The Kissing Booth: Unavoidable

Part 2 - Chapter 1 - Back to Mexico Part 1

Elle looked at me with an amused smile.  "We're having a great time, but we're also very married.  Our husbands will be right back.  You might want to move on and find yourselves some single ladies."  Elle was trying to very nicely tell him to hit the road. 

"That's fine, we don't mind.  We can keep you company until they get back."  The guy next to Elle was totally eying her up and down. 

The next thing I knew, Noah was at Elle's side with his arm around her telling the guys to leave his wife alone.  They walked away, no problem.  I could tell Noah was a little upset about it, but we quickly moved on and forgot about it.

Not long afterwards, Aaron, Josh, Ashley, and Lee came back, but spent their time on the dance floor instead of sitting at the table with us.  I was surprised Elle wasn't out there with them.  Whenever Lee was out with us, the two of them always danced together. Towards the end of the night, Elle and I were walking back to our table from the ladies room when we ran into the same guys from earlier.  At this point, they were even more sloshed, but still seemed pretty harmless.  They were trying to joke around with us.  Again, Elle reminded them we were married and we continued walking towards our husbands.  Then, the guy who had been trying to flirt with Elle earlier put his arm around her.  She immediately reached up to pull his arm off.  He was determined to keep hold of her, though, and reached back out and grabbed her arm.  At this point, I could tell that Elle was getting frustrated with him, but she still never seemed worried about the guy.  Suddenly, I watched Noah practically fly across the room and remove the guys hand from Elle.  Noah immediately got in the guy's face telling him to back off.  I noticed his clenched fists and for a second there, I thought Noah was going to hit him.  Aaron smoothly walked over to us and pulled Noah away from the guy and walked him outside to get some air.  I had heard stories of Noah's fighting days in high school and honestly thought someone must be exaggerating because I couldn't imagine Noah acting like that.  I had never seen him anywhere near a fight.  Watching him tonight, I finally saw what he must have been like.

"What's up with him?"  I looked over at Elle who looked almost as shocked as I felt.

"I have no idea.  Noah's always been a little overprotective, but I haven't seen him like this in years.  I better go check on him."  I walked with Elle outside to find Aaron and Noah. 

As soon as we made it outside, I could see Aaron and Noah standing a few yards away from the building.  Aaron was standing close to Noah trying to cool him down.  I could hear some of what Aaron was telling him.  "What the hell, Noah?  Calm down, man.  What's your deal tonight?  Elle's fine, he didn't hurt her, nothing was going to happen to her with all of us there.  You need to relax."  Noah still looked pissed off while he was talking to Aaron but his expression softened as soon as he saw Elle walking towards him.  "I'm so sorry Shelly, I don't know what happened."

Elle put her arms around his waist and hugged him and he held on to her like he didn't ever want to let her go.  "Everything is okay, Noah.  I'm fine."

"I saw that guy trying to touch you after you tried to pull his arm off you and I just lost it."  Elle and Noah were focused completely on each other at this point and it was like they were in their own little world.

"I know where this is coming from, but don't think you need to turn back into Flynn again." 

"I swear, Shell, you don't have to worry about that.  I promised you a long time ago that there would be no more fighting and I'm not going to start breaking promises to you, especially now."  I watched Elle's face become more relaxed and as soon as she smiled at Noah, he smirked down at her.  Noah picked Elle up and started kissing her.

Aaron looked over at me and grinned.  "I think our work here is done."

"You're right, I'm not sure they'll even notice we're gone."  We walked together back into the club and left Noah and Elle outside.  I know Noah has always seemed protective of Elle, but never to the point of violence before.  I chalk it up to him having a little too much to drink tonight.

As we got back to our table, Darren gave me a questioning look as I scooted in next to him.  "Everything okay?"

"Yeah, I think they're fine now."

Aaron laughed.  "They seemed perfectly fine when we left them outside making out like teenagers."

Lee had the same questioning look as Darren, but he directed his question to Aaron.  "Teenage Noah was exactly who he was acting like in here, it looked like he was going to hit that guy.  I thought we were back in high school for a minute and he was going to take that guy out! What the hell was his problem tonight?"

"I don't know, man.  He seemed really pissed when I was pulling him outside but he settled down pretty quickly.  He was avoiding my questions, it's like there was something he was trying not to tell me.  I've never seen him like that before.  As soon as Elle walked out, he completely calmed down and went back to his normal whipped self."

"She's always been able to calm him down like that.  Of course, I think his protectiveness of her is what has caused most of his fights, even when we were younger."  Lee put his arm around Ashley and took a long drink.

Darren added, "I've heard Noah talk about fighting when he was younger, but I could never picture it, I thought maybe he was exaggerating."

"I honestly thought he would be like that forever – fighting anyone he felt like and I figured he'd end up in jail or something someday.  Then, he and Elle started dating and I don't think he ever got into another fight.  Did he ever tell you about that time he got in a fight the first day of school trying to defend Elle's honor?  That was even before they started dating."  Lee went on to tell us some stories about Noah's fights. 

After Lee finished a story, Josh looked at Aaron and said, "Remember our Super Bowl party a couple years ago, when Noah met Cody?"

"Elle's ex, Cody?  Noah met him?" asked a surprised Lee.  "I never heard that one."

Aaron laughed.  "Yeah, I thought for sure Noah was going to lose it and if he could get through that without a fight, he must for sure be over his fighting deal." 

After Aaron and Josh told us about their party, we all listened to the music for awhile and eventually most of us ended up on the dance floor.  We didn't see Noah and Elle the rest of the night.  The almost fight didn't seem like that big of a deal at the time, Noah didn't even hit the guy.  But, in all the times we had been out with Noah and Elle, I had never seen Noah act like that before, and I had seen Elle get hit on by plenty of guys.  Still, I didn't think to much about what was going on until after I spent the next day with Elle.