Magnolia Parks

I miss you, I blink in Morse code.

I still love you, say the turned-down edges of his perfect mouth.

Then the world goes to black. We lock eyes. And this sheet of impenetrable glass slides up from the ground beneath us. We can’t touch and we can’t talk and there’s nothing to say anyway beside him screaming through the glass that he misses me and me screaming back that I miss him too and him screaming that he’s sorry and me screaming that it’s not enough.

“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?”

Parks drops her wrist, takes a step away from her. "Magnolia, listen "It was you?" Parks says in a tiny voice and I'm already on my feet. Shit. Paili and my eyes catch. She's panicked. "Parks." I grab Magnolia by the arm, pulling her back towards me. She moves when I move her, looks up at me, eyes like a hummingbird with no place to land. She stares up at me, mouth open, frozen in an old grief that has a weight that hasn't even hit her yet. Was it her?" she asks in almost a whisper. "Parks." I shake my head.

And maybe I am too stupid and fucked up in love to think straight, but it seems silly to me, suddenly, to throw away what BJ and I have because he had sex with a random girl at a party once when he was drunk.

His eyes flicker over my face, landing on my mouth, and then it's happening before I know it's happening. Like waves crashing into a cliff face, that's how we kiss. I don't know whether I'm the water or he's the rock, but his hands are everywhere, all over me, up my white, cotton midi dress from Bottega Veneta and I'm moving backwards- pull off his shirt, run my hand over my old stomping grounds-and then I'm pressed up against the treehis mouth is on my neck--his breath has jagged edges that snag on my skin- and I'm up on his waist--our eyes lock. They're always greener than you'd think they are-almost the colour of the leaves of the tree we're about to do this under once again. He stares at me, blinking, his face all serious. "I love you," he tells me, his voice low and throaty. I swallow, nervous. "I love you too," I whisper. And then he pushes into ne. A tiny gasp gets caught in my throat and I rest my forehead on his. I

After we broke up I read the articles the Daily Mail and The Sun ran about her. Shit like, "Close sources say sorry-looking Parks is on her way to rehab after worried parents obsess over weight-loss,"" and other ones about her having diabetes, one about her picking up a parasite, but really she was just sad. So Bridge's lying. It couldn't be worse than that. "She wouldn't sh0wer. She sat in a ball in her bed for nearly a week. She didn't eat. She didn't drink saying is killing me. dehydration." "She eats like a bird anyway," I say and shrug, like none of what she's "She blacked out," Bridget nods. “We had to take her to the hospital for My heart sinks. Parks never told me that. Fuck.

then I recognise it. My face goes still. "Are you high?" I ask quietly. He stares at me for a split second, then sniffs a laugh. “No." I lean into him closer, but it's dark-I can't see. "Are you?" I ask louder.

Alexis Blau is a sore spot. Don't know whyI've never touched her. I'm going to later though.

So, I guess she picked him, then? Hence the party. Every hot girl who has DM-ed me the last few months, every girl I've shagged that's still in my phone, every girl Parks felt nervous about in high school, I message them all. Invite every single one of them.

And he was very interested in Paili. And I don't know what happened, or why it was happening it was oddly out of character for her, like she had something to prove, even though she had nothing to prove. She's never been a real hook-up-in-a-club kind of girl, neither have Ibut that night, she was just going for it. Next to me. On a couch. And she'd been such a good friend the last few weeks, hadn't left my side. Lain in my bed with me, cried with me, sometimes for me.

"Oy, Parks. Do you really not want me to come in there, or are you pretending that you don't want me to come in because you like to play hard to get because it makes you feel in control of me, or us and whatever the fuck we are but actually, you'd be fucking stoked if I jumped in there and felt you up against the wall?" There's a pause. A long pause. Fuck. And then, from the other side of the curtain... a small crestfallen voice. The second one."

" Her voice sounds small and I think she's killing me. “Why?" I lick my top lip, and my eyes can't meet hers anymore because I know what I'm about to do. I know how it's going to hurt her, sink her like an eight ball. I say it anyway: "Because I wanted to." That hits her how I knew it would.

"Six years," Marsaili says, quickly. At that, even my jaw goes lax. Six years." Magnolia repeats slowly.

Her dad...and Marsaili? She frowns. "That's strange." And it doesn't compute to her, because it wouldn't, because Parks isn't like that, she's not wired to think about the underbellies of emotion and because she's put Marsaili up on a pedestal all her life as the only adult who hasn't disappointed her, and I get this feeling like I need to get her the fuck out of here, like I need to keep her from seeing what she's about to see "Come on-"I grab her hand, pulling her backwards. “We should check on the room." "No." She snatches her hand back. "What are they doing here?" And as soon as she asks that, she gets her answer as they lean across the table and kiss in that fucking gross tender way old people kiss.

"What's that?" He sounds defiant, but he swallows, nervous. "You need a foxhole too." He avoids my eyes. "She's your brother's wife " "It's complicated" Yeah, no shit" I cut in. "Im not playing mind games with a grieving widow." His jaw goes tight and he shakes his head. “You're not-we're not." Then what are we doing?" I look up at him, eyes wide and impatient. He takes a shallow breath that makes his barrel chest heave a bit. Blows that breath out of his mouth like there's a candle I can't see. He looks white as a ghost. "I'm in love with her."

Tom to Clara, and there's something. Some sort of weightiness. And maybe if I had eyes that could see invisible things I'd find a heavy chain from him to her that binds them--but my eyes can't see that. They can see, however, Tom's eyes-who find mine finally. And he looks, well, he doesn't look like a deer in headlights as much as a lamb caught in the thickets. And I don't know what it is but I know I'm not an idiot, and I know that I just caught something between them. I try to catch his eyes, give him a chance to talk my mind down. I don't know why it's up, if I'm honest, butI feel funny suddenly. On edge? Kind of exposed.

"He sleeps in my bed all the time." I shrug. "But it's just sleeping!" He blinks more. "He sleeps in your bed all the time but you're not sleeping...together?" "Right." I nod. "You sleep in your bed with your ex-boyfriend all the time but you're not sleeping together?" he clarifies. "Correct." I nod again. "That is fucked up." I pull back, affronted. "I beg your pardon?" He laughs. "That's so... fucking fucked." No. it isn't." My cheelks have gone hot, but I'm glad he's laughing.

giggles, you did need it- -you don't need to tell her every time you have it. You tell her to hurt her:" She folds her arms over her chest. "You have sex with other people and tell her because when you do, it makes her sad and her being sad about that validates your feelings for her. She still cares. She wouldn't be sad otherwise. She's sad that I'm sleeping with other people, it must be because she still has feelings for me. You do it to feel close to her." I scowl up at her, equal parts annoyed and confronted. "I don't need a psychology lecture, Bridge." "No, Beej." She gives me a pointed look. "You need a therapist."

He's completely shitfaced. He watches me, picks up a botle of Patron, bites out the cork, spits it on the floor then drinks straight from the bottle- -holds his arms open wide like, "what are you going to do", and then falls back on the sofa behind him and the girl keeps dancing on him, her hands slipping into his short-sleeved, yellow and brown. floral print Marni shirt. There are too many buttons undone. I want to go over and fix it. I don't want anyone seeing that much of him but me.

But then as I sat in my bedroom missing him, wishing I was with him, feeling frustrated that he wasn't there with me, I decided that the responsible thing to do--the grown-up thingwould be to go and find him and tell him all of it. That I like holding his hands, I want to keep holding his hands. That I like him cuddling me to sleep, that it was the best sleep I've had in three years that wasn't medicated. That sweeping his hair from his face, was the closest I've felt to someone since we ended. So, I put on my candy pink, square-neck knitted, mini dress from Balmain and the over-the-knee, suede stiletto boots from Casadei and took a car to Raffles, and then I get here and the first thing I see is that awful girl,