The Kissing Booth - Chasing Noah

Chapter 23

A/N: This is the edited version of Chapter 51, 52 and 53.

...

I shot forward, panting. It had just been a dream.

Dreams can't feel that real.

I looked around, reading the heart monitor. After spending so much time in the hospital with my mom, I had figured out a thing or two about them. My vitals were normal. My heart rate was a little elevated, but I could have told you that. I felt like I had just sprinted around the building four times.

There were no nurses, no weird machines that shook my body like a piece of paper in the wind. It looked the same as when I had fallen asleep.

Except for the fact that Noah was sleeping in the chair beside me instead of Lee.

~~~

"Shelly? Shelly are you okay? Should I get a doctor?" Noah asked quickly. My panting must have woken him up. I was still really shaken up from my dream, but seeing Noah's face was slowly starting to bring me back to reality.

"Yeah. Just a bad dream. When did you get here?" I asked, trying to be nonchalant. It didn't work. His face twisted into this sympathetic frown that made me want to throw up. That's how everyone was going to look at me from now on. Like a hurt puppy. But I needed to take a deep breath. I couldn't be angry with Noah because he cared about me. That was partly the reason I had gotten myself in this mess in the first place.

"Lee called me and told me that you passed out. He told me that you wouldn't want me to come..." he trailed off.

"He was right," I snapped, "You shouldn't be taking any more time off school." He smirked at me and leaned over to kiss my forehead.

"It's the weekend Shelly," he laughed. I laughed nervously, but my mind was kind of all over the place. That dream had felt so real. I could have sworn it was really happening. I literally experienced my own death and the pain that it caused the people around me. I should be worried about seeing my own death, but what I was really thinking about was the engagement ring that Noah had given me. I had dreamt my death, in so much detail that I woke up in a cold sweat over the worry that it was real, and I was thinking about how my dream-boyfriend had told me he wanted to marry me at my deathbed.

I knew that it wasn't real, but in my dream I had wanted to say yes. Was that just my brain telling me that there was so much more that I had to live for? That Noah wasn't actually thinking of asking me to marry him, but maybe eventually he would? Maybe that dream had been my body's way of telling me that if I kept treating it like crap, I wasn't going to live to see those days.

I would never get married or have kids. I would never take Brad to the Pier or give him crap about stealing my car. Do siblings actually steal each others' cars? I'd only seen it in the movies, but I assumed that's just what happens.

"Why are you smiling?" Noah whispered. I shook my head as my eyes fell to his front pocket. It was stretching his jeans awkwardly, and not in the sexual way. Like he had a small box in his pocket - like the ones that you use for rings. Noah caught me staring and blushed. He took it out of his pocket and revealed a small silver box wrapped in a neat purple bow.

"I got this for my mom when I got back to Boston a couple weeks ago. I thought it would be nice for her to have while she's going through all of this stuff with my dad," he explained, snapping the box open. Inside layed a delicate silver chain connected to a small heart, the word 'mom' written inside.

"That's perfect," I sobbed. I didn't even realize I had been crying.

"What's wrong?" he asked softly. I shrugged my shoulders, not even really knowing why I was crying. I mean, obviously I expected it to be a ring. But to be honest, I was also relieved it wasn't.