Flynn - a kissing booth fan fiction

Whispers

A/N - We're firmly in the territory covered by The Road Trip (one of the companion novellas to TKB) now so there's a lot of dialogue directly from that text included here, with minor alterations to keep this story consistent with what I've written previously. Amanda is Chloe, etc, etc. Hope you enjoy it, Jo xx.

All day I've been trying to hold off calling Elle. All day and most of the night, actually. I've been fighting this underlying sense of agitation, doing everything possible to distract myself from it. I went out with some of the guys and that helped a little, but now I'm back in my dorm room, wide awake at a little after 2am, trying not to worry about Lee and her driving across the fucking country alone. I know they're both competent drivers, but it's so far. So many miles, so many hours. Too many. Too many chances for something to go wrong. 

Not that I can say that to either of them, though. They don't want to hear it, I know that much. This is their big senior year adventure, after all. And I don't want to be the killjoy, I really don't. But I just wish they'd got on a plane instead, because then they'd already be here. Elle would already be right here, with me. Fuck it, I'm calling her. Flopping down on my bed, I quickly pull up her contact and press the phone button.

"Hello?" her sweet voice greets me a few seconds later, the sound instantly soothing my frayed nerves.

"I can't believe you guys are driving all the way from California to Boston," I say slowly.

"Noah. Hi," Elle replies, and I can hear her smile, which makes me miss her even more.

"You know, if you guys had just got on a plane to Boston and given up on the road trip, you'd be here already," I sigh.

"You're on speaker," she tells me.

"Hi, Lee," I say, a little louder this time.

After a beat of silence, Elle speaks up again.

"He's asleep right now. But, you know. He might wake up. Or, knowing him, he'll be pretending to be asleep so he can eavesdrop and use this conversation to tease me for the next few days while I've got no escape. So don't say anything that'll embarrass me too much or be too soppy."

I can't help laughing at that. "How's it going so far?"

"Pretty great!" Elle enthuses. "We've even got leftover snacks from today. Honestly, I thought we'd eat through the entire trip's worth before we even got out of the state. And we've only almost crashed once."

"What?" I exclaim, sitting up now.

Elle's tone is dismissive as she explains. "Some guy swerved across our lane to take an exit off the interstate at the last second. There were a lot of cars honking. We didn't tell your mom that part when we called her from the diner."

Yeah, I'll bet. Mom probably would've demanded that they drive to the nearest airport and get on a plane...

"Probably for the best," I tell Elle.

"How come you're up, anyway? It's, what, two in the morning for you?"

I clock the swift change of topic, but don't pick her up on it, because frankly I could use a distraction from thinking about the almost-accident.

"There was some late-night bowling thing. I tried to bail before the karaoke started."

Elle's tone is brighter again when she responds.

"Please tell me you did karaoke. There had better be videos. Tell me you got roped into singing something totally corny, like, like, I don't know, 'Blue Suede Shoes'."