Magnolia Parks (The Magnolia Parks Universe Book 1)

“—And he hasn’t really spoken to me since.”

My sister grimaces as she leans back in her seat. We’re having brunch at Neptunes.

“He never doesn’t talk to you.” She tells me like I don’t already know, like it’s not my every waking thought.

I told Tom what happened. He wasn’t so upset, he said he saw it coming. Actually, he said Gus saw it coming and gave him a head’s up.

Tom’s been around a bit, a numbing agent in the wound of an absent Ballentine.

He’s even stayed over a few times.

I’m not sure that’d placate BJ, but it’s placated me.

I think I’m starting to see why BJ has sex all the time now.

It does make me feel better, it’s a brief kind of betterness, very little permanence to the whole thing but there’s this euphoric few seconds where you can’t really focus on anything at all other than the good thing you’re feeling, and it’s so good and for twenty seconds I can’t think about how far away BJ feels or how fucked everything is these days, or who I’ll pick, because I know I’ll have to pick one of them soon, or how I’m worried about hurting Tom when I don’t pick him, because I don’t know how to pick anyone over BJ, or how Christian’s relationship’s seemingly gone to shit because of me without me even lifting a finger—all of it is all I think about when my mind isn’t forced to think about something else, and thusly—Tom and I have been having sex quite a lot.

He’s gone away for work for two days though, leaving me in the lurch with all my thoughts and the boy I love ignoring me.

“It’s actually wild, isn’t it,” Bridget considers. “Your capacity for male-driven drama.”

I give her a look.

“What?” She shrugs. “It is—you’ve got a lot of boys in the air.”

“I’ve got two boys in the air.” I pet my dark green, asymmetric, pleated, wrap skirt from Marni.

“Christian might beg to differ.”

I take a long sip of champagne, glaring over at her a bit. And she’s doing this thing she does—it’s shit and I hate it. She’s watching me, thinking, processing, reading. She leans back in her chair, squinting a bit at me—usually she’s doing this to me and Beej, trying to solve the unsolvable.

But me, she can read like a book. Crack me open, get straight to the core.

“I don’t know if it’s because of BJ or Dad,” she says. “Both probably.” She considers. “You might be addicted to male attention.”

“Fuck off.” I blink, horrified. “I am not.”

“It’s not your fault.” She shrugs. “Look at your face. Your face is the first part of the problem—”

I frown, touching it absentmindedly. “What’s wrong my face?”

“Nothing,” she says and laughs, pulling a piece of lint off of her script-logo, crew-neck jumper from Saint Ivory NYC. “Hence the origin of the problem.”

“I don’t much feel like being psychoanalysed, Bridge.”

“Too bad.” She leans in. “Dad never paid much attention to us, not enough. Not the amount little girls need from their father, anyway. But BJ—” She gives me a knowing look. “He was your saving grace. He… looks at you and sees the sun. So, you were covered. You didn’t need a dad, you had a BJ. For years, you were fine. For years, boys probably paid attention to you and you just didn’t even know, because all you saw is BJ. And then he cheated on you—”

“I’m aware.”

“—And that undercut all the attention he’d paid you ’til then.”

My brows drop a little.

“Sullied it. Made it untrustworthy and invaluable. So now I think, maybe you just collect the attention of men—”

“Fuck you—”

“—Keep it in your back pocket for a rainy day.”

“You’re being ridiculous.” I shake my head.

“Am I?” She arches her brow.

And I worry that maybe she’s not. I fold my arms over my chest.

“This thing with Christian is hitting Beej harder than I thought—”

“Well, yeah.” She shrugs. “He’s his best friend.”

“It’s not like I was shagging Jonah!” I say, mostly to make myself feel better.

“Right,” she says. “Just his other best friend who’s as close to him as his brother. Much better.”

I sigh, deflated.

“We weren’t shagging.”

She looks at me, dubious. “You and Christian really never slept together?”

“No.” My nose in the air.

“It’s okay if you did.” She gives me a look.

“Well, we didn’t.”

She gives me a look. “Why the fuck not?”

I shrug like there’s no reason, like it’s a mystery to me too, but it’s not. I know why. And there’s so much more to it than I can say.

“Beej thinks you did,” she tells me, and I have a pang of jealousy that my sister knows the innermost thoughts of the boy I love.

“I know. He doesn’t believe me.”

“That’s because BJ doesn’t know how to not have sex with people.”

I nod, glib. “Excellent.”

“Do you think you guys will ever work it out?” she asks, tilting her head as she watches me.

And honestly, the question hits me like a slap.

The idea that there’s a chance we might not has never been a reality on my horizon.

But all of that feels too personal to say out loud, even to my sister. I don’t want her to know I always assumed we’d just wind back up together and I also don’t want her to know that until this waking moment, I hadn’t realised that maybe we might not.