Daisy Haites (The Magnolia Parks Universe Book 2)

by Jessa Hastings

But I don’t like it. I don’t like the idea that we’re born bad because if we’re all born sinners, I don’t know if we can ever really wash ourselves clean.

I’m pretty sure it’s just because Magnolia doesn’t know how to be alone.

I’ve kissed all his scars. Most of them are my fault, but I guess isn’t that the way with first loves?

I’m making Magnolia Parks squirm or the part where everything she does, even prattle on incessantly like she has the worst case of verbal diarrhoea the world has seen since Trump left Capitol Hill.

I can see for the most part what we were: she was on fire, being burnt alive. I was the silver blanket she wrapped herself in.

I hate fighting with him—even though we don’t fight—I hate it when we do.[*]

About a snapshot moment for all the world to look upon, frozen the way the person who painted it saw it and felt it, like that forever for us to try to see it and feel it the same way. Hanging in the annals of time, and it is what it will be and it will keep being that for everyone until someone like my brother steals it.

Daisy’s that feeling you get when you’re floating on your back in a pool and there’s so much fucking noise around you until you put your ears under and it all goes quiet. That’s how she feels to me.

“I’m obsessed with him, I think he’s . . . every constellation in the sky.”[*]

“Were you jealous?” “Of you?” I blink. “Sleeping with him?” I nod once. “Yeah.” She smirks a little. “We don’t do jealous . . .” I give her a half-smile. “We do now.”

The universe, actually, is ablaze. The planets lose track of their orbits, the birds are poets now and all the songs written before this and all the ones that’ll come after this are about this moment; about how, when we’re standing, my ear rests right where his heart is, how one hand of his swallows a whole half of my waist. The beautiful nothingness of this, the most intimate moment of my life to date, a life that, actually, has been dotted with much intimacy and I think nothing will ever beat him resting his chin on top of my head.

I think I understand for a fleeting moment why everything that’s bad and painful and sad is worth it if you love someone, because I’ll remember how he’s looking at me now forever.