French Kiss

by Sarra Manning

  ‘So you haven’t got any regrets about last night?’ I asked him eventually. I’d half suspected that Dylan might get all moody on me today but he was certainly acting like I was his girlfriend. He shook his head.

  ‘Last night was great,’ he said. ‘What about you, you still OK with it all?’

  I was just about to answer when I got the strangest feeling that we were being watched. I looked over Dylan’s shoulder and standing at the open door of the room were Shona, Paul and Mia, their eyes literally out on stalks. Dylan had realised I’d stopped paying attention to him, but he had his back to the others.

  ‘You still here, Eeds?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘We’ve got an audience,’ I mouthed at him.

  ‘Huh?’ Then light dawned. He let go of me and turned round to face them. ‘Oh, hi,’ he said casually. ‘All right?’

  Nobody said anything for ages and then Paul grunted, ‘Uh, yeah, I’ve got to get my stuff from your, I mean, our um, room.’

  Dylan winked at me. ‘I’ll save you a seat on the coach or, like, vice versa.’

  As I started chucking clothes into my suitcase, Mia and Shona simply stared at me. I was trying to be ultra casual but they were making me feel really uncomfortable.

  ‘I s’pose I’ve got time to take a shower,’ I burbled, trying to fill the silence. ‘Might wake me up. My hair feels like it’s crawling off my head.’

  Mia couldn’t bear it any longer. ‘You spent the night with him!’ she burst out. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  I glared at her. ‘I didn’t have sex with him. Not that it’s any of your business.’

  Mia ignored me. ‘I mean I heard Dylan say, “Last night was great”,’ she continued. ‘I think it’s really sad that you slept with Dylan when you know he doesn’t want to go out with you.’

  ‘I didn’t have sex with him,’ I repeated. ‘I couldn’t get in here last night, because you were either refusing to let me in or were passed out drunk at the party, so I crashed out on one of the spare beds in Dylan’s room. And, for your information, I am going out with Dylan so you can piss off!’

  My speech took the wind out of Mia’s sails for precisely five seconds. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she snapped. ‘You’re such a slag.’ She grabbed her bags and flounced towards the door. ‘I bet Dylan only said he’d go out with you to get you into bed,’ was her parting shot before she slammed the door.

  Shona folded her arms. ‘So, before you disappear into the bathroom for five hours, are you going to tell me what really happened?’

  I told Shona about what had happened in the café and how I couldn’t get into our room when we got back.

  ‘But I didn’t crash out on a spare bed,’ I admitted. ‘I slept in Dylan’s bed and he slept on the bed, if you know what I mean, like, on the covers.’

  ‘Jesus!’ shrieked Shona. ‘She shoots, she scores.’

  ‘Well, not exactly,’ I said. ‘But I do feel like I’ve climbed Mount Everest or something.’

  ‘Well, I had my suspicions, I have to say,’ Shona confessed. ‘Especially when Dylan spent weeks working on your birthday present. Then you stopped speaking to each other and I thought, nah, never gonna happen, but when he turned up at the party last night, I just knew.’

  ‘Hang on,’ I cried. ‘Two days ago, you were telling me that I wasn’t his type.’

  ‘Well, that’s when I was still stuck on the “never gonna happen” default,’ Shona told me exasperatedly. ‘You don’t know what it’s been like for me. I’ve had the two of you coming up to me and whining about the other one. You’ve been whinging about how Dylan just wanted to be friends and he’s been sulking because you were going out with Josh… You don’t know how close I came to murdering the pair of you!’

  ‘Well, I suppose he has got a funny way of showing that he’s into me,’ I said with a frown. ‘He’s spent the whole trip acting like he just wanted to be friends. I had to give him an ultimatum in the end.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ reckoned Shona. ‘You know how dumb boys can be. I guess it was hard for Dylan to see what was right in front of him.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I muttered. ‘I’m happy, don’t get me wrong, but I feel like it could all go horribly downhill. I’m sure that Dylan’s going to get all toxic again.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think he’d do that,’ Shona declared. ‘Yeah, he’s a creature of unrivalled moodiness, rivalled in fact only by your own unrivalled moodiness, but he seemed pretty loved-up this morning.’

  ‘So, where did you get to last night when I was frantically knocking on the door?’ I asked her.

  ‘Oh, we went to Andy’s room for a party. Mia got completely drunk and me and Paul had to put her to bed,’ Shona explained with a look of disgust on her face. ‘And then you hadn’t come back and I was beginning to think that you’d chucked yourself into the Seine in a fit of despair but Paul managed to take my mind off my morbid thoughts.’ She gave me a lecherous smile and a wink. ‘Anyway, you’ve got five minutes before you need to be in the lobby with your luggage, so I guess you’d better take a raincheck on that shower.’

  ‘As if,’ I wailed, grabbing my towel and practically running into the bathroom.

  Even though I broke all showering world records, I was still fifteen minutes late. The coach driver was just about to shut the boot when I ran down the hotel steps, dragging my bags with me.

  ‘Sorry,’ I huffed at Tania who was looking seriously cheesed off with me. So, what else was new?

  ‘It’s a pity that somebody didn’t buy you a watch for your birthday,’ she said grumpily. ‘Honestly, Edie, I feel like I’ve spent the entire five days having to watch over you.’

  Duh! That’s your job, I thought.

  ‘I don’t know why I bother half the time,’ she went on as she climbed up the coach steps.

  ‘I don’t know why you bother any of the time,’ I muttered under my breath, as I followed her.

  I stomped down the aisle of the coach to a couple of wolf-whistles and as I made my way to where Dylan was sitting, I heard one of the girls whisper to me, ‘Nice one, Edie! Was he any good?’

  By the time I reached the seat that Dylan had saved for me, I was bright red. I looked at Mia who was sitting in the seat behind, like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

  ‘You bitch!’ I hissed at her. ‘Have you told everyone?’

  She smirked at me. ‘Yup!’

  Dylan stood up and moved into the aisle, so he could put my shoulder bag in the overhead locker.

  ‘You can sit by the window if you want,’ he offered. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I snapped, glaring at Mia.

  Shona, who was sitting in the seat in front with Paul, turned round. ‘It’s just Mia living up to her reputation,’ she told Dylan with a pointed look. I pressed my hot face against the cold window as Dylan sat down next to me.

  ‘Don’t worry about Mia,’ Dylan said sounding remarkably unconcerned. But then he would. If people think that a boy’s scored with a girl, he gets treated like a player while everyone thinks that she’s a slapper. It’s so unfair.

  ‘I’m not worried about Mia,’ I said. ‘I’m just annoyed with her. Y’know I wanted this to be perfect and she’s ruining everything before we’ve even got started.’

  Dylan pulled a face. ‘Life isn’t perfect, Edie,’ he told me, squeezing my hand. ‘But you just have to know when to pick the right battles and Mia really isn’t worth it.’

  ‘I heard that,’ hissed Mia from behind us.

  ‘And?’ Dylan sounded utterly unrepentant.

  ‘I don’t remember you saying I wasn’t worth it when you were seeing me,’ she said nastily.

  ‘Do you know something, Mia?’ Dylan asked her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re really starting to bore me.’

  The journey to Calais was really uneventful, apart from Mia kicking the back of my seat continuously for the first hour. Everyone was knackered after last night’s t
wo parties and having to get up at the crack of dawn, so mostly people slept.

  I didn’t know if Dylan was sleeping, but he had his eyes shut. His dark hair, which he usually pushed back from his face every five minutes was flopping onto his forehead. He’d slumped down in his seat so his bony knees, in their dark blue jeans, were almost touching the seat in front and his arms were crossed over his chest. He looked so remote.

  I started to worry. Really worry. About my reputation being in ruins thanks to Mia. About how I didn’t really know Dylan at all. Like, I knew that he makes funny little snuffly noises when he sleeps but I didn’t even know if he had any brothers or sisters. But what I really worried about was whether I’d forced Dylan into going out with me when he hadn’t really wanted to. And, like, if we were dating did that mean that we’d only hang out as a couple, instead of being mates as well? I didn’t want to be Dylan’s girlfriend if it meant that I had to stop being his friend. By the time we reached Calais, I’d practically convinced myself that Dylan and I were going to split up before the end of the day. I was in the grip of a major depression. As the coach rolled into the ferry’s bowels and came to a stop, Dylan opened his eyes.

  ‘I needed that,’ he yawned. ‘I was so tired.’ He stood up and stretched, ignoring complaints that he was blocking the aisle. ‘I’m starving,’ he announced. ‘Are you lot coming?’

  Shona and Paul murmured agreement and followed Dylan off the coach. I leant back against the window and then catching the annoyed look in Tania’s eyes as she stood by the driver’s seat, I slid out of the seat and trudged towards the exit.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about Dylan if I were you, Edie,’ Tania said to me with a smile, as we walked up the steps that led to the saloon. ‘I think you’ve managed to find yourself a good one there.’

  ‘How did you know?’ I gasped.

  ‘Oh, I was young once,’ said Tania dramatically, in that patronising way that old people do. ‘Seriously, Edie, I think Dylan, despite his cool exterior, has got a good heart. He’ll look after you and, Lord knows, you need somebody to!’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ I said mock-sulkily. Then a really hideous thought popped into my head. ‘So, Tania, did you have a Dylan-like boyfriend when you were my age and please don’t say it was Martyn?!’

  ‘Ah, that would be telling,’ she teased and I felt a bit guilty for thinking such mean thoughts about her, though I still reckoned that she could do with a well-fitting support bra. ‘Now, get out of here and try not to fall overboard or anything.’

  It’s funny how people that you don’t really know, or even like particularly, can tap into what you’re thinking. My little chat with Tania had made me feel a bit better. Maybe I was just worrying about nothing. I was going to find Dylan and the others but I passed a snack bar and I got side-tracked. After all they were selling chocolate, proper Cadbury’s chocolate, and it’d been five days since I’d had a bar of Dairy Milk…

  I unwrapped my second bar and popped a chunk in my mouth. I’d had a quick look for the others but I couldn’t find them and the sight of people being sick (it was another rough crossing) was starting to put me off my choccy, so I’d decided to find a seat on the open deck. Last time I’d sat up here I never thought that I’d be going home as Dylan’s girlfriend. Mind you, I didn’t feel like Dylan’s girlfriend, I still felt like me; Edie Wheeler, who talked too much or not at all, had snogged four boys in her entire life and had £517 in her Post Office savings account.

  ‘Hey!’ I looked up to see Dylan standing in front of me.

  ‘Hey yourself,’ I replied.

  ‘You look like you’re deep in thought,’ he commented, sitting down on the bench next to me. ‘What were you thinking about?’

  ‘How much money I’ve got in my Post Office account,’ I said vaguely. ‘Do you want some chocolate?’

  I handed him my started-on bar and watched as he broke off a couple of chunks.

  ‘Dylan?’

  ‘Hmmmm?’

  ‘Do you think we can still be friends even though we’re going out with each other?’ I asked him.

  ‘Why? Don’t you?’ he said cautiously, angling a ‘what is she on?’ look at me.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘I hope so. We’ll still do stuff together like go and see bands won’t we? And go to the cinema and hang out with Shona? It won’t change anything, will it?’

  Dylan lifted one of my hands to his lips and kissed my fingers. ‘Look, things have to change,’ he said. ‘But it doesn’t mean they’ll have to change for the worse. It’s like I said last night, I think we were going out with each other all the time and we never even realised it. We’ve just made it official.’

  ‘But we’re more than just friends who kiss each other?’ I asked him hesitantly. ‘And I don’t just want to be your girlfriend either.’

  ‘But you’re not just my girlfriend,’ protested Dylan. ‘Hey, you’re my Edie! You could never be anything else. That’s why I’m so into you.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He rubbed his knuckles against my cheek and grinned.

  ‘I wanted to kiss you so badly when we were going to France on the ferry. You know, when I stroked your face,’ he confessed. ‘Didn’t you realise?’

  ‘Nah!’ I told him, my heart suddenly feeling so light that it could have been lifted away by the wind. ‘I just thought you were admiring my delicate bone structure.’

  I smiled at Dylan and he smiled back at me. Our eyes met and I leaned forward to brush my lips against his. Dylan tasted of chocolate and coffee. Just along the horizon, the distant white cliffs of Dover came into view and I wondered if things could ever be the same again.

  A Note from the Author

  I started writing Diary of a Crush fourteen years ago.

  At the time I was Entertainment Editor on J17, a teen mag for teenage girls with plenty of attitude and a fondness for indie boys.

  Every month I would write an emotional feature about boys or relationships or snogging (usually a combination of all three), until I could take it no longer and in a features meeting pitched writing a fictional account of a relationship: from crush to kiss to going steady, just because I was so tired of dispensing advice on how to make spoddy boys who probably weren’t worthy of our readers fall madly in love with them.

  My editor, Ally Oliver, greenlighted it; probably because I was clutching my hair and saying, ‘I don’t have it in me to write another snogging feature.’ So off I went back to my desk and began to write the 1800 words that had been allocated to the piece.

  I remember sitting there thinking about my days at college where I studied for my A-levels after being asked to leave the really strict girls’ school where I’d done my GCSEs.

  Going to college was when I really blossomed. I found a sense of independence, new friends and a love for the nineteen-year-old boys studying for their Foundation Art diploma. It was from this experience that Edie, a shy sixteen year old starting college, and Dylan, the tousle-haired art boy who catches her eye and her heart, were formed.

  I’d only written for magazines and had no idea what I was doing. All I knew was that I was having huge amounts of fun (not to mention wish fulfilment) and Diary of a Crush was born.

  But a couple of days later when Ally asked me how I was getting on, the news wasn’t good. ‘I’ve written 4000 words and they haven’t even snogged yet,’ I wailed.

  Ally agreed to run Diary of a Crush over a few issues and so began a serial that lasted for more than three years. The J17 readers completely embraced Edie, no matter how whiny she got, and her motley collection of friends. It was a lovely way to become an author.

  What are gathered in these books are the monthly columns, plus the novellas I would write that were given away free with J17 each summer (originally called French Kiss, Losing It and American Dream).

  The bulk of the material here was written as monthly columns, so I would bang out 1200 words in an afternoon, then go to the subs and ar
t departments and dare them to cut a single word. I took a week off each time I wrote a novella.

  Before this, I’d never written fiction. Never been on a course or even read a book for budding novel writers. Instead, I learned on the job as I wrote Diary of a Crush and so I think Edie grows as a person as I grew as a writer.

  The columns were originally tweaked to be turned into novels and with each subsequent edition I’ve made changes to some of the popular culture references, because mooning over Leonardo DiCaprio and, er, Blazin’ Squad is not really an option these days. They were also originally written in the days before teenagers had mobile phones and long, long, long before Facebook or BlackBerry Messenger were invented.