French Kiss

by Sarra Manning

  Martyn and his hippy girlfriend, Tania (who’d come along to help), started telling us off in a very unhippy-like manner.

  ‘It’s Edie’s fault,’ protested Shona while I glared at her out of the piggy slits that used to be my eyes. ‘She wouldn’t get out of bed.’

  ‘Really, Eddie…’ began Tania, her braless breasts swinging agitatedly.

  ‘It’s Edie!’ Shona and I said in unison.

  I could see Dylan signalling to us from halfway down the coach. There was a double seat in front of him and Simon; an empty seat just waiting for me so I could talk to Dylan in the gap between the headrests. I staggered down the aisle after Shona, while Tania followed us, still going on and on about my time-keeping. I could tell that she was going to be a major pain in the butt.

  I tried to get my shoulder bag in the overhead locker, but I was so stupid with sleep that I couldn’t manage it.

  Dylan rose from his seat. ‘Let me do it for you.’

  He was wearing a new pair of dark jeans (I’m sad enough to have his whole wardrobe committed to memory), a Beatles T-shirt and his scruffy leather jacket. As he reached up to put my bag away, his T-shirt rose up and I half-shut my eyes rather than look at his stomach, but I still got a glimpse. It wasn’t a six-pack, but it was sort of taut. Then I realised that he might have seen my tummy when I was trying to put my bag away. It might have been lack of sleep, it might have been the boiled egg that Mum had forced me to eat before we left (one of the reasons why we were so late), but seeing Dylan’s stomach and wondering if he’d seen mine made me feel slightly sick.

  I grunted something at him that might have been thank you and slumped down next to Shona.

  She was busy telling Simon and Dylan exactly why we were so late.

  ‘Well, then Edie discovered that she’d packed the jeans and jumper that she was meant to be wearing today, then she had a fight with her mum about eating a proper breakfast and then we were just about to leave when she realised that she hadn’t bought any film for her camera so we had to stop at a newsagent’s on the way. We had to go to three of them before we found one that sold black-and-white film.’

  ‘Remind me not to ask you for a character reference if I’m ever up in court,’ I snapped.

  Shona pulled a face at Simon and Dylan. ‘She’s been like this ever since she got up.’

  ‘You’re obviously not a morning person, Edie,’ said Dylan. ‘I’ll have to remember that.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I said to her and she did something very rude with one of her fingers,’ teased Shona.

  Silence was definitely the best form of defence. I peered round the coach. Mia and Paul, looking all snuggly-wuggly, were sitting at the back near Nat and Trent who waved at me. I summoned up enough energy to raise a hand in their direction.

  It was going to be hours before we got to Dover. I snuggled down into the folds of my dark green jumper and shut my eyes. It was funny, the night before, I couldn’t sleep at all because I was thinking about Dylan, but that morning, when he was just inches away from me, I couldn’t stop myself from nodding off.

  We’d been on the coach for five hours and every time I went to sleep, we stopped at yet another motorway service station. And I couldn’t be left sleeping on the coach, oh no. According to Tania, I could be attacked by a homicidal, axe-wielding maniac, so Shona had to wake me up and drag me across the car park. To make matters worse, she got Dylan to do it once. I could feel someone’s hands shaking me gently and I’m ashamed to say he got one of my fists in his face (I’m not a good riser, OK?).

  When a Dylan-like voice said, ‘Ow,’ I quickly opened my eyes to see him crouched in front of me, rubbing his cheek.

  ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled.

  ‘I hope you don’t do that to Josh when he tries to wake you up,’ Dylan drawled.

  I gasped. ‘He’s never been with me when I’m asleep. I mean, I haven’t… We’re not… It’s none of your business!’

  I pushed past him and practically ran down the aisle and off the coach.

  The next time I fell asleep, I knew I had a clear two hours before we stopped at Dover. I was just settling into a really good dream about, well, never mind, when I was startled awake by some icy-cold liquid drenching me for the second time that day.

  ‘What the…?!’

  ‘Ooops, sorry Edie.’ Mia was standing over me with an upended can of Diet Coke. ‘We must have hit a pothole.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ spat Shona, who’d also got doused. ‘There’s loads of potholes on motorways.’

  Mia shrugged. ‘Whatever. I hope it doesn’t stain.’

  ‘I’m soaked,’ I whimpered. I could feel the Coke seeping into the seat underneath me. My jeans were wet through.

  ‘Oh Edie, you look like you’ve been caught short,’ Mia giggled.

  ‘Do me a favour, Mia – go and play in the traffic.’

  ‘Some people are so touchy,’ she smirked before sauntering back to Paul.

  ‘I think I put a pair of leggings in my shoulder bag,’ said Shona helpfully. ‘Like, if you want to change.’

  I shook my head. ‘I can’t take off my jeans in front of everyone.’

  ‘I guess not.’

  This trip was turning into a nightmare. I’d humiliated myself at least three times in front of Dylan. Mia was obviously planning on being a complete bitch on wheels for the next five days and it looked like I’d wet myself.

  ‘D’you want some chocolate?’ said Shona, shoving an Aero at me. ‘It might cheer you up.’

  I turned it down. Not even an Aero could help me right then.

  Fortunately the ferry crossing helped me get my own back on the world. The Channel was choppy and practically everyone on the boat was puking up. The scene in the ladies’ toilet was like this painting I’d once seen called Descent into the Inferno. People were even hurling into the washbasins. Luckily, I have a cast-iron constitution. It takes more than a little rough sea to make me sick. In fact, it was really peaceful sitting on the deck, feeling the salt-water spray sting my face. It was one of those times when you know that you’re really alive. You’re aware of all of your senses. I could hear the sea whooshing against the sides of the boat, I could smell and taste the tang of the air and even though the water was a murky blue, the white-tipped waves running along the top of it looked like little frills of lace. I sat there, feeling at one with the elements until I got a bit bored, so I dug out my phone and sat there like a dweeby boy with my hood up. I’d just got to level eight on Tetris when Dylan sat down beside me.

  ‘I thought you’d be puking somewhere,’ I said, concentrating on slotting shapes into place.

  ‘Nah, I’ve got a stomach like an ox,’ Dylan explained, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees.

  ‘Hmmm, me too. Oh, hell,’ I added as I screwed up the next level of the game. ‘Look, I’m sorry about before, about hitting you, I mean. I’m a bit disorientated when I first wake up.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Dylan lightly. ‘You’re not the first girl to hit me, you won’t be the last.’

  ‘Who hit you?’ I asked.

  ‘Mia hit me once when we were sort of seeing each other,’ he muttered.

  My chest felt like it had just caved in.

  ‘You never said you went out with her, you just said that you’d got off with her,’ I blurted out, before I could stop myself.

  Dylan turned and looked at me. ‘We didn’t go out on dates, we’d just go round to each other’s houses and fool about.’

  For starters, I’ve never been round to Dylan’s house. Secondly, all those times that he’d kissed me, was that just ‘fooling about’? Thirdly, why did I give him every opportunity to say things that I knew I didn’t want to hear and fourthly…

  ‘You’ve gone again,’ Dylan remarked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You do it all the time, Edie. I’ll be talking to you and you just disappear somewhere inside of yourself,’ he whispered, leaning back on the seat so h
is head was close to mine. ‘Anyway what are you doing, sitting here by yourself?’

  I started to tell him about the stuff I’d been thinking before, about how alive I felt with the sea roaring underneath me. Dylan was staring at me intently while I spoke. Then he did the most curious thing. He reached out one of his long-fingered hands and pulled down my hood.

  Immediately, the wind tugged at my hair, blowing it in every direction. Dylan caught a bunch of it and pulled it gently. ‘Your hair’s amazing. It’s the colour of clear honey.’

  Our faces were so close by now, I could see that his eyes weren’t completely green; there were flecks of brown around the pupils. God, he had the longest boy-lashes.

  I felt like I was caught up in the middle of someone else’s dream as I touched his hair, which was ruffling in the wind too.

  ‘Your hair’s the colour of… really dark chocolate,’ I said. ‘It looks black but when you get nearer, it’s a rich, dark brown.’ I smiled and he rubbed a finger across my mouth.

  We stayed like that for at least five minutes, honestly. Sitting so close together that our knees bumped against each other. And Dylan ran his fingers over my face. Across my eyelids and my eyebrows. Down my cheeks. Along my chin. But mostly he touched my mouth, running his fingers over my lips again and again until they were tingling.

  But he didn’t kiss me. And it didn’t matter that he didn’t kiss me because although his kisses sucked the soul right out of me, the feel of his hands on my face felt even better in a strange kind of way. Like, in my whole life I’ll probably kiss lots of people and most of those kisses I’ll probably forget, but I know I’ll always remember those minutes on the ferry to France when I sat with Dylan and he stroked my face as if it was the most precious thing in his world.

  It couldn’t last forever. But it lasted until Simon appeared and promptly threw up over the railings.

  ‘I knew I shouldn’t have had that beer,’ he groaned when he finally came up for air.

  It made me start giggling, I don’t know why. Poor Simon was green-faced. But once I started giggling, I couldn’t stop. It quickly upgraded itself to a full-on belly laugh, which started Dylan off too. Simon looked at us in disgust, like we were a pair of complete retards, while we laughed so hard that tears ran down our faces.

  ‘I’m going to find Shona,’ said Simon huffily.

  When we got back on the coach, Simon and Shona were slumped against each other, fast asleep, so I had no choice but to sit next to Dylan. No choice at all.

  I scooched around so my back was against the window and my legs were pulled up against my body, but when Dylan sat down he patted his thighs and I propped my legs over them. He rested one of his hands on my knee, but not in a lecherous, copping-a-feel kinda way.

  ‘Are you sleepy?’ he asked.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ I snorted. ‘I spent most of the morning asleep. Are you?’

  ‘Nah, I never sleep much.’ He gave me a look from under his lashes that didn’t seem entirely innocent. ‘Well, how are we going to pass the time?’

  I looked round the coach. The lights were dimmed and most people were asleep; it was only mid-afternoon but I guess all that puking had taken it out of them. Sitting there with my legs draped across Dylan suddenly felt very intimate.

  ‘We could play the alphabet game,’ I said, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘We list things we’d take to a, erm, I don’t know, a festival, but we have to do it alphabetically and you have to list all the things that we’ve said before, otherwise you lose.’

  Dylan smirked. ‘So what happens when you lose? Do you have to pay a forfeit?’

  I gave him a look. It was a pretty good look – most people wouldn’t have wanted to be on the other end of it. ‘Nothing like that, young man.’

  Dylan raised one of his eyebrows. ‘I don’t know what you think I was thinking. OK, if I lose, I’ll buy you a week’s supply of chocolate.’

  ‘And if I lose?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure I’ll think of something.’

  ‘… So, I went to the festival and I took articles of clothing belonging to Louis Walsh, Brillo pads, chocolate cake, damp-proofing, an egg casserole and a full-scale, working model of a sewage station,’ Dylan chanted.

  ‘I went to the festival and I took articles of clothing belonging to Louis Walsh, brine shrimp, a chemistry textbook, damp-proofing, an egg casserole, a full-scale, working model of a sewage station and a erm, Greek salad.’

  ‘Time out,’ called Dylan suddenly. ‘How come all the stuff you’re taking to this hypothetical festival is food?’

  Ha! I was so going to win! Talk about a transparent stalling manoeuvre. ‘Firstly, there’s nothing in the rules about what kind of stuff I can take to the festival and secondly, if you don’t have your go in the next ten seconds, you’re out.’

  ‘All right, but I think we should play a different game now,’ Dylan announced with a glint in his eye.

  I stiffened suspiciously. ‘What kind of game?’

  ‘Who would you rather?’

  ‘No way!’ I spluttered.

  ‘Oh, come on, I’ll start. Who would you rather, the ugliest one out of One Direction or Brooklyn Beckham?’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘God, Dylan, how young do you think I am? Aren’t they both, like, twelve?’

  ‘You’ve got to choose,’ Dylan insisted, curling his tongue up between his front teeth in a way which made my insides ache.

  ‘OK, One Direction boy, I guess. At least he’s probably past the age of consent,’ I finally decided. ‘Who would you rather, Cheryl Cole or the posh one out of the Saturdays?’

  ‘Cheryl, definitely,’ said Dylan instantly. ‘She’s going through stuff and I’d like to help her out with that.’

  ‘Whatever, Mr Perv. Why are you smiling like that?’

  Dylan was grinning in a cat that got the cream kind of way. ‘Oh, I’ve just thought of a really good one for you. Who would you rather, Josh or… me?’

  I could feel myself going bright red. ‘That’s not fair!’ It was a whole world of not fair, to be more accurate.

  ‘Just answer the question, missy,’ Dylan drawled.

  ‘If I answer that, then you have to tell me who you’d rather, me or Mia?’

  It was Dylan’s turn to look uncomfortable. ‘OK, you’ve made your point, I guess. Let’s pretend I never asked you that question.’

  ‘So you’d rather kiss Mia?’ I couldn’t believe that we’d got into this don’t-go-there topic of conversation. And I couldn’t believe that my voice was saying things even when I was telling it to shut up.

  ‘I never said that!’ protested Dylan.

  I tried to shift my legs off him, but he suddenly grabbed hold of one of my calves.

  ‘Let go of my leg,’ I hissed.

  ‘No! Just calm down,’ he whispered fiercely.

  ‘I am sodding calm,’ I practically screamed at him. ‘Just tell me who was a better kisser, me or Mia?’

  ‘Well, I’m not snogging Mia, am I?’ Dylan said cryptically.

  ‘You’re not snogging me either,’ I reminded him with a slight wobble to my voice.

  ‘I could if I wanted to,’ Dylan bit out. ‘But there is the little problem of your devoted boyfriend… OK, if you’re so keen on the truth, Edie, who kisses you better, Josh or me? Do you cling to him every time he kisses you? Do you go all soft and shaky when he touches you? ’Cause you do with me.’

  It was as if Dylan had been reading this diary. I felt like he’d cut me open and was looking directly at my heart. I stared out of the window at the French countryside rolling by. Why did I let Dylan break me into tiny pieces just so that he’d have something to do? I could feel one of his fingers tracing little circles on my thigh. I slapped his hand away.

  ‘You know he doesn’t,’ I managed to choke out. ‘He’s nice and he’s really into me, but he’s not you.’

  I couldn’t look at Dylan but I could feel his eyes
boring into me. ‘So why are you going out with him?’

  ‘It seemed like a good idea,’ I said in a tiny little croak. ‘I thought if I went out with him, I’d stop wanting to go out with you. But it hasn’t worked. And now he keeps telling me that he’s madly in love with me and I feel like a complete bitch. It’s all your fault.’

  I found the courage to glance up and collided with a look from Dylan that made my stomach flip over.

  ‘So…?’ he prompted.

  ‘So, I guess I should stop lying to Josh and dump him. And tell you that I, um, that if you just want a no-strings relationship with me, I reckon I could handle it.’