The Kissing Booth: Unavoidable

Chapter 16 - Christmas Surprises

Elle's POV

As soon as the movie was over, I announced that I was getting tired from traveling today and was going to bed early. Lee gave me a knowing look but still pulled me into a hug and told me good night. He knew I had flown in a day early, so hadn't traveled today but he was still being sweet about keeping our secret and didn't say anything. Noah stood up at the same time as I did and said he needed to be getting back to his apartment. We all said our good nights and I was a little surprised when I heard Noah's bike leave the driveway. I was getting ready for bed about 10 minutes later when my door opened quietly.

"I missed you, Shell!" Noah walked into the guest bedroom and locked the door behind him. He had a bag over his shoulder and strode over to me to give me a deep kiss.

"We were together all day, Noah!" I knew what he meant, though. It almost felt harder to be together and not be able to act like it, then to be apart.

"I almost told Mom about us like 5 times, just so I could come over and snuggle with you during the movie."

"Well, you have me now, do you want to snuggle?"

"Oh, I want to do more than that now!" Noah kissed me again and we fell onto the bed.  After a day spent trying to hide our relationship, we were going to take advantage of our time together.  Noah was starting to kiss his way down my neck when he stopped all of a sudden.  "I did have a plan for tonight.  You always manage to distract me, Shelly!"  He got up and dug around in his bag. He came back to the bed with two wrapped presents. "I wanted to give you your gifts when we were alone."

"You're going to let me open my present before Christmas?" Noah had always been a stickler when it came to opening presents early. I think he mainly made me wait because it drove me crazy when I knew he had a present for me.

"I know we are planning on telling everyone about us on Christmas, but I wanted to be able to give you your presents while I still have you all to myself." He leaned in and gave me a kiss on my cheek. "Go ahead, open them."

I ripped into the wrapping paper, I was so excited to see Noah's gifts for me. I started with the bigger present. It was a wooden picture frame engraved with Noah & Elle. Inside was a picture of the two of us from the weekend we spent in Chicago. Noah had asked Lexi to take the picture of us before they left my apartment that night. "Oh, that's so sweet, I love it!"

"I know we have a ton of pictures of us from before, but I wanted you to have a new picture for our new start. Now, open the other one." Noah had always been so good at picking out presents for me and gets so excited about watching me open them.

The next gift was a delicate gold chain necklace with a small heart and small heart earrings.  They were beautiful, just the kind of jewelry I would have picked for myself.  "Noah, they're perfect. Thank you so much, I love you!" I gave him a big hug and many kisses, then jumped out of bed and started digging through my luggage, finally, pulling out my presents for Noah.

The first present he opened was also a framed picture. This one was a selfie we took of the two of us in front of the Chicago Bean. "Great minds think alike, right?" The next gift was a Chicago Cubs t-shirt. "For when you move to Chicago, we will definitely plan on going to some games!" Noah was a die-hard San Francisco 49ers football fan, so I knew there was no way he would be switching football teams, but I thought it might be possible for him to become a Chicago baseball fan.

"I'm sensing a theme here. You know I already want to move to Chicago, right, you don't need to bribe me?" I knew Noah had been in talks with his boss about transferring to the Chicago office but we hadn't talked about it since I had been in LA, he must still be waiting for an answer. I was hopeful that we would hear soon.