The Beach House (a The Kissing Booth novella)

12: The Beach House

            “Hey,” Lee replied, nodding.

            The whole time, I was wide-eyed and hoping he didn’t remember me.

            This was Lee’s friend? Him, of all people?

            “Who’s your friend?” Then he got close enough to recognize me. “Oh, you! Girl who fell on me!”

            “Um.” I cleared my throat. Then I sipped my beer. “Hi.”

            The guy I fell on in volleyball and Lee laughed. “The guys are around here somewhere,” the guy told Lee.

            “Cool. We just got here.”

            The guy nodded. The fire we were stood near was making his eyes look more amber than brown. I was still embarrassed that I’d managed to fall on this guy during a volleyball match; it was just my luck he wasn’t someone I’d never see again. Great. So I was stood there, replaying and replaying my Most Embarrassing Moment Ever from the previous morning in my head, and kind of staring into space, but kind of staring at him.

            Then he turned his attention on me, and I blushed, because it looked like I was staring at him. I didn’t think it was possible, but I managed to make an even bigger fool out of myself.

            “It’s, uh… Elle, right?” He smiled, politely ignoring the fact that I practically had a flashing neon sign over my head reading ‘IDIOT’.

            “Yeah,” I said, after slightly too long a pause. Then I remembered to smile. “Yeah, that’s me. Hi.”

            “You said hi already,” Lee informed me. He was trying so hard not to burst out laughing, I knew it. I could hear it in his voice. I felt like glaring at him, but I knew if I did that then I’d have a fit of giggles.

            “Yeah, sorry. Um.” I shook my head slightly, trying to clear the fuzziness from my brain and forget how embarrassed I still was. “I don’t think I caught your name…”

            “Kory.”

            “Oh, right, cool. Hi, Kory.”

            “I think that’s four times you’ve said hi.”

            This time, I nudged Lee in the ribs, and turned to look at him. “Thank you, my human calculator.”

            He replied in a robotic, monotonous voice, “You are wel-come.”

            Thankfully, I wasn’t the only one to laugh hard at that. Kory laughed too, and then Lee joined in. I knew I wasn’t out to impress anybody here, but I didn’t want to spend the night with a bunch of people who thought I was a complete and utter fool. We were here to have fun.

            “Come on,” Kory said. “I’ll introduce you to some people.”

            And he did. They all looked either our age, or maybe freshmen and sophomores at college. There were about ten of them. I was kind of able to put names to faces, but I forgot half of them. Jack, Hunter, Laura, Miles, the twins Maya and Maria, Kathleen, Nathan and Damien. The twins, Maya and Maria, were both pretty quiet and soft-spoken, and had Hispanic accents. Nathan was the kind of guy who looked the very stereotypical image of the star quarterback in high school: blond, butch, with a strong face – and he was gay as gay gets. Laura didn’t seem to care for either me or Lee once she found out that Lee had a girlfriend.