Magnolia Parks (The Magnolia Parks Universe Book 1)

I’m waiting for her outside her work, leaning back on the hood of my car.

Tom’s somewhere overseas. Got Henry to check with Parks that he was actually gone, and he is. Thank fuck. I miss her. I need a minute with her.

She walks out, chatting to some girl from the office and for the full two seconds before she sees me, I take her in. Bright green little sundress with puffy sleeves, matching strappy high heels that make her legs go for miles and miles. Her friend sees me before she does and elbows her. Parks looks up. Our eyes catch and maybe the whole world falls into step with her blinking—I don’t know.

“Hey.” I nod my chin at her.

“Hey.” She walks over to me, closer than she needs to. “What are you doing here?” she asks, like until a fortnight ago I didn’t pick her up every day she was in the office.

“Thought you might be lonely.” She gives me a look and it makes me snort a laugh. “Want a ride?”

She purses her mouth. “I think my car’s here already—”

“So send it home,” I say and shrug. She thinks for a minute, and I love how her mouth goes when she does. Then she nods and I open the car door for her.

We drive right into London rush hour and I’ve never been so happy to see a thousand gridlocked cars. She’s mine for at least an hour. She takes off her shoes. She wouldn’t do that around Tom, I know that much. She only comes undone around me.

“Still angry at me?” I ask, looking over at her.

“No,” she says, staring straight ahead. And I wonder if she’s telling the truth. Less angry, more sad? Way worse.

“Need a hard reset?” I ask, watching her closely.

She faces me. “Probably, actually.”

“Go on then.” I nod at her. “How many seconds for?”

“Fifteen.”

“Fuck me—” I snort. “You’ve never gone higher than twelve.” A smile twitches across her face. “Fifteen it is,” I concede.

We’re in standstill traffic. I turn up the song. “Say You Will.” Kygo. She shifts her whole body to face me, tucks her feet under herself.

I mirror her. “Ready?”

She nods. “Go.”

We’ve done this since we were in school. After every fight, stare at each other in the eyes for ten seconds or something—I don’t know why. I think she saw it on Oprah. It works though.

Especially with her—I find it pretty hard to stay shitty at her for very long anyway, but she can hold a grudge like you wouldn’t believe, but when we do this, I watch it all melt off her.

And here I have her in my car, stuck in endless traffic, and I get to just stare at her, unapologetically, for fifteen seconds. My thought process is almost the same every time.

One… two… Holy fuck, she’s beautiful. That’s my first thought every time we do this. She’s so fucking beautiful. I can’t believe she loves me.

Her eye-lids flutter, she always blinks extra when we do this.

Three… four… I don’t know that she does anymore. Does she still love me? I don’t know. I used to think she did. Sometimes I still do. But maybe it doesn’t matter because maybe you can’t go back after you fuck up how I did?

Tilts her head to the side, she only does that when she wants something from me.

Five…Six… I don’t know how I could do it to her. I don’t. I don’t know what was the matter with me or even how it happened. It just happened. And once it was happening, it felt worse to stop it. But I didn’t want to hurt her. It wasn’t about her.

She rests her elbow, chin in her hand, on the middle console. Her eyes don’t shift from mine and my heart drops forty feet.

Seven…eight… Will we ever get past this? Could we work again? It’d be different. I’m different now. I think it’d work. I think we could make it work.

I can see the undoing inside of her starting to happen as her face starts to relax.

Nine…ten… Look at her mouth. Fuck. I love her mouth. It’s sort of crazy to me that I’ve lived without that mouth on mine now for three years.

She can see me watching her mouth and it starts twitching with a smile.

Eleven…twelve… I remember the first time I made her smile. It felt like such a worthwhile pursuit when I was a kid. Still feels like a worthwhile pursuit now.

Even though her smile hasn’t fully cracked the surface, it’s too late. Her eyes give her away, always have. One look and they’ll tell me anything I need to know.

Thirteen…fourteen… She’s never needed fifteen seconds of this before, this is new territory. God, I want to kiss her.

And I think she wants to kiss me too. Her eyes flicker from my eyes to my mouth—against the rules, you’re not supposed to break eye contact, but I don’t want to say it because I want her to kiss me—our heads are so close, centimetres, maybe, barely between us—I can smell her perfume. She smells exactly how she has since forever, she’s worn the same perfume since she was fourteen. Gypsy Water. I hope she never changes it. Whenever she gets out of the shower and she puts it on, sometimes I hug her and she fights me because she’s strange about it now, like we can sleep in the same bed, she can touch my face when she thinks I’m sleeping, but if I want to hug her when the sun’s up and the lights are on, all hell breaks loose, but sometimes I do it anyway, and then the smell gets on me, and I can smell her on me all day how I used to before I fucked it all up.

Fifteen. She had me at one.

She gives me a small smile, and then looks back out the window.

“How’s the weather, Parks?” I ask, staring straight ahead.

It’s a toasty 21°. Barely a cloud in the sky.

She peeks over at me out of the corner of her eye. “It’s quite lovely right now—but I heard it might rain later.”

“Oh?” I frown over at her.

She nods, eyes on the road. “Ghastly weather to drive in. You might have to stay.”

I lick away a smile. “Safety first.”