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

by Jessa Hastings

I’ve held you and protected you since I was a kid. I’ve fought a fucking gang lord for you. What do you need for you to trust me again?”

Made me hate BJ all over again. I haven’t in a while. Loving him took over the driver’s seat. I made a year’s worth of bad decisions when I hated him and Paili for what they did to me. Once I realised I only hated BJ as much as I did because I love him as much as I do, I continued to make a few more months’ worth of bad (and arguably spectacular) decisions with Julian, and it takes all of my self-control not to run right back there, because I could. How he looked at me the other week when I went to visit Daisy? I could. But I don’t and I won’t. Because I love BJ more than I want me to be okay, and that’s new, I think. Progress, some might say. For now I think I’ll just say that it’s killing me.

I love BJ more than I want the right to be angry at him — and I want to be with him, properly, always. I know for that to happen, the forgiving and the trusting need to happen. And actually, truthfully, I kind of thought I already had. Stupid, I know, because it was never conscious. One day it just stopped being the first thing I thought of, stopped being this thing that sat in my throat like a lump of dry bread that I couldn’t ever swallow down properly. That only happened when I saw him again. A face like that washes away a multitude of sins, believe me, I’ve committed many with him and he’s committed many on me. That face covers them all. His cool eyes are like a cold compress on my busy, curiously masochistic mind.

This is what BJ does to me. This is what loving him does to me. It ruins me. Makes me stupid, makes my body act like it’s broken.

I don’t want him to worry and I definitely don’t want him worse.

I don’t need him to keep me warm tonight. Even if I desperately do need him to hold me.

Everything goes away for us when we touch, but the hugs won’t cut it with this. We need a complete recalibration. All my clothes off, his hands on me til we’re back in sync,

“I didn’t stop having the best sex of my life so you could go off and be friends with Ballentine.” I give him a look and he returns it with a steady one. “You deserve more, Parks.”

well, yes!

“You don’t like me like that, remember?” I remind him. “You never have. Relieved to be rid of me.” I give him a tender smile because that one actually hurt my feelings but never mind. “I love him… I think I’ve done a bad job of showing him that.” Julian juts his chin out a bit and nods. “And him you.” I peer up at him, my eyes heavy. “Look at you—” He gestures at me. “That stupid face you’ve got, who’s not with you if they can be?” I roll my eyes and look away but his head ducks after me. “I’m serious, Tiges. What’s he playing at?”

And I think Julian knows that because he knows me. More than I wish he did, maybe. I think he was paying more attention than I thought he was all along, and I don’t have time to rationalise what that actually means right now, because for about the forty-fifth time this year, I feel like the rug is being pulled out from under me.

My voice is getting louder and my insecurities are like cracks in the varnish of us.

Magnolia, you are the only thing I’ve ever been committed to in my entire life.”

He looks so sad. So sad. The kind where it crushes me to think that I caused it, and it occurs to me for the first time ever that there are two betrayed people in this room.

He doesn’t look away from me and I can see in the sky of his eyes a little plane fly by with a banner trailing behind it that reads, “I’M SORRY, FORGIVE ME.” I write in the sand of the desert between us that I am too and I miss him already. As I step towards the door, I wonder how far we’ll get this time before we feel our way back around the darkness of everything back to each other. It’s further than I thought, because I turn to leave and he lets me.

I’ve felt that sticky, gluggy, quicksand feeling of me doing something wrong to the person I care about most every time I had sex with anyone but him. It might have gotten smaller and smaller every time I did it with that specific person. Julian was rather adept at quieting down my heart’s rhetoric that sex was a thing just for Beej and I — and I’d do it more and more often like he used to do, like me acting like him was a bridge back to him. Try to feel closer to BJ in that way, but it never worked. I’d just miss him. I don’t know how many times over the course of our lives we’ve sworn to love each other forever, and to be fair we’ve both been true to our word. I’ve never stopped loving him. I might be a runner but I have always loved him. I can see the betrayal in the leaving, understand how he’s arrived there. How he’s learnt not to trust my word — my word is good though, I promise. I will love BJ Ballentine until I die, irreversibly — but he can’t promise he won’t hurt me so I don’t know how to promise I’ll stay.

the bolter coded

I love BJ driving me places. One of his hands on the wheel, the other on my knee. I love being in cars when I’m in cars with him. I should just sell my car so he has to drive me everywhere.

“This is what it is, Magnolia. Loving him no matter what.” “I do.” I frown at her. “You do.” She nods. “You two do have the loving each other down pat. The rest of it is just showing up.” She gives me a sweet smile. “And not running away and not sleeping with gang lords, etcetera etcetera.”

How many loves do you get in a lifetime? For me it’s just the one. I’ve had more but as I float away there’s only one I’m thinking of. He is what I’m thinking of. Not how he hurt me, not what he did to me, not what we’ve done to each other. Just him. How his hair falls on his face, the dip in his top lip, how his mouth parts when he’s thinking, the freckle on the right side of his mouth, the shape of his nose. I trace his jawline in my mind, count the colours in his eyes. I feel sad for the splittest of seconds because I always kind of thought they’d be the last things I’d see here on earth, that we’d get to Tobermory eventually, grow up and old together, but here I am now, grateful anyway that I got the chance to love him at all, albeit maybe badly at times, but at least I got to love him, and maybe now, I appear to be leaving him once again — I hope that he forgives me for this one because it wasn’t my fault.

OMG

And my Ballentine-stained heart surges as it remembers every waking moment of our youth spent tangled up with each other, and a million blurry nights of tears and bad words and big feelings and messy kisses and grabby hands and choices we should have never made but I’m so glad we did. I love that tree. I love that door that he could never lock. I love that piece of sandstone that is so much more than a piece of sandstone.

And I drift off into the infinite void thinking of him.

I should call her family, right? Someone should. Should be me — but I can’t speak. Besides, I am her family.

My mind waterboards me with memories of her. Our first kiss on holidays, how she smelt like coconuts. Her coming down those stairs at Holland Park for our first date. Slow dancing to Billie Holiday. Her blushing cheeks and her wide eyes on mine the first time I got changed in front of her. The way she looks at me when I’m driving her places. The first time I snuck her up into my room at school, Jonah went for a walk to give us some space — tripped, dislocated his knee — went missing for hours. Barely cared though, because I touched her boobs for the first time. Took her top off for the first time that night too — lit a fire in me. Our tree. Her at my rugby games in my hoodies on the sidelines. How her face goes in the morning. Undoing the buttons of her school uniform, her watching me with round eyes swallowing heavy, still as a statue, breathing all quick. All the bread in her hands on our first date.

Remember all of it, I tell myself. Her hand in my hair. How she smelt before. How she smells now. Her lips on my skin. Her little trembling body wrapped around mine under the stairs at Varley. Wrapping myself around her body that trembled differently that December 3rd that I hate and love all at once, and whatever happens I know I’m lucky to have had her. To have gotten to love her how I have. I wish I was better at it. Wish I could do it again, that I had more time. I’d change everything and nothing. Where the fuck is that time machine when you need it? I’d fly to New York, bring her home with me.

I shake my head at the idea of something hurting her.

Hate that this happened to her. Hate that I wasn’t there with her.

“She’s my sister.” “Well, she’s my everything, so—” Give her a dumb smile.

“You won’t leave her?” she asks. I give Bridget a long look. “Never again.”

She comes to a few hours later. The world’s best eyes flutter open and look down at me, tired and bleary, kind of how my heart feels. I stand up and push the hair back from her face. She gives me a weak smile and holy fuck, I love her. Don’t know what I’m doing with my life anymore with how much I love her. Don’t know what to do with all the ways. I’ve got too many things I need to do with her, too many things I need to say, too many kisses for time— Spent the last few hours since Bridget left sorting myself the fuck out — the next few weeks, what it’ll look like looking after her. Cancelled my shoots, got Jo to move my stuff into her place, couple of other housekeeping things — figuring out how to best tell her I love her out loud and quietly as well for the rest of our lives.

“I’m her partner,” I tell him. “Ooh,” Bridget coos. “What kind of partner?” That little shit. I give her an exasperated look. “Life, sexual, dance, gaming—” I shrug and nod my chin at the doctor. “Take your fucking pick, Bridge.” “We don’t play a lot of games,” Magnolia says quietly to no one in particular and I snort a laugh, giving her a look. “Parks, you and I play more games than anyone else I know.” I stand over her, kiss her forehead. “But I’m done with that shit.”

Looks up at me with those eyes I love.

“I’m sorry,” she tells me, not moving her mouth from mine. “No, I am.” I hold her face. “I’m not your friend anymore.” She looks up at me, bright eyed with a tired smile. “You’ll be my boyfriend again?” I press my mouth into her forehead. “I’ll be whatever the fuck you need, Parks.”

but I’ve barely had to do a thing because Bridget says BJ is processing the grief of almost losing me by not leaving me alone, ever. That could almost sound annoying, but actually, I’d live in his pocket if he let me.

She was so cross she threw her phone at me and it hit me in my ribs, which meant her and BJ had a row. He yelled at her so much and he never yells at her — he’s horribly irrational when I’m hurt

That said, BJ takes his role as my personal bather very seriously. Absolutely zero funny business (but quite a many few kisses) — the carefulness of him with me is very sweet. The great tenderness he undresses me with only adds to the build-up of how much I want him, and the part where I can’t have him right now — well… It’s a funny kind of boundary between us, this physical one. We’ve never had one before. He’d get injured playing rugby but that barely slowed him down in this arena, but not here, not with me. And I think he revels in it a bit, that I want to be with him as badly as I do and I can’t be.

The windows behind him, illuminating him in the way I see him in my mind at all times anyway.

pleased that he does. I like it when he likes my things.

“Why did you buy us a house?” “Oh—” He nods. “Because I’m going to ask you to marry me in a minute, and married people usually live together,” he says with a shrug and then danders over to me casually.

WHAT

He drops to one knee. “How’s the weather, Parks?” He beams up at me. “Oh.” I stare down at him, wide eyed. “It’s looking to be quite fine—” “Just quite?” I roll my eyes. “Eternally sunny, then.” “Oh—” He grimaces. “Can’t promise that. Storms always come, they have to — brings balance.” “What can you promise then?” I ask as I kneel across from him so we’re level. “That I’ll love you forever.” I roll my eyes. “Well, that’s hardly special, is it? You’ve done that already all your life.” “So fucking marry me then, would you?”

OMG

“I love you,” he tells me with a serious face and a few nods. I stare down at my hand, smiling at it proudly before I glance back at him, watching me like he’s been lost at sea and he’s just spotted land. Like I’m the shore he’s washed up against. He’s every solider pulling into the train station in 1945. We’ve returned from war. That’s how we love each other. That’s what our love feels like. Battered and bruised, but the only thing in this world I’ve ever clung on to for dear life is the boy here in front of me. I can’t quite believe it. That we made it? That after all the ways we tried to kill each other, all the different ways we tried to snuff loving each other out, we’re here. Here like this in my bedroom with my broken bones and him still on his sweet knees.

AW

“Are you going to kiss me, then?” I ask him with tall eyebrows. He gives me a half smile as he moves in towards me. “Yeah, Parks—” He nods. “Forever now.”

Asking her to marry me was the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Easiest decision I’ve ever made, if we’re gonna call it that. It was more like the undertow of the universe pulling me back to her. She thinks we’re in the stars but I just think she’s the current of everything and I’m always just drifting… Floating home to her. Sorry — annoying, I know. But you know me, I love her too much and a nautical metaphor always seems to be on the horizon. Should have done it years ago, probably. Maybe everything would have been different. Done it fresh out of school — bit unusual in our circles, definitely — it worked for Sam and Clara England though. They got married when they were eighteen and were embarrassingly in love until he died, but when you know you know. And I knew when I was six that I loved her. Didn’t know it’d be like this, didn’t know that loving someone this much can be as good as it can be fucked. There are so many things I wish I’d done differently, too many ways I hurt her that I wish I could take back. But then I wonder if things now are exactly as they’re meant to me to be. Because we’re meant to be. Not a question in my mind. It’s her. It’s always been her.

AW

“Hate long engagements—” Shake my head at her. “I’ll marry you tomorrow.” “Would you?” She beams, pleased. I nod.

She walks over to me in nothing but her knickers. Pretty fun. The novelty of that still hasn’t worn off. Hope it never does.

I have these moments where I can’t believe it. That we’re doing this. Properly, finally. I’m locking her down, putting a ring on it and all that shit. My eyes go blurry with this weird new want I’ve got for her. Different from before, different from the other kinds that still live in me.

“Been waiting on you all my life.”

“But every other girl I’ve ever been with has been about you.”

“But Parks, besides that one time with Paili, I’d be hard pressed to find a time that wasn’t about you, or because of you. Because I missed you, because I wanted you, or because you were gone, because you were fucking Tom England or you flirted with a bartender. Sex for me, for the vast majority of my life, has been about you.”

“Try to just love me from now on.” Say it lighter than it feels in my chest. One of those half-truths you joke about because you don’t know how else to talk about it.

“But I have, since I met you, deliberately knotted ours together.” I sniff a laugh. “I’ve never loved anyone how I love you,” she says. No smile, no frills. “And I never will. And I’ve known that all along.”

“How did you know that’s my dream ring?” I laugh once, shake my head at her. “Because I fucking know you, Parks. And I’ve thought about marrying you since I was six.” I raise my brows. “And also your real subtle Pinterest board named ‘dream engagement rings’ was of some help.”