Magnolia Parks (The Magnolia Parks Universe, #1)

by Jessa Hastings

Also, I personally prefer those disposable non-paper, cloth-y linen, towel things

How many people will look at me like he does, not just like I’m the sun but like I’m the whole goddamn universe.

I remember hating him for dying before we had a chance to be okay again, because I always thought we would be.

Cut me and I’d bleed him.

his chest rising and falling in a rhythm that was the soundtrack of my youth

I was undone. Ruptured from the inside and bleeding out.

He’s a time bomb for me, do you see now? He’ll hurt me. He’ll always hurt me. I’ll never be safe with him, even if I’m always safe next to him.

Daisy Haites. Haites, as in, Julian. Yes, that Julian. The gang lord who somehow still manages to appear in GQ and gets write-ups in VICE.

I do my make-up in a way I know BJ likes, which is barely any (that he knows of).

And actually, it happened so many times when we were together, practically weekly he’d end it; and I wouldn’t fight it, I’d just put on an episode of Outlander, and he’d be back before it was over.

“Yep,” I said but what I really meant is I love you and you’re killing me.

You know how there are a few key moments in your life that stand out, like, your first kiss, and the first time you realise your parents are just people too and hearing Coldplay’s “The Scientist” for the first time and falling over and really fucking up your knee, like your first hospital visit, all that shit—meeting Parks is one of them for me.

Pls

And listen, I have sisters. No way was I going to tell this girl she couldn’t be better than me, even then at all of six years old, I knew it was true. She was. In every way, at everything . . .

“You probably would,” I agreed, picking up the ball and walking over to her. “I’m BJ.” “I’m Magnolia Katherine Juliet Parks.” She paused. “Henry’s my friend.”

She looked at me, really looked at me. “I like your face.”

I was sick, I think. That’s why we weren’t together. He and Jo had already planned it, he said he’d skip it, but I didn’t really mind. I was so tired and I didn’t want him to catch it.

We’d been together more than five years by then,

?!!

For so many years, his pain was my pain. But that pain, the one he was crying about then, was mine. He was crying my tears, feeling what he had done to me, broken by his own actions.

cried until I fell into a sleep that would last thirty-six hours.

Real

My devastation over what had happened and what he did was eclipsed by how much I missed him and wanted to be around him because he’s the kind of person you want to be around at all costs and believe you me—it was all cost.

Everything wonderful, everything magical, everything painful, everything beautiful and spectacular and wretched and defining that has happened to me happened with him. And I hate him for that.

they don’t speak the same silent language BJ and I do.

wearing a skirt from Prada’s 2017 fall collection which, if you recall, looked like its mood board was based solely upon Mackelmore’s ‘Thrift Shop’—”

Ew

Miu Miu

Girl loves her Miu Miu

Tom’s style is . . . Burberry when Christopher Bailey was on board. BJ’s style is Burberry in the Riccardo Tisci era, do you know what I mean? Of course you do.

Our eyes catch and maybe the whole world falls into step with her blinking—I don’t know.

“Well, I’m very experienced in leisure and also”—I give him a playful smile—“a dash of flagrant nepotism.”

I’m always happy to have an excuse to talk about him.

now he’s gone in a way where there’s no far away hope that maybe you’ll be okay again and you’ll work it out one day

I’m staring at him like he’s told me he’s got a slave labour camp in his basement.

Why

She just turned up on my doorstep. It’s why I don’t have girls stay over after.

it’s not just that I can’t move past her, it’s that even if I could figure out how to do it—I wouldn’t anyway.

She doesn’t move away from me—she never does when people can’t see us.

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.

“It’s a serious business, loving you.”

“There’s only one major flaw.” He looks at me. “Oh?” “He’s falling for you and you’re falling for him.”

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.

when I’ll look back at this moment some time from now, this is when I’ll mark it—write it down, dog-ear the moment in my mind that this—right here, is when the molecular structure of who Tom England is to me will begin to change.

A magnolia—chest. My birth year—inner elbow crease, right arm. His birth year—next to mine.

A bee—left hand. Another bee—right shoulder.

The date we first kissed—along his left thumb.

He gives me an unimpressed look that’s scolding-adjacent, which, for some reason, I find very sexy. Father issues, probably.

We’ve always done this thing where if something’s off between us, one of us caves, tries to restore the balance. I’ll text her a bee. She’ll send me an article from Nat Geo. Neither of us did that this time and I’m a bit scared to let myself think about what that might mean.

“Didn’t much like it when you were dating him—” “I know.” I roll my eyes. “Gang lord and all.” “Just a little baby one.” I shrug.

“This is me tossing my hat in the ring,” he tells me. “Just so you know.”

“I’m in love with her, Beej—”

Of course we’re going to work, even if I’m a round peg and he’s a square hole—I don’t care, I’ll shave down the edges of myself to keep him.

pull out my phone, check the date. December 1st.

“You know, you’re going to have to choose to forgive him some days,” she tells me. “It’s not always a feeling, forgiveness.”

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