A week or so passes and everything starts to feel more relaxed.
A coincidence, I’m pretty sure — Cian turning up like that. Or just Ro trying to power move me, so fuck her, I’ll take Magnolia out if I want to.
Murano on Queen Street is where we go. Get the charred mackerel, you’ll die for it.
I find myself staring over at her, half annoyed, half fucking enamoured — those are my default settings for her — it’s a shit feeling, loving someone who doesn’t love you back. Sometimes I wonder if she might — if she could — if she knew it was on the table, whether she might be open to it.
She stares back at me from across the table, her chin in her hand. “What?”
“Just thinking how fun it was watching you tear Vanna Ripley a new one.”
She rolls her eyes. “She deserves it.”
I nod once. “She does.”
She takes a long sip of her martini. Likes them wet and dirty, and I’m 90% sure it’s just because she likes the way the bartenders look at her when she says it. “Was Daisy okay?”
“Yeah.” I nod. “I mean — he’s hardly withholding when it comes to — what did you call it?” My eyes pinch. “His strong feelings of affection?” I laugh, shake my head and she smiles at me.
“They’re happy.” She tilts her head, happy for them, and shit — I love her. Fuck. As she bites down on her thumbnail smiling over at me as she picks at a piece of focaccia, she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen it all. Her happy for my baby sister, leaning over a table to undo a button on the checked shirt she picked out for me that I wore because I don’t care anymore — I’ll do whatever the fuck she says. I love everything about her— how she listens to the same song on repeat for about two and a half hours, how she fusses over clothes, how she looks in my bathroom when she’s cleaning her teeth, how she sits on my lap no matter what I’m doing, how pink her mouth is with nothing even on it.
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.
I’m going to tell her. We can do this.
We’ll figure it out.
I push back from the table, standing quickly.
She looks up at me, frowning. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I nod quickly. “Bathroom.”
“Oh.” She flashes me a quick smile.
She grabs her phone from the table and flips it over in her hand.
Kekoa and Declan walk me over and I push open the door, stand at the sink.
Run the water over my hands, my wrists.
I can do this.
Never done it before, but I can do it. Do I just say it?
How do I say it? She could love me too. She might say it back.
Do I say her name at the end — I don’t fucking know? I—
“You good?” Kekoa asks, sticking his head around the door.
“Yeah.” I nod.
“Yeah?” He doesn’t quite buy it. He points at me. “You got a face?”
“No face—” I shake my head.
He shrugs with his mouth. Still doesn’t buy it.
I push past him and walk back to my table.
She’s sitting there, phone face-down on the table again, her chin back in her hand, grinning away at someone who’s sat in my seat.
I don’t recognise them from behind and I look back at Koa then over at Decks—
We left her by herself.
I don’t run — I don’t want to scare her — I walk over to her.
“Julian—” she says, smiling up at me as as I walk fast as I can towards her. “Your friend’s just introduced himself.”
I turn to look at the stranger and I’m staring straight down at the face of Ezra Brown.
“Julian!” He beams up at me.
I put both my hands on Magnolia’s shoulders.
He’s more tan than the last time I saw him. Open buttoned shirt, linen vacation kind of pants, drinking my drink.
“It’s so good to see you — it’s been — God — How long has it been?”
I say nothing, just stare at him.
“How do you know each other?” Magnolia asks, looking between us.
“Oh—” Brown swats his hands as he eyes me down. “Julian used to do some… babysitting for me.”
“Did he?” She sits back in her chair, delighted. She looks up at me. “Aren’t you sweet?”
Ezra stares at me. “The sweetest.”
“I didn’t mean to intrude—” Ezra takes a bite of my meal. Fucking cocky bastard. If Magnolia wasn’t here I’d kill him on the spot. Club him over the head with that bottle of Malbec, drag him out by the ankles and hang him off the roof of my house for everyone in this fucking city to know that you can’t mess with me. Except you can mess with me because I’m in love with someone, and they keep fucking using it against me without lifting a finger.
“I was just getting to know your—” Brown looks at Magnolia, giving her an inquisitive smile. “Where did we land with the label again?”
“Well—” She shakes her head like it’s a ridiculous question. “We’re certainly not dating, he’s been very clear on that—” She tosses me a look, amused, maybe a bit annoyed — I want her to see my face, feel something’s amiss, I don’t want her to know what’s amiss, just to know enough to feel like she should pull back from the conversation but she doesn’t. Instead she trades an amused glance with Brown.
“I think the general consensus is lover.”
“Lover.” Ezra’s face pulls into a smile that makes me feel sick. Fuck. He stares up at me and licks his lips. “She is… lovely.”
“Get up,” I tell her, pulling her gruffly to her feet and then behind me.
“What are you — ow!” She frowns as I yank her behind me.
“He’s not my friend—”
She frowns, confused. “What?”
“He turns on a dime, Magnolia—” Ezra shakes his head at her, still eyeing me. He stands, tossing my napkin down on the food I hadn’t even started yet. “It was such a pleasure to meet you, darling—” He peeks around, looking for Magnolia’s eyes but I shield her.
“A real pleasure,” he says, staring at me. “I’m sure I’ll see you soon.”
He turns and walks away.
“Paid your bill,” he calls on his way out, and Kekoa and Declan stare after him, their hands covertly on their weapons, just in case.
We don’t shoot people in the middle of Mayfair if we can help it.
Watch him til he leaves and then I spin around to face her, holding her face in my hands.
“What did he say to you?”
“What?” She frowns. “Nothing — what’s going on? What do you mean he’s not your friend?”
I don’t know what to say — and I don’t have to answer anything either because we’re immediately ushered out the back exit, through the kitchen, down some stairs into one of my cars.
I boost her up into the back of the car, and she’s scowling away, angry that she doesn’t understand.
“Middle seat,” Kekoa tells me.
I put her in the middle, and he gives me a steep look.
“Julian—” she says, voice sounds like she’s stomping her foot even though she isn’t. “What’s going on?”
“Someone call Daisy.”
“Already have.” Declan nods. “She’s fine. At the Compound with Miguel.”
“Christian?” I ask.
He flicks me an annoyed look. “He’s there too.”
“Julian!” Magnolia tugs on my arm.
It races through my head what I could say — what I could possibly say to her — it has to be a lie.
What’s going on? Just someone levelling a threat against you for the second time in a month because you’re with me.
“Who was that?” She shakes her head, eyes starting to look worried — I hate her looking worried.
“An old friend of the family,” Kekoa offers without turning around.
“Oh.” Magnolia frowns, still confused.
“He’s a bit weird—” He glances back, giving her an assuring look. “We don’t like him hanging around.”
“Oh.” She nods like she gets it even though she doesn’t. She can’t, won’t ever. I toss my old friend a grateful look.
I take her home that night to the Compound just to be safe and to be selfish, because I know what this means. This is what it means to love someone.
We have sex, twice for good measure. Once in my bed, once on the bathroom sink. She slips into the shower with me for no reason that I can tell other than to be by me, wraps her arms around me and then nothing. I feel it bursting through my chest even though I haven’t done it yet, how much I’ll feel her absence once I do. How big this stupid fucking house is going to be without all the clothes she brings thrown about everywhere. How useless my bed’s going to feel without her in it. How empty my lap’s going to be this time next week.
“What are you doing?” I ask after five seconds of her little head pressed up against my chest in the shower.
“Nothing—” She frowns up at me, offended. “You can bend me over your vanity but I can’t give you a cuddle?”
I sit down on the mosaic tile bench built into my shower, pull her down on top of my lap, push some hair from her face.
Fuck. I hate loving her.
It’s the great undoing of my heart as I know it. She’s made herself at home, kicked off those fucking cerulean heels, put her feet up on my left rib. Over the mantelpiece she hung her own portrait up herself, that little minx. Best painting I’ve ever seen, too. Better than any woman anyone has ever painted in the history of time, a face I’d win battles for. A face I’d lose anything for. Even her.
It’s time.
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 in the cards. I’d be the death of her, and I won’t be.
So it’s time.
