Diary of a Crush: Sealed With a Kiss (10 page)

Dylan’s practically living in his dark room and surfacing only for microwaveable snacks. It’s nice to have some me time. I tumbled out of bed very, very late, pulled on jeans and a halterneck (yay for almost summer) and mooched off to the cinema to see a Tom Hardy double bill at the Rep with Poppy. It was nice to have a bucket of popcorn to myself (Poppy doesn’t like getting the little bits caught between her teeth)but I missed Dylan not holding my hand or stretching out his long legs and getting told off by the person sitting in front of him.

When we emerged blinking into the sunshine, Poppy made her excuses and left. ‘Jesse lost a bet last night, he has to be my slave for the next twenty-four hours,’ she informed me, completely deadpan.
 

‘Can you make him clean the kitchen floor and, oooh, get my hairslide out from the back of the fridge?’ I demanded, digging through my bag so I could switch my moby back on.
 

I looked up to see an absolutely porno smile on Poppy’s face. It should have had an 18 certificate. ‘I’ve got plans for him that don’t involve the fridge. Though maybe the contents of the fridge.’
 

‘Urgh! Over-sharing! Please say you’re going round to his because I do not want to see anything that might give me nightmares.’
 

But Poppy just laughed, gave me a kiss on the cheek and sauntered off. Meanwhile, I had five text messages from Grace telling me to call her.
 

‘What’s up?’
 

‘Oh, everything,’ she sighed. ‘Can I come round? If Poppy’s not going to be there
…
’
 

‘She’s over at Jesse’s. OK, come over and could you stop at KFC on the way?’
 

Grace has crashed out on Poppy’s bed, worn out by self-inflicted emotional torment. Turns out that she’s being all weird about the whole Jack thing ’cause she’s never had a boyfriend and was traumatised by the kiss forced on her by Carter, my evil ex.

‘Jack’s not going to wait forever,’ she sobbed. ‘But I’m so scared.’
 

‘But Jack’s really gentle,’ I protested. ‘He’d never make you do stuff you didn’t want to do.’
 

‘Yeah, but I’m so useless at talking to people, I’m so boring. I wish I was like you and Poppy,’ Grace sniffled. I hope she wasn’t getting snot on Poppy’s pillow because then she’d really have something to cry about.
 

I nudged her leg with my foot. ‘You’re not boring! But you have to stop comparing yourself to other people. When I first moved here I was so shy. Every time Dylan looked at me I’d get this full-on, all over body blush.’
 

Grace gave me a trembly smile. ‘Really? ’Cause now, you pretty much boss him about.’
 

‘Yeah and I do not. But when I lived in Brighton I used to go to this disco on Saturday nights and always ended up kissing this science nerd with a pocket protector because he was the only guy who didn’t call me “Weedy Edie”.’
 

‘So what you’re saying is
…
’
 

‘What I’m saying is that you won’t feel like this forever, Gracie. ’Cause Jack can see the inner you and that’s why he likes you.’
 

And then we both sighed in a moment of true girly bonding. It was very beautiful.
 

Dylan has disappeared. Someone who sounds a bit like him can sometimes be persuaded to come to the phone to jaw on about developing and hanging photos. Note to self: art boys, freaky. Being an art widow, I had a big Saturday night out with my girls, which ended up with us playing footie on a dual carriageway at two in the morning.

Weird! Just seen Grace for the first time since our big talk and she seems to have reached some kind of Zen-like state of inner tranquillity.

‘How’s the whole Jack thing?’ I asked her, expecting yet another tearful tirade but she smiled serenely and told me that she had it under control.
 

Under control? Well, I guess I don’t have to worry any more.
 

I’ve had to sort out all the roadtrip stuff because Dylan is emotionally and geographically unavailable. Luckily Shona helped ’cause she’s very practical. Also Dad phoned Lewis’s dad to talk Dad to Dad and all systems are go!

I took Dylan round some food and stayed long enough to hand it to him, before he pushed me out of the front door.
 

‘I still love you,’ he muttered through a mouthful of cheese sandwich. ‘But this is going to be a surprise so get the hell out of here.’
 

And they say romance is dead.
 

Grace is weirding me out. Now that she’s not banging on about Jack at every conceivable moment, it’s impossible to get hold of her. Every time Poppy or me ring her she’s on the interpipe and you get grunts instead of intelligent conversation. Take today fr’instance.

Me: ‘So Grace have you still got my baby-blue skinny jeans?’
 

Grace: ‘Um, yeah.’
 

Me: ‘You seem a bit distracted.’
 

Grace: ‘No.’
 

Me: ‘You’re on the internet, aren’t you? Again.’
 

Grace: ‘What? No, I’m listening to you.’
 

Me: ‘I can hear you typing. What are you doing? You’re either on G Chat or looking at pictures of Justin Bieber, you saddo.’
 

Grace: ‘I’m not. I’m listening to you. What was that about Justin Bieber?’
 

Aaaaargh! That’s me screaming via the medium of the written word.
 

Dylan’s just as bad. He’s emerged at last but spends all his time at the gallery where the exhibition is taking place. And won’t even give me the address. I might just as well not exist.

Forget what I said about Grace and Dylan. All that seems to pale into insignificance after what Poppy has just done. She suddenly announced at rehearsal tonight that she’s organised a tour for us. Which would be great if a) she’d bothered to let us know and b) the tour wasn’t in August which is when I’ll be roadtripping across the US of A with Dylan.

‘But this is more important,’ Poppy had screamed when I pointed that out.
 

‘You knew about America,’ I insisted. ‘And did you think I was going to give up on my future and getting a degree to stay here and do this?’
 

‘You’re just one of those sappy girls who are more interested in their boyfriend than being loyal to your friends,’ Poppy had screamed even louder. ‘And how was I to know you were actually serious about your stupid road trip? I thought it was another of your ridiculous plans that never goes anywhere.’
 

‘Yeah, well at least I don’t waste all my time on stupid fantasies that I might be famous,’ I’d yelled back. ‘It’s been fun Poppy, but let’s face it, we’re crap! We can’t play more than three chords between us.’
 

Poppy had looked to Atsuko and Darby for some support but they’d wisely decided to be someplace that was else.
 

‘Fine, fine then,’ she’d spat. ‘We’ll do this tour without you and to save you the trouble of formally quitting the band, I’ll do it for you. You’re out. You can’t play the guitar for crap anyway.’
 

I’d tried to think of something really wounding and sarcastic to say but I couldn’t think of anything. It hadn’t mattered though ’cause Poppy was already stomping towards the door.
 

‘You’ll make it up,’ Dylan assured me as I lay whimpering on his bed. ‘You two are always having rows.’

‘This wasn’t a row,’ I argued. ‘It had scenes and acts and walk-on parts.’
 

‘Well, she shouldn’t take it on herself to sort out a month-long tour and think it would be a really nice surprise.’
 

‘You’re not just saying that ’cause I’m your girlfriend and you have to take my side?’ I mumbled.
 

Dylan stopped looking for his favourite 2B pencil and climbed on to the bed so he could spoon in behind me.
 

‘Edie, I’ve called you out plenty of times when you’ve been hissy-fitting about nothing,’ he said, kissing the back of my neck. ‘But Poppy
…
she’s just all “nothing must stop me in my plan for world domination”. If I can accept that you have to do things even if they don’t fit in with what I want, then so can she.’
 

‘I hate her,’ I said, because I’d suddenly turned into a ten-year-old.
 

‘No you don’t.’
 

‘No, I don’t but she’s really pissed me off,’ I conceded. ‘And I’m not talking to her until she says she’s sorry.’
 

Dylan can be very wise occasionally so he didn’t say anything at all. He didn’t even make a snorting noise, he just carried on kissing the back of my neck.
 

I’m beginning to think that Mrs Poppy must have taken lots of mind-altering drugs when she was pregnant with her two daughters. Because they are both complete mentalists.

Like, Poppy won’t even speak to me, let alone be in the same room as me. If I’m not at Dylan’s or she’s not at Jesse’s, she’ll walk out rather than be in the kitchen when I’m making a cup of tea. I’m not going to apologise for the sake of making it up and a peaceful life because none of this is my fault.
 

For once.
 

And as for Grace! Turns out that her and Jack are Skype dating because they don’t feel they’re ready for the real thing.
 

If you put Grace and Poppy together, you might possibly have one almost sane girl.
 

Poor, poor Dylan. He spends weeks taking photos of me and Poppy for his first big art exhibition. He spends even longer thinking up a name for it:
Edie and Poppy: The only colour in this world is love
(um, whatever). And when he unveils his big surprise, one of the girls is absent and the other one (that’d be me) tries to smile and then goes to the Ladies so she can get a grip on herself before she starts bawling her eyes out.

Eventually I emerged. Dylan was talking to one of the exhibition organisers so I wandered around and looked at the photos. As far as I could tell they were a love story. A love story about me and Poppy and how cool it is to be a girl. Dylan had captured us doing all the things we loved to do together: playing our guitars and putting on make-up and sharing clothes and eating ice cream and just generally hanging out and being girl-shaped. Plus we looked smudgily beautiful.
 

I have to sort out this Poppy thing.
 

Poppy’s put ‘guitarist wanted’ ads up all over town that say ‘Must be able to play more than three chords.’ She’s like an evil genius when it comes to hurt.

Dylan and I spent last night doing the final draft of our road trip, it took hours. We’re going to start in New York and drive to LA via Chicago and Seattle and San Francisco. That’s Dylan’s deal, the driving whereas I’m Miss Map Reader.

‘That’s the most money I’ve ever spent on anything,’ I said to Dylan in a shaky voice, as we came out of the travel agent’s having forked out a cool £1000 on plane tickets and about every form of insurance it’s possible to buy.
 

Dylan grinned and took the tickets from me. ‘Not that I don’t trust you but I’ll look after these.’
 

‘We’re going to America!’ I squeaked, hugging Dylan. ‘We’re actually going to do it.’
 

Dylan gently brushed his lips against mine. ‘I can’t believe we had a plan and saw it through. We must be getting mature.’
 

Grace came over to see me today to help me move my stuff back home. Shona and Paul have agreed to drive it down to London in time for me to start at university. I swear, my entire life is about organising complex and detailed stuff. Any more of it and the entire back of my head will cave in.

I was trying to shove things in bags and boxes and wasn’t planning on listening that attentively to Grace banging on about Jack for, like, hours but she was
very
twittery and twitchy. I thought it was Jack-related but when I finally asked her what was up after I’d boxed up the last of my books, she flopped down on the bed and announced that she wanted to try out for the guitarist job in Mellowstar.
 

‘I know all the songs and I can play a guitar but Poppy won’t even let me audition,’ she protested. ‘She’s such a bitch at the moment.’
 

‘Well I’d offer to talk to her but I don’t think it would help,’ I said. ‘I could talk to Atsuko and Darby though?’
 

Grace sat up eagerly. ‘Now?’
 

I sighed and reached for the phone. ‘OK, I guess now would do.’
 

Atsuko and Darby were surprisingly up for the idea of Grace in the band. Something to do with Poppy asking this girl whose boyfriend they’d both snogged if she wanted to join. I really didn’t want to go into the details. They both promised they’d out-vote Poppy, as long as Grace knew the songs.
 

The packing went out of the window as I spent the afternoon drilling Grace in the finer art of playing the same three chords that we used in all our songs. But, like, in different combinations.
 

‘I think you’ve got it,’ I said after five hours. ‘Well, you’re better than I ever was, not that that’s saying much.’
 

Grace squeezed my hand. ‘Oh, Edie, I’m really going to miss you. You’re like the sister I wanted, instead of the evil bitch queen sister I got.’