Magnolia Parks (The Magnolia Parks Universe Book 1)

We get in the car and go. Just drive for a while in silence. Her chest is heaving. I’m watching her close for tears. They’ll come, now or later, I can’t tell yet with my focus split between her and the road, but she will cry, and I’ll make it better.

“Where do you want me to take you, Parks?” She looks over at me, a little dazed. Shrugs. “We’re not far from St Ives?” She nods. Looks back out the window.

Carbis Bay and Spa Hotel is where we land. I get us the best room I can last minute, then lead her up to it. How many times since we’ve broken up have I thought about taking Parks hand in mine and leading her up into a hotel room? I don’t know. A million over easy.

But her face is crushed. All of her is, sort of. I think she just watched her hero fall into a fiery inferno.

For as long as I’ve known her, Parks has had Mars on a pedestal. Never used to bother me because when we were younger she loved me like I was hers too, but after what happened—which is strange now, to think in context of all this—maybe it was too close to home? Like a mirror being held up or something.

Seven years.

The affair must have started when Parks was fifteen or sixteen and it’s a weird thought to land because Marsaili was the best. On weekends home from school when we’d come home drunk from parties she’d pick us up and bring us in McDonald’s and she and my mum had a deal they thought we didn’t know about, but it was a no questions asked policy if it meant we came home safe. It meant we always called one of them. Almost always anyway.

She used to chase me out of Parks’ bed with a wooden spoon—give gnarly smacks, those things—there’s a lot of shit Parks and I did looking back now that we’re adults, that we can’t believe we got away with when we were kids. Magnolia’s parents didn’t really give a shit. Her mum took her to the doctor to put her on birth control about a month after we got together. I don’t know it for sure, but I don’t think Parks was a planned pregnancy. That’s what I’ve picked up on over the years. Trickled out over time and bad conversations that shouldn’t have happened in front of us but did anyway because they were sort of emotionally negligent like that.

I wonder if her mum knows. I wonder what’ll happen to Bushka.

I sit Magnolia down on the bed, pull over a chair to sit across from her.

“What do you need, Parks? Whatever the fuck you need.” Then she reaches out and touches my hands. She looks strange in her face—a bit conflicted? Sad.

“I’m so sorry,” she tells me and her voice cracks a bit.

My heart falls off a ledge and I don’t know for what. “Why?”

“Nothing.” And then she shakes her head. “Beej?” I look over at her. “You know that night you overdosed? You didn’t do that on purpose, did you?”

“What?” I pull back. “No. Why would you—? No.”

She nods. Looks very breakable. “Was it about me?”

I sigh as I stare up at the ceiling. Big breaths. “Parks, there’s not much about me that isn’t about you.” I look over at her for a second, then eyes back on the roof. “But I wasn’t trying to kill myself, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Okay.” She nods.

Then she presses her hands into her eyes, shakes her head again and stands up.

“I need a shower.”

She gets up and starts walking there, then pauses without looking back.

“Are you coming?”

I stand up wordlessly, follow her in. Don’t read into it. She’s done this forever. She doesn’t like being in bathrooms by herself. Doesn’t like to be alone with her thoughts. Her brain gets loud in the shower. I sit on the edge of the bathtub, stare at my hands—do my best not to peek out of the corner of my eyes and watch her get undressed.

But I do peek and she’s watching me watch her. Our eyes catch, and she looks at me, maybe even like she wants me, then she swallows heavy and slips into the shower.

My knuckles are white as they grip my knees to steady myself—rein in how much I love her and all the things I wish I could do about it.

The shower runs and I wait a minute. “You’re taking this pretty badly,” I tell her.

“And how should I be taking it, then?” she calls back.

I stand up and move closer to the shower. “I don’t know.”

“Right.” She sounds justified.

“What are you avoiding thinking about in there?”

“Hmm?” she mumbles, but I can tell she heard me.

It’s steamy now in the bathroom. The windows are foggy. I lean with my back up against them.

“What’s wrong, Parks?” I fold my arms over my chest. She’s standing under the water; it’s running over her how I wish my hands were. She sighs. “She told me something once.”

“And what happened?”

She looks over at me, eyes all round and teary. “I listened.”