When Dylan had finally finished the whole sorry tale, he lay back in the grass. The scent of magnolias was all around us, the crickets chirping along with the faint hum of traffic from the nearby interstate.
I sat with my knees pressed against my chest. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I said calmly. Although inside I was the complete opposite of calm.
‘Because you’d have tried to talk me out of it,’ Dylan answered immediately.
That hurt. ‘You don’t know that,’ I argued. ‘If you’d explained to me that this is what you needed to do to be happy I would have understood.’
‘Look, I couldn’t deal with you and deal with all of this,’ Dylan admitted. ‘My dad was all I could think about. You don’t know what it’s like to have someone walk out on you.’
‘I had a pretty good idea from about nine this morning,’ I said sarcastically and Dylan wilted a bit.
‘You don’t get it,’ he insisted. ‘I had to find him. I had to have answers.’
‘I understand,’ I said fiercely.
‘No, you don’t!’ Dylan sat up and squatted in front of me. ‘Don’t you see? I’m terrified that I’m going to turn out just like him. Never being able to settle in one place with one person. I had to find him to discover why he’s done the things that he did.’
‘That’s just rubbish!’ I said crossly. ‘You’re not your dad. OK, you might have some of his DNA, that doesn’t mean you’re a carbon copy of him. I mean, am I like my mother? And you’d better answer that really carefully.’
Dylan smirked. ‘You aren’t really like your mum but you do have certain scary facial expressions that you’ve inherited from her.’
I stuck my tongue out at him. ‘And what about the twin rooms and the disappearing acts?’
Dylan rested his head in his hands. ‘I handled things badly. I’m sorry for that. I just get so knee deep inside myself sometimes and not even you can pull me out. In fact, I don’t want to be pulled out which I s’pose is why I pretended you weren’t there.’
‘All you tell me is that I have to trust you,’ I said in a tiny voice. ‘But when it comes to trusting me you just can’t do it, can you? I could have been there for you. You didn’t have to go through this alone.’
‘I know that now and I’m sorry,’ said Dylan, stroking my leg. He leant over and brushed his mouth against mine and I felt nothing.
‘I don’t know who you are any more,’ I confessed. I placed one of my hands on his chest and felt his heart beating steadily. ‘There’s not enough room in there for me.’
I got to my feet and wrapped my arms around my body. Dylan wasn’t Dylan any more, not my Dylan. He was part of them, those people back in the trailer. He belonged to Lenny and the mini-mes, and his mum, who I’d never met. And they probably had some handle on what made him tick ’cause I sure as hell didn’t.
‘Things are not all right with us,’ I stated shakily. ‘This stuff has happened and it can’t unhappen. You don’t love me…’
‘I do!’
‘You don’t love me,’ I continued as if Dylan hadn’t spoken. ‘Not in a good way. You weren’t protecting me by not letting me in; you were shutting me out of your life. And I can’t be… I don’t want to be with someone who won’t trust me.’
‘So are you splitting up with me?’ Dylan demanded in a choked voice. ‘Are you going home?’
‘I’m not going home. I’m going to stay with you because you need a friend,’ I said. ‘But that’s all I’m going to be. No sex, no hands in places that they shouldn’t be, no more giving you my heart so you can stamp all over it.’
And then I walked away, just left him kneeling in the long grass. Because if I’d stayed a moment longer he’d have seen the tears pouring down my face.
15th August
I spent most of this afternoon sitting on a creek bank, dangling my feet in the almost non-existent water and keeping an eye on Johnny and Hank, Dylan’s four-year-old half brothers; sons of Lenny, Dylan’s dad, and Estella, a twenty-five-year-old beautician from Tallahassee. Johnny and Hank, named after country singers Johnny Cash and Hank Williams. Note to self: Dylan is named after Bob Dylan. I can see a pattern emerging.
I stood up and walked over to Johnny and Hank. I can’t tell them apart, while they can barely understand a word I say.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘Looking for alligators,’ said one of them. ‘Then we’re gonna poke ’em with sticks.’
There’s not a lot you can say to that.
Oh God, I feel like I’m in a live recording of The Jerry Springer Show.
But I also feel quite content. After all that time on the road, it’s good to stand still. Estella is sweet and ten times more in love with Lenny than he is with her. All she wants is for everyone to be happy. And if she can’t make them happy, she’ll settle for making them look nice. This is probably why she keeps offering to perm my hair because it’s obvious to even Johnny and Hank that Dylan and I are not a happy couple. Or even an unhappy couple. We’re two separate people again.
It doesn’t help that Dylan and I have to sleep in a bed that measures two and a half feet across and is a blatant violation of my ‘no inappropriate touching’ rule. The first night, I scooted right over to the wall so there was a paper-thin gap between us. Things aren’t any better during the day. Dylan spends most of the time with Lenny, who’s about as talkative as his son. And I hang out with Estella who paints my nails and tells me that when she’s a qualified beautician they’re going to move to Hollywood.
‘Edie? Why you got that funny look on your face?’
I snapped out of my daydream to find Johnny and Hank looking at me with identical ‘that English girl is weird’ expressions.
‘I was just thinking about stuff,’ I said. I never know how to talk to little kids, especially not these two. When I’d asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up, Johnny said that he wanted to change his name to Fred and Hank had wanted to be a rabbit. Little freaks.
I was just showing them how to whistle using blades of grass when there was the sound of a twig breaking behind us. I turned round to see Lenny coming towards us. Johnny and Hank didn’t seem to mind that their dad hardly ever spoke and started climbing all over him.
‘Dinner’s ready,’ he said to me.
As we walked back to the trailer in silence, he told the boys to run ahead and touched my arm.
‘What’s going on with you and D?’ he asked in a quiet voice.
That’s my name for him, I thought, but I shrugged my shoulders. ‘What’s Dylan told you?’
‘That you’re mad at him for coming to find me,’ said Lenny, looking me right in the eye. ‘I don’t like to see him hurt.’
I slowly exhaled and counted to ten. Lenny was a proper grown-up and it’s hard to get angry with a proper grown-up, especially when it’s someone’s dad but he was pushing all my buttons, all at once.
‘I’m not the one who hurt him,’ I snapped. ‘Dylan and I are none of your business. In fact Dylan is none of your business so don’t start acting like you suddenly care.’
Lenny arched his eyebrow and looked so much like Dylan that it was like someone twisting a knife in my gut. ‘I haven’t been around but that doesn’t mean I stopped loving him,’ he said.
‘Well, I haven’t stopped loving him either,’ I said. ‘But I do not want to be in a relationship with someone who… I don’t want to talk about this with you.’
I crossed my arms and glared at Lenny, who smiled slightly. That just made me even more mad.
‘I know you think I’m some stupid kid but I’m telling you if you hurt him again, you’ll have to deal with me,’ I warned him.
It was a stupid, over-dramatic thing to say but instead of laughing at me, Lenny nodded his head and said seriously, ‘He’s lucky to have someone like you as a friend.’
At ten, all the cicadas stop their creaking noise at once; almost as if someone’s flicked a switch.
Estella l
it citronella candles to keep away the mosquitoes and made us these minty, rum-soaked drinks called mojitos. It was very tense. Dylan and Lenny sat there with matching brooding expressions while Estella and I made polite conversation about the differences between America and Britain until I couldn’t bear it any more and went to bed. There’s only so much you can say about the differences between EastEnders and The Young and the Restless.
I couldn’t sleep. I looked at the clock; it was 2am.
The sound of voices drifted in from outside. I tried not to listen. But the more I concentrated on not listening, the clearer the voices got.
‘Your mother and me… we never got along… I was a lousy father… I was angry and resentful all the time.’
‘I remember.’ Dylan sounded cool.
‘I thought about you all the time but you were better off without me. I left you a ton of money didn’t I?’
‘You mean you were better off without me. You never sent birthday cards or Christmas cards.’
‘I thought I was doing the right thing.’
There was silence. I kicked off the tangled sheet and idly raised one of my legs, watched a trickle of sweat run down my calf.
‘So you and the little girl?’
‘Her name’s Edie.’
‘She’s very young.’
‘Why does everyone keep saying that? She’s nineteen, I’m only twenty-one in case you’ve forgotten.’
‘By the time I was your age I was a father.’
‘Well, I’m not going to be making your mistakes.’
‘But Edie, she’s not like your mother… she’s very strong.’
‘You have no right to say that. You walked out on Mum after making her life a misery. You think I don’t know about your girlfriends? You think I don’t remember the way you’d stink of booze when you were driving me to school? You made her like she is.’
‘You’re right. But if I’d stayed then…’
‘Well, we’ll never know, will we?’
‘I’m just saying that the little girl in there she’s feisty as hell. You need a strong woman like that.’
‘… Edie’s not that strong. She’s all over the place most of the time. She’s changing every day. When I’m with her I feel like…’
I held my breath. It was like when you dream that you’re falling and your heart misses a beat. I felt like I was pitching downwards with nothing to grab on to to steady my fall.
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t want to talk about her with you. You don’t know her. It’s like, like she’s changing so fast, trying to run in all these different directions and all I can do is follow her and hope that when she’s ready to stop, I’ll have caught up.’
‘You don’t have to catch up with her. You can do anything you want Dylan, you could come over here; go to a really good art school.’
‘You’re not listening to me. I don’t want to be like you, constantly searching for some big dream that doesn’t exist and making everyone around me unhappy. So what if I’m stuck in Manchester, so what if Edie’s moving on…’
‘You kids think first love is forever. It’s not, Dylan. If she’s moved on, then maybe you should too.’
‘Screw you,’ Dylan snarled. There was the sound of a chair being scraped back. ‘You don’t understand. People aren’t just things that happen to you and then disappear, Edie and I were proper. She made me a better person and now I’ve lost her. And I don’t want to move on. I want to stay where I am, with her.’
I sat up in bed and pushed the sweaty strands of my hair away from my face. Everything was so messed. I didn’t want to split up with Dylan but once someone’s done the things that he had, you can’t undo those things. And just because I was the one who’d called it quits, didn’t mean that I’d got away free from all the pain and misery that happens when you tell the love of your life that you don’t want him to be the love of your life any more. The raw hurt in Dylan’s voice echoed around the empty place in my chest where my heart used to be.
I lay back down and kicked the sheet off, hoping that some stray breeze would blow in through the window and cool me down. Instead, Dylan crept through the door. I’m such a coward that I pretended to be asleep. But Dylan crawled into bed and reached out to touch me. Still feigning sleep, I inched away because if he touched me I’d get all undone.
Then Dylan started crying. Quiet choked sobs and when I turned over and asked if he was all right, he practically threw himself into my arms. I rested his head on my chest and I stroked his hair and murmured soothing words that didn’t really make any sense.
We didn’t talk about it the next day.
Mississippi – Tennessee
16th August
Am I glad to be on the road again. Dylan’s calmer after his crying thing. I s’pose he was so twisted up inside that he had to let it out. We’re talking again. Which is good but being Edie the best friend, instead of Edie the girlfriend is not so good.
I mean, it was my decision, yeah? So I have to be all bright-faced and optimistic to show that it was the right decision. But I don’t feel bright-faced and optimistic. Not at all.
But I’m also glad to get out of the trailer park, or the trailer to be more specific. Watching Estella and Lenny was not my favourite spectator sport. I couldn’t stand the way she’d constantly ask his opinion about everything and how she’d start most sentences with, ‘Lenny thinks’ or ‘Lenny says’. It wasn’t her sappiness that got on my nerves; it was the way she was so hopelessly in love with someone who didn’t love her back. I don’t think Lenny loves anyone. Not even himself. He’s what my nan would call a troubled soul.
Which probably explains why yesterday morning when we were leaving he was nowhere to be found. I hugged Estella and promised to keep in touch and even managed to ruffle the mini-Dylans’ hair without flinching (nits were a big possibility). Then it was Dylan’s turn to be pressed against Estella’s amazing double E-cup mammaries and play-wrestle with Johnny and Hank. After that came the awkward hanging around while we waited for Lenny, and Estella tried to make excuses for him.
‘D, we should get going,’ I said eventually. ‘He probably doesn’t like goodbyes.’
‘No change there then,’ Dylan muttered darkly, as he got into the car.
I took the peanut butter and jelly (that would be jam) sandwiches that Estella had made for us and gave her one last hug.
‘You take care honey,’ she sniffed, giving me a little push towards the car. ‘And you don’t be a stranger, Dylan. I know your daddy’s real proud of you but he don’t like to get all emotional and…’
‘Just drive,’ I hissed at Dylan as I shut the car door. ‘Or we’ll be here forever.’
Estella was still apologising for Lenny as we drove off. I waved and waved until we cleared the trailer park entrance and I couldn’t see her any more.
I glanced at Dylan. ‘You OK, D?’ I asked lightly.
‘Yeah, I shouldn’t have expected anything else from him,’ he replied.
‘Like Estella said, I just don’t think he’s good at showing his feelings,’ I said carefully. ‘Look, we’ve got miles to go so I’m going to take over the music selection and you just put your foot on the accelerator and worry about the driving.’
Dylan smiled a little. ‘Thanks, Edie.’
‘For what, bossing you about?’ I laughed.
‘You know what for,’ murmured Dylan.
I was just turning the volume up on Write about Love and telling Dylan that he’d listen to Belle and Sebastian and damn well like it, when we saw Lenny standing at the side of the road.
I wanted to tell Dylan to carry on driving but he was already pulling over. Lenny opened one of the back doors and threw a bag inside. My internal Civil Defence System started clanging but Dylan was already jumping out of the car.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked Lenny who was in the process of joining his bag on the back seat.
‘What does it look like?’ said Lenny. ‘I want o
ut of this town. I need to be on the move again.’
I decided to stay where I was but I turned off Belle and Sebastian and studied one of the guidebooks very intently. Dylan had to handle this one on his own.
He started by grabbing the bag and handing it back to Lenny.
‘You can’t come with us,’ he told him sternly. ‘You’ve got a family to take care of.’
Diary of a Crush: Sealed With a Kiss Page 15