4

Christian

I’m lying down on the couch at home when the door knocks. We weren’t expecting company—not that I knew of, anyway. Henry heaves up from his armchair and wanders over, swinging it open.

Magnolia Parks walks on in, followed by Paili Blythe; I barely notice her, though, because, fuck, Magnolia is beautiful.

Our eyes catch even though they shouldn’t. She drops them as she walks towards me before she drapes herself around Henry.

She thinks she’s not tactile, but she’s always touching one of us. Her sister says it’s because we’re all codependent. I’m pretty sure it’s just because Magnolia doesn’t know how to be alone.

“Where are the boys?” Magnolia says with a glance around the room, all innocent and shit. What she actually means is “Where’s BJ?” and the question pisses me off, so I sit up, crack my back and yawn before I answer.

“Jo’s out with Banksy and BJ’s on the pull with Feaven Lusk.”

Magnolia’s face freezes, all pained and tight like someone’s smacked her, and I get a shot of satisfaction from it—that’s fucked up of me, I know—I can’t help it, but . . .

“The model?” she clarifies with a blink. I nod. “But she’s an American.” She pouts, like that fucking means anything. I shrug and Henry’s giving me a look I’m ignoring because I know what happens after BJ hurts her. “Right, well, then . . .” She clears her throat.

And it works like a fucking charm. She switches into what me and Hen call FYBJ (Fuck You BJ) Mode and she’s out for blood. Her eyes drift over to mine just like I knew they would because she’s like this.

She crosses her arms over that beautiful chest of hers and sits down bang next to me. Leans in way closer than she needs to. Puts her head right on my arm.

She purses her lips, steeling herself for a few seconds.

I nearly feel bad for a second because it’s all over her face how hurt she is—imagining what the person she loves is doing with someone else, it fucks you up. But you know what? Join the fucking club, Parks.

I’ve felt like this for three years and I want some company, so I shrug a bit and say, “She’s pretty hot.”

Paili throws a book at my head from the other side of the room—doesn’t hurt much because it’s a paperback but I don’t appreciate it—and Henry breathes out loudly through his nose. Bit of a bad sign from him—he only lets me take this shit so far.

Parks’s eyes look glassy. Fuck. If I make her cry, then Henry’ll fight me—not that he’d win. Not a fair fight, though, because he’s never had to learn to fight like I have. He’s decent in a brush, though, even for a boy who grew up in Belgravia . . .

I stretch my arms up, put them behind Magnolia—not around her—behind her. An important clarification.

Henry squints over at me. He knows me too well. I know this shit with us puts him in a weird position. Me and Beej. Me and Parks. I love her, just. And it’s not all fucked up all the time.

Magnolia and Henry were best friends in nursery, they have a real sibling vibe. Hard for him sometimes, I think, working out whom to be more loyal to. His brother or his best friend? Usually it’s her. He’ll cover BJ’s tracks sometimes, but I suspect that’s more to do with what would happen if Magnolia found them.

But us four—me, Henry, Magnolia and Paili—we’re the originals. Three of us became friends in year one. Paili moved to our school in year two. And it was just the four of us till we got to Varley. Jo and Beej were around, but they were bigger, grade above. Didn’t give a shit. I mean—BJ gave a shit about Magnolia because he’s been fucking obsessed with her since he was six.

Parks used to love me. Loved me first, actually.

Henry was my best friend and she was Henry’s, and she followed me around like a puppy. I’d kiss her at lunchtimes and parties and when I was bored like you are when you’re a shit-kicking kid away at boarding school. And then all it took was just one fucking summer to fuck it all up.

Lil and Ham took us all to St Barts for three weeks.

That was the summer Parks fell for BJ. Also happened to be the summer I fell in love with Magnolia. Yeah, yeah, bad timing, I know. It’s my fault. I left it too long, whatever.

I always liked that she liked me before she liked him, it made her feel a little less his in my mind’s rationale for feeling how I feel about her, which is—for the record—in love but pretty fucked off about it.

“What are we watching?” Henry nods his head at the TV.

I glance from him to Magnolia. “Scary—”

“No!” she whines. “I hate scary movies!”

She looks over at Paili for help, who shrugs, God bless her. “I like them.”

“Well, I don’t.” Magnolia crosses her arms, huffing. “And I’ll be scared and then I’ll have to go home alone.”

Henry stares over at her, blinking. “Your dad’s 6’2”. He has weekly training sessions with Leon Edwards.”

“He’s in Atlanta!” she cries, her head falling back on the couch behind her. It lands on my arm. She leaves it there for a few seconds. Swallows. Sits back up. “And Bridget says she knows taekwondo but I’ve never seen the fruit of that, and allegedly—” She pulls a serious face and I’m laughing because she’s insane. “Bubushka defected from the Soviets, so she might be useful but also, she’s pretty old and also, maybe that’s who’s coming for us anyway.”

“Yeah.” I give her a look. “My ear on the ground says that the Soviets are just waiting to pounce on the elderly of the Second World War . . .” She glares over at me. “Stay here.” I shrug. Her face freezes up at the suggestion. Henry cranes his neck, staring at me with wide eyes. “With Henry, I mean—” I say quickly.

I can feel my cheeks turning pink.

She swallows again and looks over at Henry. “Can I, Henny Pen?”

He sighs out of his nose, annoyed. “Yes.”

Like he’d ever say no to her. Like any of us can. I don’t know what it’s about, why we can’t—why making Magnolia Parks sad for a second feels like you’re betraying your country. Happens to all of us, though, even Jo, and Jo doesn’t give a shit about making anyone sad.

“Yay.” She claps her hands together. “Sleepover!”

“Good luck, Henry.” Paili nods solemnly. Magnolia frowns over at her. “Sorry, babe—you’re just . . . so horrible to share a bed with.”

Magnolia looks from Henry to me, casting a line out. Henry gives her an apologetic smile. “Yeah, you are.”

Magnolia peers back to me, blinking a lot. Her eyes look hurt already.

“You are,” I tell her.

She turns around to face the TV, arms folding over her chest, having a little strop. “You never seemed to complain before,” she says under her breath, eyes on the television.

I lean down to her ear, stare straight ahead and whisper. “I wouldn’t complain now.”

We watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Parks is jumpy as shit the whole time. It’s cute. She grabs my hand a bunch, then she lets go every time she realises she does it.

Midway through she drops an M&M down the front of her top.

She stares down at it, frowning.

I stare at it for a few seconds too, quickly clocking Henry and Paili—neither are paying attention to us—so I grab it.

Pick it up with my index and my thumb, toss it into my mouth, smirking.

She stares at me, eyes bright and wide.

I think about her body against me the whole night, don’t pay attention to the movie.

It’s such a benign version of physical contact, I know—her head on my shoulder and her cuddled up against me, one of her oldest friends in the world. I’m probably reading into everything, but maybe I’m not.

Daisy texts me midway through, and I look at my phone—seeing Magnolia see that she’s texting me. She looks away reflexively, trying to give me privacy or some shit, but I don’t hide it. I like her seeing other people want me in the ways she won’t have me.

It’s also fake because Magnolia Parks is the fucking nosiest girl in the world. She’s angled her head, but she’s trying to read my messages out of the corner of her eye, I can see it. She’s straining so much she’s going to get a bloody migraine.

what are you doing

Leave it for a minute. I don’t know why. A bit of a prick, I guess.

chilling

come over?

maybe?

Not maybe. I’m not going anywhere . . . not with Magnolia next to me like this.

what are you doing, Baby Haites

Dickhead, I know, but it is what it is, and we are what we are.

Me and Daisy? We’re friends. Actually, we’re good friends these days. Friends who fuck. My mum would have a fucking conniption at that, but here we are. I’m shagging the sister of Britain’s most notorious crime lord and I’m blowing her off, but we’re friends, just so it’s okay. Daisy doesn’t care, we’ve been hooking up a few months now—not exclusively, obviously. The Haites don’t do exclusive.

Fuck, I don’t do exclusive. Except that one time and it went to shit. She’s sitting right next to me three years later like a deadweight wrapped around my heart’s fucking ankle.

nothing.

playing GTA with the boys

which boys

Booker and TK.

I frown and get a pang of jealousy. Weird.

She’s slept with TK. Has she slept with the other one too? I can’t remember—they’re the youngest ones of the Lost Boys. The Americans. Good-looking enough. I think she does it to annoy her brother. I think that’s why she slept with me.

My chest goes tight for a second. Weird.

who’s winning?

who do you think?

She’s just my friend, but she’s very, very hot.

hah. I can’t tonight

ok

tomorrow?

maybe

I pocket my phone and see that Magnolia’s looking up at me, a look on her face that I love, but then again I love all her faces. “Well, well.” Her lips purse. I sniff. “Is that a thing, then?” she asks, eyebrows up.

And because I’m shit, I let it hang there for a second and hope it makes her feel how I feel whenever she’s with someone else. Then I scrunch my face up. “Nah.”

“Oi, Parks,” Henry interrupts, staring over at us. “Bedtime.”

“Fuck off, man.” I laugh. “I think she can figure out her own bedtime.”

Henry gives me a look that makes me feel like shit, makes me feel like I’m being the prick here.

He ignores me and catches Parks’s eye. He cocks his head towards the stairs, then starts walking up them.

“Night, Pails,” he calls back. “Text when you get home, yeah?”

She stands, kisses me and Parks each on the cheek, and lets herself out.

I glance down at Magnolia and she stares up at me. I do my best not to kiss her. Find myself preparing for it anyway, lick my bottom lip, swallow down the heavy feeling of how much I want her. I’m a pro at not-kissing her now, though. Been not-kissing her for going on three years.

Her eyes drop to my lap. A rogue M&M sits around the fly of my jeans.

Her eyes flicker from mine to the M&M and back up to me. She drums her fingers on her mouth, eyes big and less innocent than you’d think they are—she’s staring at it and my whole body feels electric.

Then she plucks it up, tosses it in her mouth, bites down on it with a crunch and a grin.

My mouth falls open as I stare after her walking up the stairs, looking back over her shoulder at me with a small laugh.

I have a shit sleep that night. Something about her being here and not with me fucks with me a little. I’m used to her not being with me at this point, obviously.

Her staying here isn’t dead unheard of—better her in Henry’s bed than BJ’s—but how many beds will she go through before she circles back to mine?

She’ll crawl into it in the morning anyway, that I know.

She finds it less threatening to lay on my bed in the daylight, like she doesn’t trust herself with me in the dark.

The next morning I wake up how I thought I would—with Magnolia Parks flopping down next to me, staring up at the ceiling.

I roll in to face her, but she’s all eyes on the roof. Picks up the stuffed lion she gave me when I was six that still sits on my bed even though it shouldn’t anymore and tosses it up in the air, catching it mindlessly.

“Is Feaven good in bed?” Magnolia asks the ceiling.

I look over at her. She’s such a bitch. A bitch for asking me and a bitch for feeling like she can. I know what she wants me to say, I know how I could respond without hurting her, but I’m kind of keen to sting her for it because fuck her for asking.

“She’s pretty good in bed, yeah.” I nod.

Her face falters as she looks over at me. “Better than me?”

I sit up and raise an eyebrow. “We never slept together, remember?”

She purses her lips, staring over at me.

This bit’s always shitted because if we’re being technical—and I want to be—because if we are, maybe we’ve had sex. But she doesn’t count the Maserati as her first time with Beej, so she doesn’t count whatever’s happened with us as sex either. And I don’t know how much Beej knows, but she’d spin it to him different anyway, waving it around like a banner she’s proud of—that we never properly did it—like she’s one up on him. Like she thinks she’s betrayed him less than he betrayed her because she and I never did what he does with everyone else all the time. But there’s a wide open plain of sexual possibilities between kissing and literal, actual penetrative sex, and Magnolia Parks and I explored the entire fucking savanna.

And she’ll say it as loud as she can any time it suits her—that we never had sex—but what she strategically leaves out is that we tried to. All the time, and every time we did, she cried.

So when she’s on that fucking high horse of hers spouting that “we never had sex”, the giant black abyss that trails behind her sentence is: “but it wasn’t for lack of trying.”

And I’m an idiot, I know, because if that isn’t a fucking red flag, I don’t know what is.

Because I’d never force her, most of the time she’d initiate it—and she wasn’t crying because she wasn’t ready. She wasn’t crying because she was drunk. I know now—I get them, how fucking tied they are to each other and their monumental levels of dysfunction—that she was crying because she was trying to have sex with someone who wasn’t BJ. I should have known that, should have seen it, but she’d already got me by then. I was all in, all in love and shit. She could have fucked me or fucked me over, it wouldn’t have mattered either way. I wasn’t going anywhere.

I still haven’t gone anywhere.

I don’t think Beej knows that part—don’t even know if he should know. I don’t want to be the one to tell him either because it’s our chink; if we kill each other over anything, it’ll be her. He can’t see straight about her, but neither can I. We both love her and neither of us can do shit about it.

She’s angry at me for saying that, though—reminding her that we didn’t have sex. She can remind everyone else, but all fucking hell breaks loose if I remind her. We’ve had this argument before, if you want to call it that. It’s more of a nonversation and I reckon it shits her because it either invalidates us to her or makes her feel deficient. Neither is true.

The fact that she’s the only girl I’ve ever been with whom I haven’t had sex with says more about her than if we’d actually done it.

And there’s not a fucking thing that’s deficient about her.

There’s a knock on my door and it swings open without waiting for an answer—Henry nods at Magnolia. “Just buzzed BJ up.”

She sits up, eyes all wide and hopeful and pathetic. She tucks her hair behind her ears like a dog whose master’s coming to the door.

She skips out and she’s so happy I want to fucking vomit. Henry stares over at me, then points. “Tighten the fuck up, mate.”

I roll my eyes with a sigh, then follow them out.

BJ walks through our front door. Parks’s cheeks go pink.

He gives her this half-smile that gets her every time—fucking sad that I know that—but you know what? I am fucking sad. In love with my best friend’s girl.

I’m a piece of shit.

“Hi.” She gives him a shy smile, skipping over to him to hug him.

He wraps his arms around her, puts his chin on her head before he peers down at her.

He tugs on the oversized T-shirt she’s wearing that’s obviously a man’s. Doesn’t let her out of the hug. “Whose is this?” His eyes flick from me quickly back to Parks. More insecure than he’d want me to know he is.

“Henry’s.” She frowns up at him like it’s a fucking ridiculous question.

He nods once.

“You stayed here last night then?” he asks her but doesn’t let her go.

She nods, looking up at him.

“Why?” he asks and looks straight at me.

It’s a casual question with sharp edges.

“Because we watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre last night, Bushka’s on Russia’s hit list, apparently, and Magnolia can’t defend herself for shit,” Henry says with a shrug. He doesn’t look at me as he says it, but I know he’s covering for me, even though nothing he’s saying is untrue. “Worst sleep of my life.” Henry stretches his arms over his head, hamming it up.

“Hey.” She pouts.

Beej tilts his head at her, eyes all soft, looking at her like she’s just his.

“You are a bit hard to sleep with . . .” BJ concedes and she shifts in his embrace. Yes, they’re still holding on to each other. Yes, they’re that fucked up.

“She’s hot, she’s cold, she’s scared, she’s hungry.” Henry sighs and then gives her a pointed look. “No wonder you’re single.”

Hen’s the only one she’ll take that shit from without getting stroppy. It’s just how they are.

BJ shakes his head. “You’ve got to have a granola bar on your bedside table for her or else she’s a pain in the arse.”

Henry ruffles her hair as he walks past them. “She’s a pain in the arse either way.”

BJ sniffs. “Come on, get dressed.” He hooks his arm around her neck, pulling her upstairs with him. “I’ll take you to breakfast.”

“Okay, I’ll just take myself to breakfast then?” I say.

BJ looks back at me. “Yep.”