Page 69 of Ex in the City
I open the door, ready to sadly send the staff member on their way – and probably crack some kind of lame joke about how they will be returning shortly – only to find Dylan standing there, a plastic bag in each hand.
‘Hello,’ he says with a smile.
‘Erm, hi,’ I say, laughing. ‘I thought you were going out – you’re the last person I expected to find lurking outside my room.’
Dylan laughs as he steps inside.
‘So, first of all, confession time, this isn’t your room, it’s my room,’ he explains.
‘Noooo,’ I whine – playfully, but I am low-key devastated. ‘I should have known this beauty was too good to be true. I’m assuming I took your card by mistake?’
‘Oh, no, I gave you the wrong one on purpose,’ he explains confidently, like it’s the most normal thing in the world. ‘And then I nipped to the shop next door, to get the things I needed to make you dinner.’
‘I thought you were going out to celebrate with the others,’ I say again, not that I’m complaining.
‘And I thought I would rather hang out with you,’ he tells me with a smile. ‘There will be plenty of chances to party but, I don’t know, I would rather celebrate this one with you.’
My body warms up, all at once, as Dylan’s gesture gives me a strange, tingly feeling. I don’t know what it is but it’s definitely a good sensation.
I guess, for the boys, this is the start of a new chapter, the beginning of their second act, and all being well, tonight will be the first night of many. For me, this is a one-night-only (well, technically three nights, but you know what I mean) kind of deal, I’m just here with Dylan, because I’ve been helping him out. This isn’t my life any more, and soon enough I will be back to reality. So it’s really nice that he’s celebrating with me tonight, seeing as though I will be going home soon. Wherever that is.
‘Thanks,’ I say with a smile.
We look into each other’s eyes, only for a second or two, before Dylan heads for the kitchen.
‘So, what are we having?’ I ask him.
‘The best thing you’ve ever eaten,’ he says confidently. ‘But a much shitter version, because it’s made by me.’
I laugh.
‘Remember in LA,’ he prompts me.
I freeze. Every time I remember it, it feels like I’m being hit by a car.
It feels like so long ago, and it was so surreal, that it honestly feels like a movie I watched – one of my favourite movies, that I think about all the time. It’s one of those memories where you look back and think to yourself: there isno waythat happened to me.
Dylan and I became best friends on pretty much the day we met. We had this instant, undeniable connection, this sudden big love for one another that hit us from the word go. I will never be able to explain it but, looking back, it was clear that we both knew that we wanted to be together in some way. He was Dylan King, I was a journalist. He was – according to the press – a serial shagger, a man incapable of a meaningful relationship. I was – what I now can look back at and say with ease – a dummy, who had this silly idea of what she wanted her life to be like.
I idolised celebrities, I wanted to be with one, to be one myself – and Dylan was never going to be an option. So we friend-zoned one another almost instantly, but definitely mutually, and then settled into a friendship, and it really was a great one. In fact, we were so close that, when Dylan finally got his divorce from his grifter of a wife, and I found out that Luke, my boyfriend, was shagging his way around Europe behind my back, we decide to go on holiday together. Honestly, it was just what I needed, it gave me the time and space to forget about Luke-bloody-Fox, and it seemed to do Dylan the world of good too. He hadn’t seemed healthy when he was with Crystal, or in the immediate aftermath, but escaping to the US for a road trip with his bestie seemed like it changed him. While we were away, it was probably the best I’ve ever seen him – not including the present day, obviously. We had the best time, and I could feel us growing closer and closer by the day, almost as though – withoutthe shit back home – we could just be us, and our true feelings could finally come to the surface.
So, on our last night there, we went for dinner – and had the most amazing grilled cheese sandwiches and fries, which I really did say was the best thing I had ever eaten – and then we went for a gorgeous night-time walk. And then he kissed me, and while I was totally stunned, I was somehow, confusingly, not at all surprised. It was like we both knew this moment was coming and, when it finally arrived, it was even better than I had imagined it. We spent the night together – the whole night – and then I woke up in his arms, very much feeling like things had changed, like our relationship was going to be so different from there on out. And it turned out that it was going to be different, just, you know, not for the better. We landed back in London, all over each other, like love’s young dream. The second I looked up from kissing him, in the airport, the front page of theDaily Scoopcaught my eye, and they were running this huge feature on the women Dylan had slept with, while he was still married to Crystal.
Looking back, with rational eyes, it seems as though Dylan and Crystal called it quits, and so he went right back to his old lifebeforethey were divorced. But back then, to me, the girl who had just thrown away years of friendship by sleeping with her best friend, it just seemed to me like he was never going to change and that I had made a huge mistake, so I tried to style it out, to walk it back. I’m pretty sure I just laughed, kissed him on the cheek, told him that he was never going to change and that was fine, we would always be friends. Yep, I know how stupid that sounds, and all it did was pretty much kill our friendship, and then the band broke up, and then – well, I guess you’re up to date from there.
Sex with Dylan was nothing short of incredible. It was like we’d had years and years of foreplay that all built up to thatmoment, and I had never (then, or since) experienced anything like it. That feeling of my entire body being on fire, of my skin burning wherever he touched me, but in the most amazing way. Even something as simple as him kissing my neck felt like a nuclear explosion.
I need to stop thinking about it because it gets my knickers in a twist, even now, and despite little hints here and there, the two of us haven’t actually had a serious conversation about it. I’m not even sure we need to, but that memory is going to haunt me for the rest of my life, for better or worse – I suppose it’s a bit of both.
I watch Dylan pottering around in the kitchen, grabbing the things he needs to make me a sandwich, somehow looking so normal in some ways, but making me feel almost star-struck in others. Dylan King is making me a sandwich.TheDylan King.
‘Oh, there’s a present in that bag for you,’ he prompts me.
I smile and cock my head curiously as I peer inside. I laugh as I reach in and take out a bottle of red nail polish.
‘I thought, seeing as though I’m running around after you, you might make a joke about me painting your toes,’ he explains. ‘It was just a cheap one, that they were selling off at the checkout, but I thought if you did mention it, it would be funny to have one.’
‘You thought of everything,’ I say with a laugh. ‘I’ll get us some drinks.’
