The Kissing Booth - Chasing Noah

Epilogue

"Wanna see something hilarious?" I giggled, handing my phone over to Lee. We were making our semi-annual trip to New York for the weekend and Lee got stuck driving. It was sort of a sad trip - a farewell tour. It was the last one that we could take while we still lived on the East Coast. Lee was moving back to Los Angeles permanently after landing an insane role in a movie. The director had seen him in the short film that his graduating class put together and he got the call last week.

I on the other hand, have not heard anything back whatsoever about any jobs. I renewed the rent on the apartment because I have no idea where to go next. It was one thing to decide where to go to school; it was temporary. But once I apply for a job, and hopefully get it, I would be picking my home. Our home. Did I want to go across seas and teach the less-privileged? Or should I move back to L.A. and spend a couple years with my family.

This would be our eighth and final trip to the city for a while; once filming for Lee's role started; he didn't even want to tell him mom that he was coming home because he knew how little he would actually get to see her.

"Dude I'm driving. Can't it wait until we stop at Dick's?" Lee giggled. He laughed like a little girl every time that he talked about Dick's Sporting Goods.

The second time that we took our road trip to New York, it was a memorial for Lee's dad. He lost his battle against cancer; it came out of nowhere and right when we thought that everything was going to turn out okay. Lee and Noah both took the semester off of school to go home. My dad refused to let me follow Noah, which would have resulted in me losing my acceptance at Trinity. We didn't end up getting an apartment together until almost two years later. It took both of the Flynn boys a long time to jump back from that and I would never do anything to push Noah after losing his father.

I knew the pain of losing a parent better than anyone, but sometimes I think that the Flynn family didn't let me in on everything that was going on. They all seemed a little too prepared when I got the call from my father.

Honestly, after his father's death, I thought that Noah was pushing me away for good. He avoided talking to me, never making time to come see me, or refusing to let me drive out to see him. I kept in constant contact with Rachel to make sure that Lee was doing okay, but he wasn't doing any better than Noah.

It seemed pretty dark for a couple of months, Rachel and I practically bonding over the thought of our boyfriends leaving us. That's when she suggested that we go on a trip to New York, just the four of us, and do something to remember Mr Flynn.

~~~

One weekend, just before my fourth semester started, Noah literally kidnapped me - blindfold and all - and brought me to a gorgeous apartment complex on the outskirts of Worcester. It was the only apartment building in the area, standing tall among the small family homes that surrounded it. It seemed old, the bricks chipping and falling away in some places.

Noah took my hand and intertwined our fingers. I never realized how much I had missed the feeling of his hand completely swallowing mine. It was the first time that he had reached for me, hoping that I would be by his side, in months. My teeth hurt because my smile reached from ear to ear as we rode the elevator to the top floor. The building was only five floors tall, and I completely expected the elevator doors to open into a hallway that then led to several other apartments. I actually thought that Noah was bringing me to one of his friends places to pick something up on our way back to Boston.

Never in a million years would I have thought that after everything that he had been through that he would still want to move into a place together. The elevator stopped and if Noah hadn't been holding my hand I would have automatically started walking and collided head first with the metal doors. But he held on tight, entering a code into a box above the floor numbers and the doors slid open.