Page 2 of The Kissing Booth
I gave him a deadpan look – well, I tried. It wasn’t easy to catch his eye when he was spinning around like that.
‘It’sspring, Lee. Not Halloween.’
‘Yeah, so?’
‘No. No haunted house.’
‘Fine,’ he grumbled. ‘Then what do you suggest?’
I shrugged. Truth was, I had no idea. We were pretty much screwed. If we didn’t come up with a booth, then we’d end up being booted off the council, which would mean we couldn’t put it on our college applications next year.
‘I don’t know. I can’t think when it’s this hot.’
‘Then take off your sweater and come up with something.’
I rolled my eyes, and Lee started surfing Google for ideas for a booth for the Spring Carnival. I tugged my sweater off over my head, and felt the sun on my bare stomach. I tried to wriggle my arms back through so I could pull down the tank top I was wearing underneath...
‘Lee,’ I said, my voice muffled. ‘A little help?’
He sniggered at me, and I heard him get up. At that moment the bedroom door was pushed open, and I thought for a minute he’d left me in a tangle, but the next second I heard a different voice.
‘Jeez, at least lock the door if you guys are going to do that.’
I froze, my cheeks going bright pink as Lee tugged down my tank top and yanked the sweater off my head, leaving my hair static.
I looked up to see his older brother leaning against the door frame, smirking at me.
‘Hey, Shelly,’ he greeted me. He knew I hate being called Shelly. I let Lee get away with it, but Noah was another matter entirely. He did it solely to annoy me. Nobody else dared call me ‘Shelly’, not after I had yelled at Cam for it in the fourth grade. Now everybody called me Elle, short for Rochelle. Just like nobody else dared call him ‘Noah’, except for Lee and his parents; everyone else called him by his surname, Flynn.
‘Hi, Noah,’ I shot back with a sweet smile.
His jaw clenched and his dark eyebrows rose a little, like he was daring me to carry on calling him that. I just smiled back and the sexy smirk returned.
Noah was just about the hottest guy to grace this earth; believe me, I’m not exaggerating. He had dark hair that flopped into his electric blue eyes, and he was tall and broad shouldered. His nose was a little crooked from when it was broken in a fight and didn’t set quite right – Noah wasn’t a stranger to fights, but he’d never been suspended. Aside from the occasional ‘scrap’, as Lee and I had taken to calling it, he was a model student: his grades never dropped below an A, and he was the star of the football team, too.
I used to have a crush on him when I was twelve or thirteen. It passed pretty quickly though, when I realized he was way out of my league and always would be. And even though he was unbelievably hot, I acted my normal self around him because I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell that he’d ever look at me as anything other than his kid brother’s best friend.
‘I know I seem to have this effect on ladies, but could you please try and keep your clothes on in my presence?’
I laughed sarcastically. ‘Dream on.’
‘What’re you guys doing, anyway?’
I did wonder for a moment why he was interested, but I shrugged it off. Lee said, ‘We have to come up with a stupid booth for the carnival.’
‘Sounds... crap.’
‘No kidding,’ I said, rolling my eyes. ‘All the good booths are taken. We’ll end up with something like – like – like that thing where you hook a duck.’
They both looked at me like I couldn’t have come up with a worse idea, and I shrugged.
‘Whatever. Anyway, Lee – Mom and Dad are away tonight, so party at eight.’
‘Cool.’
‘And Elle? Try not to strip off in front of everybody for me tonight.’
‘You know I only have eyes for Lee,’ I said innocently.
