Free The Kissing Booth by Beth Reekles

that— Wait, he
told
everyone? He actually said that?’
    ‘Well. I say that. It was a couple of guys who pestered him about it, and it got out pretty quick. Just because, you know, your date was such big news. So . . . everyone now thinks you didn’t want to kiss him.’
    ‘It’s just . . . I don’t know . . .’
    ‘Hey, you don’t have to justify yourself,’ Dixon told me with another big smile. ‘It’s just that some people are going to talk and ask questions, so be ready for that.’
    ‘Thanks for the warning,’ I muttered.
    ‘You’re welcome.’
    And he was right – people kept coming up to me, saying, ‘Is it true you wouldn’t kiss Cody? Why didn’t you kiss him?’
    The first time, I panicked. I didn’t want to tell them the real reason, so I babbled something along the lines of, ‘I – I didn’t feel too great. I didn’t know if it was contagious.’
    What a lie. I’m sure they all knew it, but if they did, not one of them showed it.
    I walked into chemistry and Cody was there already. I dithered a second, wondering if I should sit with him or not.
    He shot me a smile though, so I went to join him.
    ‘Hey,’ I said casually.
    ‘You know, if you were ill on Friday, you should’ve said,’ he commented.
    ‘I know, but I felt okay and I didn’t want to cancel.’ I tried not to mumble too much. ‘Sorry about that.’
    ‘It’s not a problem.’
    ‘So, uh . . . Yeah . . .’ I cleared my throat and Cody laughed nervously.
    ‘I don’t want to sound too much of a jerk or anything but . . . I was thinking about it and—’
    ‘We’re better off as friends?’ I filled in, then regretted it when I realized he might not have been saying that. Oh man, what if I’d just dug myself into a grave?
    ‘Uh, yeah,’ he said, giving me a nervous smile. ‘No offence. We just didn’t seem to . . . click.’
    ‘None taken,’ I said, smiling. ‘I thought exactly the same.’ I hope my relief wasn’t too evident. ‘So did you do the homework? I didn’t get question eight.’
    And just like that, my life had snapped back to its (sadly) romance-free ways.
    We were working on the banner for the kissing booth. The letters were cut out and Lee had smoothed the edges; we just needed to paint them and then nail them onto the booth itself. We had some decorations back at my house, and the posters were ready too. We also had a couple of boards with the price on.
    ‘Everybody’s been asking me all week what happened with you and Cody,’ Lee said to me. It was after school on Wednesday afternoon. We needed to hurry our asses up to get everything ready to set the booth up on Friday night.
    ‘You haven’t said anything too incriminating?’
    ‘I haven’t told them the truth, no,’ he laughed, dunking his brush into the pink paint again. ‘I don’t know why you said you were sick though.’
    ‘It was believable,’ I defended myself. ‘First thing I thought of.’
    ‘Yeah, I guess. But loads of the guys reckon it’s Noah scaring him off.’
    ‘He did look pretty threatening when I was waiting for Cody,’ I admitted, printing with my lipstick sponge onto one of the already dry letters.
    Lee shrugged. It was a little while before he broke the silence again. ‘Shelly . . .’
    ‘Yeah?’
    ‘Does he ever scare you? I mean . . . I know he’s not quite the Incredible Hulk or anything, but he can lose his temper kinda quickly.’
    ‘That’s just the way he is. I grew up with him around. He couldn’t scare me – I know that he’s . . . intimidating . . .’
    ‘I guess,’ Lee said, nodding. Suddenly he dropped his paintbrush into the pot, splattering me with pastel-pink paint – my face, my blouse, my tie, my hair . . .
    ‘
Lee!
’ I screamed.
    ‘Sorry!’
    I grabbed a brush and dunked it into the pot of black, totally prepared to flick it over Lee. But something cold and wet landed on my face and neck as he flicked me again, making me jump so much