Magnolia Parks (The Magnolia Parks Universe, Band 1) - Softcover

Buch 1 von 5: The Magnolia Parks Universe

Hastings, Jessa

 
9780593474860: Magnolia Parks (The Magnolia Parks Universe, Band 1)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593474864 ISBN 13: 9780593474860
Verlag: Dutton, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

“How many loves do you get in a lifetime?”

She is a beautiful, affluent, self-involved, and mildly neurotic London socialite. He is Britain’s most photographed bad boy who broke her heart.

Magnolia Parks and BJ Ballentine are meant to be, and everyone knows it.

She dates other people to keep him at bay; he sleeps with other girls to get back at her for it. But at the end of every sad endeavor to get over one another, it’s still each other they crawl back to.

But now their dysfunction is catching up with them, pulling at their seams and fraying the world they’ve built; a world where neither has ever let the other go completely.

As the cracks start to show and secrets begin to surface, Magnolia and BJ are finally forced to face the formidable question they’ve been avoiding all their lives: How many loves do you really get in a lifetime?

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jessa Hastings is an Australian native who now lives in Southern California with her husband, two children, her beautiful, clingy dog, and two cats. She’s quite a bad sleeper but hopes this won’t be her lot in life forever; she has a busy brain, cannot do her hair to save her life, and has some intense anxieties about certain foods mixing or touching. Magnolia Parks was her debut novel and she is grateful for and delighted by all the girls who yell at her on the internet on a daily basis regarding this novel. She hopes they know they changed her life by loving her imaginary friends.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

ONE

Magnolia

"I like this." He tugs on my dress, coming up behind me. Black, Amiri Thrasher jeans (extra-torn knees, obviously), black Vans and the black and white raglan tee from Givenchy.

I stare at my reflection in his bedroom mirror. Tilt my head, squint my eyes and pretend like I'm the only girl who's been in here lately. I make sure the necklace with his ring on it is tucked under and away where no one but me and probably he, later, can see it, then flatten the Peter Pan collar of the red, blue and white floral, satin jacquard dress.

"Miu Miu," I tell him, catching his eye in the mirror.

I love his eyes.

He nods coolly. "Slept with a Miu Miu model last week."

I hate his eyes. I glare over at him for a second, swallow heavy to compose myself before smiling carefree. "I don't care." Our eyes lock and hold and I don't just hate his eyes but all of him for a second-for knowing me how he knows me, for seeing through everything I say, for doing that with anyone but me. He shrugs indifferently.

He, being BJ Ballentine, my first . . . everything, really. Love, time, heartbreak. He's the boy with the golden hair and the golden eyes even though his hair is brown, and his eyes are green, the most beautiful boy in all of London they say-and probably I agree. On his good days. But why am I explaining him to you? You already know who he is.

"I know you don't care." He runs his tongue over his teeth absentmindedly. He does that when he's annoyed and I can tell he's annoyed, but it's just for a second because then his eyes soften like they always do for me.

"You had a boyfriend at the time, Parks-" He looks for my eyes but I don't let him find them because I like to make him think he has to work for my attention.

"Right." I blink as I tell him again: "I don't care."

"Yeah," he sighs, fake-bored. "Shields up, right?" he says, under his breath. That's a thing that the boys say to each other when they see my heart switch gears.

He gives me another look because he knows that I'm lying, and our hearts have a Mexican stand-off with our eyes.

I miss you, I blink in Morse code.

I still love you, say the turned-down edges of his perfect mouth.

Fairly top heavy, like somehow it always manages to get stung by bees. Once upon a time, he balanced my whole heart atop that lip.

"When, anyway?" I ask as I turn on my heel and face him, grabbing his wrist to cuff the sleeves of his black denim patch scarves trucker jacket, also from Amiri, without his permission. I can feel his eyes on me, watching me, waiting for me to look up and when I do, it hurts in the centre of me like it always does when our eyes catch. A fish back in water. A sore relief.

"What?" Beej asks, brows low, watching me closely.

I tug on the centre of his jacket, trying to work out if it'd look better buttoned or not. I do the buttons up. He shifts his head, still looking for my eyes and when I don't offer them, he lifts my chin up to face him, holding it between his thumb and his index finger.

The physical distance between us is meagre, but somehow still a forest grows between. Pine trees of mistakes so tall we can't see over them and rivers of things we didn't say so wide we can't get around. We're nowhere near where we thought we'd be, we're completely off grid, and I feel lost and alone for a minute, but I'm lost and alone with him. "I was just wondering when, is all." I blink a lot. It helps keep the memories at bay. I undo the buttons. "Because you were with me almost all of last week so I just don't really know when you had the time to fornicate with some very, very white girl whose eyeballs are undoubtedly too far apart."

He smirks down at me, amused. Tall, that BJ Ballentine. Six feet, two inches.

"What?" I shrug innocently. "Ghoulishly white with googly alien eyes is undeniably Fabio Zambernardi's aesthetic."

BJ squashes a smile. "You had a boyfriend, Parks," he tells me again, and I ignore him because that's beside the point.

I jerk his jacket back together, rebuttoning. "But I was with you almost the entire time, so I just don't understand like, literally when-"

"Do you want me to share my calendar with you?"

"Your sex calendar?" I ask sharply, but I wonder if I should say yes either way, because it'd probably be handy to have for organising what nights of the week I'd plan to wash my hair, and also knowing his general whereabouts, which I like to know at all times but cannot-under any circumstance-admit to, so I just give him a look.

His eyes pinch. "I don't have a sex calendar."

'I give him another look' "Well, you certainly don't have a work calendar-"

"I have a job." He rolls his eyes.

"What, taking your shirt off for your Instagram fan club?"

He scratches the back of his neck as he grins sheepishly. "I'm just trying to pay the bills." He shrugs playfully. "Not all of us are sitting on a cool $800M, Parks."

"Quite right, quite right," I concede. "Say, how is that small island your family owns off the coast of Grenada-"

He licks his bottom lip, grinning. "You had to say small . . ."

"Smaller than mine," I cut in and he laughs.

He looks me up and down, his eyes dragging over me like his hands used to-he takes a sharp breath in and breathes loving me out-he looks past me at himself in the mirror. He shoves his hands through his hair. "Where'd we land with the buttons?"

I undo them again and he peers down at me, a grin playing about his lips.

"Always trying to undress me . . ."

I roll my eyes, but my cheeks go pink. "You wish."

I pluck the sky-blue Le Chiquito Noeud nubuck shoulder bag from Jacquemus from the fourth level of my handbag shelf.

"I do wish," he concedes, then peers around my body. "Got any buttons that need undoing?"

I smack him away, laughing. "Fuck off."

"Come on." He hooks his arm around my neck, pulling me to the door. "We're going to be late."

"So, Parks," BJ asks, small smile, eyes pinched, "what's your number-one pet peeve this week?"

"This week?" I frown. We're sitting at a table with the Full Box Set, our closest friends but even still, sometimes a thing will happen and then all the world falls to black and all we can see is each other.

"Well -" he shrugs - "I know what it is of all time."

I arch my eyebrows. "Do you now?" He nods and I drum my fingers on the table, waiting. "Enlighten me."

We're at Annabel's, and next time you're there I highly recommend getting a bottle of the 1995 Dom Pérignon Rosé.

That's not what BJ's drinking though. He's drinking a Negroni. Always a Negroni, unless the night's heading south and then it's 1942 Don Julio.

"Your number-one pet peeve of all time . . . when other girls pay attention to me. Obviously." He does a little shrug with his mouth, as if to say, "so there."

I scoff and shake my head vehemently. "No. That's . . . not even remotely close."

Though it definitely is, and is absolutely, one hundred per cent correct.

He rolls his eyes, ignoring the lie. "This week then, go on-"

"Girls who announce they're not wearing makeup on Instagram who are obviously not wearing makeup on Instagram-"

"Oh," chimes in my best friend, Paili Blythe. "I hate that!" She tucks a piece of her platinum-blonde hair behind her ear and her little button nose pinches in frustration. "What do they want from us, a Purple Heart?"

I give her a "thank you very much" gesture before continuing on.

"I don't really understand why being intentionally unkept is a bragging point."

"Some concealer, perhaps?" Paili offers. "A nice creme blush."

"Oh, what's that, Charlotte? You're not wearing any make up...

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Verlag
Dutton
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593474864
ISBN 13 
9780593474860
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
448
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Edel Music & Entertainment GmbH
https://www.edel.com

Neum�hlen 17
Hamburg
Hamburg
Deutschland

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