Summer Sky (17 page)

Parking on Tara's street is a military manoeuvre at the best of times. Finding a space isn't the issue - the problem is the politics surrounding which rectangle of tarmac belongs to who. The first day I parked in what I presumed was a free space, and then endured the wrath of a middle-aged man in a brown suit with an interesting comb-over hairstyle. He lives five doors down but claims the spot is his.

Now I park around the corner so if I do accidentally invade someone's territory, they won't know where I live.

Pissed off that the July weather equals rain clouds and not sunshine, I tramp along the street, skilfully weaving around the dog crap on the pavement - sometimes avoiding people's eyes helps in life.

Tara's home is a Victorian house converted into several flats. She says she's saving for one of the new apartments near the river. I nodded and saved my question about when a 'flat' becomes an 'apartment'? I suspect there's a pound sign and a few zeros involved.

As I approach the house, I spot a figure in a familiar blue hoodie perched on the low brick wall bordering the pavement and overgrown front garden.

Dylan.

I freeze, heart stuttering. What the hell is he doing? His head is down, hair covered by his hood, but if hardcore fans recognise him from the streets of a sleepy, seaside town, I doubt this’ll be much of a disguise.

"Dylan?"

He looks over and in his face, I recognise the Dylan from the day we collided. Beneath his hoodie, Dylan's dull eyes brighten when he notices me. He straightens and gives a lopsided apologetic smile.

"Are you mad? Sitting in the middle of a busy street?" I hiss.

An elderly lady trundles by with a wheeled shopping bag.

Dylan doesn’t take his pale blue eyes off mine. "Not exactly a hive of activity? Besides, I'm hiding in plain sight. No one's looked twice at me."

I take in his appearance. He's unshaven, in scruffy clothes with black circled eyes - exactly as when I first met him. I recognise the blue hoodie covering his tattoos as the one I wore in Broadbeach.

"I said I didn’t want to see you," I say quietly.

"I said I had to see you. I need to talk to you," he replies in a low tone. "I tried to stay away but I think I deserve an explanation. You just walked away and that was unfair.”

“I had to.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to avoid this. I thought you’d forget me as soon as I went, I didn’t expect you to want to see me.”

Confusion lines Dylan’s face and he stands. “I told you I wanted us to be more, why would you think I’d forget you? I’ll never forget you.”

Already his words are piercing my resolve, and I pull myself back to the reality sitting in my bag. "Have you seen this?" I pull the magazine out, still folded at the offending page, and show the article to him.

"Yeah," he says without looking at the magazine.

"Can you make sure I don’t get dragged into anything? Get your people or whoever to pay someone?"

He moves closer, too close. My thoughts scatter, the scent of him pulling me back to the incredible things he did to me.

"My people?" He laughs. "Sure. If you come with me and talk to me."

"No."

"Why?"

"I don’t want anything else to do with you and your life, Dylan," I say, even though my body is begging me to reconsider.

I edge past him towards the steps leading up to the flats.

"Sky. Please." He folds a hand around my sleeve before I can get by.

Tears prick my eyes, in frustration with him and the situation. "What do you want from me?"

"You." The sincerity in his face knocks the breath from me. "Sky, I want you to give us a chance. Things were going well until..."

"... I discovered who you really were and our fantasy world imploded."

"I was going to tell you, once I realised I wanted more than the Sky in our fantasy world."

“Holiday romances are great while they last, but they always end." I smile weakly.

Dylan sits back on the wall and buries his hands into his pockets. "I have so many things I want to say to you, Sky. I don't know how to make you understand that I currently don't give a fuck about anything but trying to make things work with you."

"How? How would we work? In Broadbeach, we had fun because everything was different. This is reality."

"And I want you to be part of my reality," he says, turning the eyes I could drown in back to mine. My Dylan Morgan's eyes.

Exasperated, I throw the magazine at him. "This. This is your reality. You can’t exactly pop round to watch a movie with a takeaway, or meet me at the pub for a quick drink after work, can you? And I can't be part of your insane reality."

"Don't I fucking know it," he growls, picking up the pages as they fall on the floor. “And I want to protect you from this bullshit."

"Then leave me alone."

Dylan's face hardens, and he stares at the concrete path. "If you hadn't found out about this Dylan Morgan, would you have given your Dylan Morgan a chance?"

I wince as the realisation hits. He gave part of himself to me and I'm rejecting more than rock star Dylan Morgan.

"Dylan, I’m asking you again. Leave me alone, you’re making things hard for me by being here. If anyone finds out who I am…"

Dylan jumps to his feet, and I stagger back as he approaches and takes my face in his hands. "Why won't you see me again? What did I do?"

"Nothing...you didn’t do anything wrong. We had a holiday thing which is over now." My traitorous body reacts to his touch, skin heating beneath his palms and desire to be in his arms again.

"And that's all our time was to you? A holiday thing?" His scrutiny doesn't waver, and I summon the courage to meet his eyes and lie. Lie to the man who filled my world with more colour and happiness than I've had in my life for years.

"Yes, that's all." A sinking in the pit of my stomach contradicts my words.

The anger I expect doesn’t come; instead, his mouth pulls into sadness. He rearranges his features and drops his hands. "Okay."

"Sorry."

"I guess I just needed to look at you and hear you say the words to accept I don't mean anything to you," he says.

This guy is hurting; hurting more than before he met me. However, this isn't my fault, I can't feel guilted into doing something I don't want.

"Sorry," I repeat.

As we face each other, vivid memories of our time together tumble into my mind on replay, stirring the powerful emotions this man elicits from me. Days spent rationalising the situation, of locking my Dylan Morgan in a box in my head seem pointless in this moment. My heart has been broken once and too recently, my ability to trust scratched away. I want to preserve the memories of the happiness I had with Dylan, and not risk revisiting the pain of loss and rejection I know will follow. However much he believes what he’s saying, reality will treat us unkindly.

But I want him so much. The contradiction keeps me awake at night; the emptiness left by someone I hardly know confusing. Swapping one man who tried to control my life, for another whose life is so out of control is frightening, isn’t what I need right now.

I want Dylan and I know I can never have him. He belongs to so many other people who won't share him with me. Fighting the urge to stay with Dylan, and talk about the possibility of future us, I hesitate.

Dylan touches my cheek, and I’m sure he can see the doubt in my eyes. “At least let me say goodbye this time.” I swallow down the lump in my throat, praying the tears don’t start as he strokes my face. “You have my number, call me if you change your mind. I’ll wait.”

“Please, Dylan…” My eyes tear as he leans in and places his lips softly on mine and I know if I close them, I’m lost again. I back off, before the kiss reconnects us.

Dylan delves his hands into the pocket of his hoodie, sadness and understanding etched on his features. “Bye, summer Sky.”

I nod because I know if I speak, my voice will crack. Scared he'll try to hug me, I cross my arms over my chest. Dylan inhales deeply, shakes his head then walks down the dirty path towards the road. His hunched figure disappears around a corner. As I head into Tara's ordinary flat, away from the extraordinary man, I know this isn’t the end.

Chapter Seventeen

Sky

Thanks to Tara's friend of a friend's brother (or someone equally vague); I find somewhere new to live without having to fork out a huge deposit.

I’m pissed off about moving from the modern house in the safe suburb I shared with Grant and into a tiny place in the arse end of town, even though I should be grateful. The musty smell in the lounge is only surpassed by the disgusting state of the kitchen. The cooker looks in dire need of cleaning product, and the cupboards are full of crumbs and goodness knows what from the previous occupants. As the place comes furnished, I don’t have much opportunity to make the place my own and resolve to buy some pictures to cover the ugly brown marks on the bedroom walls.

Two days later and I’m settling in. If that’s what cleaning the kitchen and steam cleaning the furniture means. Something sadistic inside me decides to buy a picture of a coastal scene and hang it over the dent in the lounge wall.

The flat is close to a bus stop, so I don’t bother with my car for work, leaving it parked outside my new home. If I drive anywhere, I again have to battle for a space within a fifty mile radius of the flat when I return. Okay, what feels like a fifty-mile radius, especially in the rain.

I haven’t heard from Dylan. He never appeared outside Tara's again, and I hope he doesn't track me down to here. I replay the last meeting in my mind constantly, and when I'm half-asleep the conversation ends differently. In this version, I allow myself to connect and he holds me while we kiss. One thing is certain, if Dylan Morgan ever kisses me again, I know the fantasy of Broadbeach will become reality because I won’t want to let him go.

Tara comes around with a "house warming" present which is odd on two accounts. Firstly, she's not the sort to waste time and money on frivolities unless they pertain to her. And secondly, she brought me a houseplant, a small Yucca in a brown pot she holds out to me as if she’s carrying a stick of dynamite about to explode. With my horticultural skills, the thing won’t last a week.

I know the real reason Tara is here – she wants the lowdown on Dylan’s and my sexual exploits, which I've so far refused to give her. A part of me worries she may 'out' me to the tabloids but she’s a better person than that, thank God. Some people would sell me out for the money, so I'm glad our twelve-year friendship stands for something. However, I don’t tell her any more details just in case.

I spend a couple of evenings torturing myself searching Dylan on Google, which is ironic - I don't want to see him but I'm spending my evenings with him anyway. Dylan has quite a history: the sex, drugs and rock and roll cliché at its very best. Many of the worst stories are a few years old, these days the media are more interested in who he's having a relationship with rather than catching him with illegal substances or getting arrested fighting journalists.

There are some bloody sexy pictures of him though, which does nothing to dampen down whatever remains racing around my body since the night at the beach house.

Did I do the right thing by rejecting something that felt so real, because I won't acknowledge how he shifted my world off its axis?

Chapter Eighteen

Dylan

"If this chick doesn’t want to see you, why are you wasting your time?"

Lost in memories of lying in bed with Sky, using the peace and happiness from those quiet moments to calm me, I don’t notice Liam come into the gym. I hit the off button on the treadmill and jump down, wiping my face with a towel. Every one of the band have tried talking to me about Sky. I won’t discuss her; I'm respecting her decision that she doesn't want to be dragged into my world.

Liam doesn’t work out; he's one of those perpetually scrawny people, so I give him a ‘what are you doing here?’ look. His wavy, dark ginger hair is pulled into a long ponytail today and his green eyes are bright. I guess he didn't spend the night drinking as I did, or needs to punish himself for this on the treadmill.

Liam's the one band member trying to hold down a steady girlfriend. They’re engaged, though they've known each other less than six months. We call her the limpet because she’s permanently stuck to him.

"Where’s Honey?" I ask.

No one but Liam believes this is her real name, but he insists it is. I guess if they ever sign the marriage certificate he’ll find out. I bet she’s called Tracey or something less exotic.

"Hey, Dylan…" Honey’s cutesy voice follows Liam into the room and I cringe. Nobody over the age of five should sound like her.

"Honey."

Miss Plastic Fantastic reattaches herself to Liam, who automatically wraps a tattooed arm around her skinny shoulders. The name Honey suggests sweet and natural, but there's little natural about her platinum blonde hair extensions or the fake nails, tits and attitude. Sweet isn't a word I'd apply to this walking Barbie doll in her tiny clothes either. Liam always falls for the fakes, which is sad because he's such a genuine, nice guy.