The Kissing Booth #2

by Beth Reekles

  “I’m supposed to be his other half.”

  “You know what I mean.” Levi sighed. “I don’t know. I’m just trying to say that maybe there’s a good reason for it. I can’t see him being a dick just because he is a dick. He’s not. He’s a good guy.”

  “Yeah, he is.”

  Somehow, that only made me feel even worse.

  “I think I want to go home,” I said, folding my hands over my knees. “I’m not really in the party mood anymore.”

  I stood up.

  “Wait, you’re not gonna walk home, are you? (a) You’re not sober, so that’s not a good idea, (b) you don’t exactly live nearby, and (c) that’s just not safe at this time of night.”

  “Thanks for your concern, but I was actually only going to go find my purse. I’ll call my dad for a ride home.”

  “Oh,” Levi said, and stood up, too. “I don’t mind taking you home if you want. Then I’ll come back here for an hour or whatever till the others are ready to go.”

  “Are we paying you to be our personal chauffeur, or something?”

  “Nah, this is just me building up some good karma.”

  “I’m not sure you get the karma if you’re trying that hard.”

  “Worth a shot, right?”

  “I guess. Just a shame we’re not talking a shot of tequila.”

  * * *

  • • •

  At home, the light was on in the living room and the drapes were shut. Levi put the car in neutral and pulled up the hand brake.

  “Thanks. Are you sure I can’t give you some gas money?”

  “It’s fine, Elle, really.” He smiled. “But I may call in another babysitting favor in payment.”

  “Ah, I knew there was a catch.” I unbuckled my seat belt and climbed out. “Well, thanks. Again. I appreciate it.”

  I shut the door and walked up the path to my front door, but only got halfway to the porch before I heard him wind down the window and call out to me. I turned back.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sure Lee will come around. You guys will figure out the college thing. If you two are best friends, you’ll work things out.”

  “I hope so.”

  Then he smiled again, waved, and drove off. I was fumbling around in my purse for my house key when my dad opened the door.

  “I wasn’t expecting you back for a while.”

  I just shrugged. “I got bored. Wasn’t a great party.”

  “That doesn’t mean you got so drunk you threw up, does it?” He frowned like he was already trying to decide how long that deserved grounding me for.

  “No, it means it was a crappy night. I just wasn’t feeling it. Levi gave me a ride home.”

  “Did anyone else leave early? What about Lee?”

  “No, only me. I’m just gonna go up to bed.”

  “Are you sure? Me and Brad are watching the new Tom Cruise film. There’s not long left, but you can come watch it with us. It’s not exactly a difficult plot to pick up on….”

  Brad didn’t usually stay up this late, but I guessed it didn’t matter as a one-off. And I was kind of tempted, because I felt so crappy and maybe being around my family with a not-too-crappy movie would make me feel at least a little bit better.

  But I was way more tempted to go crawl under my comforter and stay there forever.

  “No, thanks. I’m just going to go to bed.”

  “Okay.” My dad had never known me to leave a party early; if anything, he’d tell me off the next day for getting home too late. So right now, I wasn’t surprised that he was looking at me with concern knitting his eyebrows together behind his glasses.

  I got halfway up the stairs before he called after me. “Are you sure everything’s okay? Did something happen?”

  I gave him a smile, seeing the worry turning to panic. “No, Dad, really. It’s fine. It was just a really sucky party, and I’m beat.”

  “You know you can tell me anything, right, bud?”

  “I know, Dad.”

  “And there’s nothing you want to tell me about?”

  “No. God, everything’s fine!” I huffed, and carried on up the stairs, and that was the end of that.

  * * *

  • • •

  Once I was wrapped up inside the cocoon of my comforter and wearing one of Noah’s T-shirts he’d left behind, and my makeup was all washed off, I looked at the screen on my cell phone, my contacts pulled up.

  June Flynn. Lee Flynn. Matthew Flynn. Noah Flynn.

  My thumb hovered, and I knew I needed to talk to one of the Flynn brothers—I just couldn’t decide which.

  Call Lee. Talk to him. Sort this out. He might be home by now. He promised his mom he’d be back by one and it’s twelve-forty. Call him.

  No, call Noah. You haven’t had a chance to talk to him properly since Monday, and that was only a little. Call him. Tell him about Lee and see what he has to say. It’s a Friday night and he’s probably just getting in from a party, too.

  I called Noah, even though he’d be fast asleep by now.

  It rang, and rang, and…rang, and…

  “Hey, it’s Noah. Leave me a message and I’ll get back to you.”

  Instead of hanging up as the message started, I held the phone at my ear as the beep sounded. When had he changed his voice mail message? It used to be shorter: “Hey, it’s Flynn. You know what to do.”

  I realized that, by now, he’d have ten seconds of me breathing down the line, and I figured I should probably say something. “Hey. It’s me. Um, Elle. I wanted to talk but I guess you’re asleep. I’ll call you tomorrow. Um…Love you.”

  Tonight, more than ever, I wished Noah were here with me.

  Chapter 8

  I expected Lee to call me and apologize the next day.

  He didn’t.

  By the afternoon, though, I gave up waiting for him to talk to me and I texted him, asking if he was with Rachel. He wasn’t; he was at home. So I went straight over there, psyching myself up to argue with my best friend if necessary and demand an explanation for why he’d been such a jerk at the party last night. And we really, really needed to talk about this whole college thing.

  I was losing faith in myself by the time I walked up to the front door.

  I didn’t really like fighting with anybody (except squabbling with Noah over petty things, but that was different). I hated the idea of fighting with my best friend most of all.

  Maybe it’d be better to forget all about it and just pretend it didn’t happen.

  The door opened.

  “Why are you standing out here?”

  I looked up, and Lee was smiling at me, but looking confused because I stood about a yard away from the door, hands clenched in fists down by my sides, and I guess I must’ve been standing there for a few minutes if he’d noticed.

  There were purple bruises under Lee’s eyes, which were bloodshot, like he hadn’t slept and had drunk way too much last night. His dark hair was damp—still wet from a shower, I guessed.

  I pressed my lips tight together. I had to talk to him about it, and I had to do it now, before I chickened out.

  My stomach flipped.

  My mouth fell open, and I blurted, “Why were you such a jerk to me last night? Are you doing this on purpose, pushing me away? Why don’t you want to go to college with me anymore? Is it because of Rachel? Is it something I’ve done? Is it to do with Noah?”

  “Whoa, slow down,” Lee said as I gasped for breath. “Look, come inside, and we’ll talk, yeah?”

  I nodded, and walked the rest of the way up to the door. Inside, I could smell June’s cooking—spicy, and good enough that it made my mouth water—and the TV was on in the living room, where I guessed Matthew, Lee’s dad, was. June yelled hi to me, and I shouted back, trying not to sou
nd as anxious as I felt.

  We headed upstairs to Lee’s room. He had a little balcony, and the doors were wide open, the thin drapes billowing outward with the breeze, and there was music playing on his Mac, which Lee turned down. I perched on the end of his bed.

  Usually, I’d treat Lee’s room like my own, but now I felt nervous. Now wasn’t the time to throw myself down on the bouncy mattress.

  It had been a while since I’d been over here. The room was tidier than I’d ever seen it. “You got rid of your drum kit,” I said, noticing the empty space in the room.

  He shrugged. “It wasn’t like I played it anymore. I sold it.” He took a seat in the spinning chair at his desk, straddling it backward. His toes pressed into the floor, and he swiveled side to side very slightly. I waited for him to say something, say anything, but he was quiet. And just like that, my patience snapped.

  “You know,” I said—and it came out angry. Sharp and fierce. It sounded wrong but I couldn’t stop it. “It’s bad enough that I barely get to speak to Noah lately, but I can’t stand you pushing me away as well. And I don’t just mean because of the college thing. We never talk, not like we used to, we hardly ever hang out, and I…I…It feels like you’re pushing me away…,” I finished lamely, trailing off. I was wringing my hands, I realized, and stopped, sitting on them instead. At least that way they wouldn’t shake.

  “I’m not pushing you away,” Lee sighed.

  “Yes you are.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “You are,” I insisted, my voice growing louder with conviction. I wasn’t going to have Lee brush this off, now that we were finally addressing it. Or, at least, now that I was. “It’s like you don’t even want to make time for me. Last night you told me to shut up.”

  Lee’s shoulders sagged, and he looked down at where his hands were clasped around the back of the chair. He knew I had a point.

  He was quiet for a while, which made me more nervous, and I stopped sitting on my hands so that I could fidget again. My heart thudded, and there was a lump in the back of my throat like bile.

  “I know. I’m a bad best friend” was what he finally said.

  “Thanks for admitting it and all, but I’d kind of like an explanation.”

  Lee ran his hands through his hair. He hadn’t cut it in a while, and now it was almost as long as Noah’s.

  “I didn’t mean to be such a dick. I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t want you to say sorry, Lee! I want you to tell me why. I want to know what’s going on.”

  “Nothing’s going on. So what, I drank too much, and I was a little bitch to you. I don’t know what you want me to say, Elle. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it. I get it if you’re mad at me.”

  I pushed my knuckles into my forehead, then scraped my fingers back through my hair and sighed. “Jesus, Lee, I’m…” I stood up, shaking my head and feeling sick. I couldn’t stay here if he was going to brush me off like this. “Fine. You know what? Keep it up. Keep acting like this. You might lose us all that way. All the guys said you were acting weird last night. But I don’t have to stand here and take this bullshit from someone who’s supposed to be my best friend. If you’re not going to talk to me—”

  Lee shot to his feet, knocking the chair over and blocking my way.

  “They call me Little Flynn.”

  “Huh?”

  “The guys on the football team. They call me Little Flynn. And Coach keeps talking about Noah, how he was faster, or throws better, or whatever. They’re all expecting me to be like him. I’m the new Flynn, you know?”

  “So what, that means you have to act like I don’t exist?”

  “It means I’m trying to…be cool.”

  I scoffed. “And acting like this? Being mean to all of us, telling me to shut up? This is being cool?”

  He didn’t have anything to say to that. He just looked down at his feet.

  “I thought you were already cool because you won the initiation thing.”

  “They said Noah won when it was his initiation to the team, and he was still a sophomore at that point. They’re expecting me to be as good as Noah was.”

  I sat back down, and Lee let out a rush of breath, eyebrows relaxing before carrying on. He picked up the chair, setting it back upright. He leaned against his desk, hands braced behind him. I’d heard a couple of the guys call Lee “Little Flynn,” but I’d never realized he felt like this about it. It made my temper flare on his behalf—but it also made me feel even more sad about this entire argument. He could’ve talked to me. Why hadn’t he?

  “It just really gets to me, you know? The way they treat me. Like, even though I’ve impressed them, and I’m part of the team, I’m still not good enough. I like being part of the team, Elle, and I’m…”

  “Noah never told me to shut up at a party.”

  “See? He’s literally better than me at everything.”

  “No, Lee, I’m not…You’re…” What the hell did I say to that?

  “I get how stupid it sounds,” he told me, eyes wide and wet. “I get how pathetic and whiny I sound, okay? I know. If it helps, I haven’t even told Rachel about this. I wanted to handle it myself, you know? Just…figure it out.”

  “You don’t need to be Noah, Lee. And it’s not pathetic. You’re amazing just like you are. Besides, you’re not even the same position as him on the field. Pitch? It’s a field, right?”

  He smiled, meeting my eyes again. “Field.”

  “Right, that. They can’t even compare you guys if you’re not playing the same position.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Plus, you’re not even that little. There are smaller guys than you on the team.”

  “Yeah…”

  “And I will one hundred percent quit defending you and giving you an ego boost if you tell me to shut up like that ever again.”

  “If I ever do that to you again, feel free to throw a whole keg of beer over me.”

  “Can I get that in writing?”

  Lee laughed and moved across the room, stopping in front of me. “Are we good? Am I allowed to hug you now? I feel like things aren’t good until we hug it out.”

  I raised a finger at him. “Swear to God, Lee, this never happens again. You can talk to me about any of this, you know that, but don’t be like you were last night.”

  “Cross my heart.”

  I stood up, and Lee was hugging me tight, practically tackling me, before I was even standing straight. All the weeks of not really seeing him and all the tension that had built up between us evaporated, and he clung to me just as tightly as I clung to him. He sniffed.

  “Are you smelling my hair?”

  “No, I’m trying not to cry.”

  I laughed, burying my head in his shoulder in return. I was still kind of mad, but at least he’d talked to me. And he was sorry. That counted for something.

  Besides, if you couldn’t forgive your best friend when they were trying not to cry, could you really consider yourselves best friends?

  “Did you have a good time at the party at least?” I asked him when we finally broke apart. “Aside from pissing all of us off?”

  “It wasn’t my finest hour. I broke a vase, missed my curfew, and almost ruined my friendship with you. And I threw up on someone’s car.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah…and I’m sorry I ruined your night, too. I know you left early because of me.”

  “Did Levi tell you that?”

  Lee nodded, then changed the subject, clearly done with talking about himself now. “You two seem like pretty good friends. It’s good. You know, as long as he’s not trying to take my position as best friend, then it’s good,” he added with an imitation of the impish grin that made him look much more like the Lee I knew. “I just mean, because I haven’t been spen
ding time with you and because Noah’s not here, and it’s good that you’ve got someone. I worry about you sometimes, Shelly. Like, Rachel’s got drama club, but you’re like…”

  “Not talented enough to join in with any extracurriculars like drama club?”

  “That’s not what I was gonna say.”

  “True, though.”

  “You could join track. Maybe not volleyball, but you’d be decent at track.”

  “Sure, maybe. Wouldn’t hurt to put something else on my college application.”

  Lee rolled his eyes. “You and those goddamn college applications. Speaking of…Look, Brown isn’t just about Rachel. It’s where my dad went, too. And you could apply. Your grades are even better than mine. We could all go to Brown.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And I’m not…I’m not picking her, you know? I don’t mean to, anyway. But all the guys said how she must find it weird, with me being so close with you, and that I should make more of an effort with Rachel, and…”

  “Did Warren tell you that?”

  Lee pulled a face.

  “Warren is single and an idiot. But…I get it.” I hated to admit it, but I did get why he was worried about that. “If you don’t fix that, though, Lee, I will. I’ll make a damn roster for you if I have to. We’ll share custody of you on the weekends. I’ll see you every Tuesday night.”

  He laughed. “I’ll figure it out.”

  Then there was a shout up the staircase: “Kids! Dinner’s on the table!” And the conversation was over. But another one started up just as quickly, less serious and more like old times, both of us joking and teasing each other, and his arm bumped against mine as we walked downstairs.

  It was good to have Lee back.

  Chapter 9

  After patching things up with Lee, I tried calling Noah again when I got home from dinner with the Flynns. We’d texted a little during the day—the usual Hey / How are you / What’re you up to today / Miss you—but I really wanted to talk to him. Hell, I texted Levi more than I texted Noah these days.