alarm clock. But even the plastic hula girl, hula-ing to
La Cucaracha
, failed to raise a smile.
‘Unnnh,’ he groaned, rolling over and burying his head in the pillow.
‘Dylan!’ I whined, nudging him.
‘It’s a cute present Edie, but every morning when I wake up, you’ll be in London and it’ll just remind me of you,’ he sniffed before reaching under the bed, retrieving a small carrier bag and shoving it at me. He managed to do all this with his eyes still shut. And I’m the one who’s not a morning person.
D had got one of his arty mates to make me a cute silver ring embossed with little pink enamel hearts. Plus there was a home-made card because Dylan always makes me cards to celebrate significant events and I’d throw the mother of all hissy fits if he decided to stop. This one had a cartoon of me on the front, wearing my tiara and he’d stuck bits of diamante on it. Inside he’d written, ‘I love Edie like a fat kid loves cake.’
Aw, aw, and a thousand times aw.
I went to give him a big thank you kiss but he’d already gone back to sleep.
14th February (post-brekkie)
To tell you the truth, this Valentine’s Day was always going to suck. It’s the first Valentine’s Day in three years when Dylan and I are actually
together
instead of either mooning over each other from afar/wishing that the other one didn’t even exist/being non-committed kiss sluts (delete where applicable) which adds up to a lot of pressure
and
we’re playing a gig tonight. Or more specifically, we’re playing an anti-Valentine’s ball.
When I dared to suggest that we turn the gig down so I could spend some relationship recuperation time with Dylan, the others spent the rest of the day mocking me harshly for being lame.
14th February (post-gig)
The first nine-tenths of our set was awful. Because it was an anti-Valentine’s theme we had to play all our boys-are-evil-jerks songs, of which we have a fair few. As I tried to remember the chords for
He’s A Loser
(
And He’ll Never Be Any Good
) all I could see was Dylan sitting by the side of the stage looking like he was about to cry.
I couldn’t bear it any longer.
When we finished the song, I stepped up to the mike. ‘I know this is meant to be anti-Valentine’s,’ I said nervously, hoping that my knees knocking together wouldn’t drown out the sound of my voice. ‘And I’m down with that sentiment but I want to dedicate the next song to the sulky boy at the side of the stage. This one’s for you, Dylan.’ And it was completely unrehearsed but I started playing the thrash version of
This Girl’s In Love With You
that me and Poppy had been mucking about with all week. Finally I got a smile out of him.
After the gig, we all piled into a club. Dylan had cheered up. Like, to the power of one thousand. He pretended that he was embarrassed about having a song dedicated to him but judging by the way he kept pulling me into dark corners so he could give me these kisses which devastated my central nervous system, he was faking. I vaguely remember pulling Poppy and Grace onto the dancefloor so we could jump around to Azealia Banks when a huge bunch of flowers with legs walked up to Grace.
It was Jack hidden behind the biggest bouquet of mixed blooms I’d ever seen. If Dylan had done that, I’d have burst into soppy tears of happiness but Grace gave a horrified squeal and pushed the flowers back at Jack who promptly fled.
Then Poppy bawled out Grace loudly and publicly for being ‘a selfish, emotionally crippled, thoughtless cow’ and Grace fled. I should have been more concerned but Dylan was being sultry, which mostly involved nibbling my neck and telling me in no uncertain terms what he was planning to do to me when we got home, and Atsuko and Darby kept aiming their water pistols at us so I forgot all about Grace and Jack.
But (and it’s a big but) when we got out of the club at some godforsaken hour, sitting on the wall opposite, sharing a bag of
Vivian Winslow
Kelly Jameson
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Susan Cooper
Zadie Smith
Bree Younger
Allison Lane
Laurent Gounelle
Tim Lahaye, Jerry B. Jenkins
Daniel L. Akin