by Beth Reekles
ALSO BY BETH REEKLES
The Kissing Booth
The Beach House: A Kissing Booth novella
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2020 by Beth Reekles
Cover art used under license from Shutterstock.com
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Ember, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Simultaneously published by Penguin Random House UK, London.
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ISBN 9780593172575 (pbk.)
Ebook ISBN 9780593172582
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Contents
Cover
Also by Beth Reekles
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26: Epilogue
Acknowledgments
For Gransha, who has been my biggest fan from the very start
Chapter 1
“Senior year, baby!”
Once the car door slammed shut behind me, I tilted back my head and let my eyes slide closed, drawing in a deep breath. The sun tickled my cheeks, and a smile played on my lips. The school smelled of freshly cut grass, and the air was filled with the bubbly chatter of teenagers running around the parking lot, meeting up with their classmates again after summer. Everybody always complained about how much they hated the first day of school—I was sure that everyone secretly loved it, though.
There was just something about the new school year that meant new beginnings. Which was kind of ridiculous, because it was high school, but that didn’t stop it from feeling true.
I turned to Lee, my eyes open again now, and he shot me a grin.
It might have been a Monday morning, but I felt weightless. My smile mirrored his. “Senior year, here we come,” I replied softly.
If here was anything worth being excited about, I was sure that the start of senior year was it.
I’d heard people say that your college years were supposed to be the best years of your life—but college sounded like it was going to be so much more hard work than high school, even if it did mean more freedom. Lee and I were convinced that senior year was the last year to really enjoy ourselves, before adulthood hit.
I moved around the car to lean against the hood, next to Lee. He’d always made a fuss about his precious car, the ’65 Mustang he cherished so dearly; hell, it practically sparkled.
“I can’t believe it’s finally here. I mean, think about it: this is our last first day of high school. This time next year, we’ll be at college….”
Lee groaned. “Don’t remind me. I already had that speech off my mom this morning—complete with tearful eyes. I don’t even want to think about college.”
“Tough luck, buddy. It’s inevitable. We’re moving up in the world.”
Even though the thought of college applications made my stomach twist, too, I’d tried to work on my application essay over the summer but still hadn’t made any progress on it.
I didn’t even want to think about the possibility that Lee and I would end up at different colleges. That he’d get accepted somewhere I didn’t. That we might end up apart next year. We’d spent our entire lives practically joined at the hip. What the hell would I do without him around?
“Unfortunately,” Lee was saying, drawing me out of my thoughts. “Look, you’re not going to start waxing lyrical about the future or something, are you? Please say if you are. I’ll leave you to your thoughts and go find the guys.”
Playfully, I shoved my shoulder into his. “I’ll stop talking about college now. Promise.”
“Thank God for that.”
“Although, speaking of the guys—has Cam told you anything about this new neighbor?”
“I’d almost forgotten about that.”
Cam, one of our closest friends since elementary school, had sprung the news on us last week that some guy had moved into the house opposite his, and since he was our age, Cam’s parents had suggested he take the new guy under his wing and introduce him to us—and the way he’d said “suggested” made it sound like they’d given him an ultimatum about it.
Lee carried on. “I know he’s from Detroit. And his name’s Levi. Like the jeans. I don’t know much else about him, though. I don’t think Cam knows anything else about him either, really.” Then he stood up off the Mustang. “I’m just hoping he’s not a total asshat, since we promised Cam we’d try and help him fit in. Help Levi fit in, I mean.”
“I know what you mean,” I mumbled, but I was distracted by my cell phone, which had started to ring in my hands.
Lee’s gaze went to the caller ID, and he sighed. I looked up to give him an apologetic smile just in time to see him roll his eyes at me and start to stroll away, backpack slung over one shoulder.
“No phone sex, Shelly. This is a school. Keep it PG,” he said.
“Oh, like you and Rachel never made out in the janitor’s closet!” I shot back. He just gave me a thumbs-up over his shoulder.
I answered the phone. “Hey, Noah.”
Noah, Lee’s older brother, was half the reason I’d not made progress on my college application essay: after sneaking around with him behind Lee’s back for a couple months last spring (which ended in total disaster when Lee caught us kissing), and then officially dating him since the summer, we’d spent as much of our summer vacation together as possible. He was in college at the other end of the country now, at Harvard.
He’d been gone barely a couple weeks, and I couldn’t get over how much I missed him. How was I going to cope with not seeing him until Thanksgiving?
“Hey, how are you?”
“I’m good. Start of senior year excitement. How’s co
llege?”
“Eh. Not much different from when I called you last night. I had class this morning. Math. It was pretty interesting. Second-order differentials.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I don’t think I want to know.”
Noah laughed, a soft breathy sort of chuckle that made my heart melt. Almost everything about him made my heart melt or my knees go weak or my stomach fill with butterflies. I was a goofball, a cliché straight out of a movie. And it felt great.
I missed that laugh as much as I missed feeling his arms wrapped around me or his lips on mine. We spoke all the time—video chat, Snapchat, messages, good old-fashioned phone calls…but it wasn’t the same. And I was a little cautious about letting on just how badly I missed him, in case it made me sound too clingy. I still wasn’t really sure how to go about all this relationship stuff.
“You’re such a nerd,” I told him.
I’d never thought of Noah as a nerd. I mean, he’s smart. He’d had a 4.7 GPA (his mom had told me that recently—I’d known he was smart but hadn’t realized how smart before now). He’d narrowly missed out on being top of his class, yet he had a reputation all through high school as the resident bad boy. Up until we got together, I’d never really thought that underneath his image, he might actually like learning stuff like second-order differentials. Whatever they were.
“Shh, someone might hear you.” I could hear the smirk in his voice. “Anyway, enough about me. I talked to you for, like, an hour straight last night about college. I just wanted to wish you luck for your first day of senior year.”
I smiled, even though he couldn’t see. “Well, thanks. I appreciate it.”
“So, what’s it feel like? Being the big kids in school?”
“Kind of scary, kind of nauseating, and a lot exciting. I’m trying not to get too stressed out about college and stuff.”
“Scary, right?”
“Thinking about college makes me feel grown up when I feel anything but a grown-up. I mean, my kid brother had to come kill a spider in my room last night.”
“Tell me about it. I had to ask someone how to use the dryer in the laundry rooms the other day. I felt so stupid.”
“You’ve never done laundry?”
“My mom is very particular about how the laundry should be done, Shelly; you know that.” I did—she’d asked Lee to spread sheets to dry once, when she went out, only to redo them as soon as she got back. She didn’t ask him to do them again. “Besides, those four teddy bears on your bed probably don’t help with the not-feeling-like-an-adult.”
“I bet there are a bunch of girls at college—some guys, too, probably—who have a teddy bear or two on their beds.”
“But not four.”
“Hey, now, don’t you say a word against Mr. Wiggles.” I couldn’t help but let a pout slip onto my face. “Anyway, you’re the one with Superman boxer shorts.”
Before Noah got a chance to defend himself, there was the sound of someone pounding on a door in the background on his end of the line. He sighed. “Looks like I’ve got to go. Steve was in the bedroom, so I went to the bathroom to talk to you, for some privacy—”
“Flynn, come on, man, I need to take a piss!” his roommate, Steve, yelled. His voice was muffled, probably by their bathroom door.
“I should go, too. The guys will be here by now, and we’re supposed to meet Cam’s neighbor and help him feel welcome.”
“Is that the guy from Detroit? Seven For All Mankind?”
“Levi.”
“That’s what I said. Well, good luck with that. And, hey, tell Lee good luck at tryouts for me. I texted him, but he never replied.”
A rattling noise sounded at his end and more knocking. “Flynn! C’mon!”
“Have a good last first day of school,” Noah said.
“Thanks. I love you.”
I heard the smile in his voice and could practically see the dimple in his cheek that accompanied that smile when he said, “I love you, too.”
We both lingered on the line a moment longer, neither of us saying anything, just listening to the sound of each other’s breathing. Then I took the cell phone away from my ear and hung up, making sure the ringer was off before shoving it into my satchel, where it promptly buried itself among my brand-new notebooks and other first-day necessities (namely a hairbrush, a candy bar, a tampon, and a pair of very tangled earphones).
“Elle! Hey! Over here!”
I craned my neck at the sound of my name being called, standing on tiptoe to look. Dixon was a few yards away, with Lee and our other friend Warren waving me over. I waved back, just so he knew I’d seen him, before heading over.
I weaved between a couple of cars to get to him and the guys, and just as I began to scoot past an unfamiliar green Toyota, the driver’s door opened into my hip and knocked me back against the Ford behind me.
I sucked in a sharp breath, waiting for the Ford’s alarm to wail—and I let the air out in a rush when it didn’t.
Guess I won’t be the school klutz this year. New beginning, here I am.
“Oh, shit. Oh, man, I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you there….”
“It’s totally my fault—don’t worry about it,” I said, brushing the hair out of my face before taking a look at the driver. I didn’t recognize him: he was all long limbs, but not actually much taller than me, and his eyes were hidden behind sunglasses so dark I could see myself in them. He pushed the sunglasses up into his curly brown hair in a fluid motion; then his arm hung limp at his side, one hand clenched around a backpack strap.
He had nice eyes. Friendly sort of eyes. They were green and they crinkled in the corners. I had to squint a little, because the sun was just behind him. He shifted his weight to his other foot and blocked out the sun.
He was cute.
“Are you okay? Did I hurt you? I’m so sorry—”
“Seriously, don’t worry about it. I’m fine. Really.” I smiled for emphasis, even if my hip did hurt a little.
The sound of the passenger door opening caught my attention, and I immediately recognized Cam, with his floppy blond hair and battered blue backpack that he’d had since, like, the eighth grade. He grinned over at me.
“Why am I not surprised? Dude, we’ve told you, you need to watch where you’re walking.”
I pulled a face at him before turning back to the long-limbed guy with the sunglasses, about to say something like “You must be Levi,” but Cam beat me to the punch.
“I guess I should introduce you two. Elle, this is Levi. Levi, my friend Elle.”
“Nice to meet you.” He held a hand up in a wave and flashed a smile that showed teeth so white I thought they must be bleached.
“Nice to meet you, too. Sorry for walking into your car door. When Cam told us we should meet his new neighbor, klutz wasn’t exactly the first impression I was going for.”
His smile went wider. “So are you always this clumsy, or is this just an off day for you?”
“She’s a klutz,” Cam pitched in, and I thought he sounded kind of snappy. Did he not like his new neighbor, or was he just stressed? Sensing something off, I changed the topic.
“Dixon’s just over there, with the others.”
“Awesome.” Cam started off in the direction I’d just gestured, spotting the guys quickly, but Levi made no move to follow him straightaway.
“Come on,” I said to the new guy, “you should come meet everyone else.”
When introductions had been made, and Levi started asking about the sports here (he’d been on the lacrosse team back in Detroit), I nudged Cam in the side gently.
“What’s the deal between you two?” I kept my voice low. “Tell me to shut up if I’m crossing a line, or something, but…I don’t know, it just seems like you don’t really like the new guy much.”
<
br /> Cam’s grumpy expression became something more abashed. “It’s not that I don’t like him—I don’t really know him that well yet,” he mumbled. “I just hate being responsible for the new kid, you know? I feel like I have to rein in the sarcasm and be super nice.”
“It’ll be fine. He seems nice. At least try not to look like Brad when my dad tells him to eat his broccoli.”
“Easy for you to say,” he muttered. “The guy drives like a maniac—and my car’s still in the garage.”
“I’d like to remind you of the time that you backed into a post.”
“Ugh, don’t.” But he smiled, and I grinned back. Lee’s shoulder bumped into mine as he gestured in his conversation with Warren and Levi about football, and I caught his eye briefly.
Senior year, here we are.
Chapter 2
I quickly remembered why the first day of school was so bad: hordes of students around us were clamoring to get to their homeroom to grab seats for their friends before all the good ones were gone, and the freshmen stood in tiny groups, blocking the corridors, looking lost and overwhelmed—even a little sick, in some cases.
It was weird not to spot Noah’s head somewhere, cutting a path through them all.
Lee’s shoulder bumped against mine, and I locked my fingers around his wrist so we didn’t get separated.
I looked over my shoulder. “I’ve lost the others.”
“They know their way.” Lee paused for a moment, and someone barreled into me from behind before cursing at us and moving around. Lee tugged me down the nearest corridor, taking a detour to our homeroom class. Any other day, this way would take twice as long, but today at least we avoided being trampled.
Mr. Shane, our senior-year homeroom tutor, was an English lit teacher, so his classroom was covered in posters of the books his classes would be studying, and A4 photos of authors like John Steinbeck, Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
