The Kissing Booth: New Love

Chapter 32

Elle

When Noah first leaves for Harvard, we talk daily, every chance we can get. Although it hurts to know we're so far away from each other, this whole long distance thing doesn't seem so hard. We're both so busy, I really think the time apart should go by quickly. With as often as we're getting to talk to each other, I feel like things are still perfect between us. I know long distance relationships are hard but we love each other too much for it not to work.

But once Noah's classes start and school starts for me, somehow the calls don't happen as often. It started slowly. First we stopped talking as long, which made sense, we both had more going on and more studying to do. But then, Noah started to act differently on the phone and then didn't call as much. I realized that sometimes I didn't mind when he missed calling me because he was acting so much differently on the phone, I wasn't sure how to react. Since we grew up together, hanging out and talking to Noah has always just felt normal, which makes this new weirdness between us feel even worse.

I try to spend time with my friends, thinking maybe I just need to get out more, except spending time with Lee only makes me think of Noah. Being with Rachel and Lee is even worse.  Watching the two of them together makes me miss Noah even more.  My friend Allie is no better.  She has a new boyfriend and is just as hard to be around as Rachel and Lee.  Seeing them hold hands and kiss, knowing how long it will be before I can do that with Noah again, makes my heart physically hurt.

So when the guys ask me to hang out I jump on it.  Lee and I have been hanging around Ollie, Cam, and Dixon since grade school. Although, I've hardly spent any time with them the past few months, since everything started with Noah.  I feel like a bad friend for that and am determined to make it up to them when we meet up in the lunchroom on the first day of school.   That's how I met Cam's neighbor Marco. 

Marco moved into town a few weeks ago, right before school started. We didn't get along at first. He's a pretty boy who thinks a lot of himself and acts like he just has to sit back and wait for all girls to fall at his feet. But the more I'm around him, the more he grows on me.  I realize that we actually have a lot of things in common. We both love to dance, have the same taste in music, and must have the same sense of humor because he makes me laugh all the time.  Most importantly, he loves DDR as much as Lee and I do. Plus it helps that he doesn't remind me of Noah at all.  My other guy friends would all hang out at the Flynn's growing up, so they're all kind of friends with Noah too. All my girl friends still think he's the hottest and are always asking about him. But Marco has no idea who Noah is. Which means he'll never bring him up in a conversation or ask me how he's doing at Harvard like everyone else at school does. So on the days when I miss Noah too much, I turn to Marco. It helps to be able to forget about him for a little bit.

Although I want to forget about Noah when I'm with Marco, I do tell Marco from the start about my relationship. I don't want to hide it from him, plus I knew he would hear it from someone else anyway. Even though Noah doesn't go to our school anymore, the OMG girls and other gossipers still talk about him on a regular basis. 

Once Lee got busy with football practice, Marco and I started spending even more time together.  Lee joined the team at the beginning of the school year and had practice everyday after school. Now that Lee wasn't able to drive me home after school, I had started driving myself. Then, I started giving Marco a ride when Cam couldn't drive him. Marco and I were hanging out after school one day, a few weeks into the school year. We were sitting in my kitchen doing our calculus homework together , although we kept getting sidetracked because neither one of us wanted to work on it.

I set down my pencil for probably the hundredth time to signal another break from what we were supposed to be doing. I couldn't get my last conversation with Noah out of my head and I had to say something before I burst. He acted so weird on our call, I just needed to talk about it. "I don't understand what is going on with him." I didn't have to get anymore specific than that.  Marco knew who I was talking about.  I didn't like talking to Marco about Noah, that defeated the purpose of him being the one person who didn't know anything about him, but sometimes I felt like he was the only person I could talk about Noah with. Noah and I had actually had a chance to talk last night, which had become unusual, but it was the most strained conversation we had ever had. Noah deflected every single time I asked him a question and he didn't even seem to be listening to anything I was saying. Finally, I told him that I had to go because my Dad was making me clean up in the kitchen, even though he wasn't. I'm not sure he even believed me but he didn't question it. He jumped right off the call like he was happy for my excuse.