Magnolia Parks: Chapter 17

“You want some?” the girl I’m with asks me. Blonde hair, brown eyes, big mouth—too big probably. From Bath.

“Hm?” I look at her, not paying that much attention. We’re at Jo’s club, Hampton Haus. All the staff dress like they’re from the Hamptons and every waitress is fit as anything. It’s one of about ten venues the Hemmes brothers own, which I’m grateful for so I don’t have to lie to Parks about what they do. I can just divert the question.

“I’m going to run to the loo for a cheeky bump.” She grins over at me. “Do you want some?”

I shake my head. “I don’t use that shit.” Bath looks surprised. Maybe it is surprising. I like it—like it too much, if anything. Bath looks at me funny, her eyes a bit too round and a bit too eager, like party girls’ eyes often are.

“You just sort of strike me as someone who… would. You know?”

I shrug. She’s not wrong. “Used to.”

“But not anymore?” I shake my head, a bit bored of all the questions. What is she, Piers fucking Morgan? “Why?”

Fuck me, I roll my eyes a bit. “Promised someone.” That’s all I offer her.

“Who—?” she snorts. “Your mum?”

And then I’m annoyed. “Nah, just the girl I love.”

This throws her how I want it to. “The girl you love?” she repeats.

“Yep,” I nod, back to being bored. “Go do your line. I’ll be here when you get back.”

I pull out my phone, check my messages to see if Parks texted me. Hasn’t. Check my phone to make sure I have service. I do. Fuck.

So, I check Instagram in case she decided to DM me, reply to a story or some shit—relationships are so fucked these days with all the mediums there are to talk to each other on. Not that we’re dating. We’re not dating. She’s dating someone else. “Dating.”

I’m about forty seconds into dissecting the validity of Parks and Tom England when I realise my Instagram comments are blowing up and my DM’s are through the roof…

I mean, I always get a lot of both, but this is apeshit.

I open my most recent photo and there are hundreds of people commenting that fucking rat emoji and a bunch of shit like “I can’t believe you”, “you don’t deserve her”, a couple of “fuck u loser, die”s. I’m confused so I do what you’re never supposed to do: I Google myself.

And then I see it.

A close personal source confirms, the REAL reason behind the most confusing and drawn-out public break-up in the history of time—BJ Ballentine cheated on Magnolia Parks.

Fuck. I think I’m going to throw up. Feel light-headed. I can’t see properly for a second.

“Are you okay?” asks a bartender. I nod. I’m not. Could faint.

“What’s going on?” Jonah’s there suddenly, brows low. “Did you take something?” Shake my head. Barely. Flash him my phone. “Fuck.” He blinks, his eyes are wide. “Does it say with who?”

I shake my head. Another wave of nausea hits me like a dump truck.

Jonah leans across the bar, grabs a bottle of tequila and passes it to me. I take a few swigs. Big ones. I feel weird, like I’m walking underwater in a dream. Which, funnily enough, is how I felt the night I cheated on her as it was happening… a slow-motion walk towards something I didn’t want to do but had to do, and it was like my head was out of the water and the rest of me was under it and I was walking against the current to do it. Every touch, every grab, every kiss, every motion, the current of the entire universe was telling me not to do it and I fucking did it anyway, and now not just she knows it but everyone knows, that not only did I lose the girl we all know I love, I lost her and it’s all my fault.

I head out back to Jo’s office. Open the door. A girl rolls off of Christian on the couch. Takes a second for my eyes to adjust.

Daisy Haites. Guess that date he took her on a while back went well—

She’s very hot. Very dangerous. Not a girl I’d fuck around with. Her brother is more dangerous than the Hemmes boys.

Her mouth looks pink and a bit smudged. “Is he okay?” Daisy asks, looking at me, head to the side.

I sit down. Take another swig. She walks over, squints at me. Med student, second year. What’s my pulse going to tell her that I don’t already know? My heart lives outside of my chest over in Holland Park and it just wandered into the arms of England’s most eligible bachelor.

“It’s out.” Jonah eyes Christian.

“What is?” Christian asks, ominously. I guess I have a few skeletons at this point. Could be any one of them.

Jo nods in my direction like I can’t see him. “Him. Cheating.”

“You cheated on Magnolia?” Daisy blinks, eyes wide as she takes my pulse. “150 BPM,” ahe tells Jonah, then adds, “Does he get panic attacks?” Jonah doesn’t answer.

“Shit!” Christian sighs, coming to sit down next to me. “Who leaked it?” he asks Jonah, who shakes his head.

“Right, well.” Christian looks from me to Jonah. “Who knows?”

“Just us all,” Jo shrugs. “Our group.”

“None of us would,” Christian says, listing off his fingers. “Hen wouldn’t. Perry wouldn’t. Pails definitely wouldn’t.”

“Why?” Jonah asks, maybe too quickly.

“Because she’s shit-scared of being on Magnolia’s bad side.”

“Bridget wouldn’t have said anything,” I tell them.

“Does Taura know?” Jonah asks. I shake my head.

Daisy’s watching me, looking between my pupils. Stands up, hands on her hips. Turns to Christian. “It was probably her.”

“What?” I blink.

“It was probably her,” she says like she didn’t just send a missile straight into the middle of my whole life. “Have you pissed her off lately?”

“Has he pissed her off lately?” Jonah scoffs merrily—catches himself. “Not the time, sorry.”

I grimace. “Yeah, maybe… but she wouldn’t.”

“She would—” Christian nods, thinking it through. I scowl at him when he says that. Don’t mean to; it’s just the way he says it, like he’d know, like he knows her like I know her. All that shit between them and how angry it makes me courses through me and then it falls on me like a piano: you broke her first.

“Fuck off.” Jonah rolls his eyes. “She would not.”

I rub my face as I think about her eyes that night she saw me. Heavy-rimmed, glassy, a kind of hurt that’s too deep for me to be able to reach.

“She might have?” I look up at Jonah, a little terrified.

Jo grabs the tequila and takes a long sip. “Well. Shit.”