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

by Jessa Hastings

“You got clean for me?” He looks over his shoulder, checking who’s listening but it’s just us in all the world again. “And me.” My heart cracks open a bit with how much I love him, like daylight breaking through a boarded-up window.

An oxygen mask, is what I don’t say. Also what I don’t say is that I haven’t left Julian’s side barely at all. Nor do I say that he might be my favourite oxygen mask to date, that I don’t get tired of breathing him in, and actually whatever Julian’s atmosphere’s made of, a small part of me likes how it feels in my lungs.

AW

For all the ways BJ hovers around me, all the ways he shows up and says all the right things after doing the wrong ones, all the times his eyes find mine no matter what room we’re in — none of that matters because he never can manage to love me more than he loves an orgasm. And I hate him for that.

“You’ve wanted me for — ooh—” I catch eyes with his bodyguard. “What would you say, Kekoa — four or so years?” He shakes his head. “More like five.”

oh

We both chuckle and I miss her. Feel angry at the her-shaped hole there is in my life. Increasingly hard to stomach, Parks and Julian. Sits weird with me. Makes me angry whenever I think of it. Don’t know why — I do — but it’s more than just the obvious. The obvious being that I love her and I’m trying to fix what’s broken, the less obvious is that she’s breaking us more. I am too, I guess. Shouldn’t have sent her that text the other night though. That was shit of me. We haven’t spoken since. Not like us.

“But honestly, man — and I hate to tell you this — but I reckon she was kind of attached to him before anyway. There’s been a vibe there the last few years.”

Anyway, it’s not necessarily my favourite place to be without Julian. Julian makes everything feel safer,

I just need the person I’m actually in love with in real life to come find me, get down on his knees, tell me he’s an idiot and that he made a mistake — again — that it was just a misunderstanding, and please please please will I take him back? I’d pretend to umm and ahh about it for a minute but then I’d get down on my knees too because I love him and I always will.

“You love her!” I poke him in the chest. “Shut up!” He grabs my finger. “Just tell her!” I stomp my foot. He shakes his head. “Fucking stay out of it!” “You’re being so stupi—” I shove him, he shoves me back. “Well you’re always stupid and I never say anything!” “Then you’re a terrible friend!” “You’re a terrible friend!” My jaw falls open. “I was voted the best friend in the whole grade when—” “—We were nine!” he whisper-yells and I’m annoyed that he’s diminishing that for me so now I’m smacking him all over his stupid body. “You act like you’re nine!” “What the fuck nine-year-olds are you hanging out with?” “I don’t hang out with nine-year-olds, you stupid idiot!” “I’m not an idiot, you’re an idiot!” Christian starts as he puts me in a headlock

LMFAO

he’s being stupid, because he is, he’s so in love with this girl that sleeping with her feels like a drug addict just doing a casual bump,

“Want me to go smack him around a bit?” I wipe my nose and sniff. “Which him?” He tilts my chin up with one finger and looks for my eyes. “Any him you like…”

HOT

“I’ll defend your honour,” he tells me gallantly before glancing back at me playfully. “And then I’ll take it later.” “Julian!” I run after him, grab his wrist and pull him back. “I’ve got to, Tiges. I don’t have a choice. The drama’s calling me,” he tells me and steps out into the hallway. I keep pulling but he’s very strong so I jump on his back. Not because I think he’ll actually hit Christian, but because I feel like being close to him again. And I don’t quite know how he does it, but he reaches behind himself and pulls me around him so I’m wrapped around his waist, eye to eye. He stares at me for a few seconds then sighs again. “Well then, I guess you’re coming with me.” He keeps walking across the hall and I start laughing and he’s laughing and so I kiss him because I want to.

i love their banter

“You’re not jealous?” He gives me a look that is basically rolling his eyes without actually rolling his eyes. “Do you want me to be?” “Maybe?” I shrug, nose up in the air again. “Alright—” He launches himself up. “I’m back to hitting Christian again…” “Julian!” I laugh, grabbing his hand and pulling him back down on top of me. He touches my face and gives me the eyes that before made me think he liked me. “You’re trouble, Tiges. Do you know that?”

i love them

both our faces were portraits of grief. Her losing me to hundreds of different people, me losing her to them too, I suppose.

She pinched her top lip as hard as she could — one of her anxiety tells. Done it since high school.

he knows her so well

She didn’t know me? She’s the only fucking person who ever has.

If I was a better man at the time, I would have just taken her home, told her I was sorry. Actually, if I was a better man we wouldn’t have had the conversation in the first place. If I was a better man I would have looked at Paili in the bathroom that night, and when she asked me if I was okay I would have said, “No, I feel like shit, can you take me to my girlfriend?” And I would have told Magnolia what happened and who I saw and she would have reacted how she did that day at Dunstan’s and we never would have broken up, I would have married her, I would have knocked her up again, we’d be living Devon way, maybe in the south of France, and I wouldn’t have been in Bali looking for a girl to fuck to spite Magnolia.

And there she was. My favourite person in the world.

Cried for ages. I cried too, don’t know if she knew that. Screamed that I loved her as loud as I could without making a sound. Probably wasn’t enough though. We were fucked up back then, still fucked up now, I guess. I just loved her, that’s all. And I was bad at it even though I used to be good at it. Nowadays I’m worried I won’t know how to be good at it again.

“I don’t like Eggs Benedict.” She eyed my plate. “Then why—” “—Because you like it,” I interrupted her with a shrug. “And for some reason it makes you feel good when you order different breakfast meals, because you pride yourself on being unpredictable.” She straightened up, put the best nose in the world in the air.

“Magnolia, I’ve known you since you were four.” I gave her a shrug. “Of course I knew.” She swallowed. “How?” “The clothes thing, for one,” I started and she rolled her eyes. “You’ve kind of always had weird rules you live by, and if you don’t follow them you get weird and antsy.” She cleared her throat. “Such as?” I blew some air out of my mouth. “Like the shower thing. You can’t go to bed without a shower, but you can have naps without one, even if your nap is in the bed.” She squinted over at me. “Or,” I continued, “you stir you tea in multiples of seven. You need the mint taste in your mouth to go to sleep. Or how your food can’t be touching. Or how once you get into bed at bed time, if you get out again, you need to wash your feet or you can’t sleep.”

I remember that I grimaced at the idea of hurting her — it was such a foreign concept at the time. Little did I know that in a few short years we’d be masters at hurting each other, that causing each other pain would be the lynchpin of our relationship, the only thing more consistent than each other.

grabbing it like I was seeing them for the first time, like I didn’t know her whole entire body like the back of my hand.

“Do you think I’m crazy?” she asked, quietly. “ No.” I shook my head. “I think you’re the best.” “Even though you know the worst parts of me?” “I don’t know the worst parts of you.” I ran my thumb over her scar. “I just know you, Parks.”

aw

She waited a few seconds, probably trying her hardest to prove me wrong, but I knew — as always — that she really wanted eggs for breakfast. Sheepishly she handed me her (my) plate.

I don’t care that the boys say that Parks and Julian are good together. Fuck them. I loved her first. I love her more and he doesn’t know her like I do. No one ever will.

I like how I feel around him. Something about him makes me feel quite brave. I like to feel brave. Loving BJ as much as I do, it makes me feel weak and stupid. Next to Julian, I feel quite powerful.

slay

What I wouldn’t give to kiss that nose. Anything, literally anything except wave the white flag first.

“Do you not think I look good today?” I ask immediately. She turns her head away from me. “I think you look good every day,”

“BJ!” She stomps her foot. I lean in towards her and whisper, “I love it when you say my name.” She swallows nervous. “That’s my line.” “I stole it,” I tell her and her eyes turn to puddles. Best fucking puddles in the world “Guess what?” I say quietly, just because I want to keep her looking at me like this. “What?” “Had my first tattoo removal session today.” Her eyes get bigger. “Really?” I nod. She reaches over and peers down my shirt, looking at the bandage over it. “Did it hurt?” Press my tongue into my top lip. “Yes.” She bites back a smile. “Good.”

gives me a small smile that feels like a secret. Wonder how long it’ll take for us to get to the place where I can just throw my arm around her, let her be mine out loud, not just inside my head.

“We weren’t—” She looks over at me, mouth pursed. Us, is what she’s not saying. They weren’t us. I nod once. Grab that soaring kite heart of mine and bolt it to the floor of my apartment.

My mind’s going a million miles an hour trying to work out how to tell her I don’t care. That it doesn’t matter to me even if it does, that I still love her the same, that nothing could undo how much I want her. I want her in an unchangeable way, even if loving her right now feels like a foot pressing down on my throat.

Not much of a toucher, my Parks. Just with me.

real

taking the opportunity to check her out. She’s unreasonably beautiful. Always has been but when she wears light colours she goes browner. I love her in white. She’s been wearing so much black lately, bit unlike her. She is the personification of colour and light, so that’s all she should be wearing.

In every quiet whisper, every subtle and nuanced thread in the fabric of time, all the tiny ripples in the universe will tell you, that I’m actually just Parks’.

OMG

and my whole life, I’ve run right in after her. But I’m not chasing her this time. Not with her looking at him like that. Like it’s not just naffing, likes there’s feelings there that she doesn’t know about yet, like the flower’s taming a new fox. She’s standing there on that table with her hands on his chest, calming him down like you would a spooked horse and fuck it, I’m out of here. I can’t watch this. Not again. Can’t call it with Jordan anymore either, because fuck Parks with her hands on his chest, with his hands on her waist like she’s his and not mine, like she might actually be his and not mine. I can’t fucking do it again.

It made it easier to walk away from BJ in the moment, because Julian needed me. But actually, quietly, I probably would have gone to Julian in an instance like that no matter what. It’s nice to be needed sometimes. BJ doesn’t need me, I don’t think. I need him but it’s not the other way around, it never has been. All my life, he was all I had in so many ways. More than just my boyfriend and my best friend and my protector and my confidant, I needed him because when he was gone I felt horribly alone. But he didn’t. He’s never needed me, not with his functional family with his loving parents and siblings coming out of his eyeballs, and all his aunts and uncles and grandparents who are sober and checked in, who love him very overtly and very loudly. All the time, at his rugby games, when he did well at school, on his birthday — they were there for him how you need your family to be. He didn’t need much from me. Actually, I think the only thing he’s ever really needed from me was — well — he met that need with someone else in a bathtub one night.

this new calm now over him and I wondered if I might be bringing it to him.

My sister is being her staunchest self and pretending she still doesn’t like Julian, who is actually nearly impossible not to like, and I’m being sincere when I say that. There’s something about him, how he looks at you, how he speaks to you — instant and total buy in — that’s why I believe there are men that would follow him anywhere, right off a cliff with bullets in their chests, if he asked. There’s something wildly seductive about him and not even in an overtly sexual way, just in the way where, whatever he says, you’re in. Chinese for dinner? Sure. Can he have the rest of my salad? Absolutely. Wouldn’t it be so fun if I went to get him a coffee? Of course it would. And it’s different from how it is with BJ where it feels like everything — even the worst things — are fun. But Julian just manages to make you feel like everything he says is the cleverest, best idea. Did I think it was genuinely a good or hygienic idea to have sex in the men’s room stall at Verona a couple of nights ago? No, I didn’t. Do I have any regrets? No, I don’t.

“That man,” Gus points in Julian’s direction, “is head-over-heels in love with you.” I blink at him a few times. “Are you crazy?” Gus shakes his head at me. “He can’t keep his hands off you.” I sigh, annoyed. “He likes my body.” “He likes you.” Gus gives me a look. Bridget purses her lips. “He is protective of you.”

“He loves you.” “August.” I sigh, annoyed. “I know he doesn’t love me.” “How?” “Because he doesn’t look at me like…” I trail off, give them both a tight smile. I don’t know why saying his name felt rather difficult just then. “BJ?” My sister jumps in. “Magnolia, that can’t be the benchmark. No one is going to look at you like BJ looks at you.” “Although, Julian is surprisingly…” Gus trails off now, thinking of the right word. “…Tender towards you?” He peers over at me. “I’ve seen him with other girls. He’s not like that.”

She looks pretty because she’s an attractive girl, but really I just want to see what Parks is in. Dressed to the nines for my birthday every year, even if we aren’t together. Red or pink because she’s not a saint and she’d never roll on Valentine’s Day for me. Used to my birthday being as much about her as it is about me. Kind of like it that way too. I wonder what she got for me.

Makes me feel a bit sick. Feel sweaty at the thought of Magnolia sitting at home thinking I didn’t want her here. I always want her here. I want her everywhere. Next to me, on me, all the time. Haven’t had a birthday without her in forever. She makes them good even if she doesn’t — even if she fucks them up completely. Rather have them with her than without her.

I wouldn’t say — and don’t tell her I said this — that being sexy isn’t her strongest suit. I’ve never loved her because she’s sexy, never wanted her because she’s sexy. Don’t get me wrong — she’s beautiful and ridiculous and enigmatic and I’ll be locked into her gravity til I die — but she’s not overtly sexy.

real

Magnolia drunk is a deer in headlights. My deer though.

She touches it when she kisses me sometimes. I touch it when I miss her.

I couldn’t sleep without her anyway. Forget that Henry was texting me, begging for me to come take her off him like she was a new puppy crying in the bathroom. I couldn’t sleep without her because even before any of the shit that would happen to us happened, we’d managed to sew ourselves into one. Whenever I could at school, I’d sneak into her dorm. Whenever we were home, I’d sneak into her bed. We weren’t fused yet, but we were fusing, actively and in real time. And fuck her for that — fuck her for that then, fuck her for that now — but back then it was three in the morning and I was there knocking on my brother’s hotel room to be close to her.

“I’ve never wanted anything how I want you.”

We went ahead and welded our fucked up little hearts together for good. Definitely my worst birthday to date, but at least at that one I got to be with her.