Diary of a Crush: Sealed With a Kiss (5 page)

Dylan helped her make coffee and I think he must have been pretty devastating in his charm offensive because she was all pink-faced and smiley and ‘Oh, Dylan!’ for the rest of the afternoon.

Thank God, it’s over!

I’ve decided to stop worrying about family and worry instead about our impending debut gig. For about one minute last week, we were actually sounding good but now, despite the nightly rehearsals, we suck like a gaping chest wound.

Poppy who of course knows all her guitar parts and never forgets chords, and even knows what barre chords are, deals with the problem by yelling at us. We yell back. Then we sound even worse because we’re too busy being mad at each other to concentrate on playing properly.

I keep hoping that a meteor will crash on the pub where we’re playing so the gig gets cancelled. Especially after Poppy and I had a blazing domestic yesterday and she told me that she’d only let me join the band because I had good hair. The good hair comment kind of sidetracked me for a second and then I went back to wanting to kill her. But I can’t because I’m living in her house and I think it would really piss her mum off.

I feel like I haven’t seen Dylan in days. We’re rehearsing until eleven every night but we still sound like a bunch of amateurs. When we get home, Poppy follows me upstairs and stands over me and forces me to practise some more because I can’t seem to remember any of our songs.

‘How does it go again?’ I have to ask her after about ten seconds because the remembering stuff bit of my brain seems to have short-circuited. Then she makes this noise that’s somewhere between a growl and a scream that no human being should be able to make and slams the door, leaving me to not sleep because no girl has ever been under this kind of pressure. This time tomorrow night we’ll be on stage! At least I found something to wear today. I’ll be making my live debut in a black-and-pink American-diner, waitress uniform thingy, which looks tame compared to Poppy who describes her stage outfit as ‘white trash prom queen’.

Ooooh! And we have stage names. I’m Edie Evil, Poppy is Supreme Dictator Bitch (actually she’s Miss Pop Tart but I prefer the name I’ve given her), Darby is Dame Darby Dustbunny and Atsuko refuses to answer to anything other than Susie Samurai.

Actually, I guess I am a little bit excited…

I’m a bona fide guitar goddess! I’m going to have cards printed up and everything.

We rocked! Nobody even noticed that we hit a few bum notes and that Darby spilt a pint of beer all over me because we were too busy jumping up and down and screeching out the words in cheesy American accents. Poppy was just… She was awesome. She carried the three of us and just the way she moved, the way she sounded, I wanted to be her.

I mean, basically we’re Poppy’s backing band, it is The Poppy Show but she does it so well and so passionately that when we were on stage and I could see how she came alive, how she
glowed
, I got why she’d been so mad at us for not taking the band thing seriously. I know that five years from now I’ll be interviewed by a film crew from MTV who are doing a special on Poppy and I won’t feel any resentment that she’s this cool famous icon, because she let me come along for some of the ride. I’m not entirely sure that she’ll be so forgiving.

‘This is Edie Evil. She ain’t too good at playing the guitar but she looks mighty purty,’ was how she introduced me, much to the audience’s amusement.

Most of the crowd were our friends anyway who’d good-naturedly agreed to fork out a fiver for the privilege of seeing us behave in much the same way as we do on a night out. And being on stage, being part of something and having people watch me,
me!
, made me feel sexy and special and all those other things that I never normally feel.

When we got off stage Dylan was waiting for me. I was on such a high that I threw my arms round him and started kissing him passionately while the next band were trying to set up their equipment.

‘I’m going to have to get a T-shirt printed up that says, “I’m with the band”,’ he said when we’d finally come up for air and were sitting at the bar with the others.

‘Hmmm, we should definitely have T-shirts,’ decided Poppy who was so over-excited that I thought she was going to implode. ‘And maybe we could have umbrellas too. Or hairslides. I mean, T-shirts are so boring.’

It was very odd. Strangers kept coming up to us and asking when we were playing again and if we had a CD out. I felt slightly outside of myself but in a good way. Dylan had his arm round me and I watched Poppy hugging Grace, and Atsuko and Darby eyeing up some blokes and Paul and Shona waving at us from the other side of the club and I felt like I really belonged. Like I was part of this family that had nothing to do with my other family.

I met the famous new flatmate when he moved in today. Name’s Jesse and I can see why my fellow band-mates all go into a sugar coma when he comes up in conversation.

He looks like the result of a cloning experiment between Ryan Gosling and Kurt Cobain. He has this thatch of bleached blond hair, blue eyes the colour of Dylan’s faded denim jacket, a smattering of freckles across the bridge of his cute little nose and to offset the pretty he has a filthy grin with, as I found out about five minutes later, a matching sense of humour. If my heart weren’t already taken, I’d have fallen head over heels in lust with him.

As it was, I bowled into their lounge, threw the bag of salt and vinegar crisps that Dylan had asked me to get in the general direction of him and then stood there with my mouth hanging open when I caught sight of Jesse sprawled out on the sofa.

‘This is Edie, Dylan’s bird,’ Simon drawled from the doorway. ‘Get used to her, learn to love her, she practically lives here. Edie, you’re starting to drool.’

I promptly put a stop to the slack jawing and whirled round to give Simon the evil eye. ‘I am not Dylan’s
bird
. Thank you very much.’

‘Bird, significant other, bitch, whatever, pleased to meet you,’ Jesse said in this bewitching Irish brogue. I think I might have whimpered.

Dylan gave me an exasperated look and I felt a bit guilty. ‘I bought you crisps,’ I said to remind him of what a devoted girlfriend I was. He looked unimpressed.

‘My friend Poppy really fancies you,’ I blurted out, more for something to say and to stop Dylan giving me wounded glances.

Jesse sat forward. ‘Is she cute?’

‘She’s super cute and she’s really cool. We’re in this band called Mellowstar and she sings and plays guitar. You’ll have to meet her.’

‘I love girls who rock,’ Jesse beamed and then he took a swig of his Coke and let out a gigantic burp. ‘Better out than in.’

And I decided that yes, he was drop dead beautiful but he had the manners of a pig and Dylan was actually way more gorgeous so I plonked myself down on his lap and gave him a sloppy kiss on the cheek, despite the rather rude comments from his housemates at such unwarranted public displays of affection.

Dylan is knee-deep in art stuff. His first big college show is coming up and he’s way more interested in his interactive
Star Wars
sculpture (just don’t ask) than in interacting with me. I had to go to Atsuko’s Bonfire Night shindig with Nat because Dylan was too busy making a huge vat of papier mâché.

Having said that, his flat has become the number one destination for all my friends who are hoping to get a glimpse of Jesse wandering around in his boxer shorts. A sight I’ve been witness to and hmmm, nice, but though I appreciate him on an aesthetic level, nothing compares to Dylan holding my hand as we wait for a bus or the way his face lights up when he sees me.

I even caught Shona ogling Jesse this morning. Her and Paul stumbled downstairs and she sent him out to the corner shop for some milk, by which time Jesse had wandered into the kitchen in a pair of jeans and she just stood there like one o’clock half struck.

But the thing about Jesse is that he’s like this over-exuberant puppy. Even though all the girls they know are panting after him, it would be impossible for the boys to get pissy about it. Half the time Jesse is oblivious, though I don’t understand why – has he never looked at himself in a mirror? – and the rest of the time he’s making rude jokes about how he’s gasping for a shag.

(Though if Poppy ever finds out that I told him about her crush on him, they’ll be finding various parts of my body for months.)

It was very quiet in the café today. By the time the lunchtime rush was over, the place was deserted. Poppy and I re-filled all the ketchup doodads and were keeping an eye on a bunch of horrid, spotty boys in tracksuits who kept throwing sugar cubes at each other and were
so
bunking off when Jesse walked in.

‘Hey Edie! How are you doing, sweetheart?’ He came right behind the counter to peck me on the cheek while Poppy stared at him for a second and then turned away and pretended that the specials blackboard was totally rocking her world. It would have been really convincing too if she hadn’t gone bright red.

‘Jesse, you haven’t met my best friend, Poppy, have you?’ I said demurely. ‘The one who’s in the band with me.’

Jesse peered at the back of Poppy’s head, which was practically the same shade of platinum blonde as his. God, they were made for each other! He sidled closer and then stood looking at her.

‘What the hell are you staring at?’ Poppy demanded and my heart sank. Her relationship philosophy could be loosely described as ‘all boys are selfish gits who are good for nothing but a quick fling as long as they pay for dinner first’. There was a bad break-up with this guy she was in a band with before I met her, which she’ll never, ever talk about.

‘You,’ Jesse said jovially, completely not put off by how rude Poppy was acting. ‘Edie said you were cute, but…’

‘Have you been talking about me?’ Ick! She was using her scary serial-killer voice. I hoped that Italian Tony had cleared away all the big knives from the kitchen.

‘I might have mentioned you in passing,’ I said casually and then clocked the young tearaways going for the mayonnaise bowls. ‘Don’t even think about it if you like having kneecaps,’ I shouted at them.

‘Yeah, she said you fancied me,’ Jesse added, not bothering to disguise the way he was looking at Poppy’s boobs.

‘I so did not!’

‘I’m going to kill you!’

‘So, do you wanna go out then?’ Jesse was blithely unaware that I was this close to becoming human remains.

‘Why should I go out with you?’ Poppy asked flatly and I made a mental note to take her to one side and give her a few pointers on how to talk to boys.

Jesse, though, was gazing at her with what seemed to be adoration.

‘Because I have a weakness for really bitchy girls and I’m a fantastic shag,’ he said after a moment’s deliberation.

Poppy then looked in the direction of Jesse’s crotch and raised her eyebrows as if to suggest that she was very sceptical about that claim.

‘OK, you talked me round,’ she sighed. ‘I’ll let you have a couple of hours of my time. Now stop staring at my tits before I clock you one.’

Jesse let out a long breath. ‘You’re like my perfect woman. I’m going to take you out and treat you like a little princess,’ he promised.

And for one moment, Poppy shot him this blinding smile, which I think made Jesse fall in love with her on the spot. Then she screwed up her features into a sour expression again. ‘Edie’s our little princess, there might be copyright problems. Probably best if you treat me like the goddess that I am.’

Jesse doesn’t stand a chance.

Dylan is still missing in action. He came into the café today and I was just about to go on a break so we could snog or at least have a conversation but he just ruffled my hair and said, ‘Can’t stop, just thought I’d say hi,’ and disappeared, stuffing a cheese roll into his gob en route.

Poppy has her hot date with Jesse tonight. She was unusually flustered as she discarded one spangly dress and vintage T-shirt after another while Grace and I sat on her bed and said helpful stuff like, ‘It’s a bit low cut for a first date, you should definitely wear it’ and ‘The green one says slutty-but-shy. Not quite sure if you can pull that off, but, hey, Jesse might!’ That was just before she ordered us out with much swearing and threats to dismember our corpses and dump them in the canal.

Jesse has forked out for two tickets to see Bon Iver and then maybe a drink afterwards if Jesse hasn’t contravened any of Poppy’s rules for acceptable first date behaviour. She has a very low tolerance threshold where boys are concerned. Or that’s what she’d like us to believe. Really, she’s so busy being kickass most of the time that it’s hard for her to calm down and take time to get to know people. If we hadn’t started hanging out through work, I wonder if she’d ever have had the patience to see beyond my slightly ditzy (though charming) exterior and become friends with me.

Then Grace and I went to the cinema. I haven’t had a chance to spend much time with her lately but the dormouse attitude seems to be disappearing fast. In fact, I can’t shut her up. And she’s funny! Who knew?

The film we saw was pretty crappy but she spent most of it whispering sarcastic comments in my ear and making me spit out bits of popcorn.

As we were coming out of the multiplex we bumped into this boy I vaguely recognised from Rhythm Records. He came up to us, opened and shut his mouth a couple of times, muttered something that might have been ‘Hello’ at Grace and then tripped over his feet in an effort to get away.

‘What was all that about?’ I asked Grace but she was blushing in exactly the same way that Poppy had when she’d met Jesse, and falling over her own feet.

I nudged her with my arm. ‘He was sort of cute in a tousled, clothes-too-big-for-him way, but we could work on that,’ I said casually. ‘Where do you know him from?’