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Nine
Magnolia
I walk away from him as fast as I can, breaking into a run once I’m out of his line of sight.
I can’t see properly.
I think I’m having a panic attack.
What did I do?
How could I have left him how I left him all those years ago?
A wave of nausea rolls through me and I push past someone to throw up into a rubbish bin.
I don’t know where I am when Gus grabs me by the shoulders, frowning in my face.
“Magnolia?” He shakes me a little. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing.” I blink. “I’m fine. It’s not about me, everything’s fine—”
He wipes my face with his hands.
“Are you drunk?” He tilts his head, looking around for clues.
I shake my head.
“Taken something?”
“No.” I stare off into the distant past, peering through all the ways our lives might be different if I had known.
Then Gus puts me in his car and I’m home.
Bridget and Taura are sitting on my bed, waiting for me — half expecting me to waltz in with a ring on my finger, I think — or at least a smile. I can’t say I blame them. It wouldn’t be completely off brand for he and I after these last few years to just be together again in a heartbeat without a second thought.
Making it forever with him on a whim.
Once upon a time it would have strictly had to be him down on one knee in the prettiest place in the world with a rock the size of the moon, and now I don’t know how it would happen. If it even could…
Maybe after he backs into the front of my car and he tosses a diamond at my head. Maybe after he cuts me wide open for heart surgery, he’ll ask me through the anaesthetic.
Maybe never.
Probably never because he’s never not kissed me before. He’s never not kissed me ever in the existence of time.
His little head duck from me speaks a thesaurus of dead-ends and rejections and what the fuck is the matter with me?
Why am I thinking about this when he just told me that?
My chest starts to feel like it’s choking me again. My breathing goes.
That’s why.
Because I can’t think about that. Can’t think about what happened to him, how I left him.
My sister’s and Taura’s faces each quickly slip into despair when I’m guided through the door by Gus Waterhouse.
Bridget launches off the bed to hug me. I let her but I don’t hug her back.
