Page 97 of Charmed, I'm Sure
“How about I fuck you instead?” The words barely left my lips before Magnolia’s mouth was on mine, her hands tangling in my hair as she ground against me.
“Is that a yes?” I asked when we came up for air.
“Absolutely.”
“Where do you want these?” Magnolia asked, rummaging through yet another box. “Looks like a bunch of medical textbooks. Don’t you have to return those?”
“Only if you don’t buy them outright,” I replied, pulling random odds and ends from my own box. I really should’ve Marie Kondo’d this stuff before packing.
“Okay, Mr. Fancy Pants. But where do you want them?”
When I looked up, Magnolia was standing across the living room by the built-in bookcase, a hefty medical textbook in each hand. I had no other explanation for why all the blood in my body suddenly traveled south except for the fact that it was her—standing there in the t-shirt and sweatpants I’d, begrudgingly, loaned her. But hot damn, if seeing her in my clothes wasn’t one of the biggest turn-ons there was.
“Earth to Taylor,” Magnolia sing-songed, waving one of the books before letting out a grunt and pulling it to her chest. “Fuck, these are heavy.”
“That they are.” Palming the back of my neck, I scanned the room, trying to figure out where to put them, and came up blank. Did Imention I really needed to go furniture shopping? With a sigh, I said, “I guess just stack them on the shelves for now. I’m planning on setting up an office-slash-guest room eventually, but those shelves will do for now.”
Magnolia muttered something like “okie doke” before returning to the task at hand.
We worked in relative silence for a while, but when I opened the next box and found my Bluetooth speaker, I let out a whoop of excitement.
“Did you find gold?” she asked with a laugh, peeking out from behind a blanket she was folding.
“No, but I found this.” I held it up as she dropped the blanket, her lips pulling into a smile. “Want some music?”“Always.”
Thanking whatever benevolent being presided over electronic devices and their battery life, I turned the speaker on and pulled my phone from my pocket.
“Any preference?”
She hummed, then said, “Maybe nineties or early two-thousands?”
“Seriously?” I deadpanned.
“As a heart attack, Doctor Hallows.”
“Hardy har har,” I retorted as she laughed, shaking my head while connecting my phone to the speaker. Typing “early 2000s” into Spotify, I scrolled until I found something tolerable. I settled onFirefliesby Owl City and hit play. Magnolia’s face lit up, and she started singing along, her hips swaying as she unpacked another box.
Okay, maybe the playlist wasn’t so bad if that was the reaction I got from my girl.
My phone hadn’t been back in my pocket for more than thirty seconds when it pinged repeatedly with text notifications. Sighing, I perched on the windowsill and opened the thread from Addy. Therewas a collage of pictures from the night before: shots of her and Colin, a quick selfie of the two of us where she beamed while I looked like I wanted to be anywhere else, and a few more with me in the background looking sullen—complete with laughing emojis in the captions.
I’d just finished scrolling through the last one when another text popped up.
Addy
Mary sent this to me. It’s cute! But you’ve got a lot of explaining to do, big bro. *smirking emoji*
Before I could even process what she was talking about, another image loaded. It rendered me speechless. Though the resolution was still decent, the picture had clearly been taken from inside the house and zoomed in so far that the Christmas lights strung above the dance floor had starburst streaks. And right below those twinkling bulbs were me and Magnolia, standing impossibly close, our faces lit with moony smiles as we gazed at each other.
“Goddammit,” I muttered, pinching the bridge of my nose beneath my glasses.
Was I pissed that our privacy had been invaded—again? Yeah. But I couldn’t help the smile tugging at my lips as I stared at the photo. Magnolia looked incandescent under the glow of the lights, her smile radiant as she looked up at me. We just fit.
“Everything alright over there, cowboy?”
Magnolia
Taylor’s mouth was taut as he stared down at his phone, his hand absently rubbing his jaw.
