Double celebration! I have less than 10,000 words left to write for NaNoWriMo (despite the fact that story is no where near finished, haha!) and I'm almost caught up on that, and (now this is the big one) The Kissing Booth has just today reached 100,000 votes!!! One hundred thousand! Oh my gosh!!!! That's amazing, I can't thank you guys enough!! I appreciate it so much :D Especially considering I've entered it into the Watty Awards, haha!
Anyhow, hope you enjoy this chapter! xx
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Chapter 8
I spent the next day in bed. And I literally did not leave my bed except to use the bathroom. Lee was making the most of the last of his time with Rachel before her parents came to get her. I might’ve minded if I wasn’t sick.
When the storm hadn’t let up after about twenty minutes or so of Noah and me seeking refuge at the old shack, we decided we had no choice – which we really didn’t. I didn’t have my cell, and the storm had messed up the signal on Noah’s cell so he couldn’t get through to anyone.
So we had to run back to the beach house. In the rain.
Neither of us were surprised to wake up with headaches, stuffy noses and, in my case, a hacking cough.
I felt so gross, I didn’t even want to leave my bed. I tried, got three steps toward the door, then groaned and went back under the covers. June brought me some herbal tea, then tea with honey, then chicken soup – and they did make me feel a little better. Well, them and the antibiotics and Nyquil she picked up from the store.
Lee came in to see me around two in the afternoon. His hair was damp and he was dripping a little.
“Has Rachel gone?” My voice was croaky and rough, raw from all the coughing.
“Not yet. Her parents left late, so it’ll be another couple of hours before they get here. But enough about that.” He launched himself onto my bed so he lay next to me, his nose nearly touching mine. I held my breath, because I didn’t want him to get sick. “How’re you feeling?”
I shrugged, then pulled my pajama top over my mouth and nose. “Not too great. Lee, go enjoy your last couple of hours with your girlfriend. We have plenty of time to hang out in the next couple of days.”
His smile faltered. I could see a little spark die in his eyes. But he tried to keep his tone good-natured and teasing when he said, “Trying to get rid of me, Elle?”
“No!” I said hastily. I started shaking my head, but stopped because it made me feel dizzy. “I don’t want you getting sick!”
He laughed, and wrapped an arm around me over the covers, pulling me into a hug – which was kind of awkward with about four layers of blankets between us. “Jeez, Elle, you’re so silly sometimes! I don’t care if I get sick, anyway. I’m hanging out with you. Rachel can cope for a little bit with the TV. My best friend is sick, and that’s way more important.”
“You left me this morning though.”
“Yeah, ‘cause you kept on at me to go to the beach!” he defended himself, still laughing and grinning. “And then my mom shooed us out before you could pass on your germs. But you’re missing the point! I’m here to lift your spirits in your time of need.”
“My time of need?” I started to laugh, but it turned into a coughing fit. Once that stopped, I said, “See? Sick. Go away.”
“This is the thanks I get?” he sighed. “You’re so mean sometimes, Shelly.”
“I’m being kind in the long run.”
“Whatever.” He mussed my hair gently, which made me scowl at him. But I didn’t bother to fix it. “So, you never told me. What did you do last night?”
I shrugged. “Um, Noah made dinner.”
“Ah, no wonder you’re sick!”
I laughed, and again I had to turn away, coughing hard. “Then we went for a walk down the beach. It was so totally cute and sweet, like a movie scene or something! The waves, the peace and quiet…”
“Ooh, romantic!” Lee cried in a falsetto voice. He flicked his hair back – spraying me with water as he did so – and propped his chin in his hand. “Tell me everything, girl!”
I kicked at him from under the covers. “Stop teasing me, or I won’t tell you anything.”
“I’m sorry.” He grinned. “Go on.”
“So it was really great and then it started raining, and we ended up by the old surf shop? The one that’s all boarded up now? And then we had to run back in the rain.”
I sneezed violently, and Lee cringed away for a moment. “Oh, and that’s all you did?”
“No, we made out a lot, too.”
He laughed. “’Kay.”
“So how was your –” Sneeze. “– your night with Rachel?”
“Good, I guess.”
“You guys had a fight, didn’t you?” I said, my voice cracking and raspy because I was trying not to cough. “Have you talked it out?”
Lee shrugged. “Kind of. Not really. It was over something really silly.”
“What?”
He rolled onto his back, folding his arms behind his head and looking at the ceiling.
“Well I told her I’d pay for dinner and she said she’d pay, because I bought the movie tickets and all the snacks, and I said no, it was on me, and I said the same when she said I should at least let her pay for herself. Then she went on some big rant about femininity and slammed down a twenty dollar bill, and stormed out.”
“Oh. That.”
“What? Why do you say it like that?”
I shrugged. “It seems to happen a lot, I guess. I always hear the girls talking about stuff like that at school.”
“I didn’t even know Rachel was capable of ranting,” Lee said.
I smiled a little. “How bad was it?”
“She wasn’t yelling. Just making a case like she was on the debate team, and making me feel bad. I was just trying to be nice, though. You know, ‘cause it was her last evening here.”
I nodded. “Well… I don’t know. I’ve never been in that situation.”
“Yeah, because the only guy you’ve dated you snuck around with for months.”
Ouch.
I still felt bad about it all – not just the sneaking around and hiding everything from Lee, but also the fact it was his brother.
His head whipped around to look at me though.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized quickly, wide eyed and sincere. “That was a low blow.”
“Kinda.”
A few heartbeats passed in silence; but it wasn’t a bad silence. It was hardly ever the bad kind of silence with Lee.
He was the first to break it: “Elle.”
I made a noise, something between a suppressed cough and a mumble.
“You know I love you, right?”
My lip twitched up into a smile. Lee was nowhere near as bad as his brother, but when it came to gushy sentimental things, they were few and far between. He usually used it as a pick-me-up if I was feeling low, or if he was teasing me.
When Noah said it, it gave me a totally different feeling. When Noah said it, I felt like I was walking on air, giddy and dizzy and totally ecstatic. Almost literally high on it.
When Lee said it, I just wanted to hug him tight and never let him go. And now, even though I didn’t want him catch my germs and get sick, I couldn’t help myself from wrapping my arms around him and burrowing my face into his shoulder.
He laughed quietly, and I felt it reverberating through his chest.
“That was random,” I told him. My voice was muffled from where I’d pulled my top over my face, but also from where my head was buried in his shoulder.
He shrugged. “I feel bad.”
“Why?”
“Because… you know, the whole Rachel thing. I knew it was a bad idea to bring her here.”
“What?” I pulled back, wriggling back in the bed to look at him properly. “Where’s that coming from? Just because you guys had your first fight?” I broke off sputtering, another coughing fit taking over.
“No. You know,” he said, picking some cotton off the sheets. “We haven’t hung out much for ages. You and me. You had all your drama with Noah. I was with Rachel a lot. I mean… you always used to say even when we were in our forties, we’d be coming to the beach house, because it was the one thing we’d keep the same, right? Because that’s the kind of gushy crap you like saying.” He smiled, though. “And then I brought Rachel, and I haven’t even seen you properly for months. We haven’t really hung out in ages.”
“We hang out all the time.”
“Not like we used to.”
I was silent for a moment. He was right. I mean, sure, I’d ditched him a couple of times lately for Noah, but he’d done the same to me for Rachel. And I hadn’t minded, really, but now he said it, I realized that we actually hadn’t hung out like we used to for months. I sneezed again.
“Guess we had to grow up sometime,” I said.
Lee laughed, grinning. “You do come up with some very funny things, Shelly.”
“How was that funny? If anything, that was bordering on philosophical.”
We both cracked up. Except my laughter turned to coughing, but I was still beaming at him.
“I’m serious though,” I said. “But we’ve got a couple of days before we have to leave when it’s just going to be me and you, at least, right?”
“Right. If I don’t get sick from your company by then.”
“Ha-ha.”
“No, like, literally sick. I think I’m already running a fever just from being in this incubus of Shelly germs. Ugh.” He shuddered, pulling an elaborately disgusted face that made me giggle as he got up and walked to the door.
“Feel better, ‘kay?”
“’Kay,” I replied, smiling. I nuzzled down into the pillow, wrapping the bed sheets and blankets around me. They felt heavy, but heavy in a good way, like when it’s the middle of winter and your comforter is big and heavy and warm, and you don’t want to get up. The feeling made my eyes go droopy. I sniffled and yawned. I knew Lee was dithering, halfway out of the door, but I was already starting to fall asleep again, and I didn’t say anything more.
**
Click.
The latch of the bathroom door closing, clicking into place, made me stir, waking me up from some strange dream where I’d been in a milkshake bar with Ryan Reynolds and Daniel Radcliffe – who just so happened to be dressed up like a cow. (I don’t even know what that meant.)
“Sorry,” came a whisper. I rubbed my eyes, groggy, pulling my face up off the pillow, and sniffling. I looked around, and there was Noah standing by the bathroom door. “Did I wake you up?”
I mumbled incoherently. “S’okay,” I said then, and pulled myself up higher onto the pillows, sitting up.
Noah moved over to my bed, pulling back the layers of blankets and sheets covering me, and climbing in next to me. The room was kind of dark, and I suddenly realized that I must’ve slept for hours since Lee had left.
“What time is it?” I asked drowsily. My voice was rough, throaty and quiet, from this stupid summer cold and the cough.
“Eight?” he answered. “How are you?”
I sniffled. I had a headache, my nose was blocked up still, and I felt groggy and stuffy inside, all my limbs heavy. But I felt better than I had done in the morning, so I said, “Better. How ‘bout you?”
“I’m fine,” he told me. “I wasn’t that sick in the first place, but my mom got me all drugged up and now I’m fine. You know me, I’m like a wall of steel.”
“Abs of steel, definitely,” I said, pushing my fist into his muscled stomach. Then I gasped. “Noah! Get out!”
“What? Why?” he asked, looking totally confused.
“Well – well you’re not sick now! I am!”
He looked at me a moment before laughing quietly, and flicking the end of my nose (which was probably really gross, considering I kept sniffling). “Seriously, Elle? Even after I said I’m like a wall of steel?”
I reached over to the nightstand, grabbing up a Kleenex to blow my nose. It was gross, and yes, maybe not something that you’d want your boyfriend to see you doing, but I didn’t care in the slightest. I wriggled down further under the sheets, until they were tucked up under my chin.
Regardless, Noah wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me up close. I groaned in complaint, mumbling, “Noah, I’m sick!”
“Yeah, so was I. It’s no big deal. I can handle a cold, Elle.”
“Oh yeah? Then why were you in bed all day?”
“I went to the store, actually,” he said smugly. “After lunch. We were out of cereal.”
I frowned, not sure if he was telling the truth or not. “Whatever.”
He chuckled again, and planted a kiss on my forehead. “You’ll probably be fine by tomorrow, Elle, don’t worry. Just stay drugged up.”
I laughed. “Coming from the guy who scared guys away from me, that’s rich.”
“Ha-ha.”
I shrugged, and found myself relaxing in his embrace rather than staying rigid and trying not to breathe my germs on him, my head sinking down to rest on his shoulder.
“Rachel’s gone, then, huh?”
“Yep,” he answered. “Back to just the three of us now. At least for a couple more days.”
“Yeah…”
“I wish I didn’t have to go to see college campuses. It sucks. And I bet the next few years, I won’t be coming back here. This is probably my last year here.”
I didn’t think I’d ever heard Noah sound so sad. He tried to hide it though, and coughed abruptly like that’d cover up any emotion his voice betrayed.
“Next year will probably be your last year, too, and Lee’s,” he told me.
“Trying to kick me when I’m down, Noah? I’m already sick, now you’re just trying to depress me, too?” But I laughed a little when I said it.
“Ha-ha. I’m serious, though.”
I shook my head. “We’re coming back every year.”
He chuckled under his breath. “Don’t count on it, Elle. You guys can try, but it’s probably not gonna happen that way. Pessimist, I know, I know,” he said, cutting across me as I started to tell him he was being stupid and pessimistic. “But not everything has a happily ever after.”
I was silent for a moment, and my unspoken question seemed to hang in the air between us: What about us? What about our happily ever after?
I felt a sinking feeling in my gut, my stomach twisting around with doubt and worry. But I pushed it away, totally determined that I wouldn’t bring myself down, at least until he left for college.
“Noah, you are such a pessimist. Now shut up, please, I’m tired.”
He chuckled. “You’ve been sleeping like a zombie all day.”
“Technically zombies don’t sleep, because they’re not alive so they don’t need to sleep.” There was a moment pause. Awkward. “Blame Lee, he makes me watch zombie movies.”
Noah laughed again. “Okay then, you’ve slept like a sick person all day.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” I said, and suddenly broke out in another coughing fit, although it wasn’t so bad as it had been in the morning. It was like everything in my body, even this damn cold, wanted to have Noah lose the argument. Actually, it was barely an argument. But it felt like one.
“Aw,” he said gently, but I could’ve sworn he was trying not to laugh as he pulled me back into his arms. He stroked my frizzy, messy ponytail. “Get some sleep,” and he kissed my forehead. I sniffled again, but couldn’t stop myself from wrapping an arm around Noah and snuggling up to him. He seemed warmer than the fourteen hundred layers covering me, and I could feel his heart thudding near where my hand rested on his chest. And the way he held me, I felt as though he would never let anything hurt me.
I never ceased to find it just a little weird that I felt inexplicably safe with Noah when he was such a violence junkie.
And, after a while of us just lying there like that, not speaking, I fell asleep again with a smile on my face.
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What did you think of it? :) I hope you all liked it! Drop a vote if you did, comment if you can spare a few seconds!!!
Again, THANK YOU SO MUCH, ALL OF YOU! One hundred thousand votes (and a little bit) is absolutely phenomenal... Especially for a story I just started out writing for fun. So thank you. Seriously, I appreciate it so much!
Next chapter will be up maybe Monday/Tuesday? :) xx