Diary of a Crush: Sealed With a Kiss (19 page)

We’re in the sodding car again. I didn’t sleep a wink last night and I’m feeling really cranky. To sleep next to Dylan and not be able to touch him is a surefire way to have insomnia. I could actually feel the heat from his body as he lay a foot away from me. Not sexual tension heat, just actual heat because it was so hot.

I was very bad last night. I kept pretending to be asleep and rolling over so I was pressed against him. At one stage I hooked my leg over his like I used to and buried my face in his neck so I could take subtle gulps of Dylan-scented air. I was so close I could almost taste him. I was practically inviting him to do rude things to me. Instead, he kept gently shoving me over to my side of the bed.

But I was the one who said we should break up, so I can’t exactly say, ‘Oh, I’ve changed my mind, get over here and kiss me.’ If we got back together, it would have to be because Dylan showed me that he wanted to be with me. I s’pose he reckons that I’m going to university so I’ve saved him the trouble of a long-distance relationship before the whole inevitable drifting apart from each other.

And he’s stopped driving without a T-shirt. I wonder what he’d do if I just leant over right now and ran my tongue down his neck. Oh, we’d probably crash.

Dylan’s giving me weird looks now. I was probably drooling.

It’s four in the morning and Dylan stormed out a few hours ago. When I asked him where he was going, he snarled, ‘To get as far away from you as possible!’ But then we’d just had the mother of all fights. This was a fight with Dolby sound effects, glorious technicolour and language that some people might find offensive.

When we got to Las Vegas, I was still suffering the after-effects of a sleepless night. Nevada is all desert so it’s blistering hot. Again. It makes me cranky.

And even though I knew I was being a bitch I just couldn’t seem to help it. First I insisted that we stay in a hotel because everything’s really cheap in Las Vegas and, hell it’s Las Vegas and we have loads of money left. Then I made Dylan drive along the strip three times before I chose a hotel to stay at and eventually I chose Paris Las Vegas because it had an almost full-scale replica of the Eiffel Tower in front of it and it reminded me of when we were in Paris and Dylan and I first got together because I’m a stupid, sappy cow who never learns from her mistakes.

When we got to our room, I started griping about everything from the fluffiness of the pillows to the freebie toiletries. Part of it was about being a mardy, sleep-deprived bitch and the other part of it was that I was desperate to get a reaction out of Dylan. The Mr Nice Guy routine was getting really old. It’s so obvious that he doesn’t want me, doesn’t love me. I think he feels sorry that he gave me a hard time and that’s why he’s being so bloody reasonable about everything. And I just wanted him to feel something else towards me, even if it was anger or annoyance.

When we went to the hotel’s all-you-can-eat buffet (and at this point can I just say, God bless America!), I kept on whining. Even I was getting sick of the petulant tone of my voice and I was a lot closer to it than him. But at least I could tell I was getting to Dylan. He kept drumming his fingers on the table and sucking in his cheeks as I complained and criticised and made them take back my omelette because it was too runny.

Then I said that I wanted to play roulette and stalked off to the gaming rooms, avoiding the hotel staff who were dressed as gendarmes along the way. I forced Dylan to cash $500 into chips, even though he kept saying, ‘Do you really think this is a good idea?’ Of course, it wasn’t a good idea, which was exactly why I wanted to do it. I then lost the entire $500 in one spin of the wheel. I think I should repeat that line so the full enormity of it sinks in. I put $500 down on nineteen and lost the whole bloody lot. I actually thought I was going to have a heart attack, I could hear the blood rushing through my veins and I was going to call the whole thing off but Dylan just stood there, shaking his head slightly but still not doing anything.

‘I want more money,’ I growled at him.

He shook his head, his face almost impassive apart from the nostril flaring and lip tightening. ‘You’re not having any more money.’

‘Well, I’m going to buy chips with the credit card then!’ I announced.

Then Dylan wedged his hand into my armpit, hauled me off my chair and frogmarched me to the lifts. I could actually feel the tension in his fingers as he gripped me hard enough that I couldn’t break free. I’d wanted to get him mad but all of a sudden it seemed like a bad idea. Like, the king and queen of bad ideas. Well, I realise that now but at the time, when we got to our room, I was still spoiling for a fight.

‘How dare you molest me like that?’ I screamed before he’d even finished shutting the door. ‘I’m not your girlfriend any more. That is inappropriate touching!’

‘Just don’t,’ Dylan said warningly, his voice pitched so low I could hardly hear it.

‘Oh, piss off!’ I snapped at him. ‘You can’t tell me what to do. We’re not anything to each other. I could walk out of here and pick up some bloke if I wanted to and you couldn’t do anything about it.’

Dylan ignored me and went to look out of the window.

‘Are you listening to me?’ I shrieked like some demented harpy. ‘I’m going to the bar and I’m going to cop off with someone and if I bring them up here you’re going to have to get out.’

Dylan turned round, his eyes flashing. ‘Stop it,’ he bit out.

I didn’t even know what I was saying. All I knew was I was getting a reaction. Good or bad, it didn’t matter.

‘Oooh, I’m really scared,’ I said tauntingly, and I took a step nearer to him. And then another and another, until we were nose to nose. Dylan was breathing heavily, and looking back now I can see he was on the edge. And I tipped him right over.

I held up a finger and waved it in front of his eyes. ‘You’re. Just. My. Ex’, I said, prodding him in the chest with each word.

Something seemed to snap inside Dylan. And me. I don’t know who reached for who first but suddenly we were clutching at each other and kissing. Angry kissing. His lips were mashed against mine, all teeth and tongues and bruising pressure, his hands were pinning my arms to my sides and I couldn’t move. But I didn’t want to.

After a few moments the whole mood of the kiss changed, became
tender
. Dylan let go of my arms and I wound them around him. He teased my lips open with his tongue and started backing me towards the bed. As I went down, with him on top of me, and started trying to pull off his shirt, Dylan came to his senses. He jack-knifed off the bed and stood there looking horrified.

‘God Edie, I’m so sorry,’ he breathed. ‘I didn’t mean it. It was a mistake.’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

‘No, it wasn’t,’ I protested. ‘You still want me. That’s OK.’

‘It’s not OK,’ he said flatly.

I sat up and started unzipping my dress. Maybe lust even without love was better than nothing.

‘What are you doing?’ Dylan spluttered. ‘Stop taking your clothes off!’

I tried to look alluring. ‘Look, we don’t have to love each other to, y’know…’ I patted the bed.

‘No, I don’t know,’ Dylan said with an edge to his voice. He turned and walked to the door. ‘Jesus, Edie, I can’t believe that you’d be happy to sleep with me when you feel like that.’

He made it sound like I was the lowest of the low. I was giving myself to him and not asking for anything back and all he could do was throw the fact that he didn’t love me back in my face.

Dylan opened the door.

‘Where are you going?’ I cried.

‘To get as far away from you as possible.’

So it’s half past four in the morning and I can’t sleep. And I need to sort out things with Dylan. Tell him the truth; that I still love him; that he’s a part of me and I can’t let him go. And I don’t care that I’m wearing just a vest and my pyjama bottoms, I have to find him.

I didn’t have to look very far. Dylan was sitting in the hotel bar, staring morosely at his bottle of beer.

I took cautious steps towards him but he looked up and saw me before I could sit down. To his credit, he didn’t ask me why I was wearing my pyjamas, he just asked if I wanted a drink and then lifted his hand to summon a waiter.

‘I’ll have a Diet Coke,’ I muttered, not wanting to draw any attention to the fact that I was too young to drink in America and desperate to tell Dylan how I felt.

I was just wondering how to start when Dylan took a crumpled piece of paper out of his shirt pocket and placed it on the table in front of me.

‘What’s that?’ I asked him nervously.

‘Read it,’ he ordered in a neutral voice.

I smoothed out the paper and read the top line: Clark County Marriage Bureau.

The words started swimming in front of me. ‘Dylan, what is this?’ I asked again.

‘What do you think it is?’ he replied in a really irritating way.

‘Enough with the cryptic,’ I pleaded. ‘Just tell me.’

Dylan laid the piece of paper flat on the table. ‘It says “marriage licence” here, and there’s my name and there’s your name.’

He looked at me for some reaction. I just stared at him in a really gormless way. I couldn’t put all the words together as my brain had gone into serious meltdown.

Dylan sighed. ‘It’s a marriage licence,’ he said. Then he took a swig of beer and the suspense nearly made me keel over right there. ‘I’m asking you to marry me.’

We sat there in silence for a moment. I couldn’t even look at the marriage licence, much less actually touch the thing. Dylan’s eyes were burning into me, waiting for some kind of reaction. In the end, I pushed the piece of paper towards him with my glass.

‘So do you want to get married?’ Dylan asked finally.

I didn’t know what cruel game he was playing now. Like my heart was his own personal Xbox.

‘How can you ask me to marry you when you don’t even love me?’ I cried. ‘It’s all a big laugh to you, isn’t it?’

‘No, I’m…’

‘You know, don’t you?’ I continued and I had to hide my face in my hands because I couldn’t bear for him to look at me. ‘You know that I still love you and this is some kind of sick joke isn’t it? ’Cause it’s not enough to make me say it, you have to make it hurt just that little bit more.’

I pushed my chair back and started to get up. I had to get away before I completely lost it which was going to be any time in the next thirty seconds, but Dylan’s hand was on my arm and he pressed me back into the chair.

‘No, Dylan, let me go,’ I hissed.

‘Listen to me!’ he said urgently, giving me a tiny little shake. ‘I love you. You were the one who broke us up, you were the one who found it so easy to be friends.’

‘You don’t love me!’

‘Yes I do!’ barked Dylan. ‘I never stopped loving you. Even when I was acting crazy, I loved you. And I’ve tried to show you in a million different ways that I love you but nothing gets through to you.’

‘How can you say that?’ I wiped a hand across my hot face because I knew that the tears were starting to put in an appearance. ‘I’ve given you enough signs to let you know how I feel and you just treated me like an elderly relative.’

Dylan rolled his eyes. ‘I was showing you how much I cared about you!’ he spluttered. ‘And anyway you nearly died, you were supposed to be taking it easy.’

We sat there without speaking while I sniffed a bit and tried to get myself under control.

I tried to replay the last few weeks in my head to see if Dylan was being sincere and he’d done the über-sweetie act out of love or a potent combination of guilt, confusion and near death experience.

‘So…’

‘What…’

We both spoke at the same time. Dylan tried to smile. ‘You go first.’

I took a deep breath. ‘So when you say you love me, are you talking about, like, friendship love or
love
love?’

Dylan gently stroked the hair back from my face. ‘Please don’t make me say this ’cause every time I rehearse it in my head, it sounds so lame,’ he pleaded.

That didn’t fill me with a warm, fuzzy glow. Oh God, he was going to talk about loving friends and how friendship lasted forever and love was just a temporary thing…

Dylan pinched my ear. ‘Ow!’

‘Edie I’m just about to pour out my heart to you and you’re day-dreaming,’ he said.

I flinched away from his hand that was still stroking my face and folded my arms.

‘Go on, then.’

‘Well, first of all I wouldn’t have asked you to marry me if I was talking about just friendship love,’ Dylan began, leaning forward and staring intently at my left shoulder as if it was the most fascinating left shoulder in the world. ‘If friendship is all you want, then I’ll take it. But, really, being honest, even if it scares you, I have to tell you that we can’t ever be friends. Real friends.’

I waited for the punchline, my finger tracing the edge of my glass over and over again. I looked at Dylan’s hands, his thin, elegant hands, which were about thirty-seven per cent of the reason I first started crushing on him. He uses them a lot when he’s talking. Like, now. They keep painting circles in the air.

I felt like I was dying.

I realised that Dylan was waiting for me to say something but all I could think about was not being friends. I’d have settled for being friends. Eventually.

‘Why can’t we be friends?’ I heard myself say in a rusty voice.

Dylan tried to reach for me then but I flinched away and his mouth drooped at the edges. He took a deep breath. ‘Because I’m so in love with you that I can’t be around you if I can’t touch you and kiss you and have you love me in the same way. And I know I treated you terribly and if I could do anything to take it back and make you trust me again, then I’d do it. Just tell me what I can do.’

My whole face crumpled and I slumped back in the chair. ‘You don’t have to do anything,’ I mumbled. ‘You just have to tell me that you love me.’

‘Which I’ve just done,’ Dylan pointed out. He leaned forward in his chair, pinning me there with the intent look in his eyes. ‘Look, it’s like when I did find Lenny and I had these stupid ideas about being part of a family and how I’d feel whole. But I realised that you’re my family, Edie. I didn’t have to love you, but I do. You make me feel whole.’

I rested my elbows on the table and rubbed my forehead. ‘You’re not my friend,’ I said slowly, glancing at Dylan’s tense face. ‘I don’t want you to be my friend either. I just want you to be the boy I love who loves me back.’

‘I can do that,’ Dylan said quickly. ‘Sometimes I don’t always show it in the right way but I’ve never loved anyone except you.’

I couldn’t work out why I had this feeling like there was still miles we had to go. ‘I only broke up with you because I didn’t think you could love me and hurt me like you did. But maybe you hurt me so much because you loved me. I mean, I don’t know what I mean…’

Dylan tilted my chin so I was looking at him. ‘I have severe emotional problems,’ he confessed with a wry grin. ‘And I know that I should have told you what was going on but I’ll never pull something like that again. You have to believe me.’

‘I do, I think,’ I said uncertainly. ‘It’s just never simple with us. Something always comes along to mess things up. And I want to be with you, I do but loving you is scary sometimes, Dylan.’