Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe #1)

by Jessa Hastings

How many people do you get to call yours? There are all sorts of loves in this world, not all of them, but most of them are beautiful. Some are old, some noble, some brave. Others are dishonourable and weak and make you so by association. Some are a low whisper on a sombre night, some are maddening. Some you can’t ignore—they slow-burn inside of you, never quite going out completely but you’re too scared to dare try to fan that flame. Some loves you pretend you don’t feel, even when you can, even when you know you do, even if he’s the first thing you think of in the morning, even if he’s like a match in the darkened room of your heart—because loving something how you love him is a painful love that puts rocks in your pockets and melancholy in your eyeballs and if time has taught you anything it’s that it doesn’t matter. You’ll love him forever anyway.

Our eyes lock and hold and I don’t just hate his eyes but all of him for a second—for knowing me how he knows me, for seeing through everything I say, for doing that with anyone but me.

He gives me another look because he knows that I’m lying, and our hearts have a Mexican stand-off with our eyes. I miss you, I blink in Morse code. I still love you, say the turned-down edges of his perfect mouth. Fairly top heavy, like somehow it always manages to get stung by bees. Once upon a time, he balanced my whole heart atop that lip.

“Not everyone rolls out of bed looking like a cartoon deer, Parks—” “I—” My face falters. “Is that—is that supposed to be a compliment?” “Absolutely.” He nods.

He’s the only man I’ve ever grieved the loss of, the only love I’ve ever loved.

I ignore him and turn to look at BJ. His jaw’s tight, fists clenched, ready to throw down for my honour any day of the week. “Let’s go,” I tell him, but he doesn’t move. Beej glares past me at Calloway and I take his face in my hand, turning it towards me, ignoring the flashes of cameras swirling around us and for a second I don’t care if the Daily Mail runs a piece on us because it’s all bullshit anyway. Everything is. They all go to black. All I can see is him.

I think he might wish I was different. Better, or some shit. Parks says that isn’t true, that my parents love me stupid—they do—but doesn’t mean my dad doesn’t wish I were a better man. I mean, fuck—even I wish I was a better man.

Loving someone like I love her fucks you up a bit. Fucking up how I fucked up also fucks you up a bit.

But I’m in love with her. And this is the only way she lets me have her, so fuck it, I’ll go down with the ship.

She swallows heavy and I 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.

And then I start laughing and she starts laughing, even though it’s not that funny because she hates it, so I hate it, but she dates and I fuck and this is what we do, so we laugh.

Have you ever had someone stare you dead in the eyes and wearing all the ways you hurt them? It’s fucking intense. But you know what, she hurt me too.

“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.”

He laughed once, all cool and calm and I think if we all could have peeked behind heaven’s curtains at that moment we’d have seen those old Fates knotting our threads together, me and Beej, in this pure, sunny, inexorable, undoable way. I said knotted, not tied. Because I don’t know whether we’ll ever come undone. Not easily, anyway.

Usually when I wake early I tell him I do it to meditate on the beautiful parts of life but really, I just watch him. He is a beautiful part of life, I suppose. Painful things can still be beautiful things, in case you didn’t know.

“It’s Parks. She’s mine.” I picked him up off the ground and shoved him again. “She’ll always be mine.”

I can’t think of it. Not now. My chest goes tight as my heart bucks at the feelings I’m feeling but I can’t feel in front of him because he can’t know he still does this to me.

This is an old dance we do. A ritual, almost. Breaking our hearts open on the altar of each other.

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. And he can’t be alone, so I know if he’s not with me then he’s with someone else and that’s too heavy a thought for the morning time.

I can’t help but wonder if he went home with Taura? Probably he did. That’s what we do. Spend all our time together, get too close, get too scared. He’ll fuck around, I’ll get a boyfriend again soon. He’ll hate him, probably so will I, and BJ and I will be back to normal. Normal is relative, I know. Normal for two broken hearts who can’t fit their pieces with anyone but each other.

I wonder whether we’re going to kiss. I always wonder whether we’re going to kiss. We never do. Nor should we. Our eyes hold like our hands won’t. I love you, he blinks. Prove it, I sigh.

You’re wondering—I know you are, everyone does—why we aren’t together? Infidelity aside, you think he’s perfect. That we’re perfect, and that nothing in this world past, present or future could be big enough or bad enough to justify us not being together. I get it, I’ve been there. I’ve thought that too. There were these couple of months after everything that had happened with Christian where Beej and I began to drift back towards what we used to be. It wasn’t intentional or conscious. It was just easier to be with him than not to be, and maybe that’s not a good thing—I don’t know anymore. I can’t objectively tell with us. With anything to do with him, my heart’s logic is as blurry as the lines we pretend we don’t cross. I was still broken, and I was still sad, and I still didn’t trust him how I used to trust him, but I think at one point, I loved him more than he hurt me, and it sort of began to feel stupid to me to love someone how I loved him and to throw it all away because he had sex with someone else one time. I’m not belittling that, by the way. Or making excuses. It makes me feel sick to say it even now. It’s not that it didn’t matter. I think it’s just that how much I love him mattered more.

I felt like I was driving to my doom. I felt like I was on my way to finding the love of my life dead. I remember gripping the chair of Jo’s car so tightly my nails tore the leather. I remember Henry reaching around to me from the backseat behind and holding my arm, steadying me. I remember at a stoplight Jonah turning to me and wiping tears from my face I didn’t know I was crying. And I remember, viscerally, the feeling that my chest had been sawed wide open and the nerve endings of my heart were exposed.

I remember wondering if this was it, if that was the last time ever I’d see him. Him with the starry eyes and the hair I loved to knot my hands up in. 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.

I remember resentment pounding through my body and 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.

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.

I have missed him though. I’m glad his arm is on my chair. I’m angled in towards him. If I were to lean back—which I won’t, but if I were—I’d be leaning back into him.

But the truth is, when you love someone how we were in love, it didn’t matter what he’d do to me—he could have hit me with a bus, kind of he did—I innately still would have done everything I could to make him not feel what he was feeling.

“So then.” He wipes his hands. “Tell me—what’s it like being in love with someone who hurts you all the time?” I’m completely thrown for a moment. I blink a lot of times. I let out a bewildered laugh. “Horrible.” He nods, coolly. “Thought about as much.” “You’d hurt him too though,” he tells me. I frown at him. “How do you know?” “Face like yours?” He nods at it. “Fuck, it’s hurting me now. I’m just sitting here, across from you, without a history, not in love with you, and you look sad that I said that, and I want to slit my wrists.” He sniffs a laugh and looks a bit sad himself.

She’s in this dress that looks like it’s a watercolour painting, green and pink and fucking lilac—she did that on purpose, and she looks fucking perfect, and I get this weird feeling like maybe she’s going to fuck my heart up in that dress tonight or something.