Magnolia Parks (The Magnolia Parks Universe Book 1)

I’m jittery as shit, which is insane; I’ve spent more time with Parks than literally any other person on the planet. We grew up together. She’s seen me naked; I’ve seen her naked. She’s seen me fall, break my bones, she’s seen me cry, vomit on myself, overdose—she’s seen me at my worst, and I’ve taken her on a million dates over the course of our lives, and still, this one has me sweating fucking bullets.

Because I think it’s a big deal. I don’t know—we haven’t talked about it yet. But it feels like a shift. Like an “East Wind”, to quote my other favourite girl.

Like maybe—I don’t know—maybe we’re happening… again? It felt weird trying to plan this for her—we’re in fucking Greece—we flew here on her pilot boyfriend’s private jet. When we were babies I took her to Spain for our first proper date on our private plane. A couple of weeks ago I took her shopping on Avenue Montaigne because I felt like it. She thinks Evian tastes like piss but is “okay enough to wash your face with in a pinch.” Elton John practically gave her the Hope fucking Diamond for her birthday last year—

Luxe doesn’t cut it. Luxe is the usual to her.

And whatever this is—whatever’s about to happen—it’s a finite window, I know that.

Like the universe just gave me the time machine I’ve been praying for all this time and they’re giving me another shot. And it’s a trick shot.

I’ve got to ricochet the disaster of what we’ve become off of the glimmering light of what we were and land it in what we could be again. Both eyes closed, one hand behind my back.

This is my Hail Mary, and this has to work.

I’m waiting for her in the lobby. She’s running late. Always. So, I pull out my book, read a couple of pages when a pair of long legs appear in front of me.

She plucks the book from my hand and flips it over. The Little Prince. “You’re reading this again?”

Her hair’s out, skin’s extra brown, eyes extra bright. She’s in a top she’d only ever wear on holidays with a lilac bikini under it. I nod, trying not to smile up at her like a schoolboy because I fucking love her in lilac. “I read it every year.”

“I know,” she says, flicking her eyes, annoyed. “What’s it telling you this time?”

“That I’ve been tamed.”

“By whom?” She blinks and I know she knows.

I look over at her, my eyes steadier than my heart feels. “By you.” Her cheeks go pink and I sniff, amused and pleased. I stand up. “Let’s go.”

And then… I stop in my tracks.

“Are you wearing denim?” Can’t believe it.

Known her almost twenty years, never seen her in a pair of jeans in her life. A material for “the working man,” she says.

“Denim shorts, no less. With holes in them.” She grins, proud. “Do you like them?”

I feel self-conscious for a second, feel my cheeks go pink.

“I like you in everything,” I tell her and she looks chuffed, so I feel chuffed. I walk ahead of her a few steps and then turn back. “Also like you in nothing—”

She swallows heavy, follows after me and catches up after a small jog.

Like the feeling of her running after me.

Levels the unlevel playing field for a second and a half.

She follows me out front and we get into the back of a car that’s waiting for us. She slides into the middle seat; I climb in next to her. She’s nervous. I can feel it on her, an electric field of anxious energy.

She’s staring straight ahead, mouth twitching at nothing. Or everything, maybe? I like her feeling like this, like that I can make her feel like this.

“You good?” I ask, looking at her. She looks over at me, nods. “You nervous?” She pauses, swallows. Nods again and I toss her a tiny smile. “Same.”

That makes her happy. She tugs on the collar of my black shirt. Red and pink flowers and palm leaves on it. Bought it the other week while thinking about her taking it off of me.

“Gucci?” she asks, but she already knows. I nod, trying to be cool. “Black and green, dream print poplin.” She rubs the material between her fingers. “Viscose and silk-blend.”

I wouldn’t know. She could be speaking Russian. I’ve got no idea what the fuck she’s saying, but what I do know is that her index finger and thumb slips under my shirt and stays there. Hand on my chest.

I swallow heavy, staring at her. Her eyes don’t move, they stay on mine. Her hand doesn’t move either, and I should kiss her. I know I should kiss her. How many times am I not going to kiss her, you’re wondering—it’s a fair question and the answer is hard to pin down.

I think about kissing Magnolia Parks more than I think about anything else, literally in the world. It’s my go-to thought when my mind has a minute to spare.

Actual kisses that happened, hypothetical kisses that could have happened, kisses that should have happened, kisses that are completely fabricated and they just drift into my mind while I’m waiting for a coffee and I’ve thought about kissing her so many times since the last time I kissed her—that right here, right now, when I probably actually could—I can’t.

Because there’s too much riding on it. I can’t rush it. I can’t lose control. I can’t think with my dick. Today I have to temper how much I love her. Turn down the pot to a healthy simmer.

She can touch my chest, she does it when she drinks too much anyway. Half the time when we fall asleep in the same bed I’ll wake up in the night with her snug up against me, we’ve never talked about it. I don’t even know if she knows she does it, and I don’t want to tell her if she doesn’t know because I don’t want it to stop.

I’ve taught myself to live within the walls of our weird touching—it’s dysfunctional as shit—I know, but if being with her was heroin, what we have now is methadone. The shit isn’t the same, but it keeps the monsters at bay.

If I kiss her I’m a goner. I’m a goner anyway.

The car stops and we get out at a dock, a Rivamare waiting at the bottom of it. Not the exact same boat as the one from before, newer, fancier, but it does the trick, I can see it in her eyes.

Self-serving, maybe I’ll admit. Just my favourite day of my life is all.

I’m not going to shag her on the boat—promise. Wouldn’t be mad if she remembered that time on the boat and tried to shag me….

But actually, I just want to be alone with her someplace. I don’t care where. We’ll get on the boat. I’ve got supplies for the day. There’s a few beaches Henry and I found. All of it’s peripheral to just me and her.

I step onto the boat first, take her hand, pull her with me. Our eyes catch. That glass wall she always puts up between us doesn’t appear. She doesn’t let go of my hand.

I swallow heavy, clear my throat and pull my hand from hers. She’s not cut that I do either—her eyes go soft—I think she thinks it’s funny.

I walk to the wheel of the boat.

“Do you think I’m going to cook you and eat you?” she calls after me.

I look back, shake my head, smirking. “Nah, just fuck me up.”

She tucks some hair behind her ears and comes and stands by me. Undoes her shorts, slips them off, kicks them away. Doesn’t look away from me once as she does it.

I lick my bottom lip—give her a look and peel away in the water.

We stop for a while offshore of a little beach—Drymiskos or something, I think? White sand, water the colour of her eyes, no one around for miles. She’s picking at some cheese because she always has the appetite of a bird except for when she’s drunk and then she has the appetite of a kraken.

She looks over me. “So this is your big date? A boat, charcuterie and champagne?” She shrugs. “Kind of basic…”

I shake my head. “A boat, charcuterie, champagne and your favourite thing in the world…”

She raises her eyebrows waiting for the reveal, “Oh yeah?”

I point to myself. She rolls her eyes. “Am I not?” I ask, chin jutted out. She holds my eyes, downs her champagne. Holds it out for me to pour another. “I am,” I tell her.

She rolls her eyes again but wriggles in closer to me.

“So this is a date?” I ask, tilting my head at her.

“Is it not?”

I shrug, shyer than I want to be. “We just didn’t talk about it.”

“I mean”—she wobbles her head, considering it all—“it’s not much of a date.”

“Oy—” I toss a fig at her and she laughs.

She’s happy. I can tell. She eats the fig I threw at her, wipes her mouth with her hand.

“How’s Tom feeling about us on a maybe-date?” I ask, genuinely curious.

She breathes in and out, purses her mouth. “He’s quite a bit older than us—”

“—Not me,” I butt in to clarify.

“He’s thirty-one.”

“I’m twenty-five,” I remind her. “Not that much older.”

She rolls her eyes but doesn’t fight me on it. “Actually, I think at this point, he really just would quite like for me to figure… us out.”

And I can’t help but roll my eyes because fuck him. Truly. I mean that sincerely. Fuck him for being a stand-up legend of a man, who’s selfless and thoughtful and considerate and fuck him for making me look like a jack-off on my own date with the girl we’re maybe both dating but who I love more.

“You used to like him,” she reminds me gently.

I snort, amused. “I still like him—the smarmy prick.” I shake my head, thinking. “It was so much better when you just dated the duds.”

She nods. “Tom’s not a dud.”

And that stings me a little but it’s my legs that her legs are casually tossed over so, sorry England.

So our day goes like this. In and out of the water, drinking good wine, eating good cheese. If I close my eyes, we could be together, what we were before, somewhere far away, still out loud in love and each other’s. She and I, we edge closer and closer together, reasons to touch fall to the wayside and touching for touching’s sake becomes the name of the game. I hold her by her waist, I brush her hair behind her ears, I rest my chin on her head. Hands touching, sitting so close she’s nearly on top of me. We’re going to be together again, I’m sure of the trajectory now. She loves me, she wants to be with me, I can tell she does. I’m watching her climb over the walls she built around herself, tear down the old blockades, looking for a safe place to rest, and her head is in my lap as she looks up and then she asks me the worst thing.

“Beej?”

“Mm,” I say, looking down at her.

“Why did you do it?” I blink a few times. I know what she’s asking. I don’t know how to answer it. “Cheat on you, you mean?” I clarify for no reason.

Hurts me to say it. Hurts her to hear it. I should have seen this coming. Fuck—why did I arrange for a date with so much talking time, of course she’d bring this up.

Is she going to ask who again? I hate it when she asks me who. Her relationship with Taura is already in tatters, I guess it doesn’t matter—it doesn’t matter how many times I say it wasn’t her, she doesn’t buy it, and it doesn’t matter, because it’s done.

Parks holds my eyes. “Because you loved me—I know you did—”

I nod. I did, she’s right. Haven’t stopped.

“And the more I think of it, the more sure I become that you wouldn’t have done it without a reason—”

“Parks—” I shake my head. I feel sick.

“I know you wouldn’t have,” she presses.

I feel dizzy.

“So what was the reason?” Her eyes look desperate.

“I was drunk,” I tell her.

She shakes her head, unsatisfied. “That’s not a reason.”

I shrug, hopeless. “It is.”

She shakes her head, adamant. She’s sitting up now, facing me. “No—you’d been drunk before at parties without me—you never would have even looked at another girl. There had to be something else.”

I lift my shoulder up, apologetically. “There’s not…”

She shakes her head. “No, but you’re lying to me.”

“I’m not.”

I am.

“You are—”

“I’m not—” I dig in, because I can’t.

I wish I could, but I can’t.

“Beej—” She looks for my eyes. “I need to understand why you did what you did so I can process it properly, and move past it, so it doesn’t kill me forever, so I don’t have to hold it against you forever—and I know you would never just hurt me to hurt me, so tell me—please.” Her voice sounds small and I think she’s killing me. “Why?”

I lick my top lip, and my eyes can’t meet hers anymore because I know what I’m about to do. I know how it’s going to hurt her, sink her like an eight ball.

I say it anyway: “Because I wanted to.”

That hits her how I knew it would.

Like an arrow in the middle of her, watch how it changes her right there, on the spot. Like I just dropped a stone in the middle of a lake and now I have to watch it ripple out from her.

Her stomach sucks in from the blow, shoulders hunch. Her eyes drop mine; her face falls and she turns away from me. Walls up, armour on, swords out.

“Take me back,” she tells the water. “Now.”

“Parks—” I reach for her but she shrugs me off so violently it knocks me for six.

“Now,” she demands loud and clear.

And with that, the finite window closes.

The time machine the universe gave me catches on fire, collapses in on itself.

The trick shot fails. The disaster of what we’ve become blitzes right past what we were, circles the drain of what we could be a couple of times before it teeters off to the side and lands smack bang right where we don’t want to be.

I fucked my Hail Mary.

And this has not worked at all.