Diary of a Crush: French Kiss (7 page)

‘That job in Rhythm Records must pay really well,’ muttered Shona archly.

Dylan ran a hand through his hair, mussing it up and I itched to smooth it down. ‘I’ve just spent the last week doing a portrait of this woman’s cat to get some extra cash. It was a nightmare. Look.’

He pulled up the sleeve of his jacket to show two long cat scratches on the underside of his forearm. I couldn’t stop myself. I reached out a finger and touched the raised wound on the soft skin.

‘Nasty,’ I mumbled. I hadn’t realised that Shona was clueless about the pet portrait. I thought Dylan told her everything. I guess, he was worried that his couldn’t-give-a-fuck image would be shot to pieces if word got out that he was drawing old women’s pets to make a bit of cash for the trip to Paris.

‘You coming to class, Eeds?’ Dylan called over his shoulder as he’d already started walking away.

‘I’ll see you later,’ I said to Shona, picking up my bag and walking over to Dylan who was waiting impatiently by the canteen doors.

But I wished that I had skived off Photography because Dylan was being so
scratchy
.

‘You seeing the devoted Josh before you leave?’ he whispered to me, as Martyn banged on about our itinerary for Paris.

‘I’m seeing him tonight, if you must know,’ I hissed crossly. ‘Not that it’s any business of yours.’

‘I bet he’ll hold your hand and get all mopey ’cause you’re going to be away for five whole days. How will he manage without you?’

‘Very well, I should imagine,’ I snapped.

‘Yeah, right! He needs help crossing the road.’

I shot him an extra special version of no. 3 from my evil glare collection.

‘Temper, temper,’ laughed Dylan, reaching out and grabbing my wrist. I tried to pull my hand away.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m just checking your pulse. Stress isn’t very good for you,’ Dylan said with a smirk.

‘Well, stop bugging me then.’

Dylan was right. Josh took me to Pizza Express and spent an hour going on about how much he was going to miss me and how great I was and how he wouldn’t know what to do with himself.

It’s flattering going out with a boy who thinks you’re completely ace, but sometimes I don’t know who this girl is that Josh thinks he’s so in love with. It doesn’t sound like me.

‘You won’t know I’m gone,’ I insisted. ‘Five days is, like, no time at all.’

Josh pushed his floppy blond fringe out of his eyes and I wanted to scream at him to get his hair cut.

‘But I really wanted us to spend your birthday together,’ he moaned.

I picked at a cold piece of garlic bread. ‘Look, Josh, I wish you were coming too, but you’re not so we’ll just have to make the best of it.’

Josh just sighed heavily, which made me grit my teeth with irritation, and asked if I was going to finish the garlic bread.

Josh walked me home and stopped when he got to the corner of my road.

‘What’s up?’ I asked, hoping we weren’t going to have yet another discussion about me going to Paris.

‘Since I’m not going to see you on your birthday, I thought I’d give you your present now,’ he said, his voice trembling a little.

I thought that this was his cue to grab me and kiss my face off – Dylan would – but instead he was rummaging in his pocket. Eventually, along with a couple of bus tickets and some bits of fluff, he produced a small, wrapped present.

‘You can open it now if you like,’ he said but I was already tearing off the paper to uncover a jewellery box.

For one terrifying moment I thought it was an engagement ring and he was going to do something really stupid like propose to me. As I opened the box, I was rehearsing how I’d tell him that I was too young to commit myself, but it wasn’t a ring, it was a gold necklace with a charm that said ‘I love you’ on it. I don’t want to sound like an ungrateful bitch, but it was dead naff. Josh looked at me expectantly and I couldn’t hurt his feelings. I reached up and gave him a kiss on the cheek. ‘Thanks Josh. It’s lovely,’ I lied. And then before he could reach for me, I gave his hand a quick squeeze, muttered something about my curfew and ran the last few yards home.

Shona was very underwhelmed when she saw the token of Josh’s affection.

‘Not really you, Edie,’ she said, wrinkling her nose when I showed her the necklace.

‘It was probably really expensive but I don’t like gold,’ I muttered, trying not to sound like a heartless ingrate. ‘I’d much rather have had, y’know, maybe one of those red enamel strawberries on a silver chain that we saw in town last week.’

‘Hmmm, that sounds far more like something Dylan would get a girl,’ Shona mused with an arch look in my direction.

‘Oh, shut up!’

‘Come on Edie, I know you’re still mad about him,’ Shona insisted. ‘All this “being friends” stuff doesn’t fool me. And when we get to romantic Paris, the city of lovers, who knows what might happen?’

I threw a balled-up pair of socks at her. ‘Yeah, Shona, who knows what might happen? Like, you could knock off Mia and get back with Paul.’

Shona raised her eyebrows, ‘Something like that, perhaps.’

I sat down next to her on the bed. ‘Spill.’

She stopped folding cardies and gave me a long look. ‘I
am
going to get back with Paul,’ she said fiercely. ‘Not
if
, but
when
. Mia’s just a temporary blip. I bet you a tenner that by the time we get back from Paris, Paul will be glued to my side.’

I shrugged. ‘You sound like you’ve got it all worked out.’

‘You bet.’ Shona dug into her bag and squashed everything down to make more room. ‘I will end her if I have to.’

She sounded positively scary and then I saw the box of condoms she was packing. I guess that if I thought about it, Shona and Paul probably had slept with each other (or at least thought about it) but there was no way that I was ready to get naked and horizontal with Dylan or Josh. Or, like, anyone for that matter.

‘Oh! So you and Paul were… y’know, sort of doing it?’

‘Well, yeah,’ she laughed. ‘We’re both nineteen. I forget what a baby you are.’

‘I’ll be seventeen next week,’ I pointed out.

‘So, you’re sweet sixteen now and never been kissed! Well, Dylan had something different to say on
that
particular subject.’

I glared at her, but she was lying back on the bed, giggling at her own wit.

‘Are we going to do this packing or what?’

Shona and I realised that if we combined our wardrobes, we’d both have twice as many outfits to go away with, but it was impossible to narrow down our fashion selections any further.

‘Do you really think we need to change for dinner every night?’ I asked doubtfully.

‘’Course. We need daywear for all that mooching around art galleries and evening wear for dining and clubbing.’

‘But jeans and leggings and jumpers are daywear, Shona, not cocktail dresses,’ I protested. All she’d packed was my entire collection of vintage frocks and beaded cardies. In her suitcase.

‘Huh! I laugh in the face of daywear,’ said Shona grandly.

I started taking some of my stuff out of her suitcase. ‘I know we agreed to share our clothes but I seem to be the only one giving here.’

Shona was idly flicking through my old CDs. She turned round to look at me, her eyes narrowing slightly.

‘What?’ I asked defensively, wondering if she’d found the McFly album that I’d hidden.

‘I was just thinking about how much you’ve changed since I first met you,’ Shona said. ‘You used to be really quiet, you wouldn’t say boo to a goose. And now you’re very mouthy. But in a good way,’ she added hastily when I shot her a look.

‘It was really hard moving to a new town,’ I muttered, sitting down on the bed again. I was suffering from severe packing fatigue. ‘When I started at college, Mia was the only person who talked to me, then she turned out to be a complete psycho. I felt like I had nobody to talk to, that everyone hated me. And I was really in awe of you, and Dylan, and Paul and Simon.’

Shona sat down next to me and chuckled. ‘God, we thought you hated us. You always seemed to be in your own world. Sometimes I’d catch you looking at me like, like I’d just crawled out of the nearest rubbish dump.’

‘No I didn’t! I guess I’ve just got one of those faces. Besides, Mia told me that you and Dylan had some weird relationship where you’d get off with loads of people to make each other jealous.’

‘Mia!’ Shona said disparagingly. ‘How does she think of these things? Look, Dylan and I have known each other since nursery school. Snogging him would be like sucking face with my brother.’

‘Ewwwww.’

‘Exactly!’

The packing took forever. I was so intent on organising the right combination of clothes and ripping tunes onto my iPod to listen to on the coach that it was two in the morning before I finally finished. Shona was already taking up most of the bed. She raised herself up on one elbow to survey my stuffed suitcase.

‘I can’t get the stupid thing to shut,’ I snarled, trying to force the top down.

‘Edie, this might be a really stupid question, but have you actually remembered to pack your camera?’

Doh! ‘I knew there was something I’d forgotten.’

Shona rolled her eyes. ‘And the fact that it’s primarily a trip for your Photography class just flew out of your head, right?’

‘You got any room in your suitcase?’

It took another half hour to take everything out and start again. By the time I got into bed, Shona was fast asleep. I pushed her over to her side and re-claimed half of the duvet that she was hogging and tried to get myself into a sleepy frame of mind, but my head was buzzing.

‘Shona, you awake?’

‘No. What is it?’

‘Do you think Dylan fancies me?’

‘Um…’

‘I mean, has he said anything to you?’

‘Go to sleep, Edie.’

I know I’m going to get a severe dosage of repetitive strain injury but I have to write down everything that happened in Paris now that I’m finally back. Everything. Not how things tasted and looked and felt; all that travelogue malarkey. But the important stuff. What was said and done and every nuance and inflection of the saying and the doing. Just so I have proof that I was there and it wasn’t a dream. Although I guess at times it seemed more like a nightmare. And now everything’s different; things can’t go back. It’s like I’m not the same person any more, I’ve changed in all sorts of huge, important ways. But if you looked at me, you wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell.

Plus there was serious shopping. So I’m going to write it all down now. In one go. And I’m not going to skip bits.

So it started like this.

One minute I was looking at the clock and it was four in the morning, the next I could hear my mother yelling at me to get up.

‘Go ’way,’ I groaned, burrowing further into the pillows.

‘Edith! I won’t tell you again. It’s seven o’clock; you have to leave in half an hour. Shona’s already up and dressed.’

I opened one eye. Mum and Shona were standing over me.

I showed willing and inched one leg out from under the duvet.

Mum sighed. ‘I haven’t got time for this. Shona, see if you can get her up, love. I’ll go and finish making breakfast.’

Shona obviously didn’t believe in Mum’s gentle approach to getting me up, which is why I was shocked into full consciousness by what felt like a bucket of cold water being thrown over me.

‘You bitch!’

Shona physically hauled me out of bed. ‘I didn’t know your name was Edith,’ she grinned.

‘And nobody else had better find out,’ I hissed, staggering to the bathroom.

‘You’re not a morning person are you, kid?’

I just had time to give her the finger before I slammed the bathroom door.

We were the last ones to get on the coach. We’d held everyone up for fifteen minutes and clambered on to a round of sarcastic applause.

Martyn and his hippy girlfriend, Tania (who’d come along to help), started telling us off in a very unhippy-like manner.

‘It’s Edie’s fault,’ protested Shona while I glared at her out of the piggy slits that used to be my eyes. ‘She wouldn’t get out of bed.’

‘Really, Eddie…’ began Tania, her braless breasts swinging agitatedly.

‘It’s Edie!’ Shona and I said in unison.

I could see Dylan signalling to us from halfway down the coach. There was a double seat in front of him and Simon; an empty seat just waiting for me so I could talk to Dylan in the gap between the headrests. I staggered down the aisle after Shona, while Tania followed us, still going on and on about my time-keeping. I could tell that she was going to be a major pain in the butt.

I tried to get my shoulder bag in the overhead locker, but I was so stupid with sleep that I couldn’t manage it.

Dylan rose from his seat. ‘Let me do it for you.’

He was wearing a new pair of dark jeans (I’m sad enough to have his whole wardrobe committed to memory), a Beatles T-shirt and his scruffy leather jacket. As he reached up to put my bag away, his T-shirt rose up and I half-shut my eyes rather than look at his stomach, but I still got a glimpse. It wasn’t a six-pack, but it was sort of taut. Then I realised that he might have seen my tummy when I was trying to put my bag away. It might have been lack of sleep, it might have been the boiled egg that Mum had forced me to eat before we left (one of the reasons why we were so late), but seeing Dylan’s stomach and wondering if he’d seen mine made me feel slightly sick.

I grunted something at him that might have been thank you and slumped down next to Shona.

She was busy telling Simon and Dylan exactly why we were so late.

‘Well, then Edie discovered that she’d packed the jeans and jumper that she was meant to be wearing today, then she had a fight with her mum about eating a proper breakfast and then we were just about to leave when she realised that she hadn’t bought any film for her camera so we had to stop at a newsagent’s on the way. We had to go to three of them before we found one that sold black-and-white film.’

‘Remind me not to ask you for a character reference if I’m ever up in court,’ I snapped.

Shona pulled a face at Simon and Dylan. ‘She’s been like this ever since she got up.’

‘You’re obviously not a morning person, Edie,’ said Dylan. ‘I’ll have to remember that.’

‘That’s exactly what I said to her and she did something very rude with one of her fingers,’ teased Shona.

Silence was definitely the best form of defence. I peered round the coach. Mia and Paul, looking all snuggly-wuggly, were sitting at the back near Nat and Trent who waved at me. I summoned up enough energy to raise a hand in their direction.

It was going to be hours before we got to Dover. I snuggled down into the folds of my dark green jumper and shut my eyes. It was funny, the night before, I couldn’t sleep at all because I was thinking about Dylan, but that morning, when he was just inches away from me, I couldn’t stop myself from nodding off.

We’d been on the coach for five hours and every time I went to sleep, we stopped at yet another motorway service station. And I couldn’t be left sleeping on the coach, oh no. According to Tania, I could be attacked by a homicidal, axe-wielding maniac, so Shona had to wake me up and drag me across the car park. To make matters worse, she got Dylan to do it once. I could feel someone’s hands shaking me gently and I’m ashamed to say he got one of my fists in his face (I’m not a good riser, OK?).

When a Dylan-like voice said, ‘Ow,’ I quickly opened my eyes to see him crouched in front of me, rubbing his cheek.

‘Sorry,’ I mumbled.

‘I hope you don’t do that to Josh when he tries to wake you up,’ Dylan drawled.

I gasped. ‘He’s never been with me when I’m asleep. I mean, I haven’t… We’re not… It’s none of your business!’

I pushed past him and practically ran down the aisle and off the coach.

The next time I fell asleep, I knew I had a clear two hours before we stopped at Dover. I was just settling into a really good dream about, well, never mind, when I was startled awake by some icy-cold liquid drenching me for the second time that day.

‘What the…?!’

‘Ooops, sorry Edie.’ Mia was standing over me with an upended can of Diet Coke. ‘We must have hit a pothole.’

‘Yeah, right,’ spat Shona, who’d also got doused. ‘There’s loads of potholes on motorways.’

Mia shrugged. ‘Whatever. I hope it doesn’t stain.’

‘I’m soaked,’ I whimpered. I could feel the Coke seeping into the seat underneath me. My jeans were wet through.

‘Oh Edie, you look like you’ve been caught short,’ Mia giggled.

‘Do me a favour, Mia – go and play in the traffic.’

‘Some people are
so
touchy,’ she smirked before sauntering back to Paul.

‘I think I put a pair of leggings in my shoulder bag,’ said Shona helpfully. ‘Like, if you want to change.’

I shook my head. ‘I can’t take off my jeans in front of everyone.’

‘I guess not.’

This trip was turning into a nightmare. I’d humiliated myself at least three times in front of Dylan. Mia was obviously planning on being a complete bitch on wheels for the next five days and it looked like I’d wet myself.

‘D’you want some chocolate?’ said Shona, shoving an Aero at me. ‘It might cheer you up.’

I turned it down. Not even an Aero could help me right then.

Fortunately the ferry crossing helped me get my own back on the world. The Channel was choppy and practically everyone on the boat was puking up. The scene in the ladies’ toilet was like this painting I’d once seen called
Descent into the Inferno
. People were even hurling into the washbasins. Luckily, I have a cast-iron constitution. It takes more than a little rough sea to make me sick. In fact, it was really peaceful sitting on the deck, feeling the salt-water spray sting my face. It was one of those times when you know that you’re really alive. You’re aware of all of your senses. I could hear the sea whooshing against the sides of the boat, I could smell and taste the tang of the air and even though the water was a murky blue, the white-tipped waves running along the top of it looked like little frills of lace. I sat there, feeling at one with the elements until I got a bit bored, so I dug out my phone and sat there like a dweeby boy with my hood up. I’d just got to level eight on Tetris when Dylan sat down beside me.

‘I thought you’d be puking somewhere,’ I said, concentrating on slotting shapes into place.

‘Nah, I’ve got a stomach like an ox,’ Dylan explained, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees.

‘Hmmm, me too. Oh, hell,’ I added as I screwed up the next level of the game. ‘Look, I’m sorry about before, about hitting you, I mean. I’m a bit disorientated when I first wake up.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Dylan lightly. ‘You’re not the first girl to hit me, you won’t be the last.’

‘Who hit you?’ I asked.

‘Mia hit me once when we were sort of seeing each other,’ he muttered.

My chest felt like it had just caved in.

‘You never said you went out with her, you just said that you’d got off with her,’ I blurted out, before I could stop myself.

Dylan turned and looked at me. ‘We didn’t go out on dates, we’d just go round to each other’s houses and fool about.’

For starters, I’ve never been round to Dylan’s house. Secondly, all those times that he’d kissed me, was that just ‘fooling about’? Thirdly, why did I give him every opportunity to say things that I knew I didn’t want to hear and fourthly…

‘You’ve gone again,’ Dylan remarked.

‘What?’

‘You do it all the time, Edie. I’ll be talking to you and you just disappear somewhere inside of yourself,’ he whispered, leaning back on the seat so his head was close to mine. ‘Anyway what are you doing, sitting here by yourself?’

I started to tell him about the stuff I’d been thinking before, about how alive I felt with the sea roaring underneath me. Dylan was staring at me intently while I spoke. Then he did the most curious thing. He reached out one of his long-fingered hands and pulled down my hood.

Immediately, the wind tugged at my hair, blowing it in every direction. Dylan caught a bunch of it and pulled it gently. ‘Your hair’s amazing. It’s the colour of clear honey.’

Our faces were so close by now, I could see that his eyes weren’t completely green; there were flecks of brown around the pupils. God, he had the longest boy-lashes.

I felt like I was caught up in the middle of someone else’s dream as I touched his hair, which was ruffling in the wind too.

‘Your hair’s the colour of… really dark chocolate,’ I said. ‘It looks black but when you get nearer, it’s a rich, dark brown.’ I smiled and he rubbed a finger across my mouth.

We stayed like that for at least five minutes, honestly. Sitting so close together that our knees bumped against each other. And Dylan ran his fingers over my face. Across my eyelids and my eyebrows. Down my cheeks. Along my chin. But mostly he touched my mouth, running his fingers over my lips again and again until they were tingling.

But he didn’t kiss me. And it didn’t matter that he didn’t kiss me because although his kisses sucked the soul right out of me, the feel of his hands on my face felt even better in a strange kind of way. Like, in my whole life I’ll probably kiss lots of people and most of those kisses I’ll probably forget, but I know I’ll always remember those minutes on the ferry to France when I sat with Dylan and he stroked my face as if it was the most precious thing in his world.

It couldn’t last forever. But it lasted until Simon appeared and promptly threw up over the railings.

‘I knew I shouldn’t have had that beer,’ he groaned when he finally came up for air.

It made me start giggling, I don’t know why. Poor Simon was green-faced. But once I started giggling, I couldn’t stop. It quickly upgraded itself to a full-on belly laugh, which started Dylan off too. Simon looked at us in disgust, like we were a pair of complete retards, while we laughed so hard that tears ran down our faces.

‘I’m going to find Shona,’ said Simon huffily.

When we got back on the coach, Simon and Shona were slumped against each other, fast asleep, so I had no choice but to sit next to Dylan. No choice at all.

I scooched around so my back was against the window and my legs were pulled up against my body, but when Dylan sat down he patted his thighs and I propped my legs over them. He rested one of his hands on my knee, but not in a lecherous, copping-a-feel kinda way.

‘Are you sleepy?’ he asked.

‘Are you kidding?’ I snorted. ‘I spent most of the morning asleep. Are you?’

‘Nah, I never sleep much.’ He gave me a look from under his lashes that didn’t seem entirely innocent. ‘Well, how are we going to pass the time?’

I looked round the coach. The lights were dimmed and most people were asleep; it was only mid-afternoon but I guess all that puking had taken it out of them. Sitting there with my legs draped across Dylan suddenly felt very intimate.

‘We could play the alphabet game,’ I said, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

‘What’s that?’

‘We list things we’d take to a, erm, I don’t know, a festival, but we have to do it alphabetically and you have to list all the things that we’ve said before, otherwise you lose.’

Dylan smirked. ‘So what happens when you lose? Do you have to pay a forfeit?’

I gave him a look. It was a pretty good look – most people wouldn’t have wanted to be on the other end of it. ‘Nothing like that, young man.’

Dylan raised one of his eyebrows. ‘I don’t know what you think I was thinking. OK, if I lose, I’ll buy you a week’s supply of chocolate.’

‘And if I lose?’

‘Oh, I’m sure I’ll think of something.’

‘… So, I went to the festival and I took articles of clothing belonging to Louis Walsh, Brillo pads, chocolate cake, damp-proofing, an egg casserole and a full-scale, working model of a sewage station,’ Dylan chanted.