Magnolia Parks: The Long Way Home (Magnolia Parks Universe, #3)

by Jessa Hastings

“BJ, you can love someone and not have it rule you, not have it dictate your every waking thought and decision. You can love someone and still retain your power and autonomy. You can love someone and have it just be there, a part of you, and still have a completely functional life—” She pauses and gives me a long look. “Even if it’s a life without them.” Doesn’t sound much like any life I’m interested in, actually.

OMG

That’s what I was thinking last night once Jordan had fallen asleep and I was lying in bed looking at photos of a girl who isn’t her. That she looks okay — and I want her to be — but she looks okay without me. Fuck.

oh shit

processing what she’s said to me because I’m not thinking about her at all.

omg

I want the first person I tell to be BJ. I don’t know why — I’m not staying for him. I’m not not staying for him though. I love him. More now than ever, I think, somehow. And I want to make this work. So when Rich offered me the job today, it felt like those crafty old Fates were at it again, weaving the tears in the tapestry of us back together. Please, God, let them be weaving us back together.

want the first person I tell to be BJ. I don’t know why — I’m not staying for him. I’m not not staying for him though. I love him. More now than ever, I think, somehow. And I want to make this work. So when Rich offered me the job today, it felt like those crafty old Fates were at it again, weaving the tears in the tapestry of us back together. Please, God, let them be weaving us back together.

AW

Us arriving apart and then leaving together. It’s our tie that binds, draws us in close, regardless of how far we’ve drifted. No matter what, or where we are, we’ve never missed December 3rd. Not even the first year we broke up, when I was (secretly) with Christian, and BJ and I weren’t talking. Even then. It’s our little pilgrimage back to each other, a slow crawl towards the only proper home we’ve ever had. My mind trickles back to last year, how long we’d waited, how badly we wanted it, how perfect it was. My heart starts stomping at the thought of his hands on my body and I wonder if it’ll happen again. Whether he’ll be standing there, waiting under the tree — of course he’s under the tree, where else would he be?

AHHH

I’ll just be relieved to see him, relieved to tell him I’m staying, relieved to see my relief mirrored on his face.

aw

I called him by default. If I was ever worried about anything, I’d just — it was an absentminded call.

aw

BJ used to trace it with his finger whenever he could. I’ve always liked that scar, actually.

aw

An old kind of grief for someone I’ve never even met. Someone I wanted to meet though. Someone who’s changed my life anyway. Maybe it’s more the mourning for a life we imagined. It’s gotten easier over the years. Funny with pain, how it propagates itself, grows into you, becomes a part of you. Shapes you a bit.

poor bj

There’s no ceremony to December 3rd, but maybe the ritual is we’ll always find a way to hold each other. Sometimes it’s overt — she’ll just take her hand in mine, kiss it. Sometimes she’ll come and lean her head on my arm. Won’t say a thing. That’s what she did the year she was fucking around with Christian. Just wordlessly leaned against me. We steadied ourselves against each other how we’ve done all our lives. The tree’s a bit of a hard reset for us. I’d be a liar if I said a part of me hadn’t wondered whether Paris was just a cover and she came up here early — that’s the kind of shit she’d pull to be alone with me. I know it is because I’d do it too to get her to myself for a day or even a half of one. I thought about it, just coming up early in case she was there, in case she was waiting for me and she didn’t just fuck off all over again without a word. Hard with Jordan though, she’d ask questions. Fair enough I suppose, she should be allowed to ask them. But whatever she’d ask, there’s nothing I can tell her that won’t just prove to her that I haven’t changed at all, that won’t let her down, because I will. I’d let the whole world down to keep Magnolia afloat if I had to. Or I would have before. Not now, I tell myself. But I know it’s a lie. Try to convince myself for the two hundredth time this week that Parks is nothing except the hardest habit I’ll ever have to break.

AW

At this point it sort of all just feels like a fever dream that’s tied us together for the last nine years. I pull up outside me and Jo’s place; it’s evening now. I’m ready to crash out for the night. Sleep it off. Sleep off losing the only girls I’ve ever loved. Can you love someone you’ve never met? I think about that sometimes. Probably just love the idea of her, love the idea of a tiny Parks I helped make bossing me around forever, driving me mental. It’s all for naught now, these thoughts, but I’ll think them tonight as I drift off to sleep anyway.

aw

Pretty much my every dream. Still love her in plaid.

aw

Back in those days I could read her best if I could see her eyes. Don’t need them anymore. I can read her with both our eyes closed and my hands behind her back.

OMG

Everything about her was weird, all of her was uneasy and I had the same urge then that I still have now: If something’s wrong with her, I’ve got to fix it.

aw

The room thought I was doing it for show, but I was just doing it for me. That’s how I kissed her even if no one was watching.

AHH

Missed her, felt like holding her. I was ready for everyone else to fuck off home so I could have her to myself again.

aw

didn’t give two shits about it at the time. All I could see was Parks.

AHHH

pulled that dress off her that’s still in her closet today, I bet. She’d never get rid of it.

OMG

The shit we did to be alone together back then… Fuck, the shit I’d do still to be alone with her now.

AHH

I wanted to travel the world with Parks, more than we already had. I was going to play rugby for the country, she’d be my little WAG on the sidelines, cheering for me. Stay up all night and watch National Geographic, kiss her as much as I could in the ad breaks. I was going to marry her, build a life with her and shit… And then I realised all my plans had her in them anyway. And a kid would have been a part of the plan eventually, so it was just arriving a bit early? The only plan I’d ever had for my future was Magnolia Parks, and I’d just let her drive away by herself after she told me she was pregnant with my baby.

OMG

“And what would it look like?” she asked, nose in the air. I looked for her eyes, found them pretty easily. “It’ll look like whatever you want it to, Parks.” She looked at me cautiously. “What do you want your life to look like?” I shrugged, indifferent. “I just want one with you.”

AW

“Yeah, but that’s kind of what I want — to be fucked. By you, with you, over you—” I shrugged. “Forever.”

AHH

Get married. We were always going to anyway.

AW

and then four hours later, our lives — once again — were entirely different than we’d planned for them to be.

omg

What do you need?” “BJ,” is all I managed to choke out because even then I knew it was true. He is what I need.

AW

how we started the week as two separate people then came back at the end of it fused as one. He lay with me, breathed loudly into my ear til my breathing slowed to match his, and then he stayed. Stayed til Monday morning when we went back to school where we lied about our week. Told all our friends we snuck to Cannes to get away from our parents. He went along with it — whatever the fuck I needed, even before that was a thing, it was always our thing. I thought it always would be.

omg

And I didn’t want her to do anything dramatic or say we were bad for each other or something. Which she would have done. But we weren’t bad for each other—” I purse my lips. “We were just… for each other.”

aw

Wonder how to unlove him. If I even could. I’ll wear it like a badge of honour forever that he loved me first, that he loved me at all. Have you ever had a love like that? I always felt like the luckiest girl to have his eyes on me, his hands on me. And his mouth. I love that mouth.

omg

There aren’t a great many things I can control in this lifetime — I’m learning this now at the ripe old age of twenty-four. I can’t control how you see me, but I can control how I will be seen. And you will only ever see me very put together. You don’t need to know about the parts of me that aren’t.

real

“Oi,” says my favourite voice in the world

AHHH

and I’d actually forgotten anyone else was in the room. I forgot that we were in a room and not on the secret island BJ and I live on in my imagination where we’re all alone and no outside forces endanger our tenuous, impossible connection.

OMG

I frown, hating that I have to watch him go after anyone but me. It’s just me. It should be anyway.

real

If I was sober I might have been able to see it — everything between us, all the ties that bind, our two smashed-up hearts on the floor and we can’t even tell our pieces apart anymore but we’re the only glue we need so it doesn’t matter anyway — maybe if I was sober, and I could see it for what it was, I would have felt the rustle of the universe telling me everything is going to be okay.

aw

I love these stairs. I’ve missed these stairs. I have a thing for her and stairs, don’t know why. Actually, I do. I used to think about asking her to marry me on the Spanish Steps in Rome about a hundred years ago when I was allowed to think about marrying her. Back then, I thought I’d have married her by now, but instead I’m carrying her to her bathroom so she can throw up again because we still haven’t sorted our fucking shit out.

oh

“Like the prettiest girl in the room.” I nod once. “In every room, Parks,”

AW

“No, I think you look sexy in everything,”

AW

and something about how her face goes reminds me of her when she was sixteen with that kid of ours growing inside of her and I remember again that the truth is — for me — when it comes to her, it’s always going to be whatever the fuck she needs.

AW

try to make it sound like having too much history with Magnolia Parks isn’t the mounted deer I’ll hang in the hallway of who I am, like loving her isn’t the first thing you see when you walk through the door of me.

OMG

and she doesn’t notice when the fucking lorry drives through her living room and runs me over. Or is that just how it feels when I think about Parks being gone again?

omg

her whole face just a giant beating heart that I want to keep inside my chest.

cute

“You mean right around the corner from the man you love?” “Paul Walker is dead, Bridget.” I put my hands on my hips. “And I would appreciate it if you would let the memory of the man I love rest in peace.” (“He was so hot.” Bridget nods appreciatively. “So hot.”

real

Me and Parks are never obvious though; even when we’re crystal clear we manage to find a way to convolute things. I’ll hurt her, she’ll hurt me, I’ll do something back, she’ll do something worse — it’s just how we are now. And I wish I could stop it, but it’s like we’re stuck on a fucking track. At least we’re on the track together, I guess.

“Yes, I think she’s back for you, you fucking idiot.” He bends back over the bench, hangs his head in his hands. He rubs his eyes, tired. “Beej, you belong together.”

exactly

“I’ve never seen easier chemistry between people—”

“That fucking Brontë, Shakespearean soulmates shit, I think it’s a thing we say to girls to get laid… But whatever you and Parks have, it’s what those fuckwits were writing about.”

OMG

Jordan asks me with a smile. She didn’t seem to need to muster it up or anything, I think it’s a proper smile. What a psycho.

LMFAO

She thought it would be too sad to lose my boyfriend and my best friend all at once, so she let me think it was her. She heard Paili telling Perry about it around the time it happened, and that’s when Perry started the rumour that it was Taura. Without my knowledge, Taura Sax has been a better friend to me the last five years than almost any of my other friends have been.

i love taura

“Probably a good thing because you’re in love with BJ,” she whispers and I frown at her, pulling away. I am, she’s right. Very much so. I stare over at him and notice how his paisley-print short-sleeved Gucci shirt falls open over his chest as he leans to say something to Jo. He’s got a new tattoo. I hate that he has new things on his body that I haven’t seen and she has.

oh

Never mind that that alone — her touching him that capriciously, that mindlessly, like he’s hers and not mine — is enough to kill me dead on the spot,