Page 80 of Washed Up

Frankie took a moment to try to get her thoughts in order. But before she could respond, Dylan sat back in his chair.

‘Don’t worry, Frankie. It’s okay. I’ll… sobs… I’ll get over you. I’ll move on. You’ll see. I’ll learn to love again.’

She shook her head, hastily. ‘No, it’s not… I…’

He laughed and her stomach plummeted. ‘Actually, it is. It’s fine. Really. I was only teasing you. That’s not actually why I came back.’

‘You’re…? I’m sorry? What?’ No, now was the moment all the blood drained from her body.

He shrugged. ‘I could hardly expect you to wait for me, could I? You didn’t even know if I’d come back. A girl like you…’ He didn’t elaborate and Frankie couldn’t find the words to ask. ‘Besides…’ He gestured around him, the sky turning pink overhead, the lowering sun spreading its golden tendrils across the sea, the dune grasses waving gracefully in the warm breeze. ‘Look at this place. Even in the middle of that storm, I could see it was special. Coming back, to this. It’s paradise. I can’t believe you get to live here.’

‘Oh,’ said Frankie, a stone settling in her stomach. A stone and also nausea. ‘Yes, of course. It’s the island. It’s magic.’ She managed a weak smile.

‘I mean, that’s not all, of course.’

Frankie tried to look nonchalant. ‘It’s not?’

Dylan shook his head slowly. ‘No. Can I be really honest? It goes no further.’

‘You can tell me anything,’ said Frankie, then bit her lip. Way to play it cool.

Another of those long, languorous sighs. A glimpse of that hesitation she’d spotted earlier in the day. As if he was debating something.

Eventually he said, ‘Look, the truth is, I needed a break. A real break. This life, it’s… well, I can’t say it’s tough because that sounds ungrateful and I’m super grateful. But it’s a lot. The social media, the messages.’

‘The screaming girls,’ said Frankie with a smirk.

He laughed. ‘That bit I enjoy, mostly. But yes, it can be a bit much. And it gets to me sometimes. As soon as I saw this place…’

Frankie lifted an eyebrow.

‘Okay, fine,’ he said, laughing, ‘almost as soon as I saw this place, I knew it would be perfect for a bit of a reset. I need to write some new material. I needed some space.’

Frankie felt like she was having an out of body experience. What was happening? ‘That must be really hard to do in a hotel room surrounded by champagne bottles.’

‘It is,’ he said, with a fake sob.

‘Poor you.’

‘It’s a tough life.’

‘So how long are you staying, then?’ For the writing. ‘And don’t the others mind?’

Dylan scratched at a mark on the table. ‘They’ll be fine,’ he said, and there was a hard edge to his voice that Frankie squirrelled away to examine later. ‘We’ve had back-to-back gigs, for weeks now it feels like, and that’s not even the tour.’

‘It’s not?’

‘No. We’re meant to tour again in the autumn, UK and Europe, but before that we, uh, well, we had a couple of weeks clear in the calendar. We had a band meeting–’

Frankie snorted, then covered her face with her hand, aghast. ‘Sorry I didn’t mean to do that out loud.’

‘Oh God, you were thinking of “this one time, at band camp”. Go on admit it.’

‘It did cross my mind,’ said Frankie, giggling.

‘You’re not the first.’ Dylan laughed. ‘Told you that movie was a classic.’

Frankie rolled her eyes. ‘Anyway, you were having a meeting with the band. God, this whole conversation is so surreal.’