Page 11 of The Beach House (The Kissing Booth)

I figured a beach party couldn’t be too fancy, so it didn’t take me long to get ready. A pair of shorts and a white cami, and I was good to go.

“It’s gonna be cold,” Lee reminded me.

“Right,” I said, snapping my fingers. I picked up the gray zip-up hoodie lying across my pillow and then slipped my feet into my sandals. “Okay! Now I’m ready!”

Lee swung himself off from where he was lying across his bed with his hair grazing the floor.

He was wearing dark khakis and a plain white T-shirt, and had a hoodie exactly like mine.

(My gray hoodie used to belong to Lee, actually.

But I kept stealing it because it was so comfy, and in the end he bought a new one.)

“Come on, then,” he said, linking his arm through mine.

“You kids off now, huh?” June asked as we wandered through the lounge to go out the back door. The TV was on, but she was wrapped up in the mystery novel she’d been working her way through for the past few days.

“Yup,” we answered simultaneously.

“Okay, well, have fun. But be careful. ” She’d already read us the riot act on not accepting drinks from anyone, not letting our own drinks out of our sight, not getting too drunk, how dangerous it could be, not to go too near the water, to stay together at all times…

.It was like we’d never been to any party before.

“What time do you think you’ll be back?”

“I don’t know,” Lee said. “Probably not much later than midnight, I guess. But don’t wait up.”

She gave us a wry kind of smile. “You think I’ll be able to sleep easy if you’re out at a party?”

“Noah’s been going to them for years,” Lee pointed out. I could hear the slight irritation in his voice, like he was annoyed that his mom wasn’t letting him do things Noah had always done.

“And?” She laughed. “I never got to sleep until he got home.”

There was a moment’s pause; then Lee said, “Oh.”

“Don’t be too late,” June told us, the severe-mom look back on her face.

We both nodded. “All right.”

“Have fun!” she trilled, turning back to her book and mug of coffee. (I guessed it wasn’t decaf, if she was really going to stay up until we got home.)

“See you later,” we called, and slid the doors closed behind us.

The night was warm, and the sky was clear. The flashing lights of an airplane went across the sky, and there were stars twinkling up there too, against the inky backdrop. It made me smile. I wanted to spin around in a circle with my face tilted up to the sky.

I could feel Lee grinning at me.

“Go for it.”

So I did. Laughing, I spun around in circles with my arms flung out all the way down the beaten sandy path between the shrubbery until I lost my footing and fell over into a bush.

Lee was laughing too, and jogged over to give me a hand up.

It wasn’t hard to find the party. It was a little past eight, but there were a lot of people around. There were coolers, and a couple of small campfires. People had dragged some logs round to make circles, and if they weren’t sitting, they were milling about.

“This is the dangerous, drug-fueled rave your brother warned us to stay away from?” I couldn’t help but ask incredulously, looking on. From here, it all seemed pretty tame.

As we got closer, I saw that the people there were mostly around college age, a little older than us. But there were a ton of kids our age too, and a few younger.

“Come on,” I said, grabbing Lee’s hand and dragging him toward the nearest cooler. “I’m thirsty.”

“What happened to No, I won’t drink at all, don’t worry ?”

“I never said that. I said I wouldn’t get drunk . There’s a difference.” I bent down to grab two cans of beer out of the slowly melting ice and handed one to Lee.

“Hey, Lee, you made it!” We turned around and saw a guy walking up to us.

“Hey,” Lee replied, doing that weird half-hug thing guys do. “This is my friend I was telling you about, Elle. Elle, this is Kory.”

I sipped my beer. “Hi.”

“You guys good for drinks? Come on,” Kory said. “I’ll introduce you to some people.”

And he did. Kory’s group of friends all looked either our age or maybe freshmen and sophomores in college. I was kind of able to put names to faces, but I’d forgotten half of them within the first few minutes.

At one point, while we were talking to some of them, Lee stood beside me and slung his arm round my shoulders. He drained the last of his can and said, “I’m getting another drink—you want one?”

“No, I’m good.”

He ruffled my hair and walked off, one of the guys joining him. The other girl in our little group, Jess, watched them go for all of three seconds before saying, “So, are you guys dating, or…?”

“What?” I snorted. “No way! Are you for real?”

She shrugged. “You two just look pretty cozy.”

I laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding. He’s my friend. Not in a million years would we ever be—you know, dating. ”

“Nothing wrong with being friends first,” one of the guys whose name I couldn’t remember said. “It’s like the start of any great rom-com.”

I rolled my eyes. “Not me and Lee. Trust me.”

I wasn’t used to people asking about me and Lee. Everyone at school knew we’d always been practically joined at the hip, that we came as a package deal. I’d never really thought how it looked to an outsider.

I was still laughing about it when Lee came back.