The Beach House (a The Kissing Booth novella)

8: The Beach House

            “My time of need?” I started to laugh, but it turned into a coughing fit. Once that stopped, I said, “See? Sick. Go away.”

            “This is the thanks I get?” he sighed. “You’re so mean sometimes, Shelly.”

            “I’m being kind in the long run.”

            “Whatever.” He mussed my hair gently, which made me scowl at him. But I didn’t bother to fix it. “So, you never told me. What did you do last night?”

            I shrugged. “Um, Noah made dinner.”

            “Ah, no wonder you’re sick!”

            I laughed, and again I had to turn away, coughing hard. “Then we went for a walk down the beach. It was so totally cute and sweet, like a movie scene or something! The waves, the peace and quiet…”

            “Ooh, romantic!” Lee cried in a falsetto voice. He flicked his hair back – spraying me with water as he did so – and propped his chin in his hand. “Tell me everything, girl!”

            I kicked at him from under the covers. “Stop teasing me, or I won’t tell you anything.”

            “I’m sorry.” He grinned. “Go on.”

            “So it was really great and then it started raining, and we ended up by the old surf shop? The one that’s all boarded up now? And then we had to run back in the rain.”

            I sneezed violently, and Lee cringed away for a moment. “Oh, and that’s all you did?”

            “No, we made out a lot, too.”

            He laughed. “’Kay.”

            “So how was your –” Sneeze. “– your night with Rachel?”

            “Good, I guess.”

            “You guys had a fight, didn’t you?” I said, my voice cracking and raspy because I was trying not to cough. “Have you talked it out?”

            Lee shrugged. “Kind of. Not really. It was over something really silly.”

            “What?”

            He rolled onto his back, folding his arms behind his head and looking at the ceiling.

            “Well I told her I’d pay for dinner and she said she’d pay, because I bought the movie tickets and all the snacks, and I said no, it was on me, and I said the same when she said I should at least let her pay for herself. Then she went on some big rant about femininity and slammed down a twenty dollar bill, and stormed out.”

            “Oh. That.”

            “What? Why do you say it like that?”

            I shrugged. “It seems to happen a lot, I guess. I always hear the girls talking about stuff like that at school.”

            “I didn’t even know Rachel was capable of ranting,” Lee said.

            I smiled a little. “How bad was it?”

            “She wasn’t yelling. Just making a case like she was on the debate team, and making me feel bad. I was just trying to be nice, though. You know, ‘cause it was her last evening here.”