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Thirty-One
BJ
It was a lie, what I said to Parks about Christmas.
Magnolia’s turned me into a fucking liar, where I just spout off shit to one-up her because I don’t know what the fuck we are so I need the upper hand.
Can’t wait to spend Christmas with Jordan? I’m sweating fucking bullets about it.
No denying it’s a bit intense to spend Christmas Day with your girlfriend of one month, but I didn’t know what to do when she asked me last week what I was doing for it. Henry was standing behind her waving his arms like a fucking oaf mouthing, “No, no,” but she’s my girlfriend. What was I supposed to do?
“What’s the problem?” I scowled at him once she was out of earshot. “Do you not like her?”
Henry frowns. “Shouldn’t you be bringing Parks to Christmas?”
“How?” I stared at him. “How the fuck would you think that’s a feasible option?”
He rolled his eyes. “But don’t you want Magnolia to be there?”
I sighed like he’d punched me, because it’s true. I do. I want her to be everywhere. Wherever I am I want her there. That’s the problem.
But I don’t know what we are. Haven’t for a long time.
We’re something. I’m something to her, she’s something to me. Sometimes I think we’re in love and we’ve just had a bad run at it, that we’re fated and shit, that our stars are on their way to aligning and maybe everything that happened a couple of weeks ago is the beginning of us working out, and then she goes and fucks Jack-Jack Cavern for forty-eight hours straight and I don’t know shit.
“We always spend Christmas with the Parks,” Henry added with a shrug.
Also true. Since we were kids. Harley and Dad are okay friends, but our Christmases together really started because of Henry and Parks.
Little best friends from the get-go. Her parents were always looking for a good time, always looking for ways to pay less attention to the girls themselves, so we just started going on family trips. Zagreb, Colmar, Budapest, Dresden, Vienna, Basel, Trois Vallées — everywhere with her.
Haven’t had a Christmas without her since I was six til last year. Two in a row won’t kill me.
We spend Christmas Day with my family — extended, Dad’s side — over at my grandparents’ estate in Virginia Water.
It’s big and loud and I love it, usually.
If we’re there, usually Parks is too. Not last year, but neither was I.
Me and the boys took a bender in Paris.
Jordan did well at Christmas today. Charmed my grandparents and my aunts and uncles the way Australians usually can. Henry kept his distance, but for the most part it was pretty good. What wasn’t that good was when my little cousin, Chloe, looked Jordan square in the eye and said, “You’re not Magnolia.”
Jordan laughed and poked her, said, “Good eye!”
Sisters didn’t behave — to be expected, I guess — and barely spoke to her, made sure to bring up Parks and Jack-Jack, which broke the news over here in the last few days. They didn’t know what to do when Jordan told them that Jack-Jack’s even hotter in real life and she didn’t blame Parks.
Can’t tell whether that was a dig at me or not.
Tried to keep myself in check with all that, did my best not to look like those hickeys on Magnolia’s body at brunch weren’t just fucking eating me alive.
Made some hickeys of my own on Jordan last night just to prove to myself I don’t care. Didn’t work.
When we get back to my place around nine that night, I tell Jordan I need to go for a run. Ate too much shit during the day, got a shoot in the new year, which is true.
None of that’s a lie, believe it or not.
She smiles at me, kisses my cheek, and goes back to Instagramming her presents from bed. A bed she gets into without showering, because she’s normal. She tells me to wake her up when I get home and she’ll give me an extra Christmas present. I say okay.
