Page 6 of The Beach House (The Kissing Booth)

I’d been nervous at dinner on my first night—which turned out to have been silly.

But on Rachel’s first night with us, there was definitely a shift in the atmosphere.

I’d panicked that I’d thrown it all off balance by becoming Noah’s girlfriend.

But it wasn’t me who’d made things feel so different: it was Rachel.

Tonight, it felt much more like I was going to dinner with everyone as Noah’s girlfriend—not as practically part of the family.

Rachel and I were both trying to fit in front of the mirror in the bathroom to do our hair and makeup.

I put on the yellow sundress I’d brought, and threw on some gold jewelry too, at Rachel’s suggestion.

I’d not thought to bring any with me, but she gushed about how pretty I looked in the dress and offered me a selection of necklaces to go with it.

The weirdness hit me again when we got ready to leave for the steakhouse and I made straight for the passenger side of Lee’s car.

“Oh,” he said. “Um.”

“What’s up?”

“Elle,” Noah called, “why don’t you come ride with us?”

I looked over at him, kind of baffled, because when had I ever not gone with Lee when the option was available?

But then I noticed Rachel, clutching her purse and smiling awkwardly at me, and I got it.

I brushed it off with an easy smile, saying, “Sure!”—but it didn’t stop me from feeling like a stone had settled in the pit of my stomach.

When we got to the steakhouse and were seated, I ended up next to Rachel, with the boys opposite us. June and Matthew sat on the end by Lee and Rachel, so they’d bear the brunt of the conversation. I was kind of glad. I still felt thrown by the whole situation with the cars earlier.

Even after we’d sat down, though, it was different.

Noah’s leg was pressed against mine under the table, and every so often he’d reach across to do something like brush a strand of hair off my face or trace patterns on the back of my hand.

He didn’t usually do stuff like that around his family.

Neither of us did. Even when the food came, and conversation lulled, there were moments when I’d look up because I felt him watching me—and he’d have this warm, intense look in his bright blue eyes.

I had to gaze back down at my plate, poking my food around with a fork, trying not to blush.

Tonight was different, but I tried to tell myself that didn’t have to be a bad thing. We were all having a good time. Everything was fine.

And everything was going fine, until we’d ordered dessert.

“Oh, hey!” Rachel said all of a sudden. “I never said congrats on getting into Harvard, Flynn. That’s so fantastic!”

Noah shifted ever so slightly. I only knew because I felt his knee bump against mine, but it was almost an imperceptible motion. “Thanks. We’re checking out the campus in a couple of days.”

“Didn’t your cousin work at Harvard?” Lee said.

Rachel nodded. “Yeah! He loved it there. He was just working in one of the dorms for a while, but he said everyone was really great, and the campus was really nice.”

Noah nodded. It was the indifferent, uninterested nod that was so typically Flynn—the badass persona Noah put out to everyone at school. I poked him with my foot below the table.

His dad seemed to notice that Noah had gone quiet and said, “It’s an amazing opportunity.”

“Exactly,” I added hastily, hoping my voice sounded reassuring. “You’d have to be crazy to pass it up.”

Noah just looked at me.

Despite June talking to me about Noah going to Harvard at the end of the summer, I deliberately hadn’t brought it up with him yet. We’d been having such fun, and it wasn’t exactly like we’d had much time alone to talk about it.

I got the feeling from the look he gave me then that we really, really did need to talk about it.

I stole a glance at Lee, tearing my eyes from Noah’s impenetrable gaze. My best friend shot me a sympathetic smile. I wished again that Noah were as easy to read as his brother.

“Lemon sorbet?” the waiter said, suddenly appearing with armfuls of carefully balanced plates.

“That’s me.” Rachel put up her hand a little.

I looked at Noah again as desserts were handed out. I felt like I had to say something to break the tension between us.

In the end, I settled for “How’s the food? It looks good. I should’ve ordered something.”

“Here.” A fork was suddenly pushed right in front of my face, a lump of cheesecake and gooey, delicious raspberry sauce on the end of it. “See for yourself.”

I raised my eyebrows slightly at Noah, who was giving me a tiny smirk, one that tugged at the corners of his mouth, acting normal and ignoring the awkward atmosphere left by the college talk. I felt my cheeks warm up but leaned in to take the bite.

I made an appreciative noise—the kind you make when food is melt-in-your-mouth, oh-my-gosh delicious, which made Noah grin at me. I swallowed and bit back a laugh. My eyes crinkled with a suppressed smile.

Then Lee said, “Ew, cooties,” and I burst out laughing, the others chuckling along with me.

Forgetting the twist in my gut at the prospect of Noah and I breaking up in just a matter of weeks when he left, and the awkwardness that had been thick in the air before, I just enjoyed myself.

Noah held my gaze with that intense look, a sparkle of amusement in his eyes and a mischievous quality to his smile.

Even if I did have only a few more weeks with him, I knew I was lucky to have that much.

I tidied up a few of my things, like dirty laundry and tossed-aside sandals, as Rachel was unpacking the rest of her stuff on the other side of the bedroom. She was telling me how excited she was about the next few days, and about spending some quality time with Lee and his family.

“I wouldn’t bank on quality time with Lee,” I warned her with a laugh. “That’s pretty hard to come by here, with everyone around.”

“Guessing you’re speaking from experience, there.”

“Yup. I don’t think Noah and I have had more than, like, five minutes alone yet.”

A knock on the bathroom door cut our conversation short.

“You ladies decent?” Lee’s hushed voice was muffled by the door; it was kind of hard to hear him. I rolled to the other side of my bed and leaned over to open the door.

“Now you’re all polite because your girlfriend’s here.”

Lee just grinned. “But you know you don’t really count as a girl, Shelly.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What’s up? Did you leave something in here, or are you just missing our room so much already?”

“Our room?” Rachel echoed. We both looked over to see her blinking at us, confusion all over her face. “Did you guys…I thought you and Noah shared this room?”

Lee laughed, reaching over to ruffle my hair. “As if. Nah, me and Elle have always shared. Noah got his own room, since he’s the oldest.”

“Oh. Oh, right. Sure.”

Rachel’s usually bright smile seemed stiff, and she quickly turned back to plugging in her phone charger. I shot Lee a look. Hadn’t he mentioned, when he told her about the beach house, that we shared a room?

Not that it had ever mattered to us, but…Well, I could see how someone like his girlfriend might find it weird.

“I’m so glad to have a different roommate for once,” I told Rachel, trying to lighten the mood. “Someone who’s, like, actually tidy. And doesn’t snore.”

“Speak for yourself,” Lee told me. “Anyway. I didn’t come here to be insulted.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I came because we’re switching rooms.”

“Huh?” Rachel and I shared a look of confusion.

Lee rolled his eyes at me. “Just get in there”—he jerked a thumb over his shoulder—“for, like, an hour or something. I want to spend some alone time with my girlfriend, if you don’t mind.”

I grinned, biting back a laugh. “A connecting bathroom between you guys and us girls isn’t exactly the best way for your parents to keep us separated, I guess.”

“What they don’t know won’t hurt them. We’ll switch back in a bit. Now shoo.” Well, I didn’t need to be told twice. Lee called quietly after me just before I disappeared into the bathroom, “No hanky-panky, Shelly! These walls are thin.”

I snorted, and Rachel questioned, “Hanky-panky, Lee? Seriously?”

I paused before I went into Noah’s room, remembering I was in my pajamas.

I didn’t care so much that I had no makeup on; the past few days I hadn’t bothered wearing any, since we’d been down at the beach.

But the threadbare gray shorts and the shapeless navy tank top that fit me like a sack weren’t exactly the kind of thing I wanted my boyfriend to see me in.

I looked at myself in the mirror for a moment, then muttered, “Whatever.” Noah had seen me in a worse state than this: he’d held my hair back for me when I got too drunk at a party and puked my guts into a toilet bowl.

Compared to that, old pajamas were glamorous.

When I yanked open the door to Noah’s bedroom, though, I saw I didn’t need to worry.

The room was almost pitch-black, so I could barely even make out the bed.

I threw a hand to the wall, finding it after a few moments, and started walking forward tentatively, my other arm feeling around in front of me.

“Noah?” I whispered. I was afraid to talk too loudly in case we were all caught out.

“Polo,” he whispered back, chuckling under his breath. “And you’re supposed to say ‘Marco,’ you know.”

I scowled slightly. “Couldn’t you have put the light on? I can’t s—”

My foot caught the airbed that Lee was sleeping on. I crashed down, arms flailing. My elbow whacked the end of Noah’s bed and I grunted as the air was knocked out of me. There was a long pause, like we were both waiting for someone to burst in.

“Ouch,” I mumbled, face in the airbed.

“Are you okay?” Noah whispered. I heard him climb off the bed.

“Fine. Just hit my funny bone. Ow. Lucky the airbed broke my fall.”

“Good.” And then, half laughing, he said, “Klutz.”

“Jerk” was my only comeback. He chuckled again and I felt a hand on my waist, an arm pressed against my back. His hand found mine, and I managed to get to my feet without falling over again.

“Sneaking around, Elle?” Noah said, mock-scolding me. His warm spearmint breath tickled my face. I giggled quietly and went to kiss him, but missed and ended up kissing his chin instead. He laughed, but then he kissed the side of my nose.

I bit my lip to muffle a snort, and Noah stepped back, pulling me along with him, until we were both sitting on the bed.

“How do you always manage to fall over, Elle?” he said, playing with the ends of my hair. My eyes now adjusted to the darkness, I could just about see Noah’s face, and it looked like he was smiling. Not smirking, but giving me that smile that showed the dimple in his cheek.

I shrugged in answer. “Guess I can’t help falling for you.”

He chuckled, and his forehead rested against mine. “You’re such a romantic.”

“Is that bad?”

“Hmm, maybe. But not when it’s you. When it’s you, it’s just cute.”

Suddenly his lips were pressed against mine, finding their target this time, and I curled my arms round his shoulders, trying to draw him closer. Noah’s arms went round me too, pulling me into him, until we were lying on our sides facing each other, our legs tangled up of their own accord.

“Your feet are freezing,” he commented.

“Maybe your feet are abnormally warm.”

“No, it’s just you.”

I laughed again, trying not to be too loud. Then, in that ominous tone that told me he actually wanted to talk about something serious, he said, “Elle.”

I had a feeling I knew what this was going to be about. I half hoped I was right, because we really did need to talk about it, to try to sort something out, but the rest of me wanted it to be something else, because there were so many things he might say that would break my heart.

“What?” I whispered back eventually.

“What…what are we gonna do? When I go to college?”

He was waiting for me to answer him now. Even though it was dark enough that he probably couldn’t really see my expression, I composed my face. I shrugged in his embrace. “I don’t know. I don’t want you to—” I bit my tongue momentarily. “I’m going to miss you.”

“I’m going to miss you too. But we should talk about what we’re going to do when summer’s over.”

Now was my chance—to say that we could at least try long distance, that we shouldn’t call it off after summer just in case things didn’t work out, kind of like his mom had said to me. But I was so afraid that he might not want to, that it might spoil the rest of the time we did have.

But before I’d made up my mind about what I should say, my mouth was already blurting out, “We could try long distance. We could at least give it a shot.”

I stopped talking before I said something really stupid, like Unless you’d rather break up. Luckily for me, Noah didn’t seem to notice that my mind was freaking out more than a little bit.

“That’s really what you want?” he asked.

“Yeah. I mean, is…isn’t it what you want too?”

Great work, Elle. Now he’s going to say no, it’s not what he wants, and the rest of the summer will be ruined. Good job.

“Of course it is! But—I mean, I feel like I’m being selfish, if that’s not what you want.

You’ll be waiting around for me to come back for Thanksgiving and Christmas break.

It’s not fair to you that I’m all the way across the country in Massachusetts.

That feels like a huge commitment, and I don’t want to ask you to do that if you’re… not…like, if you don’t…”

My heart skipped a beat.

He was more worried about me waiting for him to come back home than the fact he might meet someone who was prettier, smarter, all-around better than me? He was worried that I was the one who wouldn’t want to give a long-distance relationship a fair shot?

“What I don’t want,” I said, propping myself up on my elbows and giving him a stern look he probably couldn’t see, “is to just break up and make things easy. Hell, Noah. When have we ever made things easy for ourselves?”

I could just about make out his smile. “So…”

“You know, I was the one thinking you wouldn’t want to do long distance,” I groaned, pressing my head into the crook of his neck. “I think we should get better at talking to each other.”

“Talking is going to be pretty important when I’m on the other side of the country,” Noah agreed. His voice had taken on a low, husky quality, and he pulled me closer, his lips finding my neck. “But I can think of something pretty important for right now.”

“That so?” I teased.

Noah flipped us round so he was leaning over me, and I guessed it didn’t matter how old my pajamas were when Noah was busy running a hand under my tank top, the two of us moving slowly, quietly, whispering in the dark, glad to finally have some time alone.