Diary of a Crush: Sealed With a Kiss

Adorkable

Nobody’s Girl

Guitar Girl

Let’s Get Lost

Pretty Things

Fashionistas series

French Kiss

Kiss and Make Up

Sealed With a Kiss

Table of Contents

• By Sarra Manning
  
• COPYRIGHT
  
• Acknowledgements
  
• Manchester – America – London Edie’s Diary Volume 3
  
• Road Trip!
  
• London
  
• New York
  
• Philadelphia
  
• Washington
  
• Chicago
  
• Baton Rouge – Memphis – Nashville
  
• Jackson, Mississippi
  
• The E-zee Trailer Park, Jackson, Mississippi
  
• Mississippi – Tennessee
  
• Bossier City, Louisiana
  
• Austin, Texas
  
• El Paso, Texas
  
• El Paso Memorial Hospital, Texas
  
• The Holiday Inn, El Paso, Texas
  
• Albuquerque, New Mexico
  
• Flagstaff, Arizona
  
• Grand Canyon, Arizona
  
• Route 66, Arizona
  
• Las Vegas, Nevada
  
• Los Angeles, California
  
• Los Angeles – London
  
• Camden, London
  
•  
  
• Author’s Note
  

Thanks to Ally Oliver, my editor at
J17
, who commissioned me to write the
Diary of a Crush
as a monthly column and her successor, Sophie Wilson, for continuing to commission me to write
Diary of a Crush
.

I would also like to thank Emily Thomas for giving me my first proper book deal after reading
Diary of a Crush
, my agent Karolina Sutton for working so hard and tirelessly on my behalf and Samantha Smith, Kate Agar and all at Atom for giving these books a shiny, new home.

Finally, I’d like to thank all the readers of
Diary of a Crush
. From the
J17
days, to the people who bought the books first time round, to you (yes YOU!) discovering Dylan and Edie for the first time. What a long, strange trip it’s been.

Dedicated to the late, great, never out of date Gordon and Regina Shaw, who put up with me when I was a teenager.

I can’t believe that my diary now has volumes! I’m, like, a twenty-first century Samuel Pepys or possibly someone less old, uncool, male and, y’know,
dead
who also kept a diary.

Anyway, my life up till now has been girl (that would be me), meets boy (that would be Dylan) and then fast forward through two years of torturous back and forth, kissing and fighting and all points in between. And now it’s all different. Dylan and I have been back together for nearly a month and we’ve managed not to have a single argument. Weird. Carter (the king of evil ex-boyfriends) is still seething in the background but thankfully there have been no sightings of Veronique (his sister and the queen of evil ex-girlfriends).

And the other less-Dylan-y, but just as important parts of my life involve working in a café, being in a band with my friends, Poppy, Atsuko and Darby, and trying to decide what I want to be when I finally grow up.

Dylan and I haven’t done it for two weeks. Having the parents back from their second honeymoon thing is kinda cramping my style.

There’s, like, nowhere to go that doesn’t involve secluded corners of parks or spending vast sums of money on a hotel room. And although the getting pelvic is fantastic, I kinda enjoy all the furtive kissing that doesn’t lead anywhere.

Sex is strange. It’s like this big secret that I have that no-one else knows about. Like this place that only Dylan and me have been to. Before the ’rents came home, he spent all his time here. And we’d just disappear under my covers, popping out now and then to load up with supplies from the fridge. It’s not like we were doing it all the time, because we weren’t, but the rest of the world just slipped away until all there was was Dylan and me. And what we used to be is nothing like what we’ve become.

When it’s dark and the only light is coming from the muted television set in the corner of my bedroom, he talks in whispers about everything. His family and his dreams and what makes him frightened. Most of which I’m not going to put down here ’cause it’s private – it’s Dylan’s story, not mine. But it made me understand why he is like he is, which is moody and difficult and messed up but still the sweetest boy you could ever hope to meet.

And did I mention the part where I fall in love with him a little bit more every day? It’s a lot like drowning but the water feels so warm and wet against my skin that I don’t really mind.

We had another band rehearsal tonight. We’re starting to sound like a proper group. If proper groups sang songs about pink Converse All-Stars and had a lead singer who insisted on hula-hooping during the fast songs. Poppy is becoming more and more of a mentalist every day, which leads me to the part where me and Atsuko and Darby were just packing away our gear when Poppy suddenly dropped her bombshell. ‘Oh by the way,’ she announced casually. Way too casually. ‘We’re playing a gig next month. On Halloween actually.’

‘What?!’ we screamed in unison.

‘What’s the what?’ she asked innocently. ‘There’s no point in rehearsing forever. We’re ready for a paying audience.’

‘But, but, but…’ stammered Darby while Atsuko narrowed her eyes and began cursing under her breath in Japanese. That is, I think they were swear words, I couldn’t be entirely sure.

Poppy began to twitch. ‘Is that the time? Gotta go.’ Then she practically ran out of the room though she’d never admit that she was too chicken to stay and face her band-mates’ wrath.

‘I’m so going to kill your sister,’ I told Grace as we walked to the chippy later.

Grace didn’t look too perturbed. ‘She’s just impulsive,’ she said in her tiny voice. Since we got back from the festival, Grace and I have become mates. Well, I talk and she listens. I think the whole having-her-Highland-Spring-spiked-with-acid incident made her realise that she actually had to take part in life, instead of just observing it from the sidelines. Since then I’ve made a point of trying to drag her out of her shell. Because I’m all heart, in case you hadn’t noticed.

As we reached the top of her road, my mobile started ringing. It was Dylan.

‘Hey you,’ I said softly.

‘All my flatmates have disappeared off to Altrincham for an all-night rave,’ Dylan drawled.

‘And?’ I prompted.

‘Fancy a sleepover?’

‘Cool! Shall I bring DVDs and ice cream?’ I enquired.

‘Just bring yourself and your toothbrush,’ Dylan purred. ‘And I’ll provide the entertainment.’

Yay! I’m going to get seduced tonight. Go team Edie!

What I like about staying over at Dylan’s:

What I don’t like about staying over at Dylan’s:

Luckily I was clothed. ’Cause I learnt pretty quickly that you don’t wander round in your underwear when your boyfriend lives with other boys.

I glared at Carter, but it was pretty hard to pull off when I had a mouthful of toothpaste, which was threatening to dribble down my chin.

‘Oh, you stay over now, do you?’ Carter enquired with a nasty smile. ‘God, you’ve gone from shy virgin to experienced woman of the world in sixty seconds.’

I spat a big mouthful of foam into the basin and pointed at the door with my toothbrush. ‘Get out!’

But Carter just stood there, grinning like the total, toxic cretin that he is. ‘You know something, sweetheart?’ he said in a low, confiding tone, leaning closer to me. ‘You’re not looking as cottony fresh as you used to. In fact, you seem a bit worn-in, a bit pounded, if you get my drift.’

I took a step back to get away from him and got banged in the butt by the edge of the sink. ‘Firstly, ewww! And secondly, get the
hell
out!’ I said furiously, but I kept my voice down because if Dylan knew that Carter had come into the bathroom while I was in there, let alone knew what he’d just said to me, it would have been like the Iraqi Conflict all over again. But with art boys.

I made another threatening gesture with the hand that was brandishing my toothbrush and with that stupid, inane chuckle of his, Carter finally got out.

It left me in a bad mood for the rest of the day.

Dylan’ll be going back to university at the end of this week. That means no more smooching in the store-room ’cause he’s also starting back at his regular part-time job in Rhythm Records next door.

‘It’s a good excuse to have a party this weekend,’ Poppy pointed out as I bemoaned the disadvantages of not having a willing kiss-object at my beck and call.

‘Well it would make a nice break from the chip fat in here and being in a band with a complete slave-driver who wants me to rehearse twenty-four seven,’ I agreed.

‘It’s just over a month to go till our gig,’ Poppy reminded me yet again. ‘We have to be perfect. In a really cool, rock ’n’ roll kind of way.’

I waved my hands in front of her face. ‘Between mastering A flat diminished and the endless washing-up, my fingers are seizing up. I’m going to start charging you for my hand-cream supplies.’

‘Stop being a drama queen and go and take this order to table five.’

I’m sure I’m developing calluses on the tips of my fingers from all that strumming action. Plus I have to have really short nails now and the polish just gets scraped off as soon as I apply it. This rock ’n’ roll stuff is not in the least bit glamorous.

If I thought I could spend the next year waiting tables while waiting to be famous, The Mothership has other ideas. She’s got this notion that I should spend my gap year doing something worthy (translation:
boring
) like working in the Third World or going trekking in the Hindu Kush. What she really means is that she doesn’t like me going out with Dylan. Not when I could be having a proper, committed relationship with the ‘lovely Jake’.

‘Carter was an evil, scheming rat,’ I told her till I was blue in the face.

‘Well he had charming manners,’ my mum said mildly. ‘While Dylan, well he’s very glowery, isn’t he?’

Jesus!

I took the day off so I could spend some quality time with Dylan before he becomes re-immersed in doing art boy stuff.

We went to the Tate Modern in London and after we’d admired the Warhols we walked hand in hand by the Thames, which isn’t a patch on the Manchester Ship Canal, quite frankly.

‘I hate that summer’s over,’ I moaned as we sat down on a bench. ‘There’s absolutely nothing to look forward to.’

‘Winter’s good too,’ said Dylan. ‘We can stay in and I’ll paint while you play the guitar and we’ll be cosy even when it’s all dark outside.’

And where was the fun in that? ‘Yeah, but your central heating doesn’t work,’ I reminded him, thinking back to a party they’d thrown last winter when I’d had to keep my coat on for, like, the entire three hours I was there.

Dylan grinned and shook his head at me. ‘You’re such a princess.’

‘My mum doesn’t think so.’ I rested my head against his shoulder because that’s my head’s preferred resting place these days. ‘She thinks I should be travelling round Asia in my gap year. Like, I would ever go anywhere that doesn’t have public lavatories.
Clean
public lavatories.’

‘We could go somewhere next summer,’ Dylan said but I thought he was trying to get me off the topic of public conveniences.

‘Like where? Blackpool? Or, hey, maybe we could go back to Paris at a push.’

Dylan gave a start and I had to sit up. ‘Oh! Yeah! We should go to America.’

‘Dream on, D. It would cost a fortune.’ I stood up and stretched lazily. ‘But my limited funds will stretch to a couple of ice creams.’

‘It wouldn’t have to cost that much. I have some money in the bank from the guilt fund my dad left me when he walked out anyway,’ Dylan continued, leaning forward and yanking me back down on the bench. ‘If we went next summer we’d have a whole year to save up and we could hire a car and do a road trip. Road trip, Eeds!’

I still wasn’t convinced. ‘So you think we’ll still be together then?’ I asked him.

He touched my face lightly. ‘You don’t get rid of me that easily.’ He moved closer to me and brushed my mouth with his. ‘Just think, we could go to New York, LA, San Francisco…’ He nudged me with his elbow. ‘You know you want to.’

He was right. I did. I wanted us to stay together and I wanted to do stuff with him. Exciting, adventurey stuff like going on a road trip in a cool car and going to places that I’d only seen in films. And shopping. A girl could do some serious shopping in the land of rampant consumerism.

‘Well I have always wanted to go to New Orleans,’ I admitted carefully. ‘And Seattle, maybe Chicago, oooh! And we
so
have to go to Las Vegas! Oh God, we’re going to do this, aren’t we? We’re going to do a road trip and I’m going to save all my tips and empty out my Marc Jacobs shoe savings account…’

Dylan jumped up so he could pull me to my feet, hoist me up and swing me round till I squealed because I was getting dizzy. ‘Think of all those cheap motel rooms too! Double beds, no parents, no friends, no annoying flatmates.’

‘Talking of which my parents have got a do tonight.’

Dylan smirked and leered at me at the same time, which was quite a feat. ‘So that means…’

‘An empty house. C’mon let’s go and get the train home.’

We decided to have the surprise ‘Dylan leaving-the-café-and-not-before-time-because-he-was-the crappiest-short-order-cook-in-the-world, ever’ party in a bar. I spend entirely too much time in the café as it is.

I blew my entire month’s tips (but I’m going to start saving for Operation: Road Trip from tomorrow) on a wildly expensive, almost designer, floaty dress and was just twirling in front of the bathroom mirror so I could see the effect of optimum floatiness, when I heard Dylan ring the doorbell.

Dylan was wearing his most scruffy jeans (and that’s saying something – I think his other jeans sneer at them and don’t want to hang next to them in the wardrobe because they make them look bad) and a paint-splattered T-shirt. He looked at me in bewilderment.

‘You look good but we’re only going to the pub,’ he spluttered as my mother glared at him.

‘Well, I think Edith looks beautiful,’ she began with a decidedly crisp edge to her voice.

I pulled Dylan doorwards. ‘Don’t wait up for me,’ I hissed at her.

After much lying and tugging on his arm, I managed to get Dylan to the bar even though he was hell bent on holing up in the old man’s pub at the top of my road and playing pool.

I think he began to twig that something was going on when I practically had to have a full-blown hissy fit to get him on the bus into town. I’m actually pretty lousy at keeping secrets and so when Dylan started interrogating me within an inch of my tender, young life about where I was dragging him off to, I had to resort to silence. And staring stonily out of the window, while Dylan tried to cajole me into spilling. ‘C’mon, Eeds,’ he said in a voice all dark and treacly. ‘You going to tell me what you’re up to?’