The Kissing Booth: Unavoidable

Chapter 5 - Moving On

Elle's POV

The month or so after the break-up went by in a fog for me.  I didn't have Noah or Lee to talk to and I had left the rest of my friends behind in Boston too.  In addition to always having Lee and Noah around, I had grown up with June and Matthew treating me like their daughter.  By this point, my Dad wasn't even keeping in touch with them anymore and I had a hard time talking with them without telling them about my Dad's alcohol problem, so I thought it better to lose contact for a while. 

I missed Lee and Noah and Boston terribly.  I missed how goofy Lee would get after hours of studying for a midterm together.  I missed cheering Noah on at home football games when I couldn't stop checking him out in his uniform.  I missed the weekend adventures the three of us would go on to explore the city.  I missed trying to fit with Noah in my dorm room bed.  I felt like everything in my life had been flipped upside down and I wanted everything to go back to the way it was, but I felt like there was nothing I could do about it.

I focused on Brad and my Dad as much as I could and concentrated on my classes.  I tried to get a little more involved at my new school and eventually made new friends.  Aaron stepped into the missing place in my life left by all the Flynns I was missing so much and we became close friends really quickly.  I told Aaron all about my break-up with Noah and my problems with Lee and he tried to get me to reach out to both of them. 

"I can't believe you never even confronted him about the girl that answered his phone or the pictures.  Didn't you want to hear what he had to say about them?"

"No, I didn't want to have to listen to him lie about it."  I know that I overreacted by blocking Noah for the week after our last call, but it couldn't have been all wrong when he moved on that fast.

"You wimped out.  You should have talked to him after that.  At least that would have given you closure.  You need closure with this guy if you are ever going to be able to move on.  It's not healthy to keep crying about him night after night."

"I know Aaron, I'm sorry I do this to you all the time."

"That's not it, Elle, and you know it.  I'm happy to be here for you, I only want what is best for you.  I think you should contact him and Lee too, for that matter, and tell them both about what is really going on with your Dad.  They need to understand what you're going through."

"I don't know what I would do without you, Aaron.  Now, let's quit talking about my problems and talk about your love life!"  Aaron and I had several versions of this conversation in the weeks after the break-up, but I still wasn't ready to reach out.

Eventually, I started to feel like I was fitting in at DePaul and Dad seemed to turn things around with his job and his drinking problem.  Brad even made a few new friends at his school and finally the hell our family had been going through seemed to get better.  I came to love Chicago and decided that there was no reason for me to transfer back to Boston College.  I had been really happy in Boston, mostly due to having Noah and Lee so close to me.  Now that I wasn't talking with either of them, Boston didn't have the same pull.  Plus, I knew it would make me feel worse to be in Boston without being with Noah.  Thanksgiving and Christmas came, and we celebrated together as a family without the Flynns for the first time in my life.  I did think about reaching out to Noah soon after the holidays.  Things were getting back to normal with my family and once my stress level had started to go down, I realized I had been too fast to cut him off. 

Around that time, Aaron introduced me to a Senior who lived down the hall from him named Cody.  Cody and I started hanging out without Aaron.  In many ways, he was the opposite of Noah, really laid back, always joking around, and he didn't let anything bother him.  He was really sweet to me and never argued with me about anything.  He treated me great and although I didn't feel any of the fireworks I felt when I was with Noah, I also felt much safer in my feelings about Cody than I had ever felt about Noah.  I felt like my heart would be able to survive him, unlike with Noah, where I still felt like a piece of me had been missing since the break-up.  I know that wasn't a good reason to start a relationship with someone but, in my mind, I was finally moving on.