Daisy Haites: The Great Undoing: Book 4 (Magnolia Parks Universe)
Daisy Haites: Chapter 37

I’m late to breakfast with the boys. Late because Daisy jumped in the shower with me when I was getting ready to leave and I got a bit sidetracked.

I’d sidetrack my whole fucking year for five minutes alone with her, but by way of miracle, I’m getting a lot of her five minutes these days — and I’m not going to fuck it up this time.

If there even is something to fuck up. Maybe there is, it’s so hard to tell with her because she does just enjoy sex. So maybe that’s what it is, maybe that’s all it is, or maybe — please God — we’re sorting our shit out.

“Well.” My brother leans back in his chair, smacking me on the back as I sit down next to him at the table. “Look who decided to show up…”

“Busy morning?” BJ asks, eyes up over the menu.

“Yeah, actually—” I nod, coolly.

“Doing what?” Henry asks, eyes pinched.

I leave it hanging for a couple of seconds.

“Daisy.” I give him a proud smile and Henry chokes on his drink.

“Shut the fuck up.” He grins over at me. “Actually?”

I nod, trying to play it cool.

“How long for?” Jonah asks, smacking me in the arm.

I shrug like I’m not 100% sure, like I don’t know off the top of my head that it’s been nine days and seventeen hours — give or take — since we first hooked up at my car.

That fucking car, man. I love it. I’ll never get rid of it. It belongs in one of her museums.

“And you’re just telling me?” Henry scowls.

“Believe it or not, Hen—” I shake my head. “I don’t have sex with a girl and immediately think to call you.”

“Yeah, but it’s not just a girl—” He tosses me a look. “It’s Daisy.”

“Who is a girl…” BJ tells him gently.

Henry shakes his head. “Not to him—”

I wave my hand through the air like I haven’t been missing her for the last year, like there’s not a parade sounding off in my chest cavity right now that this morning I had her pressed up against a bathroom wall and afterwards we sat on the shower floor and she explained to me who the Pre-Raphaelites were and how they changed the course of art-history, and she was so happy as she was doing it, completely engrossed in her own little story, I feel sad that she had to hide this part of who she was for a year with that cop, and I wanted to kiss her again to make sure she knows it’s a part of her that I love, but I didn’t want her to think I’m just around her for the sex — but once she started listing their doctrines off her fingers I couldn’t help it — I just leant over and kissed her and she laughed like it confused her why I did it, but she kissed me back and started things up again.

I pulled back from her, wiped some water from her face.

“You didn’t tell me the fourth one—?” I told her.

And she stared at me for a few seconds, then kissed me more.

“You been around the house a lot, then?” BJ asks, face looking a bit strained, and I know where this is going.

I nod casually, trying to keep the drama at bay as long as I can.

“Is she okay?” he asks, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Who?” I ask, as if I don’t know.

“Who the fuck do you think?” BJ shakes his head annoyed and Jonah sighs like we’re up to our old shit again.

The question annoys me.

Everything about whatever the fuck he’s doing annoys me — not because I love Parks still, not because I’m blindly on her side, but because whatever the fuck he’s doing — it’s fucked.

I give him a little shrug. “I don’t know what you’re asking—”

Beej sort of scowls at me. “I’m asking if she’s okay.”

“Yeah?” I pull a face. “I guess. As good as she’ll be while you have a girlfriend—”

Jonah rolls his eyes and Henry lets out a sigh.

“But how is she?” BJ asks like him repeating the same fucking thing brings any clarity.

“How is she like—” I shrug, waiting for more. “I don’t know what you want me to say? How is she in general? How is she health-wise—”

BJ’s brows dip. “What’s wrong with her health?”

I shake my head. “How is she with him? Is that what you mean?” I stare over at him, waiting for BJ to answer me but he doesn’t. He’s breathing heavy. I think he wants me to say it’s shit and weird and whatever, but I won’t.

“She’s good,” I tell him, unflinching.

“Christian—” My brother sighs.

“What?” I give him a look. “You can lie to him if you want, I’m not gonna to — they’re good together, man.”

BJ’s face goes a funny kind of still.

Jo shakes his head in this dismissive, apologetic way. “They’re not together—”

“They’re literally always together.”

Jonah shoots me a look. “You know that’s not what he means.”

“I don’t know…” I shrug. “Jules blew off Balaska for her—”

Jo looks surprised at that. “Piss off — Josette? He did not.”

I nod over at him. “He told her to leave. Parks walked in on her straddling him.”

“Oh, yeah—” Henry grimaces. “That one didn’t go down too well.”

“They sound like they’re going good…” BJ says sarcastically.

Henry stares over at his brother, annoyed at him the same way we all are, really, in that ‘just fucking pull it together’ kind of way, where none of us get what the fuck they’re doing or why they’re doing it. Parks, I kind of get — just because she’s an absolute fucking twist — but Beej? I don’t know. It’s a mess.

“They’re better together than you’d want them to be, mate.” Henry says, just to make a jab. “And you’re not as good with Jordan as you want everyone to think you are. No one thinks that.” he adds, flashing his brother a shit-eating grin.

BJ flips him off and tries to shake it all off but I can see floating barely under the surface that he’s stressed.

“It’s nothing, Beej—” Jo says with a sigh. “You know Parks, she’s just a handful. You can’t juggle when you’re with her—”

BJ gives him a little glare. “Thought you said they weren’t with each other—”

“They’re not, but I mean—” Jonah rolls his eyes. “You know Parks. She’s bloody Snow White with the songs and the birds on her fingers and deer running after her, but instead of animals, it’s men.”

I sniff a laugh.

“Jules is just a bird on her finger.” Jonah shrugs to placate him but I don’t know that it’s completely true.

BJ shakes his head thinking, then scratches the back of his neck. “What am I then?”

Henry drains his drink and stares over at his brother.

“The huntsman.”

Daisy
1:01pm

You still never told me the fourth doctrine.

4. “And most indispensable of all — to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues.”

Did they?

Yes.

Yes, very much so.

Show me sometime?

Okay.