Magnolia Parks (The Magnolia Parks Universe Book 1)

BJ stays almost the entire time Tom’s in America. Nothing happens—but I guess nothing ever happens. We just stayed at my house, watched National Geographic documentaries. Sometimes in my bed. Sometimes in the home theatre.

Actually, the home theatre poses a few complexities, the largest of all being that I have to come up with new and creative ways every time we go in there about why Beej and I can only sit on the snuggle seat, even though there are several other options. These excuses range from “I think there’s a bee on that seat” to “No you mustn’t, that was just reupholstered.”

I don’t need an excuse for him to sit next to me—he’d sit wherever I tell him, I know that. The excuse is for me.

National Geographic is the height of romance for Beej and me—ancient of days relationship lore for us, from the first night we slept together. In the actual way that people sleep together.

It was all incredibly planned, our first time. Which is funny now when I think of it, because now I’m older, spontaneous sex seems much more exciting—not that I’ve had an awful lot of it over the last three years—but that night, the way he planned it—it all felt so romantic and so serious at the time. I guess it was.

After the Maserati debacle and a disastrous first New Year’s Eve in Mykonos (don’t ask), everything needed to be perfect, he said. He was adamant about it, the romance of it all, the lead up, everything was going to be perfect. I didn’t really mind much how it happened because I just wanted him. I’d never wanted anyone before, really. I’d never really had the want before. But when you get it, you get it, and how couldn’t I have gotten it with BJ Ballentine? It was like someone switched a light on in a basement full of hungry bears, that’s how I was every time BJ walked into the room. Like someone lit a match in my belly, there was a growing heat always under my skin. I would have sooner, if he let us.

We were just babies, really. Doing grown-up things with hearts the size of Texas and a lust as deep as the Mariana Trench. We were too young, I think. When I think about it now. Bridget says we were, that I transferred my paternal dependency onto him and latched. Hardly my fault though, is it? I didn’t send myself to boarding school at the ripe old age of eleven. I didn’t ask to have checked-out, ridiculous parents who preferred yachting with Jay Z over weekends at home with me and my sister. What was I supposed to do? Not become disproportionately attached to the world’s most perfect boy?

Anyway.

He booked us the Knightsbridge Suite at the Mandarin Oriental.

There were so many times where we almost—almost, nearly but never quite. So many times where it could have just happened organically, but it was so plotted out… so discussed. Paili and I went shopping for it.

It was the first time for both me and BJ, which is strange, don’t you think? It was such a big deal to him then but now he sleeps with everyone.

We arranged to meet at the hotel at eight. I skip dinner (thanks Cosmo Girl!)—and I remember walking into the lobby, wearing the sexiest, most uncomfortable underwear imaginable under my white Calvin Klein mini dress, carrying my overnight bag, and he was sitting there on a couch in the lobby, reading To Kill a Mockingbird for the billionth time.

Hair pushed back, lips pursed, thumb loosely between his top and bottom teeth, thinking. Focusing. Then he spotted me. First a smile broke out on his face, then I saw him swallow nervously. He reached for my hand, then pulled me into him.

“Hi,” he said, into my hair.

“Hi,” I said, barely meeting his eyes before I broke out into a blush. My discomfort put him at ease for some reason—a purpose to be braver, and his mouth twitched into a smile as he took my hand, leading me to our room.

He stole a few bottles of Moët from his parents’ cellar at home. It’s not my favourite flavour profile as far as champagne goes, but it will forever be the specialist drink in the world to me because we had it that night. We got tipsy pretty quickly, I think because we were so nervous.

We got into robes and stood far away from each other for a long time, pretending to be casual about what was happening, which neither of us had acknowledged since we got there.

“I brought Uno,” I told him, as I rummaged through my Marc Jacobs duffle bag.

He looked at me for a few seconds and then a smile burst onto his face. “Yeah?” He put his hand out to take the cards from me. “Best of three?” he asked, and as I nodded, our hands touched and there was a spark like when you jump-start a car. Our hands touching jump-started us, and then it was like something came over him, maybe finally the champagne kicked in, and he yanked me in towards him, as confident as ever, one hand on my face, the other on the small of my back, walked me backwards towards the bed, like he was already a professional and lay me down.

I’d never before had lust be met with having. I remember how heavy he was on top of me. I equated that feeling with safety for the longest time. Him lying on me like the best quilt until he lay like that on someone else and changed everything.

He says I talked the whole time. Nervous chatter about breadsticks being a seriously underrated food and how much I fancy the colour lilac, because it brings out my eyes. He still teases me about it. Because apparently I didn’t just nervous-talk at the start, I nervous-talked the entire time, even when I came. He says that in lieu of one of those pornstar climaxing moan-gasps, there was the briefest second of silence—a few staggered breaths on my behalf where I steadied myself, one nervous swallow, and then with flushed cheeks and the fullest heart in the world, I said, “It’s Brussels Sprout, not Brussel Sprouts, did you know? It’s not a plural noun. It’s a pronoun. Singular. Until there are multiple. Can you believe it?”

And he held me tight against him, laughing softly as his body trembled inside mine involuntarily.

I remember at one point him peeling his face away from mine, everything sweaty and sticky and breathy, bodies locked and intertwined.

“Wait—are the bees really dying, then?” he said, looking intrigued.

“Yeah, like, really, really alarmingly fast.” I nodded, earnestly.

And he pressed his sweaty forehead against mine and laughed in a way where I felt it through my whole body.

Afterwards, we spent the night tangled, googling bees and watching documentaries about them and I think that after, in bed with the bees and him, is one of my favourite memories.

That’s where we’re constantly trying to revert to, I think. To a place from before we began killing each other for our hearts to stay alive.

And it’s mid one of these reveries that Tom England waltzes into my bedroom to find my ex-boyfriend in my bed, shirtless, wearing nothing but the black and camel webbing-trimmed, tapered, silk-velvet and printed satin sweatpants from Gucci and a pair of Anonymous ISM socks.

Tom hovers in the doorway for a few seconds, reading the room, then he takes a few more steps in. It’s odd, actually. It all just hangs there, suspended in time. And I don’t know what any of it means. What the seconds mean, what they’re counting down towards. I can feel the room shift instantly to tense, but I can’t quite put my finger on why.

It feels like we’re doing something wrong. Maybe BJ thinks we are. But I feel that off Tom too. I’m frozen still, staring at him and out of my peripheral, I can see BJ, mouth gaping, like he’s been caught with his hands down his pants or something. He looks terribly unintelligent.

I’m out of my bed like a light, so is Beej.

“Tom!” I throw myself towards him. He catches me somewhat hesitantly.

BJ hustles, shoving his Dezi Bear slippers from Ralph Lauren into his weekend bag—he grabs a Celiné hoodie that he doesn’t even put on.

“See ya, Parks.” He does his best not to be grinning ear to ear. He walks by Tom, clasps his hands together as though they’re full of his shit, and does this weird “thank you” bow. “Later, man,” Beej says on his way out the door.

Tom doesn’t say a thing, just watches him. He waits a few seconds, just watching me. They feel longer than normal person seconds, and it doesn’t feel dissimilar to being sent to the principal’s office when you’re a kid.

He closes the door. Takes a few breaths, looks at me out of the side of his eyes. “Did you sleep with him?”

“No, well, yes,” I concede. “But no.”

He isn’t overly enthused by my sudden penchant for semantics. His jaw tightens. “Did you have sex with him?”

“No!” I shake my head quickly.

He gives me a look. He doesn’t believe me. Why would he? BJ was half-dressed. I’m in pyjamas. Which is about to be my next point:

“Do you think I’d wear these if I were attempting to seduce someone?”

I gesture to my printed Gisele pyjamas, the white ones with the little printed pink hearts from Eberjey.

“No.” He fights a hint of a smile. “But I can’t imagine you’d have to try that hard to seduce anyone—you could wear a shower curtain and he’d still want to sleep with you.”

Is he jealous? He looks jealous. The bridge of Tom England’s nose gets rosy when he’s jealous, I think. It’s quite cute. I purse my lips. “I didn’t.”

His eyes pinch and he shrugs like he doesn’t care. “Listen, it’s fine if you did, because this is—you know, we’re—”

I don’t like to see him flailing. It makes my chest feel tight. “We didn’t”—I shake my head as I touch his arm, trying to placate him. “I promise.”

He nods once. “Why was he in your bed then?”

I frown at the question. “He’s always in my bed,”

“What?” He blinks a few times.

“He sleeps in my bed all the time.” I shrug. “But it’s just sleeping!”

He blinks more. “He sleeps in your bed all the time but you’re not sleeping…together?”

“Right.” I nod.

“You sleep in your bed with your ex-boyfriend all the time but you’re not sleeping together?” he clarifies.

“Correct.” I nod again.

“That is fucked up.”

I pull back, affronted. “I beg your pardon?”

He laughs. “That’s so… fucking fucked.”

“No, it isn’t.” My cheeks have gone hot, but I’m glad he’s laughing. Tom England being sad isn’t something I want happening on my watch.

He gives me a look that’s equal parts amused and confused. “That’s weird,” he tells me, shaking his head. “You’re weird. That’s a weird thing to do—”

“Oh, alright, okay”—I roll my eyes—“like you’re so perfect, you’re like that, you have that—you’re just so—with your…” Fuck. “Your hair’s parted weird.”

He shoves his hand through it, smile cocked. Very cocky. Very sexy. Tom falls backwards onto my bed, staring up at the ceiling. I lay down, facing him. He looks over at me and goes back to serious.

“I don’t want to look stupid,” he tells me. “Don’t make me look stupid, yeah?”

“We’re in a fake relationship to bury my feelings for my ex-boyfriend. We’re being stupid.”

His cheeks do that thing again. The jealous thing. “Just make sure no one sees you being stupid with him,” he tells me. He rolls in towards me, kisses me on the cheek, ruffles my hair, and leaves.

Ruffles my hair!

Like I’m a fucking Labradoodle!

I watch after him—incensed and yet, mildly aroused.

I’m going to suggest that to my mother for the name of her next fragrance.

15:32

BJ

See you tonight?

Yep xx

Are you good?

Yep!

Is the weather not good?

Clear skies, Parks

You promise?

I’ll see you and Tom in a bit xx