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I tip my head in Magnolia’s direction. “Didn’t have a lot of patience for it.”
“It’s such a long game for so little payoff.” Magnolia rolls her eyes.
“£2 million in the pot is hardly chump change.”
“Oh—” Magnolia nods sarcastically. “Playing the PGA now are we? God, you must be good.”
I look over at her more tenderly than I should, feel an old kind of missing her in my chest that I wish would just die but it can’t seem to take its last breath. Every time it takes one it takes another and another, and it’s never a last breath. Loving her like this is a kind of breathing that feels like dying.
“You could probably be better if you wanted to be,” I tell her. I shouldn’t have because that was a deep cut. Parks’s eyes go round. She looks just like the four-year-old she was the day we met twenty years ago and I feel it in my chest — old flames that never died anyway, the kind that have never needed stoking a day in their life. The over-the-shoulder restraints lower down over me and I’m locked in.
I’m on the ride whether I want to be or not.
“So, when’re you heading back?” Julian asks, nodding at Parks.
Shits me how much he’s focusing on her, but he’s a shit talker so I know it means nothing.
Parks glances over at me, our eyes catch for less than a second.
“I fly out December 5th.”
“Maybe I’ll come visit you,” he tells her.
I throw back the rest of my Negroni. Do my best not to watch them.
Parks smiles up at him with playful eyes.
“You should,” she tells him. She doesn’t mean it though.
“I think you could show me a pretty good time,” he tells her, smirking.
Magnolia throws back her martini in one gulp. “Oh — I don’t think you could keep up.”
Julian lets out one obnoxious laugh, and I’m done now.
The wheel of the ship’s spinning out of control and why the fuck is it that when Magnolia Parks is in my life I am all riddles and nautical metaphors?
I lean into Jordan, cock my head towards the door and whisper, “Let’s get out of here.”
She nods, ready. “Nice to meet you,” she tells Parks.
Magnolia watches her for a couple of seconds. “Yeah, you too.”
“See you around, Parks.” I nod at her.
Jordan walks towards the door.
‘I’ll text you,’ I mouth to Parks.
She gives me a tiny wink and then I’m gone.
Parks
23:56pm
Oi
It’s BJ.
