More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
I miss you, I blink in Morse code. I still love you, say the turned-down edges of his perfect mouth.
miss you, I blink in Morse code. I still love you, say the turned-down edges of his perfect mouth.
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.
brushing off a rogue eyelash that isn’t on my face… just any old reason to touch me, really.
I don’t know how he knows I lost Magnolia, not that she lost me—but
don’t know how he knows I lost Magnolia, not that she lost me—but
Loving someone like I love her fucks you up a bit. Fucking up how I fucked up also fucks you up a bit.
hate this. Hate whatever we are. Hate that I can’t just rush her and kiss her and take her in the shower. Hate this box she’s put me in, hate the walls she’s built around her. Hate these bones of a relationship, but it’s all we have left. And it’s the best part of my day.
Hate whatever we are. Hate that I can’t just rush her and kiss her and take her in the shower. Hate this box she’s put me in, hate the walls she’s built around her. Hate these bones of a relationship, but it’s all we have left. And it’s the best part of my day.
He is a beautiful part of life, I suppose. Painful things can still be beautiful things, in case you didn’t know.
But I’ve never really liked it when he’s not here—we were together too long, loved each other in such an intertwined way that his absence makes me feel uneasy.
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.
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.
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.
And it doesn’t matter normally, we’re anchored in the same port. I don’t know what port it is, but we always find each other there, but I miss him,
I learnt to look him in the eye again, I learnt not to cry every time I left him again, I learnt how to breathe through him flirting with other people, I realised we could still talk to each other without using words, and somehow, in the bloodshed of it all, I found my friend.
She never gave my ring back. We’ve had each other’s family signet rings since we were rug rats.
Fifteen. She had me at one.
Magnets. That’s what the boys say about us. Sometimes we’re the same pole, sometimes we’re opposites, but we move each other. Pushing away, pulling closer.
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.
Heart on her sleeve, mine in her pocket.
A magnolia—chest. My birth year—inner elbow crease, right arm. His birth year—next to mine. National Geographic—down his forearm. My back begins to arch. A bee—left hand. Another bee—right shoulder. The Uno Reverse Card—left calf. A deer—left arm. Tom presses my hand into the bed. ‘Billie’—along a rib, left side. A beach umbrella—left upper arm. Coordinates from Dartmouth—inner elbow crease, left arm. The date we first kissed—along his left thumb. My breath is fast. Soon I’ll lose it. A lilac—left middle finger. The date we first slept together—left forearm. ‘In every lovely summers day’—right
...more
Forget-me-knot—right thumb.
hold her face in both my hands—heavy, light eyes, that blushing mouth of hers with those cheeks that always go pink when I’m with her. The caramel skin, the hand I’ve held since I was fifteen, the curves of her body that fit into me like we’re split from the same stone. How will I ever get past her? I won’t. Can’t. Couldn’t.
He’s the moon, and I’m the tides.
BJ and I are unquantifiable. It’s the nuances of all the ways we love each other and have loved each other and keep on accidentally loving each other and it’s the intricacies of our threads we’ve knotted together and it’s the secrets we know about each other and it’s that one broken heart we share.
want to fight with her, feel the closeness I feel when we do—when we say things we shouldn’t and go too far and the other night when she shoved my face away it broke me and made me fly at the same time, because she can only hate me how she hates me because she loves me how she loves me.
She could have lopped off my entire arm and if she looked a bit sad about it, I’d offer her my other one if it’d cheer her up.
Because if she loved herself more than she loves me, she’d have fucked off years ago. I don’t deserve all the chances she half-tries to give me. And if I loved myself more than I love her, I would have cut the ties between us as soon as she started to strangle me with them. If I loved me more I would have let me drift away, into the dark, out of her light but I didn’t, and I couldn’t and I won’t because when it comes to her, I have zero instinct for self-preservation. I’ll die in her arms or at her doorstep trying to get back into them, I don’t give a fuck.
BJ is merry of heart, the best kiss of your life and is probably actively making an Instagram story with a puppy or something, but Tom is a grown-up man, with a wristwatch and a sense of self and time.
I can see it in how the butterflies flap in the halo over her head, in the way the light reflects off her thoughts, the way that willow tree shudders—
Forget the metaphors about the jumper cables and the sparks, we’re all of them and none of them—Parks and me. It’s in the fucking stars.
There are all sorts of loves in this world, I know that now. I don’t know it completely—it’s not a full moon of knowing just yet, maybe at best I’m at the waxing crescent of understanding what I can about love. They say it conquers all, but does it? Can it even? All is so vast.
so maybe love doesn’t conquer all but just some. Because all is vast and love is so varied, like light in a prism; if you move it around a room, depending on how it catches, it changes. It means different things and there are so many different things love can be to people.
I know that some love is beautiful, and some is freeing, some unravels you, some love poisons you, some blinds you, some betters you, and some loves break you in invisible ways that no one else knows about until you have to stand up and the weight of your love crushes your bones. And as I watch him scream “fuck” again and again in a back alley while he punches a wall, I wonder if maybe I accidentally made Christian love me like that?
Pored over the cracks in our timeline, wonder if she filled them with Christian.
“Why her?” My tone meets his. “Because she’s Magnolia fucking Parks.”
How many loves, I wonder again? Some loves, like ours was, are like wrecking balls in glass houses. And wrecking balls have no business being in glass houses like I had no business loving Christian how I did once upon a time, except that sometimes, some loves keep your head above the water when you’re drowning. Some loves might fog up a phone booth on a rainy London afternoon and make you feel less alone than you did before your lips touched.
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. I’d do anything for him.
“Did he hurt you?” my father asked. Not in any way you can see with your eyes.
“What am I to you?” I lean back into him, pursing my mouth at the question. “The oxygen mask”—I glance back at him—“that falls down from the ceiling of the planes.” He hugs me tighter. “That’s good enough for me.”
Maybe BJ is the great love of my life not because he’s great but because he’s been defining, and maybe Tom will be the redeeming love of my life, and maybe that’s better?
try not to cry again because I’m holding her how I’ve thought about holding her since the last time I did. It’s the best day of my life.
If BJ’s water to me, Tom is wine. I don’t need him to survive, but I love him anyway; he tastes good, makes me feel better, makes me feel braver.
When they lift my heart out of my chest cavity to weigh it, does it weigh the same as his top lip? Is his name carved into my third rib to the left? Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. He’s killing me. Loving him is killing me too, and I’m afraid because how many loves really, do you get in a lifetime? How many chances do you give it before you let it go? I’m letting it go.
