*Cue the fanfare*
Chapter twelve right here for ya, folks! Hope you enjoy!
Oh, and ps. don't forget to go to wattpad.com/watty to vote for The Kissing Booth in Most Popular, and Teen Fiction? Please! Tell everyone you know ;) I'd very much appreciate it!! xx
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 12
It was weird, without Noah there. It was also kind of weird to go back up to the house to make a sandwich for lunch, and see June sitting by herself reading a book out by the pool, with no Matthew.
Then, we felt kind of bad for her, because she was a bit alone, so we spent a few hours in the pool instead; and I think that she was quite glad of the company, even if she did just sit there sipping lemonade and reading a mystery novel.
It was around seven when I decided I should probably start getting ready. Lee said the volleyball guys had told him the day before that people probably wouldn’t start showing up until at least eight.
“Are you ready yet?” Lee asked for the twenty ninth time in the past half hour (I’d been counting). It was quarter to eight, and I was still throwing clothes out of the drawers and trying to choose something.
I didn’t think it’d be so hard to choose something to wear! I mean, would all the girls be in dresses? Would I look really stupid if I turned up in shorts and a tee?
“Elle, just pick something already! Do you even really care that much?”
“Well… no, but it’s just –”
“Just what?”
I shrugged. I didn’t really know why I was taking so much trouble to pick out an outfit. I’d braided my hair over one shoulder, and my makeup was done. It was only the clothes I was having a problem with.
Shorts, I decided firmly. I was going to wear shorts.
I rummaged through the haphazard mountain of grounds that had grown on my bed and the floor around me for the pair of dark denim distressed shorts. Then I picked up the first top I laid my eyes on, which happened to be a cream camisole with some floral-patterned lacing around the neckline.
“Okay,” I announced. “Ready.”
“It’s gonna be cold,” Lee reminded me.
“Right,” I said, snapping my fingers. I picked up the grey zip-up hoodie lying across my pillow, and then slipped my feet into my sandals. “Okay! Now I’m ready!”
Lee chuckled, and swung himself off from where he was lying across his bed with his hair grazing the floor. He was wearing dark khakis and a plain white tee, and had a hoodie exactly like mine (my grey hoodie used to belong to Lee, actually. But I kept stealing it because it was so comfy, so he bought a new one).
“Come on then,” he said, linking his arm through mine.
“You kids off, now, huh?” his mom said as we wandered through the lounge to go out the doors in the kitchen.
“Yup,” we answered simultaneously.
“Okay, well, have fun. But be careful.” She’d already read us the riot act on not accepting drinks from anyone, not letting our own drinks out of our sight, not getting too drunk, how dangerous it could be, to stay together at all times. It was like we’d never been to any party before. “What time do you think you’ll be back?”
“I don’t know,” Lee said. “Probably not much later than midnight, I guess. But don’t wait up.”
She gave us a wry kind of smile. “You think I’ll be able to sleep easy if you’re out at a party?”
“Noah’s been going to them for years,” Lee pointed out. I could hear the slight tone of annoyance in his voice, like he was annoyed his mom wasn’t letting him do things Noah had always done.
“And?” She laughed a little. “I never got to sleep until he got home.”
There was a moment’s pause, then Lee said, “Oh.”
“Don’t be too late,” June told us, the severe mom look back on her face.
We both nodded. “Alright.”
“Have fun!” she trilled, turning back to her book and mug of coffee (I guessed it wasn’t decaf, if she was really going to stay up until we got home).
“See you later,” we called back, and slid the doors closed behind us.
The night was warm, and the sky was clear. The red and blue flashing lights of an airplane went across the sky, and there were stars twinkling up there too, against the inky backdrop. It made me smile. I wanted to spin around in a circle, with my face tilted up to the sky like that.
“Go for it.”
So I did. Laughing, I spun around in circles with my arms flung out all the way down the beaten sandy path between the shrubbery until I lost my footing and fell over into a bush.
Lee was laughing too, and jogged over to give me a hand up.
It wasn’t hard to find the party. It was a little past eight, but there were a lot of people around. There were ice boxes, and a couple of small campfires. People had dragged around some logs to make circles, and if they weren’t sitting down, then they were milling around.
As we got closer, I saw that the people there were mostly around college age; a little older than us. But there were a ton of kids our age, too, and a few younger.
And, I couldn’t help but notice, there were a hell of a lot of girls in dresses.
At that point, though, I couldn’t really care. I was here to have fun. I wasn’t here to impress anyone – especially boys – and despite the fact I’d been worrying about what to wear earlier, right then, I honestly didn’t care.
“Come on,” I said, grabbing Lee’s hand, dragging him toward the nearest box of ice and beer cans. “I’m thirsty.”
“What happened to, ‘No, I won’t drink at all, don’t worry’?”
“I never said that. I said I wouldn’t get drunk. There’s a difference.” I bent down and grabbed two cans of beer out of the slowly melting ice box, handing one to Lee. He (somehow) managed to crack it open with his teeth, whilst I fumbled to open mine a little.
“Show off,” I muttered, but I grinned.
“Hey, Lee, you made it!” We both turned around and saw a guy walking up to us. It was kind of dark, so I couldn’t really make him out – until he got close enough that I recognized him. He didn’t seem to be able to see me as he walked up though.
“Hey,” Lee replied, nodding.
The whole time, I was wide-eyed and hoping he didn’t remember me.
This was Lee’s friend? Him, of all people?
“Who’s your friend?” Then he got close enough to recognize me. “Oh, you! Girl who fell on me!”
“Um.” I cleared my throat. Then I sipped my beer. “Hi.”
The guy I fell on in volleyball and Lee laughed. “The guys are around here somewhere,” the guy told Lee.
“Cool. We just got here.”
The guy nodded. The fire we were stood near was making his eyes look more amber than brown. I was still embarrassed that I’d managed to fall on this guy during a volleyball match; it was just my luck he wasn’t someone I’d never see again. Great. So I was stood there, replaying and replaying my Most Embarrassing Moment Ever from the previous morning in my head, and kind of staring into space, but kind of staring at him.
Then he turned his attention on me, and I blushed, because it looked like I was staring at him. I didn’t think it was possible, but I managed to make an even bigger fool out of myself.
“It’s, uh… Elle, right?” He smiled, politely ignoring the fact that I practically had a flashing neon sign over my head reading ‘IDIOT’.
“Yeah,” I said, after slightly too long a pause. Then I remembered to smile. “Yeah, that’s me. Hi.”
“You said hi already,” Lee informed me. He was trying so hard not to burst out laughing, I knew it. I could hear it in his voice. I felt like glaring at him, but I knew if I did that then I’d have a fit of giggles.
“Yeah, sorry. Um.” I shook my head slightly, trying to clear the fuzziness from my brain and forget how embarrassed I still was. “I don’t think I caught your name…”
“Kory.”
“Oh, right, cool. Hi, Kory.”
“I think that’s four times you’ve said hi.”
This time, I nudged Lee in the ribs, and turned to look at him. “Thank you, my human calculator.”
He replied in a robotic, monotonous voice, “You are wel-come.”
Thankfully, I wasn’t the only one to laugh hard at that. Kory laughed too, and then Lee joined in. I knew I wasn’t out to impress anybody here, but I didn’t want to spend the night with a bunch of people who thought I was a complete and utter fool. We were here to have fun.
“Come on,” Kory said. “I’ll introduce you to some people.”
And he did. They all looked either our age, or maybe freshmen and sophomores at college. There were about ten of them. I was kind of able to put names to faces, but I forgot half of them. Jack, Hunter, Laura, Miles, the twins Maya and Maria, Kathleen, Nathan and Damien. The twins, Maya and Maria, were both pretty quiet and soft-spoken, and had Hispanic accents. Nathan was the kind of guy who looked the very stereotypical image of the star quarterback in high school: blond, butch, with a strong face – and he was gay as gay gets. Laura didn’t seem to care for either me or Lee once she found out that Lee had a girlfriend.
They were nice, though. Damien seemed to be the joker of the group, so he and Lee got on like a house on fire. I talked to some of the boys and Kathleen. I didn’t even really know what we were talking about; I didn’t know a thing about these people, yet an hour had flown by and we’d been talking about all kinds of random stuff.
At one point, Lee was stood beside me and slung his arm around my shoulders while Kathleen was telling Damien all about how I’d fallen over and on top of Kory playing volleyball – because, as my luck would have it, almost all of the group Kory introduced us to had seen my attempt at volleyball.
After a while, Lee drained the last of his can and said, “I’m getting another drink, you want one?”
“No, I’m good.”
He mussed my hair and walked off. Kathleen trotted after him after saying she could do with a drink too.
“So what, are you guys dating, or…?”
I looked up at the guy who I think was Hunter, but I wasn’t entirely sure. It might’ve been Miles or someone. “Who?”
“You and him.” He nodded his head in the direction Lee had just walked off in.
“What?” I snorted. And I mean, actually snorted. But I guess I’d made a big enough idiot of myself before that I didn’t care anymore. “No way! Are you for real?”
He shrugged. “You two just look pretty cozy.”
“You’d make such a cute couple, though!” Nathan put in, winking at me.
I laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding. He’s my friend. Not in a million years would we ever be – you know, dating.” I started laughing again then at the thought of it.
Maybe-Hunter-but-maybe-Miles-or-someone said, “So you two aren’t together.”
“Nope.” I popped the ‘p’, still laughing.
He nodded. Whichever guy he was, he was definitely a man of few words.
But it didn’t really matter, because at that point a conga line started heading toward us – like, going right through the middle of our little huddle. We all broke apart to one side or the other; and it just so happened that Maybe-Hunter-but-maybe-Miles-or-someone was the only one who ended up on my side of the conga line.
It wouldn’t have mattered at all if the conga line wasn’t at least a hundred people long.
I never realized there were so many teenagers at the beach.
I smile though, at everyone bopping their way gradually past me, my head nodding to the infectious beat of the music that was playing from somewhere.
But the whole time, I could feel eyes on me.
So I turned my head and met Hunter/Miles/someone else’s steady gaze, just staring back at them.
“What?” I asked.
He shrugged, as if to say, ‘Nothing’, but he said, “Come on, this place is getting boring.”
And, just like that, he started walking off. I stood there, eyebrows raised a little, watching him go a few steps before he paused and turned back to me.
“Are you coming or what?”
“Um, no.”
Now it was his turn to raise his eyebrows. He didn't say anything, but everything about his expression said ‘Why?’, so I carried on, “I’m not going anywhere with some random guy I don’t even know.”
His top lip curled up at the one side. It was kind of a smirk, but kind of a sneer. It matched the breath of condescending laughter he gave pretty damn well.
“I’m not some random guy,” he told me.
“Well you pretty much are,” I argued. If I hadn’t been holding a can (albeit an empty one), I’d have crossed my arms. Whichever he was – Miles, Hunter, whatever – I was so not impressed at his attempts at flirting or whatever.
The sneer/smirk stayed on his face. “Oh, come on, it’s just a little fun. Besides, we won’t go too far away.”
“Hmm, let me think about – no.”
He laughed a little, but it wasn’t the nice kind of laugh, or even a drunk kind of laugh. It was the kind of laugh that made me want to grind my teeth. I turned my attention back to the conga line, wondering just how much longer it would be bopping past, and didn’t look back at him even when he stood right up close to me.
“I thought you said that guy you were with wasn’t your boyfriend.”
“He’s not.”
“Then let’s go someplace quieter,” he suggested, dropping his voice. I really had the urge to punch him or something for the moment. Then I found myself wishing Noah was around.
“Just because he’s not my boyfriend doesn’t mean I don’t have one.”
He cocked his head ever so slightly to the side, one eyebrow arching up a little, questioning me.
So I said, “Get lost,” because I couldn’t think of anything better to say. When the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to slap my forehead. Why couldn’t I come up with a witty retort when I really needed to? I sounded like such a loser…
The conga line’s timing was impeccable; Hunter/Miles/whoever-it-was didn’t have chance to even do that weird smirking sneer thing at me before I’d ducked around the trailing end of the line. On the other side, Lee was laughing with Damien and Nathan, and Maya (or maybe it was Maria) had appeared too, chatting to Kathleen.
I breathed a sigh of relief and hurried over to Lee’s side.
“Hey,” he said distractedly, then after a fleeting sideways glance at me he stopped listening to Nathan and frowned at me. “What’s up.”
I shook my head. “Nothing. It’s fine. Just…” I gestured a hand vaguely over my shoulder. “Being an idiot.”
Damien looked around, then said to me, “Yeah, Hunter gets like that sometimes with girls. Ignore him.”
“Gets like what?” Lee asked, his frown deepening.
Damien shrugged, looking like he couldn’t find the right word. Nathan said, “Pushy.”
The can of beer Lee was holding crumpled a little, with a sharp noise that made me and Nathan both jump a little. Lee was scowling, his eyes shadowed and his jaw set. He looked eerily like Noah in that moment.
I put a hand on his arm and squeezed. “Chill. It’s fine.”
“Did he do anything to you?”
I laughed, but it wasn’t quite my normal laugh. “No! Don’t be silly. Calm down already. Look, he’s already gone off somewhere.”
It took a couple of seconds, but Lee’s expression eased back out into a calm one, and then into a hint of a smile. I squeezed his arm again, and when he looked at me, I rolled my eyes – as if to say he was overreacting and being silly. He just grinned at me and bumped my hip, knowing exactly what I was thinking.
Then Nathan said, “Seriously, you two. Get a room.”
--------------------------------------------------------------
Hope you all enjoyed it :) don't forget - click that Watty Awards tab at the top and vote for The Kissing Booth (Teen Fic and Most Popular!!!) Pleeeeaaasseee...
I'll keep you updated on the Christmas story :) I will hopefully finish it by next week so it will be up in time for you to all have a little read of a holiday romance. You know, just in case this beach story isn't quite giving you the festive feeling ;)
I'll probably upload... maybe Friday? Not Thursday, I'm out then. I will do my best!! :) xx