Page 324 of The Long Way Home

Seventy-Four

Magnolia

Maybe I should have smelled it in the air. Trouble.

After Paili? How could I not?

That threw a spanner in the works of my heart. Made me hate BJ all over again. I haven’t in a while. Loving him took over the driver’s seat.

I made a year’s worth of bad decisions when I hated him and Paili for what they did to me. Once I realised I only hated BJ as much as I did because I love him as much as I do, I continued to make a few more months’ worth of bad (and arguably spectacular) decisions with Julian, and it takes all of my self-control not to run right back there, because I could.

How he looked at me the other week when I went to visit Daisy? I could.

But I don’t and I won’t. Because I love BJ more than I want me to be okay, and that’s new, I think. Progress, some might say.

For now I think I’ll just say that it’s killing me.

Seeing BJ and Paili near each other felt like being knocked over by a wave and I can’t kick my way back up to the surface.

It made me feel stupid.

For how many years had it been in front of me plainly and I didn’t see?

There were clues. I can see that now when I think back on it — things she’d do and say when she was drunk, like how she’d go with him. But it was never overtly sexual, not dissimilar to how I was with the other boys. Boys who were just safe places to me. I thought BJ was a safe place for her.

I never thought, well, you know what I never thought.

I hate feeling stupid. I hate in particular that it’s not just the three of us who know. For years Jonah knew, for years Perry knew. And then after that night at the Rosebery, everyone knew. The whole wide world got a front row seat to me finding out the two people I loved more than anything didn’t love me enough not to do that.

I had anxiety attacks over that. Bad ones. The kinds you get taken to hospital for. Usually at night time, usually after I had been with another boy, trying not to think about the only thing I think about. Tom, Rush and Jack-Jack — all of them had to take me to Mount Sinai at least once. Rush a bunch of times, actually.

I love BJ more than I want the right to be angry at him — and I want to be with him, properly, always. I know for that to happen, the forgiving and the trusting need to happen.

And actually, truthfully, I kind of thought I already had.

Stupid, I know, because it was never conscious. One day it just stopped being the first thing I thought of, stopped being this thing that sat in my throat like a lump of dry bread that I couldn’t ever swallow down properly.

That only happened when I saw him again.

A face like that washes away a multitude of sins, believe me, I’ve committed many with him and he’s committed many on me. That face covers them all. His cool eyes are like a cold compress on my busy, curiously masochistic mind.

But then I saw her and all I could see was my old friend, who saw my boyfriend, my person, my love of my life, naked. She ran her hands through his hair, had him inside of her. And him, his mouth dragging over her skin, her eyes squeezed shut as he pushed into her how he’d push into me.

I vomit again. I vomit every time I think of it. This is what BJ does to me. This is what loving him does to me. It ruins me. Makes me stupid, makes my body act like it’s broken.

“Maybe you should just stay home?” Taura tells me.

Some night for some thing at one of Christian’s clubs, I don’t really want to go myself, but what, with their mum in hospital and them not wanting us to do anything for them, I figure the least I can do is show up to his events when he asks me to.

I love Rebecca Barnes. I’ll never forget the secret she kept for me all these years. I’ll always be grateful for her. Christian and Jonah both seem strangely calm. Bridget says it’s because of their sister, that they’re just internalising things, but the Hemmes boys have always been epically stoic.

I shake my head at Taura, even though I think she’s probably right. On a personal level I perhaps should stay away from him. On a relational level, I need to be there.

Plus, in all honesty, I’ve avoided BJ since that day with Paili, which is bad of me, but I’m trying. I’ve answered his calls, I’ve answered his texts. I’m trying not to wear it, trying not to have it set us back sixteen months. If I don’t come I know he’ll worry, or worse.

I don’t want him to worry and I definitely don’t want him worse.

So I pull on the off-the-shoulder lace-trimmed sequinned crepe mini dress from Saint Laurent and slip into the Dolce & Gabbana black satin pumps with bejewelled embellishment. Toss on the black and white checked wool and cashmere-blend coat from Valentino and that should tell you everything you need to know about my mind space. I don’t need him to keep me warm tonight. Even if I desperately do need him to hold me.