Always and Forever, Lara Jean
Page 67

When she returns a few minutes later, the bachelor party is in tow. She gives me a warning look. Don’t act drunk, she mouths. I give her a thumbs-up. Then I jump up and throw my arms around Peter.
“Peter!” I shout above the music. He looks so cute in his button-down and tie. So cute I could cry. I bury my face in his neck like a squirrel. “I’ve missed you so, so very much.”
Peter peers at me. “Are you drunk?”
“No, I only had like two sips. Two drinks.”
“Trina let you drink?”
“No.” I giggle. “I stole sips.”
“We’d better get you out of here before your dad sees you,” Peter says, eyes darting around. My dad is looking through a songbook with Margot, who is giving me a look that says, Get it together.
“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt a living soul.”
“Let’s go out to the parking lot so you can get some air,” he says, putting his arm around me and hustling me out the door and through the restaurant.
We step outside, and I sway on my feet a little. Peter’s trying not to smile. “You’re drunk.”
“I guess I’m a weightlight!”
“Lightweight.” He pinches my cheeks.
“Right. Weightlight. I mean, lightweight.” Why is that so funny? I can’t stop laughing. But then I see the way he is looking at me, with such tenderness, and I stop. I don’t feel like laughing anymore. I feel like crying. Look at the way he made my dad’s bachelor party so special. Look at all the ways he loves me so well. I have to love him back just as much. I didn’t know what I was going to do until this very moment, but now I know. “There’s something I want to say to you.” I straighten up suddenly and accidentally knock Peter in the collarbone, which makes him cough. “I’m sorry. Here’s what I want to say to you. I want you to do what you’re supposed to do and I want to do what I’m supposed to do.”
He has a half smile on his face. Shaking his head at me, he says, “What are you talking about, Covey?”
“I’m talking about, I don’t think we should be in a long-distance—a long-distance relationship.”
His smile is fading. “What?”
“I think that you need to do all the things you need to do at UVA, like play lacrosse, and study, and I need to do what I need to do at UNC, and if we try to stay together, everything will just fall apart. So we can’t. We just, we just can’t.”
He blinks and then his face goes very still. “You don’t want to stay together?”
I shake my head, and the hurt on his face sobers me up. “I want you to do what you’re supposed to do. I don’t want you to do something for me. UVA is what you’ve worked for, Peter. That’s where you have to be. Not at UNC.”
He turns ashen. “Did you talk to my mom?”
“Yes. I mean, no . . .”
The muscle in his jaw twitches. “Got it. Say no more.”
“Wait, listen to me, Peter—”
“Nah, I’m good. Just for the record, I mentioned UNC to my mom as a throwaway possibility. It wasn’t anything definite. Just something I threw out there. But it’s cool if you don’t want me to come.” He starts to walk away from me, and I grab his arm to stop him.
“Peter, that’s not what I’m saying! I’m saying that if you came, if you gave up everything you’ve worked for at UVA, you’d only end up resenting me.”
Flatly he says, “Just stop it, Lara Jean. I saw this coming a mile away. Ever since you decided to go to UNC, you’ve been saying good-bye to me.”
My arm drops away from him. “What does that even mean?”
“There’s the scrapbook, for one thing. You said it was to remember us by. Why would I need something to remember us by, Lara Jean?”
“That isn’t how I meant it! I spent months working on that scrapbook. You’re putting this all on me, but you’re the one who’s been pushing me away. Ever since Beach Week!”
“Fine, let’s talk about what happened that night at Beach Week.” I can feel my face flush as he looks at me with a challenge in his eyes. “That night you wanted to have sex, it was like you were trying to put a bow on this whole thing. Like you were putting me in your—your hatbox. Like I played my part in your first love story, and now you can go on to the next chapter.”
I feel light-headed, unsteady on my feet. Peter, who I thought I understood so well. “I’m sorry you took it that way, but that’s not how I meant it. Not at all.”
“It clearly is how you meant it, because you’re doing it right now. Aren’t you?”
Is there some hidden truth to what he’s saying, even a little bit? It’s true that I wouldn’t want my first time to be with anyone else. It’s true that it felt right to have it be with Peter, because he’s the first boy I ever loved. I wouldn’t want it to be with some boy I meet in college. That boy is a stranger to me. Peter I’ve known since we were kids. Was I just trying to close a chapter?
No. I did it because I wanted it to be him. But if that’s how he sees it, maybe it’s easier this way.
I swallow. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I did want my first time to be with you so I could close a chapter on high school. On us.”
He freezes. I see the pain in his eyes, and then his face closes up like a shuttered empty house. He starts to walk away. This time I don’t try to stop him. Over his shoulder he says, “We’re good, Covey. Don’t worry about it.”
As soon as he’s gone, I turn to the side and throw up everything I drank and ate tonight. I’m bent over, heaving, when Trina and Daddy and Margot walk out of the karaoke bar. Daddy rushes over to me. “Lara Jean, what’s the matter? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” I mumble, wiping my eyes and mouth.
His eyes widen, alarmed. “Have you been drinking?” He looks accusingly at Trina, who is rubbing my back. “Trina, you let Lara Jean drink?”
“She had a few sips of a pomegranate martini. She’ll be fine.”
“She doesn’t look fine!”
Trina stands up straight, her hand still on my back. “Dan, Lara Jean’s a young woman now. You can’t see it, because you still see her as a little girl, but she’s grown up so much in the time I’ve known her. She can handle herself.”