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Forty-Four
Magnolia
Julian’s leaning back on my bed in the black logo-print track pants from Off-White. No socks, no shirt — nothing. Rather the way I like him, actually.
He’s just sitting there doing my rhinestone-embellished YSL Rubik’s Cube insanely fast. Genius-level fast. Like, solves it under twenty seconds no matter how I mess it up. He gets cockier and cockier every time, simultaneously getting hotter and hotter every time also.
He tosses it back to me. Solved that one in under ten seconds.
“You’re not even trying, Tiges.” He grins down at me.
I make a cross noise as I begin to mess it up the most I possibly can but then I hear our apartment door open and close and the sound of a voice I love.
I sit up straighter, listening intently.
Julian frowns, confused.
“Gus!” I sing out and then leap from my bed, thrilled.
I gallop out towards his voice.
“Gus!” I round the corner to find Gus — and my father. “Oh. Harley.”
He rolls his eyes.
“It’s good to see you also, first born.”
I give him a tight smile as I walk over and hug Gus anyway. “That’s the most paternal thing you’ve ever said to me.”
I look between them. “What are you doing here?”
Bridget walks out wearing Danielle straight-leg jeans from Khaite, with a white shirt underneath Marni’s argyle-pattern vest, her shoes are from — my eyes pinch. The shoes I don’t recognise.
“Dad’s taking me to lunch,” Bridget tells me.
I pull a face. “I guess we know who the favourite is…”
He gives me a look. “She does call me ‘Dad.’”
“Well,” I concede, “she is more desperate than I am, so—”
Gus tilts his head, looking at me. “Are you in pyjamas?”
“Yes,” I tell him, my nose in the air. “They are adorable ones though.”
The Mimi Martine floral-print satin-jacquard pyjama set from Morgan Lane.
“She doesn’t leave the bed much these days—” Bridget gives me a tempestuous smile.
I roll my eyes at her.
Not a huge fan of Julian, though she’s yet to meet him.
“Magnolia,” my sister says and tilts her head at me. “It’s good to see you alive and not murdered.”
Bridget gives me a smug and annoying look.
Our father frowns, looking between us. “Why would she be murdered?”
