Page 9 of The Beach House (The Kissing Booth)

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 like Mmmph, 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— after I’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.”

“We’re not idiots, Noah.”

“You don’t even know the guys who invited you.”

“Sure I do. I added one of them on Facebook.”

“Elle,” Noah said, turning to me now. “Are you serious about this? You really wanna go that bad? I’m telling you guys, it’s not your scene—”

“You’re not the boss of her,” Lee interrupted.

“Yeah, well, neither are you.”

“I’m her best friend,” Lee snapped. “I’ll take care of her just fine.”

“And I’m her boyfriend,” Noah retorted. “I’m trying to look out for her.”

I stood up and walked off.

That got their attention. Lee called, “Shelly!” and Noah said, “Elle?”

I carried on stalking away from our little evening picnic on the beach. I didn’t walk very far, though, getting only a few feet away before I spun back round.

“Okay,” I said. “Look, Lee and I are going to that party tomorrow, and neither of us is going to do anything stupid. We’ll be careful. And I appreciate you, both of you, looking out for me, but—news flash—I don’t need either of you cataloging my every move and babysitting me. Got that?”

It was hard to tell who looked more stunned by my outburst—Lee or Noah. I was pretty stunned myself, since I hadn’t expected to rant at them like that when I’d opened my mouth.

Lee recovered first. “Sorry.”

“Fine,” Noah said. “Just promise me you guys will get out of there if things start heading south. Both of you.”

It was sweet, I thought, that he wasn’t only worried about me. I’d been ready to argue with him, thinking he was being kind of a jerk telling us not to go, but he was just looking out for us. Both of us.

“We swear,” I told him. “Right, Lee?”

Lee huffed, but said, “Yeah, we swear. We’ll be careful.”

I sat back down, reaching for some chips. I caught Lee’s eye and grinned at him. “Hey, Lee…beach party.”

He beamed back at me. “Beach party.”