Free Diary of a Crush: French Kiss by Sarra Manning Page B

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