Diary of a Crush: Kiss and Make Up (7 page)

Everything has changed! I’m so on to Dylan now. If I push him just far enough in the right direction, I can have him back. Then once I’ve got him, I can turn around and mess with his head, just like he’s messed with mine.

But I’m not that kind of girl. I wish I was. I wish I could be all calculating and cruel and focussed on my plans for revenge but … but… I was doing so well at the getting over him. And I know that pursuing him and making him dump Veronique for me would only store up some really bad relationship karma for myself.

So, tempting as the idea is of totally playing him, I’m going to pass. And just carry on keeping him out of my life.

Oh who the hell am I kidding?

I am a bad, bad person. I’m, like, irredeemably bad. But I know, I just
know
that he still loves me and he still wants me and he still wants to be with me. I’m absolutely sure of it. Even though after the New Year argument and kissage, Dylan has tried to make it abundantly clear (by which I mean avoiding the café and
crossing to the other side of the road if he sees me coming
!
) that he doesn’t want me around. But I don’t believe him, which is why I seem to get this sadistic kick out of cornering him so he can’t escape, and then flirting shamelessly with him The weirdest thing is that this evil behaviour is not my style. And while I’m watching Dylan, Carter is watching me and trying to keep me away from his sister’s boyfriend.

Tonight, I ended up wedged next to Dylan on Shona’s sofa as we watched
The Virgin Suicides
for, like, the sixtieth time. Veronique was rehearsing one of her crappy Performance Art pieces someplace else and the lights were dim as I ran my finger lightly down Dylan’s arm. It’s not what I really wanted to do. The urge to wrap myself around him and feel his ribs against my side and his heart beating was so strong, it made my skin twitch. I know it’s wrong to make passes at other girls’ boyfriends, I do. But he was mine long before he was hers. And I could feel the way his arm itched to curl round me. I grabbed his hand and stroked his palm longingly.

‘Cut that out,’ Dylan hissed at me, pulling his hand away.

I shifted restlessly from my cramped position on the end of the settee.

‘And stop wriggling like that!’ Then he pushed me so I found myself sitting on the floor! I glared at him.

Dylan shrugged and looked utterly unrepentant. ‘I’m trying to watch the film, Edie. And you keep fidgeting.’

I rested my head on my knees and wondered why in a room crammed with people, I could feel so alone. To make matters worse, I was sitting next to Carter who smiled nastily and muttered, ‘Ha! Foiled again.’

I don’t think I’ve ever hated anyone as much as I hate him.

Dylan never comes into the café on his own any more. But I caught him out today. I’d popped in on my way home to pick up my wages when I saw him sitting at the corner table. I walked over and kissed him on the cheek in a friendly fashion. He didn’t look very pleased to see me.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said.

‘Can this be the same Dylan who wrote me a letter saying, what was it?, “I miss your kisses and how right it felt to hold you.”’ My voice went all trembly.

Dylan didn’t look at me. ‘New Year changed everything.’

‘I know.’ My hand hovered in the air because I wasn’t allowed to touch him. ‘I realised that you still love me and I still love you.’

He sighed then, like I’d said something hurtful. ‘You have to move on, Edie.’

‘What if I can’t?’

As I stood there and watched him trace patterns in the sugar bowl with his finger; noted the way his hair flopped into his eyes; the rigid, set lines of his face, he seemed so distant. Like he’d never ever been close to me.

Dylan looked up and stared at me for a second without speaking. ‘Don’t make me end up hating you,’ he said, but sadly, like he knew that even as he said it, he was lying and he did still love me.

I stumbled out of the door almost blinded by tears and bumped into Carter.

‘Oh, well if it isn’t the relationship wrecker,’ he said cheerily.

It wasn’t worthy of retaliation and, besides, I was way too close to completely losing it. I just pushed him out of the way – hard – and ran.

So, like, there I was, minding my own business and trying to write a French essay on drug addiction, when I heard The Mothership calling me.

I stuck my head round the bedroom door to see Veronique coming up the stairs!

‘What do
you
want?’ I asked her in a horrified voice. Like, the enemy had invaded my territory.

‘I wanted to talk to you,’ she said in her stupid, girly voice. She always sounds like she’s been sucking on helium.

I stood on the landing, barring the way to my bedroom, with my arms folded across my chest. ‘About what?’

‘About Dylan and about Jake,’ she said hesitantly but I wasn’t buying the little girl lost act for a second.

I frowned. ‘Who’s Jake?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Y’know, my brother.’

‘Oh, Carter! Well what about him?’ I asked her.

She gave me a slow once-over and I wished I wasn’t wearing a ratty pair of pyjama bottoms and a vest that had gone grey in the wash. She was definitely winning in the style stakes especially as she was wearing the polka dot skirt that I’d nearly bought in H&M the other week. ‘Look, it’s bad enough that you keep flirting with Dylan but all Jake talks about is you. It’s all, “I saw Edie yesterday,” or “Edie likes the Beatles too.”’ Her voice rose perilously high at the end of the sentence.

‘OK, I’ll admit the stuff about Dylan,’ I spluttered. ‘I’m not going to apologise because you could never understand about me and Dylan. As for Carter, I hate him, he hates me. End of story. And I have a French essay to write so could you please leave?’

As I turned away, I heard her say: ‘You know the really sad thing? You and I could have been such good friends but if this is the way you want it, so be it.’

‘Is that meant to be a declaration of war or something?’ I demanded, whirling round.

Veronique threw me a look of utter hatred. ‘I guess so! And you are not going to know what’s hit you.’

I thought I’d be dodging scud missiles and stuff but Veronique’s call to arms has obviously gone unnoticed. Well, ’cept Dylan has started getting his lunch from Pret A Manger.

And Shona never calls but we haven’t really been close for a while, which is a pity because I miss her.

Veronique is such a bitch! It was Dylan’s birthday yesterday (I sent him a card and a mix CD I’d made but he didn’t text me back when I left a message asking if he’d got them) and she had a party for him and didn’t even invite me. Which, yeah, fair enough. But she invited Nat, who’s my friend. And she even invited Poppy from the café. Nat didn’t go though he offered to poke his head in so he could bring me the gossip. Then he got an attack of conscience and came round and listened to me rant on and on for, like, hours. He told me I was becoming a ‘scary obsesso girl’. Although Poppy went she was so useless at relaying the important details, like what Veronique was wearing and whether her and Dylan were all over each other.

‘They were together but not together together, if you know what I mean,’ was her very disappointing summing up of the evening. Then, when I scowled, she very sweetly and sarcastically told me that next time I should send her off with a questionnaire and she’d tick the boxes for me.

Three Valentine cards! That has to be a record. I know one’s from Nat ’cause it has Hello Kitty on it. The other two cards are arty ones. I hope beyond hope that the one with a Georgia O’Keefe flower is from Dylan but it doesn’t have any handwriting on, just a heart with my name in the middle in capitals.

The other one is very strange. It has a bleeding heart on the front and I don’t recognise the writing at all. ‘Even amid fierce flames, a golden lotus can be planted,’ my mystery admirer had written.

I hate cryptic stuff. It makes my head hurt.

Shona rang! They’re all going to Southport this weekend and she wanted to know if I was up for it.

I was really restrained. I didn’t automatically ask if Dylan was going, even though I haven’t seen him to speak to for a month and I have the worst withdrawal symptoms.

But God, I’ll even go to Southport for the day on the remote chance that he might be going too.

And, for future reference, no, I don’t really like this sad girl I’ve become.

I never got to Southport. Not after Veronique had arranged who was going in whose car, so there was no room for me. I felt about
this
big. Paul and Shona had already left and I had to stand and pretend that I hadn’t wanted to go anyway.

‘I can get three people in the back of…’ Dylan trailed off and wouldn’t look at me.

Veronique smirked. ‘Sorry Edie, maybe next time,’ she simpered, winking at the two sappy friends she was with.

I turned and walked away without a word. It wasn’t fair, Veronique was winning. I was just contemplating throwing myself under the first bus that came along, when there was a tug on my sleeve. It was Carter. My joy was now complete.

‘What do you want?’ I gulped because I was trying so hard not to cry.

‘It’s OK, I haven’t come to gloat,’ he said with a strange little smile. ‘Well, maybe just a little.’

I shot him a look and carried on walking. Carter fell into step beside me.

‘Why aren’t you on your way to Southport with your stupid sister?’ I spat out after five minutes.

He ignored that comment. ‘So where are you going?’

I shrugged. ‘Going home. Placing an ad. Finding some new friends.’

‘I’m your friend,’ Carter said softly.

‘Are you on crack? You and I are about as close to being friends as I am to… to …’ But I couldn’t think of any metaphor large enough to contain the notion that we were mates. I still wanted to cry so shutting up seemed like a really good idea. We got to my bus stop and I pretended to scrutinise the timetable like it was about to tell me the secrets of the universe. There was another tug on my sleeve and I couldn’t help but glance at his face. Carter was twisting the signet ring he wears and eyeing me up. I mean, he was definitely eyeing me up. Looking at my lips and then his eyes moved downwards in the direction of my chest, though, quite frankly, there’s nothing much to see there, even without a tightly buttoned-up jacket over it.

And the really annoying thing was that I started blushing. I just couldn’t help it.

Y’know, he’d just checked me out. And he was still checking me out and I was still blushing and, we were, like, having a moment.

‘So… d’you want to go to the cinema this evening?’

‘Are you asking me out?’ I spluttered.

He looked me dead in the eye. ‘Yeah.’

What the hell?

Tonight was very… I don’t think there’s a word in the dictionary that could even come close to describing it.

I’ve never met anyone like Carter before. It was weird because we did actually get on even though we argued all the time. We argued about what film to go and see and who was going to pay for the tickets and where we were going to sit. It was a regular old bickerfest, but it was kinda enjoyable. Whatever…

And he’s twenty-three (he’s doing a postgraduate art thingy) and I’m not even eighteen yet. He wears sharp second-hand suits that always have splashes of paint on them. His hair is dark blond and quiffed and he looks like he’s stepped out of an old black-and-white film. He’s bony in this elegant way and it always seems as if he’s either a) laughing at some private joke that no-one else gets or b) quietly seething. Halfway through the film, after our hands kept colliding in the popcorn bucket, Carter pulled me towards him and started to kiss me. Gentle kisses that made me want him to grab me and throw me down on the floor and do things to me that I could never, ever tell anyone about. And just when I thought he was going to, he stopped and settled back down to watch the film.

‘You should pay attention,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘I’ll be asking questions later.’ Carter was not a relaxing person to be around.

Afterwards we went for a drink in the pub at the corner of his road.

‘You’re such a funny little thing,’ he said, laughing as my awkward silence default setting kicked in. Just when I was finally starting to relax and wonder if he’d kiss me again, Dylan slid into the seat opposite!

‘What are you doing here?’ Carter and I both asked, though he sounded really pissed off whereas I couldn’t keep the delight out of my voice. It was Dylan and me sharing the same breathing space.

Dylan pulled a face. ‘Your sister decided to stay in Southport with the others but I’ve got to work tomorrow.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Anyway what are you two up to?’

‘Nothing,’ I said too quickly while Carter murmured something about the cinema.

Dylan stood up. ‘Whatever!’ he said in a suspicious voice. ‘I might as well walk you home.’

Carter raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s OK, Dylan, I’m already on it.’

‘It’s completely out of your way,’ hissed Dylan, turning to me. ‘C’mon, you’re going home.’

I sat there watching them argue over chaperone duties until Dylan grabbed me and my coat and pulled me out of the door.

We walked most of the way in this tense silence. I was trying to process what had just happened but I was at a loss to come up with anything that made any sense.

‘What was all that about?’ I finally demanded.

Dylan gave me a furious look. ‘You’re so stupid Edie,’ he bit out angrily. ‘Carter doesn’t fancy you, he just wants to keep you out of my way. Can’t you tell when you’re being used?’

I shook his hand off my arm. ‘What’s it to you? You don’t care about me.’

‘Yes I do,’ insisted Dylan.