Page 105 of The Kissing Booth
‘What’re you doing by yourself anyway?’
‘I couldn’t find anyone,’ I laughed, defending myself.
‘Excuses, excuses... Come on. Ithinkthey’re all over here still.’ I followed Cam through the crowds of dancing masked teenagers, holding onto his arm so I didn’t lose him. The whole time, I kept an eye out, but I didn’t have a clue where Noah had gone.
We soon found the others. The girls all looked beautiful, of course, and the guys looked pretty good too. Lee had matched his tie perfectly to Rachel’s dress, but the other boys had mostly just gone for black. Cam, however, had made the effort to try and match Lisa’s dress – except he’d gone for scarlet when Lisa wore burgundy.
Lee and Rachel were just so cute together.
‘You’re not too upset, Elle, are you? You know, because you’re here on your own,’ said Warren. It was a little insensitive, but that was Warren, so I didn’t think anything of it.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’
‘I swear I saw you come in with someone and have a photo,’ said Bridget, Warren’s date.
‘No, that wasn’t her, I asked,’ Cam answered for me.
‘Oh. That’s weird. See, everyone in these stupid masks and I can hardly tell anybody apart!’
Conversation moved into easy chatter then. I kept looking around for Noah but couldn’t see him anywhere. I went up and danced with the girls for a while, and danced with Cam and Lee too. Then Cody came over, tapping Lee’s shoulder.
I only recognized him by the tongue piercing that caught the light when he said, ‘Can I cut in?’
‘Be my guest,’ Lee said. He gave me an elaborate, sweeping bow, then went to where the others were dancing. The music had just switched to something slower – an acoustic cover of some pop song.
‘Hi, Cody.’
‘Hey, Elle.’ He smiled. ‘Hope you don’t mind me stealing this dance, by the way.’
I laughed. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘You look really pretty tonight,’ he said. ‘Sorry to hear you didn’t get a date.’
I groaned dramatically. ‘Does everyone know?’
He shrugged, laughing with me. ‘Don’t worry. It’s just ’cause Flynn scared guys off, right? But nobody’s seen him anyway – you’ll be dancing all night, stealing some other girl’s date.’
‘Who did you come with again?’
‘Amy. Amy Johnson.’
I nodded. ‘Cool. She doesn’t mind you dancing with me, though?’
‘Nah. Don’t worry about it. How’ve you been, anyway? I don’t see you much outside of chemistry.’
‘Good, I guess. You?’
‘Same old, same old.’
We laughed at the awkward lapse in conversation that followed, and chatted easily about the band and how everything looked until the end of the song, when I begged off Jason’s offer of a dance to go ‘find Lee’. What I really intended to do was find Noah.
I might’ve found him – if everyone hadn’t suddenly started to take their seats for dinner. I went up on my tiptoes, craning my neck to look for him.
‘Elle! Elle!’ I looked around. ‘Over here!’ Lee waved his hand, gesturing for me to join him.
I smiled, though it felt more like a grimace, and squeezed through the crowd to take my seat.
The table was left with one empty seat, of course: it sat five couples, and we had Warren, Dixon, Lee and Cam with their dates, and then me with an empty seat beside me.
