The Beach House (a The Kissing Booth novella)

2: The Beach House

So it's nearly Halloween... consider this your Treat!

Important note about all the covers you fabulous people have been making at the end, by the way! And hope you guys like this chapter! A certain someone returns... ;)

enjoy!! xx

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Chapter 2

We had to take two cars this year.

Usually, we’d all cram into the back of Lee’s dad’s car. I’d be squished up in the middle, between Noah and Lee, the trunk on the verge of bursting open with luggage for five people for about two weeks.

But since Noah and his father were flying to Massachusetts they needed the car to take it to the airport. Lee’s mom would stay the whole time, with the two of us. She’d insisted there was no need for us to cut the vacation short just because there would only be three of us for a couple of days.

So now, instead of trying to ram my case into the trunk and then clamber into the car before Lee, I was sliding into the front seat of his red 65 convertible Mustang, despite his irrational worries that the ‘sea air would damage the paint job’.

“That’s just a weird thing to worry about,” I’d told him.

“It could happen!” he’d insisted.

But we both knew that my car, the old used Ford Escort my dad had got me for my birthday, probably wouldn’t survive the two hour forty minute drive down to the coast. Even Dad had told me we’d be better to take Lee’s car since it was more reliable.

Don’t get me wrong, though – I loved my car. (I also loved saying ‘my car’.)

The journey didn’t seem to long, at least. Actually, it went by pretty quickly, since we were singing along to the radio at the top of our lungs and joking around the whole time.

Well, that – or Lee was speeding.

We arrived after the others. But they couldn’t have been there for very long; Matthew, Lee’s dad, was only just shutting the trunk and locking the car up. He shot us a smile and a wave.

“Roads okay?”

I swung out of the car, and put my huge straw bag up onto my shoulder. “Yeah.”

Lee was still sat inside, clearing up his mess of candy bar wrappers and the few empty drinks bottles. He was so messy, but way too proud of his car to leave the trash in there like a lot of guys would. (Like Dixon. I called shotgun once when we all went to the movies, and I had to sit practically knee-deep in ancient McDonald’s wrappings stained with grease and old, cracked CD cases. Warren was just as bad.)

I opened up the trunk and tried to get a good grip on my suitcase. I started to haul it out, and wondered what the hell I’d packed for not even a whole two weeks that made it so heavy.

Maybe I should’ve just left the volumizing shampoo behind after all.

Lee was always right.

“Need to borrow some muscle?”

I let go of my case with a huff and it slid back into the car with a heavy thunk. I twisted my head to look over my shoulder, hair falling in my face, to see Noah, sexy and handsome as ever, cocking a dark eyebrow at me with a smug look on his face.

“I’ve got it,” I told him stubbornly. I closed my fingers on the handle of my case, wiggling it to the edge of the trunk again. I just knew Noah would have that trademark smirk on his face right now. I wondered if there was any chance of me getting my case out without scratching the paint on Lee’s car.