Page 329 of The Long Way Home

“It’s very fixable, Magnolia,” she says and gives me a serious look. “You just stay.”

She gives me a small shrug like it’s the simplest thing in the world.

“That’s all he needs from you. You know you’re in, in that insane, undoable way. You’re always going to be. You just keep staying.”

“Even when—” I start but she cuts me off.

“—Even when.” She gives me a look. “Even when anything, there’s nothing you could put at the end of that sentence that would warrant you leaving.”

I frown at her.

“This is what it is, Magnolia. Loving him no matter what.”

“I do.” I frown at her.

“You do.” She nods. “You two do have the loving each other down pat. The rest of it is just showing up.” She gives me a sweet smile. “And not running away and not sleeping with gang lords, etcetera etcetera.”

“Julian took me home last night,” I tell her.

“Magnolia!” She smacks me in the arm. “Did you? You didn’t!”

“No!” I shake my head. “I said I couldn’t.”

“Because…?” Bridget stares over at me, eyebrows up.

“Because I love BJ.” I frown.

My phone rings again and I sigh. “Answer that for me, would you?”

“Oh, hello—” My sister groans. “We were just talking about you— No, you can’t, she’s driving— What? Sorry, I can’t hear you—”

And then there’s a bang at the back of my car and my sister yells, “MAGNOLIA LOOK OUT!”

I don’t even think I ever took my eyes off the road. I didn’t look at the phone, I didn’t pass it to her, it was in my bag on the floor.

I don’t swerve. I was in my lane and driving the limit.

There are none of the sounds your mind is trained to listen for — no screeching of tyres, no horn blaring a warning.

I’m driving like normal one second and the next someone has driven into the back of my car. Mostly it’s just a big jolt. We both jerk forward. My seatbelt chokes me a little — and it happens so quickly, pushing us onto the other side of the road — I barely have time to glance over at Bridget before the next car hits.

This time it comes from the driver’s side and I don’t see the car itself but what’s about to happen on my sister’s frozen face.

“Magnolia!” she cries before the loudest sound I’ve ever heard in my life is wrapping around us.

Glass everywhere, the grinding of metal folding in on itself and wrapping around my body.

I’m still watching my little sister’s face — it breaks out in a deep kind of horror. She’s talking to me but I can’t hear her because everything else is too loud suddenly. I know it’s probably dramatic of me, like some terrible cliche, but I suppose this is how these things go, isn’t it?

How many loves do you get in a lifetime? For me it’s just the one. I’ve had more but as I float away there’s only one I’m thinking of.

He is what I’m thinking of.

Not how he hurt me, not what he did to me, not what we’ve done to each other. Just him.

How his hair falls on his face, the dip in his top lip, how his mouth parts when he’s thinking, the freckle on the right side of his mouth, the shape of his nose. I trace his jawline in my mind, count the colours in his eyes. I feel sad for the splittest of seconds because I always kind of thought they’d be the last things I’d see here on earth, that we’d get to Tobermory eventually, grow up and old together, but here I am now, grateful anyway that I got the chance to love him at all, albeit maybe badly at times, but at least I got to love him, and maybe now, I appear to be leaving him once again — I hope that he forgives me for this one because it wasn’t my fault. The sounds are getting quieter now, even though they could be getting louder too.

My sister’s mouth is moving, she’s reaching for me. My face feels wet? The edges of my vision start going dark.

And my Ballentine-stained heart surges as it remembers every waking moment of our youth spent tangled up with each other, and a million blurry nights of tears and bad words and big feelings and messy kisses and grabby hands and choices we should have never made but I’m so glad we did. I love that tree. I love that door that he could never lock. I love that piece of sandstone that is so much more than a piece of sandstone.

I try to tell Bridget that I love her but the sounds come out muffled.

It gets darker and my head feels lighter.

It’s pulling me under and I let it.

And I drift off into the infinite void thinking of him.