Hi everybody – SO, something very special to share with you guys today, which you've only been asking me to do for years...
This April (2021) marks TEN YEARS since I began writing The Kissing Booth and uploading it to Wattpad! And so much has happened in that time. It's now become a five-book series (The Kissing Booth / The Beach House / TKB2: Going the Distance / TKB: Road Trip! / and TKB3: One Last Time, coming this summer) with translations worldwide, and a three-part series of Netflix Original Movies!
Honestly, when I began this story, I never could've imagined any of this. I wrote it for fun and thought I'd share it on Wattpad because, why not? You guys used to comment what a great movie it would make and I'd think lol, yeah right... But hey, what did I know!
To celebrate ten years of The Kissing Booth I'm doing a bunch of special content like reacting to the book on YouTube (you can find me there at Beth Reekles), some Live Q&As on Instagram (@authorbethreekles) and a giveaway on there too! And, of course, I had to do something special for Wattpad since this is where it all started...
So, without further ado, here's "Noah's Story", a one-shot of Noah's version of events at the infamous kissing booth... Enjoy!
*****
If there was one thing I admired about my little brother and his best friend, it was that they could make the impossible possible.
I mean, I admired it, but it also terrified me, and pretty much everyone else I knew.
They were always coming up with ideas that my mom would call 'zany'. Costume parties, game night tournaments...
Kissing booths.
Seriously, they couldn't just do the normal thing where you hooked a duck to win a prize, or shot darts at water balloons. They had to go big, go bold, be different. A kissing booth. I didn't know how they'd ever got that one approved by the student council but, hey, I shouldn't have been surprised. Lee and Elle always had a way of sweeping everyone else up in their schemes and I guessed this wasn't any different.
Their enthusiasm was infectious.
Unless, like me, you'd had a lifetime to get used to it.
Lee could be pretty exhausting, sometimes; or maybe that was just because I lived with him, so I got it twenty-four/seven. At least Elle always had one foot on the ground. You know, most of the time.
I smirked to myself, remembering a couple of weeks back when I had to carry her off a pool table before she committed to the really bad idea of skinny dipping. She definitely hadn't had two feet on the ground then.
Ugh, no.
Bad idea. I definitely shouldn't have been thinking about that night. The whole thing was... messy, but even 'messy' felt like an understatement. From the moment she asked me to do their kissing booth, that group of girls giggling over her shoulder, which, man, I really wished she hadn't done.
(Like I needed anyone putting the idea of kissing Elle Evans in my head.)
Then she'd tried to strip off to jump in the pool, and I'd had to hold her hair while she threw up... Not her finest moment, but she did look kind of cute when she was asking me not to tell either of our parents about it and then babbling on about dolphins for some reason.
It was cool though, because it wasn't my finest moment when she caught me in my Superman boxers and laughed at me for it, so we were pretty even on that front.
But yeah, thinking about that whole thing was a bad idea.
There was no way I was ever going to sign up to be a kisser at their booth. It was a horrible idea. Besides, she hadn't even meant it. I knew everyone had built up this impression I was some kind of womanizer just because I kissed girls at parties and never had 'official' girlfriends, but the fact that Elle seemed to see through that felt kinda good.
The school's annual Spring Carnival was bright, loud, busy. The grass was trampled into the ground and the smell of cotton candy was thick in the air. Coach always expected us to make an appearance at these things, but I had to admit: the Spring Carnival was something I secretly loved.
It really wasn't that complicated. It just made me feel like a kid who didn't have to worry about college applications or grades or anything like that. I could hang out, play some dorky games, eat a bunch of hot dogs, and because everyone else was doing it too, nobody cared that 'badass Noah Flynn' was getting a little too competitive at the dunk tank.
Hanging out with the football guys took my mind off Elle for a while, but it didn't last for very long: everyone was talking about the kissing booth. It had drawn in a huge crowd, and I let myself get dragged along with the other guys on the team, only half-listening to the conversation. They were talking about one of the hot girls running the booth. Someone cracked a joke about one of the guys on the booth – although it got shot down pretty quickly, because the others didn't think getting to kiss a bunch of cute girls sounded so bad.
It wasn't like I planned to get in the queue for the kissing booth.
I planned to avoid it completely.
Now I was here, I figured it'd be weirder if I left. I would just hang out with the guys, laugh at their jokes, find something to rib Elle and Lee about later.
But then I noticed Elle peeking out from the edge of the booth, assessing the crowd. She bit her lip, looking a little nervous and a lot excited. Lee must've been hanging around somewhere back there, too.
Everyone always thought she and Lee would end up together. Our families would make light-hearted comments about it at Thanksgivings and Christmases, their friends would joke about it from time to time. People at school had made a bunch of comments about it for as long as I could remember.
Elle and Lee always thought it was hilarious, whenever someone said it to their face. I had to wonder what other people were seeing – apart from two dorks goofing around, practically attached at the hip.
They didn't seem so attached at the hip now. The queue kept moving along and Lee was still nowhere to be seen. The girls at the booth switched, and one of the football guys groaned, doing the math.
"Shit," he mumbled to us. "Flynn, man, switch places with me. I'm not kissing my ex. I am not going back there. Me and Karen have already broken up like, eight times already. You gotta switch with me."
"Sure, man."
What else was I going to do? I was already standing here with a couple of dollar bills out already like I'd been totally planning on kissing one of the girls on the booth anyway.
I didn't know why that suddenly felt so weird. Like a kiss was a big deal. Like I was even going to remember it, or it was ever going to matter.
But it did. It did kinda feel weird.
I wasn't paying much attention as the couple of football guys went on ahead of me, laughing and jeering and clapping each other on the backs, but as soon as it was my turn, I noticed one of the girls turn pale and bolt out of the booth.
Ew, was she sick?
Yeah, Elle and Lee definitely didn't think this whole kissing booth thing through.
And then... there she was. Walking into the booth, picking up a tube of red lipstick, her hands shaking as she applied some.
Shit.
Okay.
A kiss was not a big deal.
Kissing Elle Evans?
Yeah, that... That might kind of be a big deal. I was suddenly never happier that Lee was nowhere to be seen; I couldn't be sure if he'd rag on us for this for the rest of eternity or lose his shit over it.
Her dark hair caught the sun, shining, and she looked a little pale, her dark eyes wide and body tense. Her outfit was cute.
Not that I was looking.
But, you know, I kinda was.
I shook myself. C'mon, Noah. It's just a kiss.
No.
Big.
Deal.
Somehow, I was at the counter, opposite Elle. She complained about Karen bailing, but it was half-hearted. She couldn't meet my eye; it looked way too hard like she was trying to play it cool.
Good – she seemed oblivious to the fact I was doing the same thing.
I could've just walked away, but somehow that seemed worse. I'd never live it down, for one thing, but I also knew that if I walked away without a kiss, it wouldn't look good for their booth. The curse of popularity. I couldn't do that to them. It was a crazy idea, sure, but they had worked hard on it.
Elle caught me checking her out, and I had to try not to wince when I told her she looked 'fine'. Fine? Jeez. Talk about an understatement. But it came out casual, offhanded, like I didn't care, and she still seemed to take it as a compliment.
Huh. Maybe she could tell how nervous I was.
"I didn't think you were going to show up here."
Elle always had a habit of talking when she got real nervous about something. Which wasn't something she did with me a lot – she usually just rolled her eyes and shot me down with a snarky comment and called me on my shit instead.
She wanted to kiss me, I realized.
And damn, if I hadn't thought about kissing her.
"I didn't pay to talk, you know," I replied instead.
Elle looked at me, eyes wide and dark, lips parted slightly. The lipstick didn't really suit her and it was smudged at the corner of her mouth. I guessed that wouldn't really matter in a minute, though.
"I paid," I told her, pushing the dollars across the rickety wooden counter, "to get a kiss."
Elle gulped, and I heard it. I was pretty sure if everyone else shut up and the music stopped, I'd hear her heart thundering. She looked a little terrified, but also a lot determined.
If there was one thing I knew about Elle Evans, it was that she didn't back down from a challenge.
And, I mean, I knew a lot of things about Elle Evans. We'd known each other our whole lives.
I also knew she'd never kissed a guy before.
Hell, like that mattered. I'd kissed plenty of girls, but I'd never kissed Elle Evans before.
Suddenly, just like that, I was terrified, too.
I smirked at her a little wider, but she had that look on her face like when she was getting in her head about something; if it was obvious I was as nervous as she was, she didn't notice. I heard her draw a shaky breath.
God, she smelled good.
Had she always smelled this good?
I leant halfway across the counter towards her.
If I wasn't a reckless jerk, I'd probably think better of this whole thing. I definitely would've if Elle wasn't looking at me like that – like she wanted to kiss me, like she... wanted me.
If you'd asked me a week ago, I would have laughed in your face and said the idea of kissing her was impossible.
But, hey.
Here we were.
Her eyes fluttered shut, lashes thick and dark against her flushed cheeks, and she leant towards me.
Let's make the impossible possible, Elle Evans.
*****
Aaah! And there we have it! I really hope you guys enjoyed this. Make sure you check out my other social media for more content and giveaways this month, pre-order The Kissing Booth 3: One Last Time ready for the book and movie coming out this summer (date still to be confirmed!) and finally...
Thank you. Whether you've been a fan of Elle, Lee and Noah since April 2011 or found them through the movie or are just stumbling across this now, thank you. None of this would have happened without you guys!
xo Beth