One Last Time Read online

  ALSO BY BETH REEKLES

  The Kissing Booth

  The Beach House: A Kissing Booth e-novella

  The Kissing Booth 2: Going the Distance

  Road Trip: A Kissing Booth e-novella

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2021 by Beth Reekles

  Netflix is a registered trademark of Netflix, Inc. and its affiliates. Artwork used with permission of Netflix, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Ember, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Simultaneously published by Penguin Random House UK, London.

  Ember and the E colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the web! GetUnderlined.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 9780593425657 (trade) — ebook ISBN 9780593425664

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  Penguin Random House LLC supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to publish books for every reader.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Beth Reekles

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For all the bookish fifteen-year-olds with a story to tell

  Author’s Note

  Hi, everybody!

  Well, here we are. Five books, three movies, and ten years of the Kissing Booth, and Elle, Lee, and Noah’s story is finally wrapping up! Can you believe it?

  I wrote The Kissing Booth when I was fifteen, uploading it to Wattpad. I was astonished that anybody wanted to read it, and barely dared to dream I might publish something one day. (I also used to laugh at the comments saying it should be a movie—that seemed too brilliant and bizarre to even dream about….) I always said back then that I never planned to write a sequel, or to carry on the story, but I had a hard time letting go of these characters. They’ve meant so much to me, and they’ve been such a huge part of my life. I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity to explore their story more, and to now wrap it all up in this novel.

  I’ve always known how things would turn out for Elle and Noah—and Lee. I maybe didn’t always know what the journey there would look like, but I knew the final destination. Which is exactly what you’ll get to dive into now, in this installment of the Kissing Booth series.

  This book was a really interesting challenge. Write a book based on the movie based on the movies based on my books. Er, simple, right? Maybe not quite simple, but a lot of fun. And while this book is a novelization of the third Netflix movie, you’ll notice that it doesn’t stick completely to the script. While it follows the same storyline, it does also follow from my sequel, The Kissing Booth 2: Going the Distance, so instead of Marco and Chloe, like in the movie, you’ll be back with Levi and Amanda!

  Plus, you’ll get to see some scenes and interactions that aren’t in the movie, and explore the characters differently. You won’t need to see the movie to be able to follow this book. Maybe you’re picking up this book having only seen the movies. Maybe you’ve been a fan since the early Wattpad days. Either way, thanks for being here, and I hope you enjoy this final chapter in Elle’s story.

  Beth X

  Chapter One

  Dad cleared his throat, tossing the mail onto the counter. A thick envelope slid its way over to me.

  “What’s that?” I asked, my mouth full of Cheerios.

  Instead of answering me, he said, “Hey, Brad, why don’t you go clean up your room, huh, before you head over to Benny’s.”

  “But—”

  There was no room for buts, though, because Dad just hauled Brad, my little brother, up from his stool at the breakfast bar with a grunt and set him on his feet. “Go on, bud, and I’ll let you off doing the dishes with Elle this morning.”

  I was immediately suspicious. This summer, Dad had decided to give Brad more responsibility around the house. I’d already shown him how to fold laundry and how to make pasta. Dad had shown him how to mow the lawn properly on the weekend, and we’d just gotten into a routine where he helped one of us do the dishes. Dad said it was because Brad was in middle school now and getting old enough to help out, but we all knew the real reason: I’d be starting college in the fall and wouldn’t be around to do all those kinds of things anymore.

  My stomach twisted at the thought of it. In a few months, once I was in Berkeley, everything would change so much. It wasn’t like the house totally fell apart without me—it was always fine when I spent a couple of weeks at the Flynns’ beach house every summer. But still. I was kinda worried about leaving them to fend for themselves.

  Just a few days ago, I’d been on top of the world, walking across that stage to get my high school diploma, tossing my cap into the air with everybody else….I’d gotten into UC Berkeley with my best friend in the entire world, Lee Flynn, just like we’d always planned, ever since we were old enough to understand what college was. We’d spent our whole lives together, and we’d be starting this next chapter of life as college students together, too. It was so perfect. It was exactly the way it was meant to be.

  We had said senior year was going to be our year—and sure, it had been…a little bumpy sometimes, but it had still been awesome. And college would be, too. As apprehensive as I was about how different everything would be, it was s
till exciting to think about.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at the envelope and then at my dad. I shoveled down the last of my cereal, wiped the back of my hand across my mouth, and pushed aside the bowl.

  Dad took Brad’s empty stool, tapping the envelope near me. “Maybe you’d like to tell me what’s going on. This came for you.”

  “For me?”

  I picked up the envelope and turned it over.

  Ms. R. Evans

  It was marked with the Harvard University logo.

  Oh.

  Oh shit.

  My Cheerios threatened to make a reappearance and my heart was somewhere in my throat as I fumbled to open the envelope. This wasn’t happening. This was not happening. A couple of months ago, I got a letter telling me I was wait-listed, and that was supposed to be the end of it. Except…apparently it wasn’t.

  I shook the letter out and laid it flat on the counter to read it.

  …delighted to inform you…

  My head snapped up, my mouth hanging open. “I…I…”

  I could not get my words out.

  Impatient, his eyes looking a little crazed behind his glasses, my dad snatched the letter up to read for himself. I watched his eyes dart over the words a few times before he let out a hoot of laughter and shook his head.

  I winced, knowing what would come next, and headed him off with a groan, slumping forward to bury my face in my arms. “Please don’t say it. Please don’t say it.”

  “You got into Harvard! My little girl got into Harvard! You—” Then he cleared his throat again. “Honey, you didn’t tell me you’d even applied. Is this…Is this because of Noah?”

  I groaned again.

  This was not supposed to happen.

  The first college I’d applied to had been Berkeley—because, duh, of course it was. And then I’d applied to safety schools. Of course I had. That’s what you did, right? That’s what my guidance counselor told me to do. So, obviously, Lee and I had tried to pick all the same safety schools.

  Lee had talked about applying to Brown when his girlfriend, Rachel, had applied there, and…

  Maybe, sort of, in a moment of madness, I’d…sent off an application to Harvard. Where my boyfriend, Lee’s older brother, Noah, had been for the last year.

  It was madness, because I was not supposed to get in. I never thought I would. I mean, sure, I worked hard at school, and my grades were good, and I had a couple of extracurriculars, and I’d done well on the SATs…but…it was Harvard, you know? It wasn’t supposed to be the kind of place you got into on a whim; it was the sort of place you spent your entire high school career working toward.

  It was madness because they were never supposed to say yes.

  “Kind of,” I told my dad now. I lifted my head just a little, grimacing as I caught his eye. Ugh. He looked so damn proud of me. I wished he’d stop that. “I just…I dunno. I thought it might be nice. Like how Lee wanted to apply to Brown because that’s where Rachel’s going. I never mentioned it to anybody—”

  “Wait—Lee doesn’t know about this?”

  Some of the pride started to dim in his expression. Good, I thought. A little parental disappointment was the least I deserved for keeping a secret from my best friend. The last time I’d done that was when I’d started dating Noah and I’d been worried about Lee finding out and taking it badly. And that hadn’t exactly gone too great when he did find out, even if he forgave me in the end….

  “It’s not like I was trying to hide it from him,” I tried to explain. “This wasn’t like…you know, when I started dating Noah. I just never thought I’d get in, so I didn’t see the point in scaring him. I didn’t think…” I let out a sigh. “I got wait-listed. Which I thought was kind of cool, you know? But people who get wait-listed for Harvard don’t actually get in.”

  “Looks like they do.”

  “Yeah,” I muttered.

  A grin split my dad’s face and he came around the counter to hug me. “Well, whatever you decide to do, I’m so proud of you, Elle. Harvard! I know I’ve had my reservations about you dating Noah, but, hey, if this is the kind of influence he’s having on you…”

  “I didn’t just apply because of Noah, you know. I mean—it’s Harvard. Who wouldn’t want to get into Harvard?”

  “He’s just the reason you picked that over, say, Yale.”

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “And I figured…I mean, I sort of…wanted to see if I could get in, you know?”

  “Well, you kept it pretty quiet! Didn’t even tell your old man!” He laughed as he sat back down opposite me, but then I watched his forehead crease and the smile slip from his face. He tapped the letter again. “So, uh…you didn’t tell Lee. Or Noah either, I’m guessing?”

  “No. Nobody knows about it. I didn’t want to get Noah’s hopes up, and I didn’t want Lee to think…I didn’t want to hurt him. Make him think I didn’t want to go to Berkeley.”

  “Have you accepted your place there yet?”

  I shook my head. I’d meant to. I just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

  Maybe part of why I hadn’t was because I’d held out some little, tiny piece of hope that I’d get off the wait-list at Harvard, but…

  This was not supposed to happen.

  One afternoon over the phone, Noah had mentioned, flippantly, that maybe I should apply—he’d said it’d be nice to have me around and to spend more time together and that he missed me so much. He hadn’t meant for me to take it seriously, and I knew that, but…

  It stuck. And I honestly had wanted to see if I could do it.

  Harvard. I got a place at Harvard. Me—Elle Evans!

  My mouth was dry and my stomach had coiled itself into knots.

  “Any idea what you’re going to do?”

  I stared at the letter from the admissions office, thinking of the one in my drawer upstairs that said much the same thing but had a Berkeley letterhead instead.

  Lee and I had had our hearts set on Berkeley since what felt like forever. It wasn’t out of state, and it was where our moms had met and become such good friends. It felt special.

  And even if you took Noah and our relationship out of the equation…well, Harvard was Harvard. It was the kind of college you were supposed to dream about going to.

  But, okay, the fact that Noah was there was a pretty strong pull, I had to admit.

  I looked from the letter to my dad, who just looked so damn proud of me that he might burst.

  “Please don’t tell everyone about this,” I said. “Especially not the Flynns. I need to…I need to think about this.”

  I couldn’t bear it if Dad let it slip to Lee and Noah’s parents first in a crazy proud-parent moment, and that was how Lee or Noah found out. I didn’t even know how Noah would react to me getting into Harvard, or what he’d say if I decided to go—maybe him saying it’d be nice to have me there had been a throwaway comment, something he didn’t actually mean. Maybe he wouldn’t really want me there anyway.

  And Lee…

  Lee would be so hurt if I turned around and told him that, actually, despite all our promises, and despite how put out I’d been when I’d heard he’d applied to Brown, I’d done the same thing behind his back to be with Noah.

  “Gonna have to decide soon, bud,” Dad said. He reached over to squeeze my shoulder. “There’s only so long Harvard will wait before they need an answer about this.”

  Before I told Noah and Lee, I had to figure this out for myself first. And fast.

  Chapter Two

  I spent the rest of my morning getting ready for lunch with the Flynns. Lee’s mom had organized for us all to go out for a fancy meal to celebrate our graduation. I usually wasn’t one for dressing up, so there had been a few outfit changes and a slightly desperate video call to Rachel, who was also
going to be there. It had been enough to distract me from thinking too hard about the two admittance letters that now sat in my desk drawer. And then, of course, Noah had come by to pick me up and drive me to the restaurant, so it wasn’t really like I’d had the time to think about it.

  “So,” Noah said, slinging his arm around my shoulder once we were out of the car. My hand moved up automatically, fingers locking with his. “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Careful. Don’t wanna hurt yourself.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “About?” I prompted, jokes aside.

  “I was thinking,” he said again, “maybe this summer you could come with me to Boston. You can check out where I’m gonna be living. I can show you your dresser drawer.”

  “You saved a dresser drawer just for me? Awww,” I cooed at him, turning my face up to his to bat my eyelashes. I pinched his cheek playfully. “Look at my boyfriend, the big ball of mush.”

  He was such a big ball of mush. At least compared to how he’d been when we first started dating. Noah had been our school’s bad boy, with a reputation for hooking up with tons of girls (which he later told me was mostly untrue). He even had a motorcycle, and he used to smoke just to help him look the part. And here he was, talking about the dresser drawer he’d reserved for me.

  I loved him so much.

  “It would’ve been so awesome if you’d been in Boston with me. Even if it wasn’t at Harvard. We’d have seen so much more of each other. Could’ve even, like, gotten an apartment together over the summer or something.”