Page 134 of The Long Way Home

Thirty-Four

BJ

It’s unbelievable that she did that.

My girlfriend upstairs and Parks calls me down to tell me she loves me.

Holy fucking shit.

I’ve waited for her to say that to me since she left last December and then there she was, saying everything I’ve wanted to hear, and I couldn’t say it back.

I don’t know what happened.

I got angry. Don’t really know why.

Felt indignant that she’d do this now on a whim. Casually jog over to my house late one night to turn my whole fucking life upside down. Spent the shittest year of my life trying my fucking best to try to let her go after she left me for something I did when I was twenty. After everything that happened and everything we’d been through — because we’d been through everything by then. News to everyone else, what happened, but not to us. And then she ended it with me anyway. I don’t understand how I can have missed her how I’ve missed her and be so fucking angry now that she’s here, doing and saying everything I’ve wanted her to the whole time.

Do I love her? Of course I fucking love her. She’s everything I’ve ever wanted. But it was honestly only about thirty days ago that I began to accept that me and her happening probably wasn’t on the cards anymore. And now she’s back. Fucking everything up, fucking me up — because she’s back, and that’s what she does. And me? I have a girlfriend who’s living with me because she has an idiot for a flatmate who doesn’t know how to use a fucking bath. And she’s upstairs, sitting on my couch, wearing a sweater of mine that’d look better on Parks because everything about me does, and she’s waiting for me to make her a cup of tea. I said we needed milk — another lie for Parks. I hate lying, and I’m lying to Jordan all the time covering the tracks of how much I love this other girl whose sole mission in life is to fuck mine up. And what about Jordan? Did Parks even give her a thought before she marched on over to declare her love to me? When the articles started running about me and a new girlfriend, I only let them run because Parks was gone. If I thought she was coming back, if I thought it was an option that we — I never would have—

It started out purely as sex, me and Jordan.

And it was fine. I was cool with that, she was cool with that. Then we kind of just started hanging out, mostly just as friends. And it was cool, like to go to a pub to watch football and shit with a hot girl who’d just drink the beers and eat the pies, someone who I didn’t have a continent’s worth of broken-hearted history with, no secret stone under a tree, no infidelity, no hospital visits, no near-death experiences where I’m dying in her arms — just a clean slate.

To me, all the girls from London, in one way or another, just felt like, shitter, cheaper versions of Parks. But Jordan didn’t remind me of Magnolia at all, which was exactly what I needed. To be done.

I needed to be done with Parks.

Not because I wanted to be, but because she forced my hand. How could I ever actually be done with Parks? Couldn’t be. So I just pushed her from my mind. I put her in the cupboard under the stairs and played the sound of Jordan really loud to drown out the banging of how much I loved Magnolia.

Got easier and easier too. To drown her out, to ignore the sound of being with someone I’m not meant to be with.

It’s getting loud again, the banging under the stairs.

I love her, I know I do. I should have told her that. Didn’t. A bit out of shock, but mostly cause I’m proud. Might be the death of me. Or us. We’re both proud.

I don’t love anything more than I love her, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get a high out of watching her squirm. I know that’s fucked up, but that’s all I had for so long. Watching her be uncomfortable about the things I did or the things I said was, for years, the only way I knew I still meant something to her.

And if she thinks she can just swoop back into my life and I’d drop it all because those Bambi eyes blinked at me—? I mean, I would, but fuck her for thinking it. For thinking she can boomerang me around like this.

“Hey.” Jordan looks up and then at my empty hands. “No milk?”

I shake my head, walk over to her. What the fuck am I doing? I’m angry. I’m doing what I do when I’m angry at Parks.

“Get up,” I tell her.

Jordan swallows, does it.

I pull my hoodie off her body, grab her, hold her against me.

She smiles as she kisses me back.

We haven’t had sex in a while, not like we were before — I wonder if Jordan knows why? Why I’ve barely touched her since Parks came back? Or why when we do I keep my eyes open?

I don’t know what I’m doing even though I know exactly what I’m doing — done this before — no doubt that now Magnolia’s is back that I’ll do it again. ‘Sex is not a weapon,’ Claire says to me sometimes in our sessions. But she’s wrong.

Parks wants to throw Jack-Jack Cavan at me and then come over a few days later telling me she loves me? Fuck her.

Jordan pulls my top off, hands running over my body. I fall backwards onto the couch, bringing her down on top of me and I make a mental note to cancel therapy this week. I don’t need that lecture.