The Kissing Booth: Unavoidable

Chapter 12 - Breakfast

Elle's POV

I walked into the restaurant at 8, like we'd planned. I immediately see Noah sitting at one of the booths in back, fidgeting with the napkins on the table. "Good morning!"

"Hey, Shelly, good to see you! I wasn't sure if you would make it here this early. I know how much you hate mornings."

I rolled my eyes at him. "I'll have you know that I have been a responsible adult and working a real job for months now and am more than used to getting up at a decent time."

After ordering our pancakes, we caught up each other on some plans we had coming up but didn't get into any of our break-up issues again. I felt like we had reverted back into an easy banter like we had when we were in a relationship, teasing each other and arguing about pretty much everything, all in good fun. Talking with Noah like this made me realize how much I missed the way things had been between us. I would be happy, even if we could just figure out a way to get this back and be friends again. I had missed Noah as my friend as much as I missed him as my boyfriend. We were finished with our breakfast, but it was obvious that neither of us wanted to leave yet. Noah looked over at me like he wants to say something, I'm not sure why he won't just spit it out.

"Can I see your apartment?" I blurted out. Noah looked at me, looking a little surprised by my question. I'm not really sure what made me ask that. I knew I wasn't ready to leave him yet and I thought maybe seeing where Noah lived now would somehow give me a better idea of what his life was like these days. Now that we had finally started talking again, I realized how little I knew about his life now, this person who had been a part of my life my entire life. I wanted to get to know this grown-up Noah. "Don't worry, I'm not going to try to seduce you, I'd like to see where you are living these days. I promise I won't come on to you or anything."

Noah chuckled at that comment. "There's not a lot to see, but yeah, I'd love to show you around."

I followed him on the quick drive to his apartment, since I would have to leave soon for my plans with Dad and Brad. Noah waited for me in the parking lot and led me up to his apartment. It was obvious that Noah hadn't spent much time on decorating, there weren't many personal items, but the place suited him. "I'm guessing your Mom helped you get everything set up."

"My Mom loves this kind of thing, of course I let her take care of it." Noah smirked but then took a deep breath and gave me a look I couldn't quite read. "So, I feel like we finally cleared the air a little of the break-up and figured out more about what happened between us. We were both hot headed and got mad at each other way too quickly. And I know you said that we shouldn't keep apologizing to each other, but I do want to tell you that I am sorry about it all, especially that it took us so long to start talking again.  Can we talk about what that means for us now?"

"I think it will be much easier for us to see each other when it is time for Christmas get togethers and other family gatherings. . ." I stopped talking when I saw the look in his eyes.

"I want more than that, Elle. I want to try again. Can you give us another chance? I never stopped loving you."

Wow. He put all his cards on the table with that one. I had to look away from him and take a couple deep breaths. I mean I've been thinking about this since I saw Noah months ago at the family lunch but hadn't really let myself believe it was a possibility. Is this possible? "You want to get back together? We still live in different time zones. I think we already figured out we weren't good with a long-distance relationship."

"Maybe we don't have to be long-distance. I work for a big company with offices all over the country, including Chicago. What if I transferred or at least tried to work on a special project in the Chicago office? That would give us a few months to see if we can do this without screwing things up again."