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Forty-Two
Magnolia
How do you imagine a gang lord’s bedroom? I can’t say I’d ever given it much thought til I found myself in one.
And I know what you’re thinking — Christian Grey’s Red Room.
But you would be incorrect.
It’s not like that at all. Neither is he, actually.
His bedroom’s changed since the last time I was in it, which was probably more than four years ago now, if you can believe it. That infamous night with the pancakes and the no sex. I was so scared of sleeping with anyone who wasn’t BJ, as though doing that with someone else might make me less his. Jokes on me though, because BJ’s as not mine as ever and I wake up every morning to check the status of my tether to him. It’s iron clad, even now.
I used to think about that night a lot. Me and Julian and what we didn’t do. He’s a strange person, but I sort of love being next to him. There’s just this feeling you get from being by him that’s not like anything else in the world.
I never knew whether he didn’t say anything about the night because he was annoyed or embarrassed or he was just a better man than we all give him credit for, but it became apparent that night at his thirtieth that none of the boys knew we’d ever gone home together.
It made me look at him a bit differently once I realised he hadn’t told anyone. I don’t know in what way it made me see him exactly, but I suppose I’ve read stupid things in the papers about boys I’ve kissed or allegedly gone home with hundreds of times. Most of the time it’s never true, but I did kiss him, and I did go home with him, and he seemingly didn’t tell a soul.
Back then his room was more of a bachelor pad. Game consoles. I think there was a candy bar vending machine? Definitely a condom vending machine, I remember that. Dark grey walls, dark wooden floors. Big chandelier. Almost as though he styled it in a way he thought would be sexy in the eyes of the girls he was bedding.
But now?
The walls are a lighter grey, lots of brown and wooden accents. Huge bed. White bedding. Dramatic lamps. 1950s rococo style headboard which, unfortunately for me, is not tufted. There’s some fine art — original pieces only — dotting the walls.
Actually, there are originals all over the place.
“You’re rather big on art, then?” I asked him brightly the morning after we first slept together as I peered up at the most convincing print of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Street, Berlin I’ve ever seen.
“This is a very realistic.” I look at it closer.
Julian squashed a smile. “It’s not a print.”
I spun around on my foot, confused.
“You bought Street, Berlin?” I asked, feeling a tad jealous. “How much was it?”
He licked away a smile. “Cheaper than you’d think...”
“Huh,” I said as I shook my head. “Some people just don’t appreciate the value of art. Funny. I swear I saw this hanging at MOMA a couple of months ago—”
He rubbed his chin. “Don’t know much about my family, do you?” He smirked over at me a little. “What we do.”
I thought I did. Arms dealing. Some light crime. Probably cocaine because it’s the fanciest drug. I don’t like admitting that I don’t know things so I pursed my mouth and he leant down and kissed me. A lot. Far more than the question required.
“Daisy likes art.”
But do you know what Daisy doesn’t like?
Me.
She doesn’t like me. I don’t know whether that’s a Julian thing or a Christian thing, but her thinly-veiled distaste for me is now my raison d’être.
No one doesn’t like me. Ever.
It just fundamentally doesn’t make sense to me. I mean, it does make literal sense in this case, as I’m sleeping with her brother and used to date the boy she loved (loves?), but that’s neither here nor there.
I’ll make her like me.
