Diary of a Crush: Sealed With a Kiss (6 page)

‘Edie! Stop it!’ Grace yelped and refused to talk to me for at least five minutes.

If I managed to set up both Poppy
and
Grace in the same month, then my own romance karma levels would go through the roof. Maybe Dylan might actually spend some time in the same room as me. Stranger things have happened.

Had a big, bad gloom today. Realised that I’ve been staying at Poppy’s for nearly two months and it can’t last forever. So I can either a) move back home with Mum and her variable mood swings b) move in with Dylan, the absentee boyfriend or c) use up all my wages and try to find somewhere to rent.

Talking of Dylan I was just having an extremely sarcastic rant at him inside my head as I locked up the café, when I realised he was standing in the doorway.

‘Hey you,’ he drawled.

‘Sorry, who are you again?’ I hissed, turning my back on him as I fiddled with the keys.

He came up behind me and enveloped me in a big hug. ‘I know, I know,’ he murmured in my ear as he held me tight so I couldn’t wriggle away from him. ‘I’m a self-obsessed jerk who’s been neglecting his really cool girlfriend. I should be taken out back and horsewhipped.’

‘You’re going to have to do better than that,’ I said grumpily although I was melting at the feel of Dylan’s lean body pressed against me.

‘Well I’ve got chocolate and some arty but romantic DVDs back home,’ Dylan whispered. ‘And best of all, I’m going to spend the next fourteen hours kissing you senseless.’

With some difficulty, I turned round so I could look at him. Dylan arched an eyebrow enquiringly. ‘So am I forgiven?’

‘I’ll think about it,’ I mock-sulked, which actually isn’t that different from when I’m really sulking. ‘I’m expecting some major crawling though. And present-buying. You might want to start pricing up tiaras.’

Dylan gave me a slightly evil smile, ‘How about I make it up to you in kind.’

I thought about it for a moment. ‘No, I’d rather have diamonds, I think. I’d get right on that if I were you.’

Dylan pushed me against the wall and placed his arms on either side of my head so I couldn’t escape the wicked glint in his eyes as he took in my completely crap attempts to pretend that I wasn’t about to make a pre-emptive bid on the whole senseless kissing arrangement.

‘How about you use your lips for something other than pouting and I’m sure we can come to some arrangement,’ he purred, before lowering his head.

I’m never going to persuade anyone to buy me a tiara.

Hey, sweet little diary. Did you miss me? There’s a reason why I haven’t written in ages, apart from the usual work/band/Dylan thing. I’ve been sorting out my big, exciting move! Not back to the folks because it’s just not going to happen. I love them dearly but now I’ve had a taste of freedom it’s too hard to go back to live with a woman who tries to button up my coat every time I leave the house.

I’m moving into my very own place! Kind of. I’m going to be living in the empty flat above the café with Poppy, Shona and Paul, because Shona and Paul are practically living together anyway and she feels the same way about the boys’ bathroom as I do. Anna chucked out her last tenants ’cause they were non-rent paying slackers and is letting us have it cheap because we’re so lovely and she doesn’t want the building empty all night. Though she did make a muttered aside that it would be the only way that she could guarantee me and Poppy actually turn up for work on time. I can’t imagine what she means.

Mum and Dad have been calmer about it than I expected. I have the sneaking suspicion that they actually like having the place to themselves. I think Dad must have told Mum that I’d be going to university in a few months anyway so if I did move back in it would only be delaying the inevitable and then she’d only get upset all over again when I moved out. And this way, they have Anna around to keep an eye on me, which is skewy logic on their part because she’s only around when the café’s open, leaving me to get up to a world of wrong after five o’clock most nights! Whatever. The good thing is they’re paying my rent. It’s a bit like a parentally-sponsored project to see how independent I really am.

D and I talked for two minutes about moving in together but came to the speedy conclusion that he’d kill me for leaving my clothes all over the floor, if I hadn’t already killed him first for being too damn chirpy first thing in the morning.

I think we’re well beyond that first part of going out together where we spent all our time hanging out and holding hands. Now, we both have our own stuff going on but it just makes seeing him even more exciting. If I have to go a couple of days Dylanless, then when we do hook up it’s like falling in love with him all over again. Seeing his face crack into this sunshine smile when he first catches sight of me, and realising that I’d forgotten just how green his eyes are or how I’d never seen him wear that T-shirt before makes me glad that he still has depths I’ve yet to explore.

God, I’m in danger of turning terminally sappy. I need to watch that.

So somehow I had to fit in working, band rehearsals and moving – hence even more lack of wordage in diary. I think Dylan’s secretly relieved that we’re not shacking up together although his toothbrush has permanent visitation rights, especially after we hauled my many goods and chattels into my little attic room and then had trouble getting the door shut. But it’s going to be all kinds of good when he stays over and we don’t have to worry that Poppy’s mum or one of his flatmates is going to burst in on us doing something they’d rather not know we were doing. Even if it’s only Dylan letting me paint his toenails.

‘Do you think we’re getting boring and coupley?’ I asked him as he hung up my fairy lights and I unpacked my third binbag of clothes.

Dylan threw a balled-up pair of socks at me in protest. ‘I make sculptures out of food and you have a theory about carrier bags being the next dominant species,’ he pointed out with a smirk. ‘I don’t think boring is the right word.’

‘Well not when you put it like that,’ I said, after I’d had a moment to consider it. ‘And we do our own stuff. I just worry that we’re like as dull and middle-age-y as Prince William and Kate Middleton.’

‘Nah! We’re the anti-Wills and Kate,’ Dylan shuddered. He turned to look at the rest of my things waiting to be unpacked. ‘Explain to me again why you have so many dresses?’

We played our second gig last night at the Christmas party at my old college and got our first groupie – this fifteen-year-old kid from Cheadle Hulme who tried to snog Poppy after buying her a drink.

‘Not while there’s dogs on the pavement,’ she snarled at him before flouncing off to find Jesse. That would be Jesse her new boyfriend, though he’s very much on a thirty-day free trial even if he doesn’t know it. (Our flat is just like the boys’ old flat with Dylan, Paul and Jesse there all the time. It just smells less of boy and more of girl.)

Anyway, the gig: I think we’re not so much about the songs and more about our stage outfits (we wore matching Barbie T-shirts and tutus over our jeans – well, it’s a look) and the between songs banter. I think Poppy wishes it was actually more about the songs but then she’s going to have to get together with people who can actually play their instruments well instead of just about adequately.

After we came off stage, I dragged Grace over to Dylan to explain why it was necessary to have at least thirty vintage dresses when someone caught my eye.

‘Grace!’ I tugged at her arm. ‘It’s that boy! The one from outside the cinema.’

Dylan looked up. ‘Oh that’s Jack. He comes into Rhythm all the time.’

I nudged Dylan. ‘Get him to come over!’

‘Edie!’ Grace said between clenched teeth. ‘Stop it!’

Dylan winked at me and then waved at Jack.

‘He’s coming over,’ I told Grace rather unnecessarily, but the pissy expression on her face was very amusing.

Jack shambled over. He’s quite cute really. He has a thin face with these huge brown eyes and all this floppy blond hair, which he constantly pushes back. ‘Er hi, Grace,’ he said softly.

Grace grunted quietly.

‘I’m Edie,’ I shouted over the music, sticking out my hand so he could shake it. Good firm grip. ‘So where do you know Grace from?’

‘We’re in the same English class,’ Jack mumbled, peering at her from under his eyelashes, then looking away like he’d been caught shoplifting.

I smiled encouragingly. ‘I’m having a house-warming cum Christmas party next week. You should come.’

Dylan shook his head and made the universal sign language for throat slitting at me but I ignored him.

Grace was staring stonily at the wall and Jack was gazing at Grace as if she was a big bar of chocolate suddenly come to life.

‘So this party?’ I prompted. Jack tore his eyes away from Grace.

‘Er yeah, sounds cool,’ he muttered.

‘I’ll give Grace an invite to give to you,’ I promised before following Dylan into the crowd because he was clutching my hand so tightly that if I hadn’t, he’d have had my arm off.

‘Don’t,’ he said sternly, when we got to the bar and he decided that maybe it would be a good idea to stop cutting off my circulation.

‘Don’t what?’ I asked innocently.

‘Don’t meddle.’ He gave me one of his looks. This one is my least favourite because it manages to convey equal parts disapproval and disappointment. ‘What do you want to drink?’

‘Oh, don’t be mad at me and anyway you were happy enough to call him over,’ I fiddled with my fake tiara.

Dylan straightened it for me and ran his fingers through my hair. ‘Just let Grace find her own boyfriend, OK?’

‘But by then she’ll be in her eighties and living on her own with loads of cats,’ I protested.

Dylan threw up his hands. ‘I give in. It’s impossible to argue with someone who’s wearing a tutu anyway. Undignified, you know?’

Grace still hasn’t forgiven me but I’m not going to let a little thing like that stop me.

‘He’s so sweet,’ I told her the evening of my party, while she was helping me unpack carrier bag upon carrier bag of nibbles. The others had gone to the off-licence, though why it took five of them I don’t know. I think it was a cunning plot to stick me with the vacuuming.

‘I’m not listening!’ she insisted.

I shook my head. ‘Oh, please, you fancy him. He obviously fancies you. What’s the problem?’

‘It’s, oh y’know, I’ve never, um even… kissed someone, I mean, a boy before,’ Grace stuttered. ‘Apart from Carter and he
so
doesn’t count.’

‘You don’t have to snog him, talking would be good though.’

But Grace blushed for the millionth time and refused to say anything more.

And by the way, why did no-one tell me that it was Christmas in two days’ time? I’m going to have to get all my presents from Sainsbury’s and hope people think I’m being cute and ironic, rather than just a girl who left everything to the last minute.

Note to self: Being the hostess sucks. I barely had any time to get ready, in between dusting and cleaning and trying desperately to get into the bathroom while there was still hot water. If this is being independent, I’m not sure I like it very much.

I was still in the shower when the first people turned up and I had to do a lightning streak back to my room with my towel clutched in a death grip around me. I just had time to throw on jeans and Shona’s new vintage satin blouse and a bit of make-up, instead of spending hours getting ready to look like I’d just thrown my look together. There is a
huge
difference.

I thought I’d mingle and pass around the odd plate of cocktail sausages and keep the party afloat with witty asides and tinkling laughter but actually I had to make sure everyone had a drink and didn’t throw up on a non-easy-wipe surface. Plus I could see Grace and Jack on opposite sides of the living room not talking to anyone. I wanted to bash their heads together.

I was just making my millionth trip to the kitchen to see if any of the ice-cube bags in the freezer had actually iced up when I felt two hands reach round my waist and a warm mouth nip me lightly on the neck.

‘Get off me!’ I said crossly.

Dylan turned me round to face him. ‘Oh it’s you,’ I muttered. ‘This party is a disaster, Jack and Grace won’t talk to each other and Will’s been sick out of the window and I have no ice and…’

Dylan stopped my rant simply by backing me against the wall and kissing me till I couldn’t think straight.

‘What was…?’

Dylan put a finger on my lips, took me by the hand and started leading me towards my room.

‘But the party…’ I protested as he opened the door.

Dylan gave me a wolfish smile. ‘I thought you wanted to be not boring,’ he purred.

Have I mentioned how much I love being independent?

It’s been a weird, long year. This time last year, D was still with Veronique and there was that godawful party at the boys’ flat where I managed to kiss Dylan
and
Carter within the space of fifteen minutes.

Then there were all those months of stress-inducing boy issues. Dylan and Carter played so many mind games with me, that it’s quite miraculous that I still have some shreds of sanity left.

Even stranger is that I’ve forgiven Dylan. Really, really forgiven him, to the extent that I don’t even bring it up when we argue. Sometimes I think that no matter how unpleasant it all got, it was necessary because it made me grow up. It made me stop being a wide-eyed kid with a crush on a boy and instead I’m becoming more like the girl I always wanted to be.

I’m a lot less whiny for starters. And I have plans that don’t involve concocting ways to be in the same room as Dylan. I have big scary plans about life and what I want to be when I’m a grown-up, which I think is going to be pretty soon.

Like, I’m waiting to hear back from universities and have pretty much decided that I want to study English Literature and French and maybe even live in Paris for a year. And I love being in the band but I realise that it isn’t going to be something that leads to fame, fortune and nubile, androgynous, young men throwing themselves at my designer-shoed feet. But my life is also about Dylan ’cause I honestly believe we’re in it for the long haul. That it’s not puppy love; or first love; or any of those other kinds of love that are never meant to last. I love him in so many different ways. In the way that he’s a cute boy who’s into me and kisses me until the world falls out from under my feet. And then I love him in this deeper way that kinda feels like he’s a part of me, like we breathe to the same rhythm. So, I guess what I’m trying to make sense of here, albeit in a very rambly way, is that I never thought I’d get to the end of this year and there’d be someone, let alone Dylan, who’d mean more to me than I do.