‘I’ll go and see Matt then while you compare nail varnish or whatever it is you girls talk about,’ and he walked off in the direction of the DJ booth where one of his friends was hanging out.
Atsuko and Darby visibly relaxed. ‘I’m surprised he doesn’t have you electronically tagged,’ sniped Darby as we grabbed a booth.
‘I can’t believe I’m seeing a boy who all my mates loathe,’ I said miserably. ‘I know he can be sarcastic but he can be really sweet too. Honest.’
‘Are you trying to convince us or yourself?’ asked Darby as she took a sip of her lurid pink cocktail.
‘I’m really confused about the way he makes me feel half the time,’ I confessed. ‘When he gets all toxic on me I end up wanting to kiss him.’
‘Classic evasion tactic,’ explained Atsuko whose dad’s a psychologist. ‘You think that if he kisses you, he’ll stop being all arsey. Whereas he’s being all arsey ’cause he knows it makes you uncomfortable and then he gets to be the one in control. Do you know what I mean?’
‘No, not really,’ I admitted.
‘She means he’s a complete control freak, Edie,’ said Darby in an exasperated voice. ‘You practically had to ask for his permission to spend time with us.’
‘It’s complicated,’ I said, trying to explain. ‘I had this mini-fling thing with my ex…’
‘Dylan?’
‘Yeah, well Carter’s convinced that I’m the least trustworthy girl in the Manchester area ’cause I was kind of seeing him too,’ I finished unhappily. ‘You must think I’m a terrible person, like, boy-obsessed or something.’
‘Everyone has boy issues,’ said Darby consolingly. ‘I once had three boys on the go ’cause I couldn’t make up my mind which one I really fancied.’
‘But you’re with Carter now, right?’ asked Atsuko. ‘So he should get over it.’
I gave a deep sigh. ‘But he refuses to acknowledge the fact that we’re practically going steady. He just says that we should keep it loose but…’
‘But?’ prompted Atsuko.
‘He reckons that if we are going out then we should, you know, um, have sex but I’m not sure,’ I managed to stammer. ‘It seems like a lousy reason. Right?’
‘Right!’ agreed Darby. ‘It’s one thing to have sex ’cause you’re in a serious relationship with someone you care about. But to do it with someone in the hope that he might decide to actually admit that you’re already having a relationship, well that’s just twisted.’
‘Edie, what are you doing with that guy?’ Atsuko demanded.
‘I don’t know.’ I fisted my hands in my hair. ‘I know he can be difficult but it’s exciting at the same time.’
‘Boys can be such jerks,’ said Darby feelingly.
There was a moment’s silence as we all contemplated the jerkdom of the male species and I was pleased that I was bonding with them, even if it was over Carter’s lack of boyfriendliness. I looked up to see the man himself looming over me.
‘Edie, please can we go?’ he begged. I looked at Atsuko and Darby. They were no help.
‘See you at rehearsal tomorrow then,’ they both chirped and slid out of the booth. ‘Right, let’s find our first victim,’ Darby added.
‘Good luck!’ I called after them.
Which left just me and Carter. He ran a finger down my cheek, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’
We got a taxi back to my house and the minute I opened the front door I kicked my wedges off.
‘Ow!’ I whimpered. ‘My feet are officially killing me.’
Carter laughed and followed me into the lounge. I made some tea and he dumped all the cushions off the settee and we sprawled out on the floor and listened to Belle and Sebastian. It’s strange with the parents off the premises. Like, it’s my house or something (although I would never have chosen such disgusting soft furnishings). To start with we drank our tea and didn’t really say anything but this time the silence was companionable. When there aren’t any other people around Carter completely chills out. He’s funny and we talk about books and films and play ‘anywhere but here’. And Carter strokes Pudding, my cat, until she’s all purred out and I think I could really love him.
But then I don’t want to go that deep with Carter ’cause on some level I know that the closer that I let him get, the more he’ll be able to hurt me someday. Could my thought patterns be any more skewy?
An hour later I was stretched out on the carpet while Carter lay over me, his hands gently pinning my arms to my side while he nibbled at my bottom lip. It was frustrating not being able to touch him as his tongue sank into my mouth. He let go of my wrists and trailed a hand down my side until I felt him start to push the skirt of my dress further up my leg. I kind of blissed out as he tickled the underside of my knee but when his hand reached mid-thigh I tugged it away. Carter behaved himself for a while and concentrated on kissing me until I was gasping for breath but as he reached under me and started to inch my zip down, I sat up and pushed him away.
‘No!’ I yelped.
‘No?’ he asked, reaching for me again but I brushed his hands away. Carter got to his feet and gave me an annoyed look.
‘I’m not going to wait forever, Edie,’ he said. ‘You have to lose it sometime, you might as well lose it with me.’
‘It just doesn’t feel right,’ I tried to explain. ‘I’m not ready, it’s too soon.’
‘Is it me?’ Carter wanted to know. ‘Are you scared?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose so. Sometimes I think you’re only interested in me ’cause, you know, you want to…’
‘God, you can’t even say it,’ said Carter sounding really exasperated. ‘People have sex, it’s no big deal.’
‘Well, it is to me,’ I muttered. ‘I want it to be special. I want to lose my virginity with someone who lo— who really cares for me. I don’t want my first time to be on the living room carpet.’
Carter shook his head. ‘I’ve gotta go,’ he said. ‘I’ll call you.’
I scrambled to my feet. ‘Don’t be mad at me,’ I begged, trying to give him a hug. He gently but firmly held me off.
‘I’ll call you,’ he repeated and was out of the front door before I could say another word.
22nd July
I didn’t sleep at all last night. In fact, I spent most of the night tossing and turning and whacking at my pillows as I tried to get comfy. All I could think about was what Carter had said. Maybe he was right, maybe I was making a big fuss out of nothing. In fact, when I thought about it I realised that I was the only girl I knew who was still a virgin. Apart from Poppy’s sister Grace and she’s only fifteen or something.
It isn’t like I’m worried that it’s going to hurt (well not completely) but the longer I hold on to my virginity (I hate that word), the more difficult it is to think about actually bumping uglies with someone. And although Carter gets me all hot and bothered and occasionally I feel like I’m really into him, is he the person I want to have sex with? I mean everyone says you never forget your first time and fifty years from now do I really want to have memories of Carter going where no boy-shape had gone before? But what really bugs me is wondering whether I should have had sex with Dylan back when we were together or semi-together. Despite all the crap he’s put me through, it would have been, I don’t know, fitting for him to have been my first. I mean he was my first everything else. My first boyfriend. My first boy that I loved. The first person to break my heart into tiny little pieces and grind them into the ground with his heel. Or, then again, maybe not.
23rd July
I didn’t sleep again last night! I think I’m going down with insomnia or something. I just get into bed and my head is whirling with A-level Fear and Boy-related Worries. All this nocturnal soul-searching leaves me sleep deprived and majorly crabby. This morning I finally managed to drag myself out of bed and into a cold shower which a) did nothing to make me feel more awake and b) left me feeling even more bad-tempered. I was actually kind of sorr
y that The Mothership wasn’t around so I could unleash some of my aggression by snarling at her before I went to work.
I pulled on some boy-cut trousers and a faded, old T-shirt ’cause it made some crazy sense to look as horrible as I felt, shoved my still aching feet into trainers and scraped my hair back into a ponytail before stomping out of the front door.
Even though I’d managed to tut loudly at old women getting in my way and pulled faces at any unsuspecting small child who’d dared to even cross my line of vision I still felt hissy when I got to work. And there was Dylan looking all foxy even with a chef’s jacket on and his faded jeans that hung low on his hips. He gave me a lazy wave and smile from the serving hatch (oh, the cheek of him!) which I ignored as I grabbed my order pad and a pencil and marched over to a couple of businessmen who were waiting to be served.
It wasn’t my fault. When you’re feeling icky and some stupid suit tells you to ‘cheer up love, it might never happen’ they’re lucky that you don’t chuck their breakfast special into their lap. Anna hurried over just as the fully-laden plate I was holding was beginning to tip lapwards and ordered me into the kitchen for the rest of the day.
I banged open the kitchen door and glared at Dylan and Italian Tony, the other chef.
Dylan nearly jumped out of his skin but Tony just laughed.
‘I make you some black coffee, Edie,’ he said with a twinkle. ‘And you don’t speak if you don’t have anything nice to say, huh?’
I gave Tony a look, which just made him laugh as I opened a loaf of sliced white and attacked the first piece of bread with my butter knife. We worked in silence for an hour until Tony announced that he was off to the cash and carry and sauntered out.
‘I leave you in charge, Edie,’ he announced. ‘But no picking on the new boy.’
The minute Tony was out of the door, I turned and glared at Dylan.
‘You couldn’t get a summer job somewhere else, could you?’ I hissed at him. ‘You have to find work where you can bug me for the next eight weeks.’
Dylan looked hurt but I was immune to his puppy-dog eyes these days. ‘I’ve known Anna for ages. I have worked next door to her for three years,’ he pointed out mildly.
‘Why can’t you work in Rhythm over the summer?’ I demanded.
‘Can you stop pointing that knife at me?’ said Dylan nervously. ‘They don’t need any more full-time staff and I’m behind with my rent so Anna said I could help out here. Mind you, if I’d known you were going to be such charming company maybe I’d have started working here ages ago.’
‘Oh, ha ha,’ I said sarcastically. ‘Anyway I didn’t even know you could cook.’
Dylan looked incredibly uncomfortable and shifted his gaze to the griddle where two misshapen sausages were doing a good impersonation of charcoal.
Although I hadn’t thought it possible I started to grin. ‘Oh my God!’ I yelped.
‘Leave it!’ said Dylan warningly.
I ignored him. ‘You can’t cook,’ I crowed. ‘You can’t even make a decent cup of coffee! How did you think you were going to manage as a short order cook?’
‘Are you going to carry on like this all day or are you going to help me?’ asked Dylan with a bite to his voice as the sausages started to smoke.
‘I guess you’re on buttering and slicing duties,’ I told Dylan as I gently pushed him out of the way and started to scrape the meaty mess off the griddle plate.
I guess Dylan was worried that I was going to ’fess his lack of culinary expertise to Anna, which I so wasn’t but he tried to be really nice to me. In between making up the sandwiches for lunch he kept offering me endless cups of tea and muffins while all I could do was bitch about how I was going to stink of bacon fat and try to keep my eyes open. Sometimes it frightens me how much I enjoy behaving like a complete cow.
In the end Dylan abandoned his attempts to jolly me up. I think the final straw was when he asked me if I was going to any festivals this summer. ‘We’re not friends, Dylan,’ I reminded him. ‘Things are completely crap between us, which is entirely your fault, so stop pretending that you give a shit.’
I can be quite the badass when I haven’t had my normal eight hours’ worth of shut-eye.
24th July
Jesus, I’ve turned into one of those boring people who bangs on and on about their job, like, the whole time.
I managed not to speak to Dylan all morning because I was serving out front but the atmosphere between us was still slightly more frosty than the North Pole. I’m also still not sleeping (maybe it has something to do with being on my own in the house?) and it makes me so touchy. No wonder his continued presence makes everything that much worse. I have to admit I’ve also been worrying about Poppy spending quality time with Dylan. They know each other to say hello to but she’s my friend.
I’ve worked really hard to make new friends that have nothing to do with my old friends and the thought of Dylan and Poppy even being in the same room for any amount of time makes me feel queasy. Not least because she knows that it’s hard for me to turn off my feelings for him, the kind of feelings that I’ve tried to bury really deep so no-one would know they were there.
But what the hell do I know? She came in to cover the lunchtime rush today and after ten minutes, the pair of them were acting like they’d been friends forever – it was enough to make me puke.
After lunch I went on my break and managed to grab an hour’s snooze on some sacks of flour in the storeroom and when I surfaced I felt relatively human again.
I bounded back into the kitchen and peered into the fridge.
‘I’m starving!’ I announced to Dylan who was spooning mayonnaise into little bowls. ‘Have we got any chicken left?’
‘Oh hi Edie, your evil twin was looking for you earlier,’ he said drily.
I pulled a face. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said in a small voice because I had been acting like a bitch on wheels. ‘I didn’t sleep very well last night.’
Dylan gave me an all-penetrating look. ‘You don’t look like you’ve slept well in ages. You’ve got huge dark shadows under your eyes.’
‘Cheers for that, tact boy.’
‘It makes you look all mysterious,’ backtracked Dylan fast. ‘Like you’ve been staying up all night to write intense poetry.’
It was impossible to be mad at Dylan any longer. I just couldn’t do it. ‘Nothing that exotic,’ I told him with a smile. ‘I’ve just got a lot on my mind.’ Like you and your girlfriend’s brother, I added to myself.
But Dylan was nodding and making some sympathetic comment about my A-level results and how he knew I’d ace them.
I started making up the mixture for tomorrow’s muffins and sang along with the radio while Dylan did the washing up. I looked up from my stirring to find him watching me with a sad little smile.
‘What?’ I asked defensively.
He shook his head. ‘It’s weird seeing you in work mode, that’s all. I forget how capable you are.’
‘You and Carter both have a vested interest in treating me like a little girl half the time,’ I muttered darkly.
‘Is he being his usual overbearing self?’ asked Dylan with a cold edge to his voice.
I gulped. ‘I don’t want to talk about him.’ There was a moment’s silence before I continued. ‘Anyway, yup, I’m a very capable girl, as my mum is always telling me, and I shall be taking over the world in approximately two years, three months and seventeen days.’
Dylan chuckled at that and made some sarky remark about me staging my first military coup before the end of summer.
We had such a good time this afternoon. We didn’t mention Veronique or Carter, just pratted about and sang along to Dylan’s iPod. And as I walked home I wished that it could be just me and Dylan again. Like how it was before but better ’cause I’d done loads of growing up since then and I really didn’t know how I was going to get through the summer having to see him every day. Plus the weather’s starting to get really hot and I’m pr
obably going to die from chip fat inhalation.
27th July
Thank God for band rehearsals that save me from sinking into a big gloom about the thought of spending the summer in Manchester. I had a nap when I got in from work and a long L’Occitane Green Tea bubble bath-scented soak so I was feeling no pain. When I got to the rehearsal room that we’ve started to use, Atsuko and Darby were already there. And so was Grace, Poppy’s really shy little sister.
‘Hey,’ I said as I knelt on the floor to open my guitar case. ‘So, how many guys did you two pull the other night?’ I added, as Atsuko plonked herself down on the amp next to me.
Diary of a Crush: Kiss and Make Up Page 10
