Magnolia Parks Book Quotes

What am I to you?” “Oh, I don’t know—” I give her a little shrug, stare straight ahead. Take a long sip before I look over at her. “Like, just—everything.

Rummage through the drawer in my mind as fast as I can to find the words to tell her that I’m coming for her, I’m on my way back, that this is just the long way home.

In another life I reckon I could have loved you.” I tilt my head, looking up at him. “In another life I would have let you.

Because she’s yours. And even when she isn’t yours, she still is.

Daisy for me was a complete trip—I accidentally fell in love with her, and I accidentally lost her. I wasn’t ready for it. I wasn’t ready to love someone how it turns out I love her.

She doesn’t know that I’m a wolf and Parks is the moon whose name I’ve howled since I was fifteen.

I wonder if he looks a little bit sad. And the thought rattles through my mind only for a second, but I wonder whether perhaps I’ve had more loves than I knew of in this lifetime.

I love her more than I’ve ever loved anything and I thought I might have been able to angle it, find a way for us to work. A life between where I can be who I am and love her how I do and it not be the death of her, but it’s not on the cards. I’d be the death of her, and I won’t be.

It’s a hard thing about relationships, isn’t it? Doesn’t matter what type it is, if it’s worth keeping, sometimes you have to say shit you don’t want to, pry it out of your own mouth and toss it over a fence your mate’s building now because that’s what people do when you hurt them—build fences, raise walls, dig ditches, pitfalls, etc.

To anyone whom the more sting-y parts of this book resonate with, anyone who’s grieved or is grieving or has lost or is losing, anyone who worries about the black, empty nothingness . . . everything is going to be okay. Okay?

He will be nothing to me even though he’s everything.

The fact is that the older I get the less sure I am that sex is ever just casual.

she’s the current of everything and I’m always just drifting. . . Floating home to her.

This is what loving him does to me. It ruins me. Makes me stupid, makes my body act like it’s broken.

in that moment we’re still each other’s and time wraps around us in the infinity we thought we had but we don’t anymore because he broke us.

Loving her like this is a kind of breathing that feels like dying.

In another life I reckon I could have loved you,” I tell her. She gives me a little smile back. “In another life I would have let you—” Never you mind that I already love her in this one.

My whole childhood is littered with memories of being alone and lonely and abandoned and disregarded in our family, and the only part that makes it feel okay is that Bridget was there with me. Through all the ways our parents failed us, my sister did not. My sister is the lace trimming around all of it

just never saw her coming, I couldn’t have picked loving her out of a line-up until it happened and then it was everything: my first thought, last thought, mid-thought, the name I’d say in my sleep, the body I’d think about when I was with other bodies, the smell I’d try to chase down every time I’d walk through Selfridges just so I could breathe in something that smelt like her and feel close to her again, but I can never find it.

How he was my teacher and my partner in so many key life areas. My best friend and my family and my pillow and my quilt. Each of them are like bricks laid in the house I built to love him, but the point is really that house I built isn’t a monument to a love I used to have. It’s a house I want to live inside of still.

I’d like to feel alone sometimes, I’d like to walk down the street and not worry that the car that’s driving next to me is there to take me,

I am good with names, though, always have been. Intentionally. People respond well to that sort of shit. Makes them feel seen, makes them feel validated.

I’ll come,” he tells me.

you can ask anyone and they’ll tell you for free (even though the lesson itself often comes at great cost)—love isn’t enough, and it will hardly ever set you free.

You’re Central Park at midnight.

Keep a secret long enough and it keeps you.

It’s the great undoing of my heart as I know it.

ask anyone and they’ll tell you for free (even though the lesson itself often comes at great cost)—love isn’t enough, and it will hardly ever set you free.

Or maybe she’s reckoning with the fact that it just never stops feeling terribly impossible to watch someone who once was yours be with someone else.

Like, just—everything.

I love him in a way that’s unravelled me, it’s undone me at the seams of myself, and everything that’s pouring out of me is ugly and awful, maybe because I let out all my good for him?

She squints over at me. “Did you really do that for me or is this just a merry coincidence?” “You know what, Tiges, I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve fallen into the ranks of men who find that there’s very little that they wouldn’t do for you.

She is the goddess in the Botticelli clam shell, her eyes are the waterlilies in Monet’s pond, she is the hand of God reaching down to mankind. Klimt’s kiss is a portrait of us and I’m gonna steal it. Take it, make it mine, make her mine too. Maybe do that one first.

He is—you and me—we’re it, you know? We’re always going to be it, we’ll always come back to each other.[*] So yeah, I might fuck around with other girls, and yeah, I slept with Tavie in New York. And you know, I’ll probably do it again when you do something shitty—but it’s you and me, Dais.

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.

I slip into the bathroom, lock the door and lean against it as a terrible revelation dawns on me. It’s like the morning sun when you forget to close the curtain—it’s my fault, I should have closed the curtain, I knew the sun was there, I knew the sun would eventually rise again, but I didn’t close the curtain and now this invasive, bright, shimmering light wakens me from the slumber I was using to avoid it. I still love him.

You’ve wanted me for five years and I’ve sort of wanted you maybe for, like, three and a half weeks, so really, it’s no skin off my back . . .” I pressed my tongue into the side of my cheek. The fucking mouth on this girl—unbelievable. “So.” She tapped her little impatient foot. “What’s it going to be?” I held her eyes, trying to make her look away first, but she didn’t. It was a power struggle and I was losing. Licked my bottom lip, shook my head and shrugged. “You heard the boss—” The other girl sort of tumbled off my lap onto the couch as I stood up and stepped towards Magnolia, slipping my arms around her waist. She gave me a defiant look, chin in the air. “Don’t you do that again.” “Fuck, you’re demanding . . .” “Oh, you have no idea . . . But you’re about to—” She gave me a tight smile as she nodded towards the door. “Let’s go. You’re going to take me home and put me to bed.

Several days later I decided to go on a good long jog, trusting that Chip would not leave Drake again. As I was on my way back I saw Chip coming down the road in his truck with the trailer on it. He rolled up to me with his window down and said, “Baby, you’re doing so good. I’m heading to work now. I’ve got to go.” I looked in the back, thinking, Of course, he’s got Drake. But I didn’t see a car seat. “Chip, where’s Drake?” she said, and I was like, “Oh, shoot!” She took off without a word and ran like lightning all the way back to the house as I turned the truck around. She got there faster on foot than I did in my truck. I sure hope no one from Child Protective Services reads this book. They can’t come after me retroactively, can they? Chip promised it would never happen again. So the third time I attempted to take a run, I went running down Third Street and made it all the way home. I walked in, and Chip and Drake were gone. I thought, Oh, good. Finally he remembered to take the baby. But then I noticed his car was still parked out front. I looked around and couldn’t find them anywhere. Moments later, Chip pulled up on his four-wheeler--with Drake bungee-strapped to the handlebars in his car seat. “Chip!” I screamed, “What in the heck are you doing?” “Oh, he was crying, and I’d always heard my mom say she would drive me around the neighborhood when I was a baby, and it made me feel better,” Chip said. “He loved it. He fell right to sleep.” “He didn’t love it, Chip. He probably fell asleep because the wind in his face made it impossible to breathe.” I didn’t go for another run for the whole first year of Drake’s life, and I took him to the shop with me every single day. Some people might see that as a burden, but I have to admit I loved it. Having him in that BabyBjörn was the best feeling in the world. Drake was a shop baby. He would come home every night smelling like candles. We had friends who owned a barbecue joint, and their baby always came home smelling like a rack of ribs. I liked Drake’s smell a whole lot better.

I can see for the most part what we were: she was on fire, being burnt alive. I was the silver blanket she wrapped herself in.

for the briefest second it feels like someone kicks a piano down the stairs and it lands on me.

Because I’m just making sure you’re going to be okay.

It’s dark, I’m in stupid shoes. They’re trainers but they’re not made for running, those stupid Golden Goose shoes, what are they good for? They arrive tattered, they don’t make you faster—

if I could, I’d pour his expression into a Martini glass and take a big sip.

If he were a MacBook he’d have the swirling rainbow of death on his face.

can’t tell where loving Romeo ends and being traumatised with Romeo beings. It’s all muddled.

BJ, you can love someone and not have it rule you, not have it dictate your every waking thought and decision. You can love someone and still retain your power and autonomy. You can love someone and have it just be there, a part of you, and still have a completely functional life—” She pauses and gives me a long look. “Even if it’s a life without them.

The other him. The one I love but can’t love anymore, because I’m normal now.

Are you fucking kidding, Parks?” He stares at her with wild eyes. “Is two of us not enough?

And you know, I’ll probably do it again when you do something shitty—but it’s you and me, Dais.

Because she’s Magnolia fucking Parks.

I give Tom England a month.

I’ve thought about kissing her for years since the last time we did it, made kissing her again my Everest, and here I am, in her bedroom in the middle of Holland Park with my hand on her waist, kissing her how I’ve wanted to for so long and it’s not what I want and I know why.

To compound how fucked up it all was, he bought Tavie Jukes with him to the dinner.

Jo arrives after a while with Henry, Taura, BJ and—wait for it— Magnolia.

I’m the girl you’re fucking while you’re thinking of your best friend’s girlfriend.

There’s a lot about it we don’t understand.

Beej pushes back from the table, looking from me to Parks. “You can both get fucked.” And then he delivers her his final blow. “I’m going to.

You know I’m the second in command of the second-biggest crime family in England.

His head pulls back. “Do you know who you’re talking to?” Daisy Haites, love of my fucking life, cocks an eyebrow. “Do you?

I’ve kissed all his scars. Most of them are my fault, but I guess isn’t that the way with first loves?

And I don’t really think about what I do next, it sort of just happens. I take off my necklace, slip it over her head and onto her. She stares up at me, blinking. “What are you doing?” I shrug. “Yours now.

Full Box Set dinner,

All these suns we’re staring at from other galaxies that I’ll never get to see except in the way they’re making her eyes light up right now.

You can’t. You already told me—” (“ Oh fuck,” sighs Jonah.) “—You love me,” I tell her. “I heard you. My doorman heard you. You love me, there’s no take-backs.” She breathes loudly through her nose, huffing.

I swear to God if that fucking prick is using my phone charger

Fuck it. I’m going Full Beej.

We’re not dating,

Paili Blythe

Full Box Set

Julian

My followers have tripled since we’ve been together.

Because I’m going to ask you to marry me in a minute, and married people usually live together,

shred of self-respect, she’ll leave me herself.

She’ll crawl into it in the morning anyway, that I know. She finds it less threatening to lay on my bed in the daylight, like she doesn’t trust herself with me in the dark.

And anyway, when she was little, Bridget didn’t like her hair in her face so I learned how to braid it for her.

I hear you’ve got yerself a wee girlfriend as well.

We ended properly probably three years ago, but define “properly”. There’s too much water under the bridge for properly, there is no properly. He and I will only break up properly when one of us is dead. No one likes it when I say that, though, least of all him . . .

You need to tighten the fuck up, kid.

I push my hand through her hair, staring over at her like she’s a dream I used to have that just walked through the door. I guess she kind of is.

Daisy Haites being with that sexy policeman she’s dating.

Julian cruises after her, cool as a motherfucking cucumber—pauses in front of me. Squints, cocks a smile. Reaches over, closes my open mouth—smacks me on the face twice—technically playfully, technically hard. “Happy new year, bruv.” Gives me a shit-eating grin. My jaw goes tight.

—Romeo Bambrilla in the corner[*

How’s the weather, Parks?

I didn’t think she deserved to be invited.

That’s called dopamine. He’s high off of loving you.” She gives me an annoyed look. “There’s not one calming thing about you, you’re obsessive and infuriating and weird.

she picked up her phone, took a photo of her leaning on my shoulder. Her blue eyes still teary; obviously she’d been crying. Posted it to Instagram, wrote some shit caption about how good a boyfriend I am.

And good men can do terrible things, I know that. But it’s usually by accident and just once, it’s not premeditated and the behaviour doesn’t repeat.

Raised by her older brother Julian since their parents were murdered, Daisy has never been able to escape the watchful gaze of her gang-lord brother. But Julian’s line of work means that Daisy’s life is . . . complicated.

I’m not not staying for him though. I love him. More now than ever, I think, somehow.

Do you believe children carry the sins of their fathers? Have you heard of that? Generational sins, ancestral sins—do you believe in those? My brother does. Because our dad did what he did—that’s Julian’s second pass. He’s already wearing Dad’s sins—what’s a few more?

People we won’t work with, no matter what. Sapanta Asad, Mata Tosell, Roisin MacMathan—people who fuck with people how they fuck with people, it’s a no-fly zone for us. Julian would never. I need him to never.

It might be the bigger thing to do, could be a short-cut home for us—but we love a detour, me and Parks. And she just swerved us right off the fucking road.

But I should have never broken up with him.

Magnolia’s dumb face lit up.

St Daisy’s Hospital for the Deranged and the Desperate, that’s what she calls it when they come here, and a lot of them do.

but what she strategically leaves out is that we tried to. All the time, and every time we did, she cried.

Her staying here isn’t dead unheard of—better her in Henry’s bed than BJ’s—but how many beds will she go through before she circles back to mine? She’ll crawl into it in the morning anyway, that I know. She finds it less threatening to lay on my bed in the daylight, like she doesn’t trust herself with me in the dark.

Are you kidding?” I push my hair over my shoulders the same way I’ll push this thought away. “That’s Julian Haites. I couldn’t break his heart if I hit it with a sledgehammer.” “Baby girl—” Gus gives me a look. “You are the sledgehammer.

There is a part of me that worries we’re on a track, loving each other in this stupid way, hating each other in the moments between and we’re just . . . what we are. This disfigured, maladjusted version of a committed couple, but the commitment isn’t necessarily by choice, it’s just an unbreakable habit that makes you feel better and worse in one fell swoop.

I think she fancied him,” I tell her, crossing my arms. “Yeah, no shit, Sherlock—” Bridge rolls her eyes. “Though, she’d fancy a fucking door knob if it made her stop thinking about BJ.