Page 70 of Ex in the City
I pop the bottle in my pocket so that I can pour myself a drink – a vodka and orange from the bar – and ask Dylan if I can get him anything.
‘A beer, please,’ he says. ‘The one with the blue label. I know you don’t know beer.’
I laugh.
‘I know I don’tlikebeer,’ I reply as I hand him his drink, but then something catches my eye. ‘Shit, the pan is smoking.’
Dylan grabs the pan from the hob, which only releases more smoke from under it.
‘Okay, this isn’t my fault,’ he says, coughing and laughing. ‘This must be a new pan – there’s a huge paper label underneath it.’
‘Geez, you can’t get service these days,’ I joke, but then I start coughing too.
‘Go out onto the balcony for a minute,’ he tells me. ‘Get some air, leave the door open to let the smell out. I’ll wave this towel around, before the smoke alarm starts.’
I do as I’m told, heading outside, taking a seat on one of the comfortable outdoor sofas. It’s a large, private terrace off the living space. I notice an outdoor heater above me so I click it on.
I don’t hear the smoke alarm, which is good for us, but kind of worrying generally.
Eventually, Dylan joins me with our drinks in his hands and a blanket tucked under his arm.
‘I didn’t burn the hotel down,’ he says proudly.
‘Yeah, you didn’t!’ I confirm with faux encouragement.
‘I did make it stink, though,’ he replies as he hands me my drink and takes a seat next to me. ‘Maybe we should give it a minute to air out, before we go back in.’
‘Sure,’ I reply, taking the blanket, covering myself with it. ‘I don’t mind that this isn’t my room now.’
Dylan laughs as he gets under the blanket on the sofa next to me.
‘How do we flag that the smoke alarm didn’t go off, without admitting that we almost started a fire?’ I ask. ‘It’s odd that it didn’t go off.’
‘You know what musicians are like, for tampering with smoke detectors,’ he reminds me. ‘Would you be surprised if a previous guest had messed with it?’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised if you had stayed here in 2014 and done it yourself,’ I point out through a chuckle. ‘Of course, I would have been here, and I would have stopped you.’
‘Do you ever miss it?’ he asks. ‘The lifestyle, the touring, running around in a whirlwind of chaos with me?’
I laugh.
‘There are plenty of things that I miss,’ I tell him with a smile. ‘I miss the glamour of it all – all the nice places we would go, all the cool free stuff we would get. I miss eating Hawaiian pizza in your bunk while we watched that Tom Green movie everyone but us hated. I miss going out for dinner with you, and the way people would move heaven and earth to give us what we wanted, even if it was chicken nuggets in a five-star fish restaurant.’
Dylan laughs as he recalls the evening I’m referring to.
‘I miss being in your orbit,’ I continue, a little more seriously. ‘I miss the feeling of being around you. I miss the way you make me feel about myself, because, I don’t know, you make me feel like there is something there worth liking, even when I don’t think it myself. I miss having you to talk to. I miss having someone so on my wavelength that we always knew what the other person was going to say or do – before we knew it ourselves. Someone who knows me well enough to finish my…’
‘…Sandwiches?’ he jokes.
God, that’s exactly the same joke I would have made too.
Dylan looks into my eyes – not just into them, through them, peering into my soul.
‘I miss you too,’ he tells me. ‘I miss the way you can make anywhere feel like a home, whether it’s a hotel room or a tour bus. I miss your calming influence on me. I miss having someone who will tell me when I’m being a dickhead. I miss the smell of your perfume, the way it would always linger in a room after you’d gone, always leaving me wanting more. I miss having someone around who always likes me, even on my baddays. I miss watching you sleep, when you would drop off while we watched movies together, or when I would sing you to sleep if you’d had a bad day. I even miss painting your bloody toenails.’
My breathing is heavy and my heart is pounding, but even now I can laugh at that.
‘Did Rowan used to paint your toenails for you?’ he asks curiously.
