Diary of a Crush: French Kiss (17 page)

‘Calm down,’ he said softly. ‘I’m not going to seduce you or anything.’

‘It’s the anything I’m worried about,’ I mumbled. ‘Dylan? You don’t mind about, like, me not wanting to, y’know, do it?’

Dylan paused mid-nibble. ‘Well, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to,’ he confessed. ‘But I want to make you happy and if you’re not comfortable about having sex, then it’s cool with me. Plus if you can’t actually say it, then you’re probably not ready to do it.’

‘I’m so not,’ I told him. ‘Y’know, it’s a really big thing. It’s like the biggest thing in the world and there’s all these things I don’t know about you. And I haven’t been round to your house and we haven’t even been on a proper date and I’m not saying that once we do, I’ll have sex with you, I’m just saying…’

‘Shush,’ breathed Dylan. ‘It’s all right. If you want to have sex some time in the future, that’s fine with me and if you don’t, that’s fine with me too.’

Of course, I couldn’t just let it drop. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Edie, it’s been hard enough just getting together with you,’ Dylan insisted. ‘I’m not going to drop you just because you don’t want to have sex with me. I don’t think I could handle the trauma.’

I pinched his arm lightly. ‘Huh! How can you say it was hard getting together with me when I had to force you to go out with me?’ I demanded, but I put my hands over his hands, which were still clasped around my waist so he’d know that I wasn’t mad at him.

I could feel that low rumble of laughter against my back again. ‘I was just playing hard to get!’

‘Oh, that’s what it was,’ I said. ‘So have you slept with loads of girls?’

‘Edie?’

‘What?’

‘Shut up and give me a kiss.’

We had another long bout of kissing before I got out of bed.

‘Look, why don’t you spend the night in here?’ Dylan said. ‘You could sleep in one of the other beds.’

‘But what about Paul and Simon?’ I pointed out.

‘Simon will stay where he is until morning and for all you know Paul could be tucked up with Shona in your room,’ Dylan protested.

‘What with Mia in there too?’ I said incredulously.

Dylan shrugged. ‘She’s probably crashed out at the party.’

‘Under some willing art boy,’ I said snidely, before I could stop myself.

Dylan just rolled his eyes as I put my coat on ’cause it was freezing, picked up my boots and headed for the door.

‘Sweet dreams, girlfriend.’

One minute later, I was knocking on his door again. Dylan opened it, and raised his eyebrows at me.

‘I thought you might be back,’ he remarked.

‘There’s still no answer,’ I explained. ‘Can I sleep in here then?’

Dylan stretched, his black shirt rising up to show several inches of lean stomach. I looked away but he didn’t seem to notice.

‘Yeah, ’course you can,’ he said.

I shrugged my coat off again and let it land on the floor while I hurriedly jumped back into the bed I’d just got out of.

‘Jeez, Edie,’ Dylan complained half seriously, picking up my coat and putting it on the door hook. ‘What did your last slave die of?’

‘Hard work!’ I said. ‘You tired?’

‘Not really,’ Dylan shook his head. ‘Are you?’

‘A little bit,’ I admitted, snuggling under the covers again. Dylan lay down on the bed beside me but didn’t make any effort to get under the blankets with me. He started undoing the little twisty knots I’d put my hair in earlier and combed the tangles out with his fingers.

I love having my hair stroked. It makes me feel like a little kid again. Dylan was talking to me but I didn’t really pay any attention to what he was saying, I could feel my eyelids getting heavier and I rubbed my head against his hand.

‘Did you have a good birthday?’ Dylan suddenly asked.

‘It was the best,’ I replied sleepily. ‘Weird but good.’

‘Bit like you then,’ he murmured. ‘Weird but good.’ He put his arms round me but I moaned in protest.

‘Don’t stop stroking my hair! I’m nearly asleep,’ I said drowsily.

‘Oh God, I can see you’re going to be demanding,’ was the last thing I heard Dylan say before I fell asleep.

I couldn’t quite work out what woke me up. It might have been the weight of Dylan’s arm curled against my waist, or just the fact that Dylan was lying next to me. I opened one eye, he was still lying on top of the blankets, his mouth slightly open and his chest rising and falling as he took deep, even breaths.

A pale, bleached-out kind of sunlight was leaking through the gap in the curtains and when I craned my neck to look at the clock on Dylan’s bedside table it was six o’clock. I burrowed deeper under the covers and was just about to go back to sleep when a terrible thought occurred to me. Well, actually several terrible thoughts occurred to me. I sat bolt upright in bed.

‘OH MY GOD!’ I shrieked.

Dylan woke up with a start, then gave another start when he realised that I was there.

‘I must have fallen asleep,’ he said sleepily, pointing out the obvious. ‘I was going to crash on Simon’s bed.’

‘Never mind that,’ I whimpered. ‘We’re meant to be leaving in an hour. To go home! Everyone will have sussed out that I didn’t sleep in my room…’ I tailed off and looked across the room. The other two beds were empty. Dylan followed my gaze and then slumped back on the pillow and groaned.

I staggered out of the bed and hunted for my boots. Even though I was in the middle of a potentially catastrophic emergency, I hoped that I didn’t look too skanky. My dress was all crumpled and I was sure my hair was going in all directions.

Dylan padded over to the door, opened it and peered out cautiously.

‘There doesn’t seem to be anyone about,’ he called softly over his shoulder. ‘I think the coast is clear.’

I grabbed my coat off the hook and was just about to leave when Dylan pulled me back.

‘What?’ I enquired sleepily. I just couldn’t get my brain into gear.

Dylan rested his hands on my shoulders. ‘You’re
really
not a morning person, are you?’ he chuckled. ‘Come here.’

I was going to protest that I hadn’t cleaned my teeth, but then Dylan was giving me a good morning kiss and I stopped thinking.

‘So you haven’t got any regrets about last night?’ I asked him eventually. I’d half suspected that Dylan might get all moody on me today but he was certainly acting like I was his girlfriend. He shook his head.

‘Last night was great,’ he said. ‘What about you, you still OK with it all?’

I was just about to answer when I got the strangest feeling that we were being watched. I looked over Dylan’s shoulder and standing at the open door of the room were Shona, Paul and Mia, their eyes literally out on stalks. Dylan had realised I’d stopped paying attention to him, but he had his back to the others.

‘You still here, Eeds?’ he wanted to know.

‘We’ve got an audience,’ I mouthed at him.

‘Huh?’ Then light dawned. He let go of me and turned round to face them. ‘Oh, hi,’ he said casually. ‘All right?’

Nobody said anything for ages and then Paul grunted, ‘Uh, yeah, I’ve got to get my stuff from your, I mean, our um, room.’

Dylan winked at me. ‘I’ll save you a seat on the coach or, like, vice versa.’

As I started chucking clothes into my suitcase, Mia and Shona simply stared at me. I was trying to be ultra casual but they were making me feel really uncomfortable.

‘I s’pose I’ve got time to take a shower,’ I burbled, trying to fill the silence. ‘Might wake me up. My hair feels like it’s crawling off my head.’

Mia couldn’t bear it any longer. ‘You spent the night with him!’ she burst out. ‘I can’t believe it.’

I glared at her. ‘I didn’t have sex with him. Not that it’s any of your business.’

Mia ignored me. ‘I mean I heard Dylan say, “Last night was great”,’ she continued. ‘I think it’s really sad that you slept with Dylan when you know he doesn’t want to go out with you.’

‘I didn’t have sex with him,’ I repeated. ‘I couldn’t get in here last night, because you were either refusing to let me in or were passed out drunk at the party, so I crashed out on one of the spare beds in Dylan’s room. And, for your information, I
am
going out with Dylan so you can piss off!’

My speech took the wind out of Mia’s sails for precisely five seconds. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she snapped. ‘You’re such a slag.’ She grabbed her bags and flounced towards the door. ‘I bet Dylan only said he’d go out with you to get you into bed,’ was her parting shot before she slammed the door.

Shona folded her arms. ‘So, before you disappear into the bathroom for five hours, are you going to tell me what really happened?’

I told Shona about what had happened in the café and how I couldn’t get into our room when we got back.

‘But I didn’t crash out on a spare bed,’ I admitted. ‘I slept in Dylan’s bed and he slept on the bed, if you know what I mean, like, on the covers.’

‘Jesus!’ shrieked Shona. ‘She shoots, she scores.’

‘Well, not exactly,’ I said. ‘But I do feel like I’ve climbed Mount Everest or something.’

‘Well, I had my suspicions, I have to say,’ Shona confessed. ‘Especially when Dylan spent weeks working on your birthday present. Then you stopped speaking to each other and I thought, nah, never gonna happen, but when he turned up at the party last night, I just
knew
.’

‘Hang on,’ I cried. ‘Two days ago, you were telling me that I wasn’t his type.’

‘Well, that’s when I was still stuck on the “never gonna happen” default,’ Shona told me exasperatedly. ‘You don’t know what it’s been like for me. I’ve had the two of you coming up to me and whining about the other one. You’ve been whinging about how Dylan just wanted to be friends and he’s been sulking because you were going out with Josh… You don’t know how close I came to murdering the pair of you!’

‘Well, I suppose he has got a funny way of showing that he’s into me,’ I said with a frown. ‘He’s spent the whole trip acting like he just wanted to be friends. I had to give him an ultimatum in the end.’

‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ reckoned Shona. ‘You know how dumb boys can be. I guess it was hard for Dylan to see what was right in front of him.’

‘I don’t know,’ I muttered. ‘I’m happy, don’t get me wrong, but I feel like it could all go horribly downhill. I’m sure that Dylan’s going to get all toxic again.’

‘Oh, I don’t think he’d do that,’ Shona declared. ‘Yeah, he’s a creature of unrivalled moodiness, rivalled in fact only by your own unrivalled moodiness, but he seemed pretty loved-up this morning.’

‘So, where did you get to last night when I was frantically knocking on the door?’ I asked her.

‘Oh, we went to Andy’s room for a party. Mia got completely drunk and me and Paul had to put her to bed,’ Shona explained with a look of disgust on her face. ‘And then you hadn’t come back and I was beginning to think that you’d chucked yourself into the Seine in a fit of despair but Paul managed to take my mind off my morbid thoughts.’ She gave me a lecherous smile and a wink. ‘Anyway, you’ve got five minutes before you need to be in the lobby with your luggage, so I guess you’d better take a raincheck on that shower.’

‘As if,’ I wailed, grabbing my towel and practically running into the bathroom.

Even though I broke all showering world records, I was still fifteen minutes late. The coach driver was just about to shut the boot when I ran down the hotel steps, dragging my bags with me.

‘Sorry,’ I huffed at Tania who was looking seriously cheesed off with me. So, what else was new?

‘It’s a pity that somebody didn’t buy you a watch for your birthday,’ she said grumpily. ‘Honestly, Edie, I feel like I’ve spent the entire five days having to watch over you.’

Duh! That’s your job, I thought.

‘I don’t know why I bother half the time,’ she went on as she climbed up the coach steps.

‘I don’t know why you bother any of the time,’ I muttered under my breath, as I followed her.

I stomped down the aisle of the coach to a couple of wolf-whistles and as I made my way to where Dylan was sitting, I heard one of the girls whisper to me, ‘Nice one, Edie! Was he any good?’

By the time I reached the seat that Dylan had saved for me, I was bright red. I looked at Mia who was sitting in the seat behind, like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

‘You bitch!’ I hissed at her. ‘Have you told everyone?’

She smirked at me. ‘Yup!’

Dylan stood up and moved into the aisle, so he could put my shoulder bag in the overhead locker.

‘You can sit by the window if you want,’ he offered. ‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing,’ I snapped, glaring at Mia.

Shona, who was sitting in the seat in front with Paul, turned round. ‘It’s just Mia living up to her reputation,’ she told Dylan with a pointed look. I pressed my hot face against the cold window as Dylan sat down next to me.

‘Don’t worry about Mia,’ Dylan said sounding remarkably unconcerned. But then he would. If people think that a boy’s scored with a girl, he gets treated like a player while everyone thinks that she’s a slapper. It’s so unfair.

‘I’m not worried about Mia,’ I said. ‘I’m just annoyed with her. Y’know I wanted this to be perfect and she’s ruining everything before we’ve even got started.’

Dylan pulled a face. ‘Life isn’t perfect, Edie,’ he told me, squeezing my hand. ‘But you just have to know when to pick the right battles and Mia really isn’t worth it.’

‘I heard that,’ hissed Mia from behind us.

‘And?’ Dylan sounded utterly unrepentant.

‘I don’t remember you saying I wasn’t worth it when you were seeing me,’ she said nastily.

‘Do you know something, Mia?’ Dylan asked her.

‘What?’

‘You’re really starting to bore me.’

The journey to Calais was really uneventful, apart from Mia kicking the back of my seat continuously for the first hour. Everyone was knackered after last night’s two parties and having to get up at the crack of dawn, so mostly people slept.

I didn’t know if Dylan was sleeping, but he had his eyes shut. His dark hair, which he usually pushed back from his face every five minutes was flopping onto his forehead. He’d slumped down in his seat so his bony knees, in their dark blue jeans, were almost touching the seat in front and his arms were crossed over his chest. He looked so remote.