “Yeah.”

00:14

Parks

Hi

Hey

How’s the weather, Beej?

Better now.

Goodnight BJ.