Page 22 of The Beach House
Lee made an exaggerated gagging sound. “If you two are done flirting, can we say good night?”
I giggled and threw the T-shirt and sock of his I was still holding at his head. The sock caught on his ear until he shook it off, like a dog. Noah chuckled too, and that wistful part of me, the part that was forever a hopeless romantic, wished I could take a snapshot of the moment—all three of us laughing and smiling at the beach house together like always, and seemingly without a care in the world.
It was a perfect moment in time—but that was all it was. A moment.
Chapter 9
Our last day together went by way too quickly. We tried to cram everything in: games of Frisbee, tossing a football around, swimming in the ocean, playing volleyball (I’d joined in this time, even if I was awful at it). Noah and I had left Lee playing another round of volleyball to get some time to ourselves at the beach bar—thankfully without any problems like the last time.
I wished it could last forever. I wished Noah didn’t have to leave.
I was dreading saying goodbye to him. I knew it wasn’t for long, and he’d be back soon, but it just made me think about how much harder it would be to say goodbye when he left for good. I was trying really hard not to think about it; it was dragging down my happy mood.
“Mm,” Lee said, pulling me out of my thoughts. “I just remembered!”
Except he was talking with his mouth full, so it sounded more likeMmmph, ah jush muh-mem-phud.I understood what he was saying, though; after seventeen years of being around Lee, I’d got used to listening to him tell me things with his mouth full of food.
“What?” I said—afterI’d swallowed my food.
“Well,” he said, gulping down his burrito loudly, then belching even louder. “You know this morning when we were playing volleyball? After you two left, I was talking to a couple of guys. There’s a party down on the beach tomorrow night. There’s gonna be a whole bunch of people there. But no bonfire, they said.”
“They haven’t had a bonfire for years,” Noah said, but he sounded uninterested—or distracted. “The police caught them a few years back. Something about a safety hazard.”
“A safety hazard right by the sea?” I said.
He shot me a flat look, but then turned back to Lee. “So? What’s your point?”
Lee took another impossibly huge bite of his burrito. This time, he swallowed most of it before he answered. “Well…my point is, there’s a party tomorrow. So me and Shelly can go.”
“Really?” My pulse picked up and I felt my eyebrows shooting toward my hairline. We hadn’t been to a beach party before. They’d been something that Noah would disappear to one or two nights, but Lee and I had always been too young. June and Matthew (and my dad, via phone call) hadn’t let us go when Noah was going. And Noah hadn’t wanted us there.
There was that one year, when we were fourteen: we’d snuck down to a party even after my dad and Lee’s parents had told us we weren’t allowed to go. Mostly, though, we snuck down to spy on Noah. It hadn’t been very successful, though. He’d caught us trailing after him and threatened to phone his mom and tell on us.
Childish, but it worked.
We probably would’ve been allowed to go last year, maybe even the year before, but we’d never asked. The parties were Noah’s thing. Lee and I stayed at the house playing video games and joking about, like we always did.
Now, though, adrenaline coursed through me.
“Really?” I squealed. “We get to go to a beach party this year? We’re going to a party—”
“Um,” Noah interrupted. “I don’t think so.”
“What?” Lee and I both turned to him, wide-eyed with pure confusion.
“Do you even know what goes on at those things?” he said. I pursed my lips, glaring at him. If he was going to turn right back into an overprotective jerk…
“We’re going,” I told him.
“Elle.” He sighed, with a look on his face that I completely ignored.
“No, she’s right,” Lee added. “I’m going. And Shelly can’t not go if I go. Therefore, we are both going.” I was so tempted to make a comment like“Therefore”? Wow, that’s a pretty big word for you, Lee,but I was too interested in what he had to say. “Besides, you can’t keep track of where she’s going and what she’s doing every single day.”
“Well, the beauty of Instagram means I kind of can,” Noah joked. “But I’m serious. You guys have never been to one of these parties. They can get really crazy. There’s alcohol, douchey guys….Things can get pretty wild. I swear I saw drugs getting passed around last year. And I’m not talking about weed.”
“Oh, come on.” Lee snorted. “As if we’re going to get involved in anything like that.”
“Some of those parties get out of control real quick, Lee. I can handle myself. I’m not so sure about you guys.”
