So it's nearly Halloween... consider this your Treat!

Important note about all the covers you fabulous people have been making at the end, by the way! And hope you guys like this chapter! A certain someone returns... ;)

enjoy!! xx

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Chapter 2

We had to take two cars this year.

Usually, we’d all cram into the back of Lee’s dad’s car. I’d be squished up in the middle, between Noah and Lee, the trunk on the verge of bursting open with luggage for five people for about two weeks.

But since Noah and his father were flying to Massachusetts they needed the car to take it to the airport. Lee’s mom would stay the whole time, with the two of us. She’d insisted there was no need for us to cut the vacation short just because there would only be three of us for a couple of days.

So now, instead of trying to ram my case into the trunk and then clamber into the car before Lee, I was sliding into the front seat of his red 65 convertible Mustang, despite his irrational worries that the ‘sea air would damage the paint job’.

“That’s just a weird thing to worry about,” I’d told him.

“It could happen!” he’d insisted.

But we both knew that my car, the old used Ford Escort my dad had got me for my birthday, probably wouldn’t survive the two hour forty minute drive down to the coast. Even Dad had told me we’d be better to take Lee’s car since it was more reliable.

Don’t get me wrong, though – I loved my car. (I also loved saying ‘my car’.)

The journey didn’t seem to long, at least. Actually, it went by pretty quickly, since we were singing along to the radio at the top of our lungs and joking around the whole time.

Well, that – or Lee was speeding.

We arrived after the others. But they couldn’t have been there for very long; Matthew, Lee’s dad, was only just shutting the trunk and locking the car up. He shot us a smile and a wave.

“Roads okay?”

I swung out of the car, and put my huge straw bag up onto my shoulder. “Yeah.”

Lee was still sat inside, clearing up his mess of candy bar wrappers and the few empty drinks bottles. He was so messy, but way too proud of his car to leave the trash in there like a lot of guys would. (Like Dixon. I called shotgun once when we all went to the movies, and I had to sit practically knee-deep in ancient McDonald’s wrappings stained with grease and old, cracked CD cases. Warren was just as bad.)

I opened up the trunk and tried to get a good grip on my suitcase. I started to haul it out, and wondered what the hell I’d packed for not even a whole two weeks that made it so heavy.

Maybe I should’ve just left the volumizing shampoo behind after all.

Lee was always right.

“Need to borrow some muscle?”

I let go of my case with a huff and it slid back into the car with a heavy thunk. I twisted my head to look over my shoulder, hair falling in my face, to see Noah, sexy and handsome as ever, cocking a dark eyebrow at me with a smug look on his face.

“I’ve got it,” I told him stubbornly. I closed my fingers on the handle of my case, wiggling it to the edge of the trunk again. I just knew Noah would have that trademark smirk on his face right now. I wondered if there was any chance of me getting my case out without scratching the paint on Lee’s car.

Does it matter if you do? Just blame it on the sea air.

I shook my head at myself and my internal joke.

“You’re so stubborn, Elle,” Noah said, but there was something in the way he said it that made stubborn sound like a good thing. “Sure you don’t need a hand?”

Whatever it was, even silly stuff like what to watch on TV, I hated giving in to Noah and letting him be right. We’d always argued and bickered. More so in the last few months, when we were together.

But there was no way I could get this case out. And Lee was still gathering up trash.

Well, if I was going to give in…

“Fine! It’s all yours, Superman!”

I couldn’t resist taking that dig – just before we got together, I’d caught him wearing Superman boxers. And he’d actually been embarrassed about it. Noah Flynn, the school badass, the jerk who I always argued with, the violence junkie… wearing Superman boxers.

He hated whenever I brought it up. But teasing him was irresistible sometimes.

I saw him grit his teeth at my Superman comment as I stormed into the house, almost tripping over the welcome mat on the porch on my way in. I could hear Lee laughing, and got the feeling he’d deliberately lingered in the car so I’d have to let Noah get my case.

The beach house was only one floor, unless you counted the cobweb-covered attic, which we didn’t. It wasn’t huge, with five of us, but it fit us all in such a way that we could call it ‘cozy’ with a smile on our face.

There was a kitchen-diner that wasn’t too spacious, but served its purpose. It opened out into the lounge, the two rooms divided only by a waist-height wall with a wide gap to serve as a doorway at the end. The walls there were a soft yellow. I remember them being annoyingly bright when I was younger though. There was a small room off the kitchen with a washer-dryer for the laundry.

The beach house only had three bedrooms – June and Matthew’s, Noah’s, and mine and Lee’s. It might’ve made more sense for the boys to share now we were all older, but Lee and I had always shared when we were younger and didn’t care about sharing now either.

Out front, there was the old creaky porch with a bench just as old and creaky. The wood was rough, discolored. The two-foot-tall white fence around the edge of the porch and the beams going from the floor up to the canopied roof were a little chipped, the paint peeling.

There was a doorway in the lounge that led outside. We had a pool out there – not as big as the one at Lee’s house, but a decent sized one. There was a wooden table we usually ate at unless it was raining, and loungers that were bleached from the sun. There was a beaten path in the sand through all the shrubbery that led down onto the beach.

The furniture in the beach house was all a little mismatched and worn with age, the total opposite to the décor in the Flynn household, but none of us, not even June, Lee’s mom, had ever suggested kitting it out nicely. We loved it exactly as it was – a little shabby, lived in and worn, and homey.

In my eyes, it was perfect. And always would be, too.

“I’m just going to run and get some food,” June announced, walking out of the kitchen-diner as I was walking down the hallway. I don’t think she even started unpacking before she went to Wal-Mart to stock the kitchen. But I guess, with three guys in the house, food was right up there at the top of the list.

“Do you want some company?” I offered.

“No, no, that’s okay. You stay here and unpack.”

“Are you sure?” She nodded. “I guess that’s just as well. It’ll take me about three days to unpack…”

June laughed. “I packed way too much, too. Don’t even get Matthew started on how much I packed this year… We’d never have fit in just the one car!”

I laughed, too, and she gave me that motherly smile she always wore.

Then she said something that caught me totally off guard, because it was so out of the blue.

“Look at you, Elle, you suddenly seem so grown up.”

“Why? Because I had to use that special zipper that makes my suitcase expand?”

“No,” she laughed. “I don’t know, I can’t quite pinpoint it… You just seem like you’ve grown up so much recently. Listen to me! Rambling on like this! I’m getting out of here before I see if there’re any baby photos lying around here! Oh, and tell the boys we’re having steak for dinner!”

“Will do!” I called back.

I walked out of the lounge, and turned down the hallway toward the bedrooms. Lee and I had our bedroom side-by-side with Noah’s, separated by a bathroom in the middle that we all shared. Lee’s parents had their own little bathroom next to their room.

A throat cleared from the kitchen doorway as I passed it, making me jump a little.

“Your case is in your room,” Noah told me.

“Okay. Thanks.”

“What,” he said, making me stop before I could leave, “I don’t get a tip?”

I laughed, as if to tell him No chance, and he caught my wrist, stepping in front of me in the doorframe to pin me there.

“I’m an awesome bellboy and you know it,” he said, his voice just as serious as his expression.

I bit back a laugh, but a grin spread over my face. “You tell yourself that. But thank you for bringing my case in,” I added, and went up on my toes to give him a peck on the lips. Instead of letting me pull away though, Noah drew me in for a soft, sweet kiss. His fingers dropped from around my wrist to link themselves through my fingers.

A throat cleared – we both jumped.

I turned my head ready to roll my eyes at Lee, make a comment about how I’d interrupt him every time he kissed Rachel once she got here; but the eye rolling never came and the words stuck in my throat.

“Can I get through?” their dad said. Noah stepped back and tugged me around the doorframe to let his dad through. I was so mortified for a moment all I could do was bite on my tongue and make a mental note to never, ever kiss in a doorway ever again.

I jerked out of my thoughts when I felt a gentle tug on my ponytail. Noah chuckled.

“I’m going to unpack,” I managed to get out, still hideously embarrassed.

“Take you a decade,” Noah commented, following me. “What did you pack, anyway? The entire mall?”

“It’s a zebra, actually,” Lee said as the two of us went into the bedroom. I saw his case lying face-down and open on the threadbare green carpet, his clothes, hair gel, and whatever else he’d packed, in a haphazard mountain on his bed, like he’d just upended the case there. As usual.

“Right…” Noah said slowly, looking confused while Lee and I shared a smirk at the zebra thing. “Whatever. Are you guys heading down to the beach soon?”

“Probably,” we chorused. Lee said, “We’ll meet you down there, I guess.”

“Sure.”

“Oh, your mom said we’re having steak for dinner,” I called out at Noah’s retreating back, and he gave a grunt to let me know he’d heard me. I turned back to look at my case, which Noah had left by the door.

I wriggled it over to my bed, the one nearest the bathroom. I didn’t even bother trying to pick it up and put it on the bed.

“Maybe I should just invest in a case with wheels on,” I panted.

“That might just about be the smartest thing you’ve said yet, Elle.”

“Ha-ha.”

“See,” Lee said, “this is where I’d make a joke about how that’s silly because this way you have an excuse to see my brother flex his muscles and actually talk to him, since you’re so in love with him, except… Well, you are in love with him. So it kind of loses all effect…”

I laughed. “It’s still funny, Lee, don’t worry.”

“Yeah, but that’s because I am comedian extraordinaire,” he laughed. “It’s not the same though.”

I sighed. “What do you want me to say? Sorry?”

“I didn’t mean it like that, Shelly.”

“I know,” I said, sighing again. “It’s just… I keep expecting you to get mad at me.”

“For what?”

For lying to you for so long about it. For sneaking around with your brother behind your back. For making you feel like I picked him over you.

So I shrugged, undoing the zipper on my case, and said, “I guess just because it’s your brother. I don’t know.”

It was silent for a moment. I hated when it was this kind of silence, where we were both thinking about things but didn’t know what the other was thinking. Well, that said – Lee probably knew what I was thinking, but I didn’t have a clue what was going through his mind for those few quiet seconds.

“Shouldn’t you be the one saying the heart wants with the heart wants, it doesn’t matter if your best friend and the guy you love share a few DNA strands?” I could hear the note of laughter in  his voice, see it in his smile, and I threw a pair of shorts at him for teasing me.

“Don’t you share genes, not DNA? Or are they the same thing?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re the biology kid here,” I reminded him, laughing. That was the only class we didn’t have together at school; I took chemistry while he took biology.

“You really think I care? It’s summer. I don’t have to remember the difference until September.” He threw my shorts back at me, laughing. “Now hurry up, find your bikini, and go change. I want to get down to the beach already.”

**

I didn’t unpack properly, opting to just change for the beach and leave my stuff until later. Once Lee opened the window and let the sea air blow in, I realized just how much I wanted to get down to the beach and lie in the sun, or dive in the sea.

Sure, we usually got the awesome weather that came with living in California, and the past few weeks at home had been sun, sun, sun – but there was something special about the beach. Summer just seemed a lot brighter when we were only minutes away from the sea, and there was always sand on the floorboards in the house.

Twenty minutes later, Lee and I were making our way down the beaten sandy track between the shrubbery and onto the beach, armed with towels, sunscreen, and our iPods. We stopped at a spot where the sand was fine and soft, just before it turned harder and damp nearer the shore. I spread my towel out carefully before flopping down onto it.

I plugged in an earphone and pressed play on my iPod, then put on my red plastic five-dollars-from-a-gas-station sunglasses. I still couldn’t believe I’d forgotten my sunglasses. And after I’d spent about twenty minutes at the mall the other day trying to pick out the perfect pair, too!

I heard Lee clear his throat loudly, and I twisted my head up to look at him.

Pushing his Ray Bans up into his hair, messing it up, he said, “What are you doing?”

“Um… sunbathing?”

He sighed irritably, frowning at me. Then he actually wagged a finger at me, like I was a misbehaving puppy. “You’re such a girl, sometimes, Rochelle Evans.”

He put heavy emphasis on ‘girl’, making it sound like a bad thing.

Resisting the urge to burst into a fit of giggles, I raised my eyebrows at him briefly, then looked down at myself. I looked back at Lee, my jaw dropping melodramatically. “What do you know? I am a girl!”

He laughed and kicked some sand over my legs. “You know what I mean. Let’s go get the body boards already.”

“Tell you what. You go get the body boards, and I will stay here soaking up some sunshine.”

“Um, let me think a – no.”

“Yes.”

“Fine. But I can’t be held responsible for what body board you end up with.”

Before I could say anything, he’d taken off, kicking sand up behind him. I sighed and shook my head, and led down on my towel, wriggling around a little to get comfortable.

Something poked my leg, and a voice said, “Hey, lazy.”

“Can’t I have like, two seconds of peace?” I snapped, sitting up and pulling off my glasses so Noah would know I was glaring at him. He just chuckled at me, throwing his towel in a heap next to me.

I put my glasses back on and couldn’t help it when my gaze accidentally caught on Noah’s abs and I started checking him out. It occurred to me how weird it was that in all the years we’d been coming here, I’d never used it as an excuse to check Noah out. I mean, I guess I’d be having too much fun or joking around too much to pay attention to Noah. And when I did have a crush on him, when I was like, twelve, I’d gone through a stage of barely being able to talk around him, let alone bring myself to see if he had abs when he was thirteen or fourteen.

Even when I was looking right at him, I found it hard to believe this guy had an actual eight-pack.

Guess something good came out of all those fights he got into after all.

I shook myself mentally, and glanced at his face to see if he’d caught me ogling him. I just knew he’d have that sexy smirk on his face that made me blush for no real reason – and I did blush, but not because he was smirking; he was checking me out.

I pushed my glasses up, and his eyes snapped back to my face. This time, it was my turn to smirk.

But before I could come up with some flirty, funny comment, he said with a small half-smirk, half-smile, “What, I can’t appreciate how gorgeous my girlfriend is?”

I laughed then. “If only I could appreciate how cheesy my boyfriend is.”

“Aw, come on. You love the cheesy stuff, you hopeless romantic.”

My smile turned sheepish. “Kinda.”

He chuckled again, and offered me his hand. I took it, letting him pull me to my feet. Noah pulled me into his arms and planted a kiss on my forehead. I started to turn my head so I could kiss him properly when –

“Ew, cooties.”

“Lee…” I complained, turning around slightly in Noah’s arms. I shot him a mock-glare, but my best friend just gave a grin that was so innocent, it made him look impish, and he swung the body boards he was holding around.

He tossed a black one with a white logo on to Noah, kept a blue version in his own hand, and then tossed me a bright pink one. I fumbled to catch it before it hit me in the face, and then I saw the big ‘Barbie’ logo on it, and all the pink flowers and hearts.

“Lee!”

“What? I told you, I couldn’t be held responsible for –”

“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered, but I was smiling. “Come on, then. Let’s get this party started.”

Lee sighed and clapped a hand on my shoulder, and I heard Noah turn a laugh into a cough.

“Shelly… please, promise me one thing.”

“What?”

“Never say that again.”

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Okay, so hope you all enjoyed that! I think it was quite long, so hopefully it'll keep you all going! Um, I'll probably upload maybe on Friday :)

About the covers: So many of you made covers for this book, and thank you to everyone! The covers are all amazing, but I've picked my favourites (although all the covers are up on my Facebook page) and you can find them in the external link (which is to my Tumblr). I want you guys to pick your favourite cover since I'm having such a hard time choosing - so send me a message on Twitter, Wattpad, Tumblr, Facebook, whatever and let me know which cover's your favourite!

Well... see you round, and DFTBA (if you know what that means, I salute you with the gang sign ;) teehee) xx