To All the Boys I've Loved Before (23 page)

“That was a pretty big sip,” he says. “How come you never get your own?”

“Why should I when I know you’ll share?” I break off a piece of grilled cheese and dip it into the soup.

“So you were saying?” Josh prods. When I stare at him blankly, he says, “You were about to talk about Kavinsky . . .”

I was hoping this wouldn’t come up. I’m not in the mood to tell more lies to Josh. “Things are good.” Because Josh is looking at me like he’s expecting something more, I add, “He’s really sweet.”

Josh snorts.

“He’s not what you’d think. People are so quick to judge him, but he’s different.” I’m surprised to find I’m telling the truth. Peter
isn’t
what you’d think. He is cocky and he can be obnoxious and he’s always late, true, but there are other good and surprising things about him too. “He’s . . . not what you think.”

Josh gives me a dubious look. Then he dunks half his sandwich into the soup and says, “You already said that.”

“That’s because it’s true.” He shrugs at this like he doesn’t believe me. So I say, “You should see the way Kitty acts around Peter. She’s crazy about him.” I don’t realize it until the words are actually out of my mouth, but I say it to hurt him.

Josh tears off a hunk of grilled cheese. “Well, I hope she doesn’t get too attached.” Even though I’ve had that exact same thought for different reasons, it still hurts to hear.

Suddenly the easy Josh-and–Lara Jean feeling is lost. Josh is withdrawn and closed off, and I’m stinging from
what he said about Peter, and it feels like playacting to sit across from each other and pretend it’s the same as the old days. How could it be, when Margot isn’t here? She is the point of our little triangle.

“Hey,” Josh says suddenly. I look up. “I didn’t mean that. That was a shitty thing to say.” He ducks his head. “I guess . . . I don’t know, maybe I’m just jealous. I’m not used to sharing the Song girls.”

I go soft inside. Now that he’s said this nice thing, I am feeling warm and generous toward him again. I don’t say what I’m thinking, which is,
You may not be used to sharing us, but we’re very used to sharing you.
“You know Kitty still loves you best,” I say, which makes him smile.

“I mean, I did teach her how to hock a loogie,” Josh says. “You don’t forget the person who teaches you something like that.” He takes a long sip of his milkshake. “Hey, they’re doing a Lord of the Rings marathon at the Bess this weekend. Wanna go?”

“That’s like . . . nine hours!”

“Yeah, nine hours of awesome.”

“True,” I agree. “I wanna go; I just have to check with Peter first. He said something about going to a movie this weekend, and—”

Josh cuts me off before I can finish. “It’s fine. I can just go with Mike. Or maybe I’ll take Kitty. It’s about time I introduced her to the genius that is Tolkien.”

I’m quiet. Are Kitty and I interchangeable in his mind? Are Margot and I?

We’re sharing a waffle when Genevieve walks into the diner with a little kid who I guess must be her little brother. Not her actual little brother; Gen is an only child. She’s the president of the Little Sib program. It’s where a high school student is paired up with an elementary school kid and you tutor them and take them out for fun days.

I slump down in my seat, but of course Gen still sees me. She looks from me to Josh, and then she gives me a little wave. I don’t know what to do so I just wave back. Something about the way she’s smiling at me is unsettling. It’s how genuinely happy she looks.

If Genevieve is happy, that’s not good for me.

* * *

At dinner I get a text from Peter. It says,
If you’re going to hang out with Sanderson, can you at least not do it in public?

Under the table I read it over and over. Could it be that Peter’s the teensiest bit jealous? Or is he really just worried about how it looks to Genevieve?

“What do you keep looking at?” Kitty wants to know.

I put my phone down, facedown. “Nothing.”

Kitty turns to Daddy and says, “I bet it was a text from Peter.”

Buttering a roll, my dad says, “I like Peter.”

“You do?” I say.

Daddy nods. “He’s a good kid. He’s really taken with you, Lara Jean.”

“Taken with me?” I repeat.

To me Kitty says, “You sound like a parrot.” To Daddy
she says, “What does that mean? Taken by her?”

“It means he’s charmed by her,” Daddy explains. “He’s smitten.”

“Well, what’s smitten?”

He chuckles and stuffs the roll in Kitty’s open, perplexed mouth. “It means he likes her.”

“He definitely likes her,” Kitty agrees, her mouth full. “He . . . he looks at you a lot, Lara Jean. When you’re not paying attention. He looks at you, to see if you’re having a good time.”

“He does?” My chest feels warm and glowy, and I can feel myself start to smile.

“I’m just happy to see you so happy. I used to worry about Margot taking on so many responsibilities at home and helping out the way she did. I didn’t want her to miss out on her high school experience. But you know Margot. She’s so driven.” Daddy reaches over and squeezes my shoulder. “To see you now, going out and doing things and making new friends . . . it makes your old man very happy. Very, very happy.”

I feel a lump grow in my throat. If only it wasn’t all a lie.

“Don’t cry, Daddy,” Kitty orders, and Daddy nods and pulls her into his arms for a hug.

“Can you do me a favor, Kitty?” he says.

“What?”

“Can you stay this age forever?”

Automatically Kitty replies, “I can if you give me a puppy.”

My dad roars with laughter, and Kitty laughs too.

I really admire my little sister sometimes. She knows exactly what she wants, and she’ll do whatever it takes to get it. She’s shameless that way.

I’m going to talk to Daddy and help her cause. The two of us will wear him down. There’ll be a puppy under our tree Christmas morning. I’d bet money on it.

THE NEXT NIGHT PETER AND
I study at Starbucks for a few hours—well, I study, and he keeps getting up and talking to people from school. On the way home he asks, “Did you sign up for the ski trip?”

“No. I’m a terrible skier.” Only cool people like Peter and his friends go on the ski trip. I could try to twist Chris’s arm into going, but she’d probably laugh in my face. She’s not going on any school trip.

“You don’t have to ski. You can snowboard. That’s what I’m doing.”

I give him a look. “Can you picture me snowboarding?”

“I’ll teach you. Come on, it’ll be fun.” Peter grabs my hand and says, “Please please please, Lara Jean? Come on, be a sport. It’ll be fun, I promise.”

He catches me by surprise with this. The ski trip isn’t until winter break. So he wants to keep this, us, up until then. For some reason I feel relieved.

“If you don’t want to snowboard,” he continues, “the lodge has a big stone fireplace and big comfy chairs. You can sit and read for hours. And they sell the best hot chocolate. I’ll buy you one.” He squeezes my hand.

My heart does a little zing, and I say, “All right, I’ll go. But the hot chocolate had better be as good as you say.”

“I’ll buy you as many as you want.”

“Then you better bring a lot of singles,” I say, and Peter snorts. “What?”

“Nothing.”

When we get to my house, I climb out and he drives away before it occurs to me I left my bag on the floor of his car, and Daddy and Kitty aren’t home. They’re at Kitty’s school for parent-teacher conferences.

I fumble around blindly under the deck, feeling around in the dark for the spare keys we keep hidden under the wheelbarrow. Then I remember that the spare keys are in the junk drawer, in the house, because I forgot to put them back the last time I got locked out. I have no keys, no phone, no way of getting into the house.

Josh! Josh has a spare key. He’s watered my dad’s plants for him a few times when we went away on vacation.

I find a rock in the driveway and I cross the lawn and stand underneath Josh’s window. I throw the rock at it and I miss. I find another one, and it pings off the glass, barely making a sound. I try again, with a bigger rock. This one hits.

Josh opens the window and leans his head out. “Hey. Did Kavinsky leave already?”

Surprised, I say, “Yeah. I left my bag in his car. Can you throw down the spare keys?”

Josh sighs, like I’m asking for something huge. “Hold on.” Then he disappears.

I stand there and wait for him to come back to the window, but he doesn’t. He comes outside the front door instead.
He’s wearing a hoodie and sweatpants. It’s Margot’s favorite hoodie. When they first got together, she used to wear it all the time, like it was a letterman’s jacket or something.

I hold my hand out for the keys and Josh drops them in my hand. “Thanks, Joshy.”

I turn to leave, but he says, “Wait. I’m worried about you.”

“What? Why?”

He sighs heavily and adjusts his glasses. He only wears his glasses at night. “This thing with Kavinsky . . .”

“Not that again. Josh—”

“He’s a player. He’s not good enough for you. You’re . . . innocent. You’re not like other girls. He’s a typical guy. You can’t trust him.”

“I think I know him a lot better than you do.”

“I’m just looking out for you.” Josh clears his throat. “You’re like my little sister.”

I want to hit him for saying that. “No I’m not,” I say.

An uneasy look crosses over Josh’s face. I know what he’s thinking, because we’re both thinking it.

Then, headlights are beaming down our street. It’s Peter’s car. He’s come back. I hand Josh his set of keys and run over to my driveway. Over my shoulder I call out, “Thanks, Joshy!”

I come around the front to the driver’s side. Peter’s window is down. “You forgot your bag,” he says, glancing over toward Josh’s house.

“I know,” I say breathlessly. “Thanks for coming back.”

“Is he out there?”

“I don’t know. He was a minute ago.”

“Then just in case,” Peter says, and he leans his head out and kisses me on the lips, open-mouthed and sure.

I’m stunned.

When he pulls away, Peter’s smiling. “Night, Lara Jean.”

He drives off into the night and I’m still standing there with my fingers to my lips. Peter Kavinsky just kissed me. He kissed me, and I liked it. I’m pretty sure I liked it. I’m pretty sure I like him.

* * *

The next morning I’m at my locker, putting my books away, when I see Peter walking down the hallway. My heart thumps in my chest so loud I can hear it echo in my ears. He hasn’t seen me yet. I duck my head into my locker and start arranging my books into a pile.

From behind the locker door he says, “Hey.”

“Hey,” I say back.

“I just want to set your mind at ease, Covey. I’m not going to kiss you again, so don’t worry about it.”

Oh.

So that’s that. It doesn’t matter if I like him or not, because he doesn’t like me back. It’s kind of silly to feel so disappointed about something you only just realized you wanted, isn’t it?

Don’t let him see that you’re disappointed.

I face him. “I wasn’t worrying about it.”

“Yes you were. Look at you: your face is all pinched together like a clam.” Peter laughs, and I try to unpinch my
face, to look serene. “It’s not going to happen again. It was all for Sanderson’s benefit.”

“Good.”

“Good,” he says, and he takes my hand, and he closes my locker door, and he walks me to class like a real boyfriend, like we’re really in love.

How was I supposed to know what’s real and what’s not? It feels like I’m the only one who doesn’t know the difference.

MY DAD’S THRILLED WHEN I
ask him to sign the permission slip. “Oh, Lara Jean, this is great. Did Peter convince you? You’ve been scared of skiing ever since you were ten and you did the splits and you couldn’t get back up!”

“Yeah, I remember.” My boots froze onto the skis, and I lay there in the splits for what felt like days.

Signing the paper, my dad says, “Hey, maybe we can all of us go to Wintergreen over Christmas. Peter too.”

So that’s where I get it from. My dad. He lives in a fantasy world. Handing me the slip, he says cheerfully, “You can wear Margot’s ski pants. Her gloves, too.”

I don’t tell him that I won’t need them, because I’ll be cozy in the lodge reading and sipping hot cocoa by the fire. I should bring my knitting stuff with me too.

When I talk to Margot on the phone that night, I tell her I’m going on the ski trip, and she’s surprised. “But you hate skiing.”

“I’m going to try out snowboarding.”

“Just . . . be careful,” she says.

* * *

I’m thinking she means on the slopes, but when Chris comes over the next night to borrow a dress, I learn otherwise.
“You know everybody hooks up on the ski trip, right? It’s like a school-sanctioned booty call.”

“
What?
”

“That’s where I lost my V freshman year.”

“I thought you lost it in the woods near your house.”

“Oh yeah. Whatever, the point is, I had sex on the ski trip.”

“There are chaperones,” I say worriedly. “How can people just have sex with chaperones around?”

“Chaperones go to sleep early because they’re old,” Chris says. “People just sneak out. Plus there’s a hot tub. Did you know that there’s a hot tub?”

“No . . . Peter never mentioned that.” Well, that’s that, I just won’t pack a bathing suit. It’s not like they can make you go in a hot tub if you don’t want to.

“The year I went, people were skinny-dipping.”

My eyes bug out. Skinny-dipping! “People were nude?”

“Well, the girls took their tops off. Just be prepared.” Chris chews on her fingernail. “Last year I heard Mr. Dunham got in the hot tub with students and it was weird.”

“This sounds like the Wild West,” I mutter.

“More like Girls Gone Wild.”

It’s not that I’m worried Peter will try something with me. I know he won’t, because he doesn’t see me that way. But are people going to expect it? Am I going to have to sneak into his room in the middle of the night so people think we’re doing something? I don’t want to get in trouble on a school trip, but Peter has a way of convincing me to do stuff I don’t want to do.