P.S. I Still Love You (4 page)

5

PETER AND I ARE STANDING
in line for popcorn at the movies. Even just this mundane thing feels like the best mundane thing that’s ever happened to me. I check my pocket to make sure I’ve still got my ticket stub. This I’ll want to save.

Gazing up at Peter, I whisper, “This is my first date.” I feel like the nerdy girl in the movie who lands the coolest guy in school, and I don’t mind one bit. Not one bit.

“How can this be your first date when we’ve gone out plenty of times?”

“It’s my first
real
date. Those other times were just pretend; this is the real thing.”

He frowns. “Oh, wait, is this real? I didn’t realize that.”

I move to slug him in the shoulder, and he laughs and grabs my hand and links my fingers with his. It feels like my heart is beating right through my hand. It’s the first time we’ve held hands for real, and it feels different from those fake times. Like electric currents, in a good way. The best way.

We’re moving up in the line, and I realize I’m nervous, which is strange, because this is Peter. But he’s also a different Peter, and I’m a different Lara Jean, because this is a date, an actual date. Just to make conversation, I ask, “So, when you go to the movies are you more of a chocolate kind of candy or a gummy kind of candy?”

“Neither. All I want is popcorn.”

“Then we’re doomed! You’re neither, and I’m either or all of the above.” We get to the cashier and I start fishing around for my wallet.

Peter laughs. “You think I’m going to make a girl pay on her first date?” He puffs out his chest and says to the cashier, “Can we have one medium popcorn with butter, and can you layer the butter? And a Sour Patch Kids and a box of Milk Duds. And one small Cherry Coke.”

“How did you know that was what I wanted?”

“I pay a lot better attention than you think, Covey.” Peter slings his arm around my shoulders with a self-satisfied smirk, and he accidentally hits my right boob.

“Ow!”

He laughs an embarrassed laugh. “Whoops. Sorry. Are you okay?”

I give him a hard elbow to the side, and he’s still laughing as we walk into the theater—which is when we see Genevieve and Emily coming out of the ladies’ room. The last time I saw Genevieve, she was telling everyone on the ski trip bus how Peter and I had sex in the hot tub. I feel a strong surge of panic, of fight or flight.

Peter slows down for a second, and I’m not sure what’s going to happen. Do we have to go over and say hi? Do we keep walking? His arm tightens around me, and I can feel Peter’s hesitance too. He’s torn.

Genevieve solves it for everyone. She walks into the theater like she didn’t see us. The same theater we’re going into. I don’t look at Peter, and he doesn’t say anything either. I guess we’re just going to pretend like she isn’t here? He steers me through the same set of doors and picks our seats, far left toward the back. Genevieve and Emily are sitting in the middle. I see her blond head, the back of her dove gray dress coat. I make myself look away. If Gen turns around, I don’t want to be caught staring.

We sit down, and I’m taking off my coat and getting comfy in my seat when Peter’s phone buzzes. He pulls it out of his pocket and then puts it away, and I know it was Gen, but I feel like I can’t ask. Her presence has punctured the night. Two vampire bite marks right into it.

The lights dim, and Peter puts his arm back around me. Is he going to keep it there the whole movie, I wonder. I feel stiff, and I try to even my breathing. He whispers in my ear, “Relax, Covey.”

I’m trying, but it’s sort of impossible to relax on command under these circumstances. Peter gives my shoulder a squeeze, and he leans in and nuzzles my neck. “You smell nice,” he says in a low voice.

I laugh, a touch too loudly, and the man sitting in front of us whips around in his seat and glares at me. Chastened, I say to Peter, “Sorry, I’m really ticklish.”

“No worries,” he says, keeping his arm around me.

I smile and nod, but now I’m wondering—is he expecting that we’re going to do stuff during the movie? Is that why he picked seats in the back when there were still free seats in the middle? Panic is rising inside me. Genevieve is here! And other people too! I might have made out with him in a hot tub, but there wasn’t anyone around to see. Also, I kind of just want to watch the movie. I lean forward to take a sip of soda, but really it’s just so I can subtly move away from him.

After the movie we have an unspoken understanding to hustle out so we don’t run into Genevieve again. The two of us bolt out of the theater like the devil is on our heels—which, I suppose, she sort of is. Peter’s hungry, but I’m too full from all the junk to eat a real dinner, so I suggest we just go to the diner and I’ll share his fries. But Peter says, “I feel like we should go to a real restaurant since this is your first date.”

“I never knew you had such a romantic side.” I say it like it’s a joke, but I mean it.

“Get used to it,” he boasts. “I know how to treat a girl.”

He takes me to Biscuit Soul Food—his favorite restaurant, he says. I watch him scarf down fried chicken with hot honey and Tabasco drizzled on top, and I wonder how many times Genevieve has sat and watched him do the very same thing. Our town isn’t that big. There aren’t many places we can go that he hasn’t already been with Genevieve. When I get up to go to the bathroom, I suddenly wonder if he’s texting her back, but I make myself push this thought out of my mind tout de suite. So what if he does text back? They’re still friends. He’s allowed. I’m not going to let Gen ruin this night for me. I want to be right here, in this moment, just the two of us on our first date.

I sit back down, and Peter’s finished his fried chicken and he has a pile of dirty napkins in front of him. He has a habit of wiping his fingers every time he takes a bite. There’s honey on his cheek, and a bit of breading is stuck to it, but I don’t tell him, because I think it’s funny.

“So how was your first date?” Peter asks me, stretching back in his chair. “Tell it to me like it wasn’t me that took you.”

“I liked it when you knew what kinds of movie theater snacks I like.” He nods encouragingly. “And . . . I liked the movie.”

“Yeah, I got that. You kept shushing me and pointing at the screen.”

“That man in front of us was getting mad.” I hesitate. I’m not sure if I should say this next thing I want to say, the thing I’ve been thinking all night. “I don’t know . . . is it just me, or . . .”

He leans in closer, now he’s listening. “What?”

I take a deep breath. “Is it . . . a little weird? I mean, first we were fake, and then we weren’t, and then we had a fight, and now here we are and you’re eating fried chicken. It’s like we did everything in the wrong order, and it’s good, but it’s . . . still kind of upside down.”
And also were you trying to feel me up during the movie?

“I guess it’s a little weird,” he admits.

I sip my sweet tea, relieved that he doesn’t think I’m the weird one for bringing up all the weirdness.

He grins at me. “Maybe what we need is a new contract.”

I can’t tell if he’s joking or if he’s serious, so I play along. “What would go in the contract?”

“Off the top of my head . . . I guess I’d have to call you every night before I went to bed. You’d agree to come to all my lacrosse games. Some practices, too. I’d have to come to your house for dinner. You’d have to come to parties with me.”

I make a face at the parties part. “Let’s just do the things we want to do. Like before.” Suddenly I hear Margot’s voice in my head. “Let’s . . . let’s have fun.”

He nods, and now he’s the one who looks relieved. “Yeah!”

I like that he doesn’t take things too seriously. In other people that could be annoying, but not him. It’s one of his best qualities, I think. That and his face. I could stare at his face all day long. I sip sweet tea out of my straw and look at him. A contract might actually be good for us. It could help us to head problems off at the pass and keep us accountable. I think Margot would be proud of me for this.

I pull a little notebook out of my purse and a pen. I write
Lara Jean and Peter’s New Contract
on the top of the page.

Line one I write,
Peter will be on time.

Peter cranes his neck to read upside down. “Wait, does that say, ‘Peter will be on time’?”

“If you say you’re going to be somewhere, then be there.”

Peter scowls. “I didn’t show up
one time
and you hold a grudge—”

“But you’re always late.”

“That’s not the same as not showing up!”

“Being late all the time shows a lack of respect for the person who’s waiting for you.”

“I respect you! I respect you more than any girl I know!”

I point at him. “‘Girl’? Just ‘girl’? What boy do you respect more than me?”

Peter throws his head back and groans so loudly it’s a roar. I reach across the table, over the food, and grab him by the collar and kiss him before we can fight again. Though I have to say, it’s this kind of fighting, the bickering kind, not the hurt-feelings kind, that makes us feel like
us
for the first time all night.

This is what we decide on.

Peter will not be more than five minutes late.

Lara Jean will not make Peter do crafts of any kind.

Peter doesn’t have to call Lara Jean before he goes to bed at night, but he can if he feels like it.

Lara Jean will only go to parties if she feels like it.

Peter will give Lara Jean rides whenever she wants.

Lara Jean and Peter will always tell each other the truth.

There’s one thing I want to add to the contract, but I’m nervous to broach the subject now that things are going smoothly.

Peter can still be friends with Genevieve, as long as he is up front with Lara Jean about it.

Or maybe it’s
Peter will not lie to Lara Jean about Genevieve.
But that’s redundant, because we already have the rule about always telling each other the truth. A rule like that wouldn’t be the truth anyway. What I really want to say is
Peter will always pick Lara Jean over Genevieve.
But I can’t say that. Of course I can’t. I don’t know a ton about dating or guys, but I do know that jealous insecurity is a real turnoff.

So I bite my tongue; I don’t say what I’m thinking. There’s only one thing, one really important thing I want to be sure of.

“Peter?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want us to ever break each other’s hearts.”

Peter laughs easily; he cups my cheek in his hand. “Are you planning on breaking my heart, Covey?”

“No. And I’m sure you’re not planning on breaking mine. Nobody ever plans it.”

“Then put that in the contract. Peter and Lara Jean promise not to break each other’s hearts.”

I beam at him, relieved as anything, and then I write it down.
Lara Jean and Peter will not break each other’s hearts.

6

THE DAY BEFORE WE GO
back to school, Kitty and I are lying in my bed watching pet videos on my computer. Our puppy, Jamie Fox-Pickle, is curled up in a ball at the foot of the bed. Kitty wrapped him up in her nubby old baby blanket so only his face is peeking out. He’s dreaming—I can tell by the way he shudders and shakes every so often. I can’t tell if it’s a good dream or a bad dream.

“Do you think we should start doing videos of Jamie?” Kitty asks me. “He’s cute enough, right?”

“He’s definitely got the look, but he doesn’t have any discernible talent or quirky thing about him.” As soon as I say the word “quirky,” I think of Peter and how he once said I was “cute in a quirky way.” I wonder if that’s still how he sees me. I’ve heard people say that the more you like someone, the more you think they are beautiful even if you didn’t think so in the beginning.

“Jamie does that thing where he prances around like a baby deer,” Kitty reminds me.

“Hm. I wouldn’t exactly call that a ‘thing.’ It’s not the same as leaping into cardboard boxes or playing the piano or having a really grumpy face.”

“Ms. Rothschild will help me train him. She thinks he has the right personality for tricks.” Kitty clicks on the next video, a dog that howls when you play Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Kitty and I crack up and we watch it again.

After a video of a woman whose cat wraps itself around her face like a scarf, I say, “Wait a minute—did you do your homework?”

“All I had to do was read a book.”

“So did you read it?”

“Mostly,” Kitty hedges, snuggling in closer to me.

“You’ve had all of Christmas break to read it, Kitty!” I really wish Kitty were more of a reader like Margot and me. She much prefers TV. I click stop on the video and snap my computer shut with a flourish. “No more pet videos for you. You go finish your book.” I start to shove her out of the bed, and Kitty grabs on to my leg.

“Sweet my sister, cast me not away!” Proudly she says, “That’s Shakespeare.
Romeo and Juliet
, in case you haven’t read it.”

“Don’t act high and mighty like you were reading Shakespeare. I saw you watching the movie on TV the other day.”

“Who cares if I read it or I saw the movie? The message is still the same.” Kitty crawls back up by me.

I pat her hair. “So what’s the message?”

“Don’t kill yourself over a boy.”

“Or a girl.”

“Or a girl,” she agrees. She opens up my computer. “One more cat video and then I’ll go read.”

My phone buzzes, a text from Chris.

Check Anonybitch’s instagram NOW.

Anonybitch is an anonymous Instagram account that puts up scandalous pictures and videos of people hooking up and getting drunk at parties around town. No one knows who runs the account; they just send in the content. There was a picture of a girl from another high school that went viral last year—she was flashing a cop car. I heard she got expelled from school for it.

My phone buzzes again.

NOW!

“Hold on, Kitty, let me check something first,” I say, pausing the video. As I type in the address, I say, “If you want to stay in here, close your eyes until I tell you to open them.”

Kitty obeys.

At the top of Anonybitch’s feed, there is a video of a boy and a girl making out in a hot tub. Anonybitch is particularly famous for her hot tub videos. She tags them #rubadub. This one’s a little grainy, like it was zoomed in from far away. I click play. The girl is sitting in the boy’s lap, her body draped over his, legs hooked around his waist, arms around his neck. She’s wearing a red nightgown, and it billows in the water like a full sail. The back of her head obscures the boy. Her hair is long, and the ends dip into the hot tub like calligraphy brushes in ink. The boy runs his hands down her spine like she is a cello and he is playing her.

I’m so entranced I don’t notice at first that Kitty is watching with me. Both of our heads are tilted, trying to suss out what it is we’re looking at. “You shouldn’t be looking at this,” I say.

“Are they doing it?” she asks.

“It’s hard to say because of her nightgown.” But maybe?

Then the girl touches the boy’s cheek, and there is something about the movement, the way she touches him like she is reading braille. Something familiar. The back of my neck goes icy cold, and I am hit with a
gust
of awareness, of humiliating recognition.

That girl is me. Me and Peter, in the hot tub on the ski trip.

Oh my God.

I scream.

Margot comes racing in, wearing one of those Korean beauty masks on her face with slits for eyes, nose, and mouth. “What?
What?
”

I try to cover the computer screen with my hand, but she pushes it out of the way, and then she lets out a scream too. Her mask falls off. “Oh my God! Is that you?”

Oh my God oh my God oh my God.

“Don’t let Kitty see!” I shout.

Kitty’s wide-eyed. “Lara Jean, I thought you were a goody-goody.”

“I am!” I scream.

Margot gulps. “That . . . that looks like . . .”

“I know. Don’t say it.”

“Don’t worry, Lara Jean,” Kitty soothes. “I’ve seen worse on regular TV, not even HBO.”

“Kitty, go to your room!” Margot yells. Kitty whimpers and clings closer to me.

I can’t believe what I am seeing. The caption reads
Goody two shoes Lara Jean having full-on sex with Kavinsky in the hot tub. Do condoms work underwater? Guess we’ll find out soon enough. ;)
The comments are a lot of wide-eyed emojis and
lol
s. Someone named Veronica Chen wrote,
What a slut! Is she Asian??
I don’t even know who Veronica Chen is!

“Who could have done this to me?” I wail, pressing my hands to my cheeks. “I can’t feel my face. Is my face still my face?”

“Who the hell is Anonybitch?” Margot demands.

“No one knows,” I say, and the roaring in my ears is so loud I can hardly hear my own voice. “People just re-gram her. Or him. Am I talking really loud right now?” I’m in shock. Now I can’t feel my hands or feet. I’m gonna faint. Is this happening? Is this my life?

“We have to get this taken down right now. Is there a help line for inappropriate content? We have to report this!” Margot’s grabbing the computer from me. She clicks the
REPORT INAPPROPRIATE
tab. Scanning the comments on the page, she seethes, “People are absolute jerks! We might have to call a lawyer. This won’t get taken down right away.”

“No!” I scream. “I don’t want Daddy to see!”

“Lara Jean, this is serious. You don’t want colleges to google you and have this video come up! Or, like, future employers—”

“Gogo! You’re making me feel so much worse right now!” I grab my phone. Peter. He’ll know what to do. It’s five o’clock, which means he’s still at lacrosse practice. I can’t even call him right now. I text instead:

Call me ASAP.

Then I hear Daddy’s voice calling up the staircase. “These potatoes won’t mash themselves! Who’s helping me?”

Oh my God. Now I have to sit at dinner and look my dad in the face, knowing that this video exists. This can’t be my life.

Margot and Kitty look at each other, then back at me. “Nobody says a word to Daddy!” I hiss at them. “That means you, Kitty!”

She gives me a hurt look. “I know when to keep my mouth shut.”

“Sorry, sorry,” I mumble. My heart is pounding so hard it’s giving me a headache. I can’t even think straight.

At dinner, my stomach is churning and I can barely get down a bite of potatoes. Luckily, I have Margot and Kitty to run interference and keep a steady chatter going so I don’t have to talk. I just push the food around on my plate and sneak Jamie Fox-Pickle bites under the table. As soon as everyone else is done eating, I sprint upstairs and look at my phone. Still nothing from Peter. Just more texts from Chris and one from Haven:

OMG is this you??!

I don’t know who the girl in the video is. I don’t recognize me in it. It’s not how I see myself at all. It’s like some other person who has nothing to do with me. I’m not someone who climbs into hot tubs with boys and sits in their laps and kisses them passionately with a wet nightgown clinging to them. But I was that night. The video just doesn’t tell the whole truth.

I keep telling myself it’s not like we’re really having sex in the video. It’s not like I’m naked. It just
feels
like I’m naked in the video. And all I can think is, everybody at school has seen that video, a video of me in one of the most intimate and truly romantic moments of my life. And not only that, but someone recorded it. Someone was there. That memory was supposed to only be mine and Peter’s, but now it turns out there was some random Peeping Tom in the woods there with us. It’s not just ours anymore. It feels tawdry now. It certainly looks that way. In the moment I felt free, and adventurous, maybe even sexy. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt sexy in my whole life. And now I just want to not exist.

I’m lying in bed staring up at the ceiling, phone at my side. Margot and Kitty have forbidden me from looking at the video. They tried to take my phone away, but I told them I need it for when Peter calls. Then I snuck a look at the video, and so far there are over a hundred comments, none good.

Kitty’s playing with Jamie Fox-Pickle on the floor and Margot’s emailing Instagram customer service when Chris knocks on my window. Margot unlocks it for her, and Chris climbs inside, shivering and pink-cheeked. “Is she okay?”

“I think she’s in shock,” Kitty says.

“I’m not in shock,” I say. But maybe I am. Maybe this is shock. It’s a queer, surreal sort of feeling, like I’m numb, but also all my senses feel heightened.

Margot says to Chris, “Why can’t you come in through the front door like a normal person?”

“Nobody answered.” Chris yanks off her boots and sits down on the floor next to Kitty. Petting Jamie, she says, “Okay, first of all, you can barely tell it’s you. And second of all, it’s really hot, so there’s nothing to be ashamed of. I mean, you look great.”

Margot makes a disgusted sound. “That’s so beside the point I don’t even know where to begin.”

“I’m just being honest! Objectively, it sucks, but also objectively, Lara Jean looks awesome in it.”

Crawling under my quilt, I say, “I thought you could barely even tell it was me! I knew I shouldn’t have gone on that ski trip. I hate hot tubs. Why would I willingly get into a hot tub?”

“Hey, be glad you were in your pajamas,” Chris says. “You could have been nude!”

My head pops out from under the quilt and I glare at her. “I would never be nude!”

Chris snorts. “Never nude. Did you know that’s a real thing? Some people call themselves never-nudes and they wear clothes at all times, even in the shower. Like, jean shorts.”

I turn on my side, away from Chris.

The weight of my bed shifts as Margot climbs in. “It’s going to be fine,” she says, peeling back the blanket. “We’ll get them to take the video down.”

“It won’t matter,” I say. “Everyone’s already seen it. They all think I’m a slut.”

Chris’s eyes go narrow. “So are you saying that if a girl has sex in a hot tub, that makes her a slut?”

“No! That’s not what I’m saying; that’s what other people are saying.”

“Then what
are
you saying?” she demands.

I look at Kitty, who’s braiding Chris’s hair in microbraids. She’s being extra quiet so we forget she’s here and don’t kick her out. “I think that as long as you’re ready and it’s what you want to do and you’re protecting yourself, then it’s okay and you should do what you want to do.”

Margot says, “Society is far too caught up in shaming a woman for enjoying sex and applauding a man. I mean, all of the comments are about how Lara Jean is a slut, but nobody’s saying anything about Peter, and he’s right there with her. It’s a ridiculous double standard.”

I hadn’t thought of that.

Chris looks down at her phone. “Like, three different people just texted the video to me as we were sitting here.”

I let out a sob and Margot says, “Chris, that’s not helping. At all.” To me she says, “If people say anything, just be really blasé, like it’s beneath you.”

“Or just, like, lean into it,” Chris says.

From behind her Kitty says, “Nobody will say anything to Lara Jean because she’s Peter’s girl. That means she’s under his protection, like on
The Sopranos
.”

Aghast, Margot says, “Oh my God, you’ve seen
The Sopranos
? How have you seen
The Sopranos
? It’s not even on TV anymore.”

“I watched it on demand. I’m on season three.”

“Kitty! Stop watching it!” She shuts her eyes and shakes her head. “Never mind. That’s not what’s important right now. We’ll talk about it later. Kitty, Lara Jean doesn’t need a boy to protect her.”

“No, Kitty has a good point,” Chris says. “It’s not about the fact that Peter’s a guy. Well, not completely. It’s about the fact that he’s popular and she isn’t. That’s where the protection comes into play. No offense, LJ.”

“None taken,” I say. It’s slightly insulting, but it’s also true, and now isn’t the time for me to get my feelings hurt about something so miniscule in comparison to a would-be sex tape.