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Fifty-Eight
Magnolia
BJ’s birthday night I show up to Julian’s.
A tiny bit drunk and heart sunk, out for blood.
Jonah called me, told me Beej didn’t know. That she’d planned it, that she didn’t invite me and he had no idea, that Beej would be upset that I wasn’t there, that he would have wanted me there. I don’t know.
I bought him a watch before I realised I wasn’t invited, but it felt too sad to keep it so I asked Henry to give it to him. Henry said I should’ve just come anyway, but I couldn’t go from being the only person on the planet that he saw to being the girl who shows up to his birthday parties uninvited.
Not just because I’m proud, but because my heart couldn’t handle the whiplash.
Anyway, the security guards let me in and I park my car — I barely ever drive myself places but I felt like it today. I walk straight to his office.
I mean business.
This is BJ’s School of Questionable Coping and I’ve learned from the master.
Sex is a potent tonic for a broken heart.
Julian’s at his desk. Decks is there too, on the couch in the corner watching football.
“Hey—” Jules frowns, standing up. “I thought you’d be at the birthday.”
I walk around the desk and face him, toe to toe. “I wasn’t invited.”
“Fuck.” He blinks a few times. “Are you okay?”
His hands are folded over his chest, eyes flicking around my face. He looks annoyed almost until his eyes land on mine and everything softens.
“Are you?” He tilts his head.
I’m in the red satin-trimmed metallic stretch-jersey midi dress from Dolce & Gabbana, a black and white faux-fur vintage Chanel jacket from 1994 with the Dolce & Gabbana black satin sandals with floral embroidery.
All clothes I picked out at a store the other week while imagining BJ taking them off my body and I wonder for a few seconds what’s wrong with me? How I can have gotten dressed thinking about BJ’s breath dragging across my skin and then get in the car and run straight into Julian’s arms? Something’s wrong with me, I know there is, and I can barely get the sentence written down onto the page of my mind before the answer presents itself.
I love him too much.
That’s the problem.
That’s the only problem I’ve ever had, really.
The only reason I’m sad how I am, the only reason I’ve been hurt how I have been, it’s all because I love him too much.
And I wonder how I’ve moved through life stuck on loving the same boy since I was fourteen, which is far too young to be in love, but I dare you to find anyone who loves anything more than I love him.
I lift my arms in the air, waiting for Julian to take my clothes off.
He stares at me for a few seconds, doesn’t look away when he says, “Declan, leave.”
Declan sniffs a laugh, rolls his eyes at us and closes the door behind him. Then Julian grabs me by the waist. My feet are off the floor and he bangs me into the wall.
He reaches behind my body, undoes the zip to my dress and it pools around my ankles.
I’m on my tiptoes trying to be close to him and this is a feeling I’ve begun to grow terribly fond of — how big he is, how much he shadows over me, how his arms feel like branches that are protecting me from a storm.
He’s kissing me down my neck, behind my ear, breath heavy on me like a welcome fog rolling in on a winter morning. He pulls back to look at me and his eyes remind me of being alone somewhere quiet at midnight. Dark, inky blue. Somehow still a bit sparkly. They’re too beautiful to be the eyes of Scotland Yard’s most watched man. That’s who my sister says he is. I think it’s probably slander from a rival arms dealer.
