Page 141 of The Kissing Booth
I finished tugging it off, and dropped it on the lounger, pulling off my sunglasses too.
‘Elle, you coming?’
‘Oh, come on! It’ll be fun!’ Lisa said brightly.
‘What’ll be fun?’ Cam asked, suddenly appearing out of the pool. He shook his hair like a dog and, dripping wet, gave Lisa a kiss on the cheek before standing up again. ‘Ah, Elle, don’t tell me you’ve got some wild prank in mind.’
I laughed. ‘No.’
‘We’re going shopping,’ May told him.
‘Without Lee,’ Lisa added.
‘What’s happening without me? Shelly? Rachel? What’re you ditching me for now?’
‘Shopping,’ Rachel and I answered, and we laughed.
‘You? Shopping? Withoutme, your personal stylist?’ Lee looked horrified. ‘Will you still get me a milkshake?’
I laughed. ‘Fine.’
‘So that’s a yes, then?’ Lisa said.
‘Sure.’ I was actually kind of flattered to be included in something that didn’t involve Lee. But I was just a little worried I’d feel out of place, since I didn’t usually go on girlie outings.
‘Oh, Elle, it won’t be that bad,’ Dixon said, heaving himself up onto his elbows on the side of the pool. ‘You can buy some sexy lingerie for Flynn.’
I didn’t know how to react to that – laugh or blush. I did both.
Then Lee splashed him right in the face. Dixon must’ve swallowed half a gallon of water, and flopped back into the pool, spluttering, while we all laughed.
‘Dude, that’s my Shelly you’re talking about!’ Lee protested dramatically. He said ‘my Shelly’ like another guy would say ‘my little sister’. But then he said, ‘Talk about disgusting,’ and shuddered.
‘Oh, yeah?’ I challenged him.
‘Oh, yeah!’
I stood, blinked innocently at him, and yelled, ‘Cannonball!’
As it turned out, shoppingwasfun. It was kind of weird, in a way, to be going shopping with ‘the girls’ instead of my best friend, but I enjoyed it all the same.
The day after that was spent packing and repacking, and then upturning my case to pack it all over again. I always had trouble packing for the beach house. In the end, though, I took the same things I always did. We’d gone to the Flynns’ beach house every summer for years now.
I wanted things to be exactly the same as always – but I knew they wouldn’t. Noah and his dad were leaving two days earlier than the rest of us, to check out the campus at Harvard. Rachel came for a couple of days too – not that I minded: I actually enjoyed having some female company other than June for once.
And even if the beach house seemed the same as ever – sandy floors, a little too cramped to fit all of us, the peeling paint and creaky floors and mismatched furniture we loved so much – it was different. At first, I thought everything was just as it always had been.
The first night Rachel was there we all went out to dinner, and Noah and I were acting like a real couple; once he made me dinner when everyone else was out, and we walked along the beach together. And times like that, I remembered just how much everything really had changed, and how nothing was going to stay the same.
Not even my relationship with Noah.
I didn’t know how things would work out when he finally left. I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want it to put a dark cloud over the time we had left together. I kept telling myself we’d cross that bridge when we came to it, but...
I didn’t know if we’d even cross it then, to be honest.
It was weird, trying to split my time between my best friend and my boyfriend. I was thankful that Lee had Rachel; I didn’t feel so bad about spending so much time with Noah then.
He’d take me to movies, and it was so nice just being a regular couple after all the time we’d spent sneaking around. I still couldn’t believe how much he’d changed in the past few months.
