More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
He, being BJ Ballentine, my first… everything, really. Love, time, heartbreak. He’s the boy with the golden hair and the golden eyes even though his hair is brown, and his eyes are green, the most beautiful boy in all of London they say—and probably I agree.
“Shields up,
I miss you, I blink in Morse code. I still love you,
The physical distance between us is meagre, but somehow still a forest grows between.
Pine trees of mistakes so tall we can’t see over them and rivers of things we didn’t say so wide we can’t get around.
He’s drinking a Negroni. Always a Negroni, unless the night’s heading south and then it’s 1942 Don Julio.
“So if I’m a deer, what are you?” “A wolf,” he tells me without missing a beat.
so the wolf sticks around out of the goodness of his heart.”
I want to make him laugh forever but I can’t because he broke forever and still I fight the urge to kiss him anyway.
you can believe this: once upon a time, BJ Ballentine was the love of my life.
“How many fights do you need to get into before you understand that it’s too late. You lost Magnolia a long time ago.”
That voicemail he’ll leave me, that’s just what he says to me after every fight I have over her. They’re all over her though. That’s the point—not just because I love her and she’s her but because she’s my family.
and whether I love her or not, she’s mine.
Loving someone like I love her fucks you up a bit. Fucking up how I fucked up also fucks you up a bit.
“How’s the weather over there, Parks?” She looks over at me, and I see her mouth twitch with a smile. “Warm enough,” and she wriggles closer to me. “How’s the weather over there, Beej?” I turn on my side to face her. “Clear skies.”
Painful things can still be beautiful things, in case you didn’t know.
“She’ll always be mine.”
Normal is relative, I know. Normal for two broken hearts who can’t fit their pieces with anyone but each other.
I love you, he blinks. Prove it, I sigh.
And I remember, viscerally, the feeling that my chest had been sawed wide open and the nerve endings of my heart were exposed.
The most beautiful boy in every room, the great love of my life—how many loves do you get in a lifetime? I remember wondering that. How many people will look at me like he does, not just like I’m the sun but like I’m the whole god damn universe.
then I remember it, like a physical punch in the gut, how much I loved him. Really loved him. To the bone, loved him. Cut me and I’d bleed him. How much I needed him, still needed him, would forever, always, never couldn’t even if I tried, needed him. And I remember being deeply afraid of what my life would be like without him in it.
His voice, I remember it sounding like Christmas morning and my birthday and Valentine’s Day and home and I loved him.
He’s a time bomb for me, do you see now? That 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.
So, it doesn’t matter if I love him—which I don’t—but if I did, it doesn’t matter, even now. Because loving him is the same thing as tossing the keys to my heart to a valet without a driver’s license. He’ll drive me off a cliff.
She’s in all black, France. Magnolia never wears black.
She’s the only one. Only one whose shit I’ll put up with, the only one who fucks me over and around
and I’ll stick around for, the only person who’s ever had my heart in a headlock.
It’s hard going from what we were: teenage love unbridled and set on fire, to what we are now: fucked if I know.
“Yep,” I said but what I really meant is I love you and you’re killing me.
And sometimes I wish I could go back in time and tell little me to fucking run—that this girl is going to ruin you, she’ll be all you think of, all the time, she’s going to bake biscuits, grind up your heart and use it for sprinkles, she’ll hurt you and you’ll hurt her, and you’ll never, fucking ever, get past her. But I can’t.
What a mind fuck it is to comfort the person who just blew your whole heart open with a rifle.
It was easier to be his friend than not to be. Too much of my life, maybe even too much of who I am entirely can be traced back to him or us.
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.
“You asking me to marry you, Parks?” I squinted down at her playfully. “Not yet.” She smiled. “One day?” I asked, brows up. “Girls don’t ask.” She frowned, offended. “But I could?” Me. “You could.” She nodded, resolute. “I will.” I nodded coolly.
How’s the weather, Beej? Better now. Goodnight BJ. Goodnight Parks x
“How’s the weather, Parks?” I ask, staring straight ahead. It’s a toasty 21°. Barely a cloud in the sky. She peeks over at me out of the corner of her eye. “It’s quite lovely right now—but I heard it might rain later.”
Are you good? Yep! Is the weather not good? Clear skies, Parks
And Parks is the kind of girl parents dream about their sons ending up with—she’s honey on toast personified, and they’re eating her up.
And I wonder what love is like for other people… Is love for everyone wordless exchanges and a million memories that fuck you up to the bone?
“Parks, there’s not much about me that isn’t about you.”
And I know that he smells like a Sunday morning. Slow, easy, uncomplicated. Like fresh coffee. New towels and a light-flooded room. Oak moss, patchouli, bergamot, lavender. And if Tom smells like a Sunday morning, then BJ smells like a Saturday night spent in the emergency room—don’t think of BJ—and I just would love not to be in the emergency room anymore.
Marsaili used to say something about how
love can go sour like milk and then it turns to hate. Maybe we left our love out.
How many loves do we get in a lifetime? I really don’t know anymore—my
Maybe the ship’s not still sinking, maybe it’s sunk. Maybe we’re on the seabed now. Maybe the ship’s wood is starting to rot and all the anchors in the world can’t save us anymore.
Because I love her in a final way.
her eyes remind me of raindrops on leaves on cold mornings.
Hey How’s the weather, Parks. Fucked.
He’s the moon, and I’m the tides.
