Elle's POV
"Hey, Lee, what do you want to drink?" I yelled out to my best friend as I ran down the stairs from his room. We had come straight to the Flynn's after school today and were getting ready to start cramming for a huge history test we have tomorrow. My best friend, Lee, and I always do pretty much everything together, well at least we did until a few weeks ago. A few weeks ago, the Kissing Booth happened and Lee started dating his girlfriend, Rachel, which left me third wheeling it or on my own these days. Luckily, Rachel wasn't in our history class, or else I'm sure it wouldn't be just the two of us today either. Although, I really can't complain about the Kissing Booth. After all, I had my own relationship that came out of it, but that's still a secret right now.
I heard Lee's yelled reply, "Gatorade!" as I pushed open the door to the kitchen and started to walk towards the fridge. I've always loved the Flynn's kitchen. It is huge and decorated beautifully, like the rest of their home, but has always felt homey to me. I have wonderful memories of Lee's Mom, June, trying to teach me how to cook here. Smiling as I walked in, I still had the song that had been playing in Lee's room in my head and I was half humming half singing to myself. All of a sudden, I felt a pair of hands around my waist and felt myself being spun around until my back was against the now closed door. Once I saw who it was, I swallowed my surprised yelp, instead making only a quiet squeak. I found myself face to face with a sexy, smirking Noah Flynn. Noah is Lee's older brother and although I've known him all my life, things have been much different between us lately.
"Shelly. It's about time I found you alone," Noah whispered right before he crashed his lips to mine. My arms immediately found their way around his neck as I kissed him back. Never breaking our kiss, I felt Noah reach down and put his arms around my legs right before he picked me up and moved me to sit on the kitchen counter where our normally huge height difference disappeared.
At this point, I'm no longer thinking about June Flynn or the beautiful homey kitchen I'm sitting in. I'm not really thinking about anything as Noah's lips moved from mine and start to kiss along my jawline. I forgot myself in the kiss for a second longer as he started kissing his way down my neck, his arms moving under my shirt and up my back as he pulled me closer to him. Kissing Noah Flynn was so much better than studying for some stupid history test with Lee. Crap, wait, Lee. . . Lee is home! I moved my arms from around Noah's neck to his chest, pushing him away as I exclaimed, "Noah, stop, we can't. Lee's right upstairs waiting for me to come back!" Leave it to Noah, trying to take things to the next level right there in the kitchen when his brother is right upstairs. This seemed to be happening a lot these days, things between us escalating so quickly. We couldn't seem to get enough of each other.
Noah pulled back, leaning his forehead against mine and looking straight into my eyes. "What do you mean we can't? Shelly, we're alone together for the first time in a week." Noah responded, sounding a little frustrated, but grinning as he said it.
Noah and I have been dating for a few weeks now. Well, I'm not sure you would call it dating, we don't actually go anywhere in public together. I suppose it's more that we talk on the phone and text anytime we can and try to find any chance we can to sneak off alone to see each other. We did go on one date, two weeks after the Kissing Booth. It became a huge ordeal to come up with an excuse of why I couldn't hang out with Lee and figure out how to get out of my house ready for a date without my Dad figuring out what was going on. Planning how to get there, since I couldn't have Noah pick me up and I don't have my own car yet, only added to my predicament. Noah found a restaurant pretty far away from where we lived where we didn't think we would see anyone we knew, but we were both so paranoid the whole time that it kind of ruined the mood. Noah was so sweet all night, though, which was not at all what I was expecting and totally made everything I had done to get there worth it. I'm still kind of in shock about all of this, I mean I've been crushing on Noah Flynn for years now and I never would have believed that he would be interested in me too. The only downfall is that Lee would flip out if he knew anything was going on between us.
Luckily, Lee has been a bit distracted with his new girlfriend and hasn't noticed much about what has been going on with me these days. You would think that would mean more alone time for me and Noah, but we've still been struggling to find time together where we are by ourselves. Lee has blown me off for Rachel a few times, but those have been times we were going out with a group of friends or when he was supposed to help me babysit my little brother Brad. I couldn't exactly have Noah replace Lee for either of those things. The other times, Lee has just invited Rachel along to whatever we have had planned. I haven't had many close girlfriends before, so in some ways it's been fun to get to know Rachel. But did Lee really have to bring her to our bestie day at the pier? I know Noah thinks I need to blow Lee off one of these days, so the two of us can spend time together, but I'm terrified he's going to find out what I'm doing. I don't even want to think about what will happen then.
I had left my hands on Noah's chest after pushing him away and I finally lifted them off of him to play with his school uniform tie. Neither of us had changed from school yet so we were both still in our uniforms. Suddenly I wondered just how we ended up with this time alone together. Giggling, I asked Noah, "Did you follow me down here?"
Noah was still standing between my legs as I sat on the counter. He lifted his hands from where they had been on my thighs and started playing with my hair as he responded, "I was walking by Lee's door and heard you say you were going to the kitchen for drinks. I may have run to the living room to wait for you and snuck into the kitchen after you."
"You were walking by Lee's room or standing outside eavesdropping?"
"I don't need to stand outside his door to listen in on you two dorks. You're so loud, I can practically listen in on your conversations from my room." I playfully stuck my tongue out at Noah for his dork comment, as he continued, "But I may walk by his door really slow these days, to see if there's a chance I can get you alone like this." He leaned in and gave me a quick kiss on my lips before I pushed him back again.
I couldn't resist running my fingers through his hair as I answered. "Lee is upstairs waiting for me. I was getting us drinks before we start studying for our history test. I don't want him to come down here to see what is taking me so long."
The expression on Noah's face turned serious when he responded, "We're gonna have to tell him someday, Elle." Noah and I have had this conversation far more than I wanted to in the last few weeks. I know Noah is frustrated with me about this but that's not going to change my feelings on the subject.
I finally decided I needed to put some distance between me and Noah if I was ever going to get out of the kitchen and I gently pushed him back so I could jump down from the counter. Seeing I was trying to get down, Noah huge hands wrapped around my waist as he picked me up to set me on the floor. "I know," I answered, getting on my tip toes to give Noah a quick kiss before turning around and extricating myself out of his grip. I walked towards the fridge to grab those drinks, adding, "We will tell him, just give it a little more time, okay?" I know how Noah feels about us hiding what is going on between us from everyone, but I'm terrified of how Lee will feel about this. I know how he feels about Noah, how jealous he's always been. At first, I thought it made sense to keep what was going on between us a secret because I didn't think there was any way this relationship between me and Noah would last long enough for it to become an issue. Now that things seem to be getting real between us, like this is an actual real relationship, I don't know what to do. I don't think I could pick between these brothers and I don't want someone to ask me to. But, I guess that is why I'm scared to tell Lee, I'm worried that is exactly what will happen.
Now that I've moved out of his reach, Noah is leaning down with his elbows resting on the island and his chin on his hands, giving me his puppy dog eyes before flashing me his smile that shows off his dimples. That smile that feels like it is meant for only me. Noah says, "We can wait if you want to, Elle, but not too much longer, okay? I'm tired of hiding us, I want everyone to know you're my girlfriend."
His girlfriend! Excuse me while I swoon over here. He's never called me that before. In fact, I've never been called that by anyone before. In all the years I've known him, how did I never know how sweet Noah could be? I smiled at Noah and blew him a kiss as I walked around the other side of the island and back to the door, staying just out of his reach. As much as I wanted one last kiss before I left, I knew how that went and how hard it was to tear myself away from Noah. I had been gone from Lee's room for far too long already. Noah was right though, we have hardly been alone together since our night at the Hollywood sign soon after we started dating. We needed to come up with a plan so we can have some alone time soon.
I made my way up the stairs and took a deep breath before opening the door to Lee's room. I let myself take one last look down the stairs and saw Noah standing there watching me. He winked at me, as if to say see you later. I laughed quietly and waved back at him. Whenever we were together, I felt reassured that we would find a way to make this relationship work and eventually figure out how to tell Lee.
As I walked into Lee's room and glanced around, I thought about how his room was almost as familiar to me as my own. Lee's room had hardly changed over the years, even as the rest of the Flynn home had been redecorated and remodeled to follow every new trend. Lee was not a fan of change and always wanted his room left alone. Sure, most of our favorite toys were gone now, stuffed animals and Legos making way for electronics and a drum set, but it didn't change the feel of his room. Although, it could do with a little more cleaning, an empty bag of chips was left on his desk, while dirty clothes littered his floor. Lee is sprawled in the middle of his bed and lifts his head in my direction as if to greet me, but I notice his eyes never really leave his phone. He must be texting Rachel, he has the goofy look on his face he always gets whenever he's around Rachel, or talking to her, or even talking about her. So, pretty much all the time these days. I notice his backpack is still sitting on his floor and I assume his books are inside, maybe he's forgotten about studying already. He probably has no idea how much longer I was gone than it should have taken me to get those drinks. I wonder how long I could have stayed in the kitchen before he would have noticed. Saved by the Rachel distraction. Finally, Lee looks up at me for real, pulling his focus off his phone. "Oh, Elle . . . the drinks, thanks."
"I had to dig around to find the blue Gatorade, you know they're always hiding in the fridge." I tried to explain what took me so long as I handed him the drink, even though he didn't ask. Blue was the only type of Gatorade Lee would drink. I don't know what his deal is, they don't taste that much different to me, but that's how he's always been. They were forever running out of blue Gatorade at the Flynn's. I always assumed that Noah was drinking it up just to annoy Lee.
"Should we start studying?" Lee asked, taking one more look at his phone before picking his backpack off the floor and starting to pull out his books.
Smiling at my best friend, I plop down on the futon, my normal spot for studying, and grab my history book. Lee seems to be pretty much oblivious to anything not Rachel related these days. Noah and I are lucky he's not paying much attention or this sneaking around stuff we're doing would be a lot harder. I guess I'm lucky Lee is so distracted with Rachel these days, right?
A/N - My favorite part of TKB series is the start of Elle and Noah's relationship when they are sneaking around. This part goes by way too fast in the movie, in my opinion, so when I decided to start another story, this is what I wanted more of. I hope you guys enjoy this!