P.S. I Still Love You (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, #2)(3)

“No, Kitty’s right, he’s hot,” Haven admits. “Like, how did you get him? No offense. I just thought you were the non-dating type.”

I frown. The non-dating type? What kind of type is that? A little mushroom who sits at home in a semidark room growing moss?

“Lara Jean dates plenty,” Margot says loyally.

I blush. I date never, Peter barely even counts, but I’m glad for the lie.

“What’s his name?” Haven asks me.

“Peter. Peter Kavinsky.” Even saying his name is a remembered pleasure, something to savor, like a piece of chocolate dissolving on my tongue.

“Ohh,” she says. “I thought he dated that pretty blond girl. What’s her name? Jenna? Weren’t you guys best friends when you were little?”

I feel a pang in my heart. “Her name is Genevieve. We used to be friends, not anymore. And she and Peter have been broken up for a while.”

“So then how long have you and Peter been together?” Haven asks me. She has a dubious look in her eye, like she 90 percent believes me but there’s still that niggling 10 percent that has doubt.

“We started hanging out in September.” At least that much is true. “We’re not together right now; we’re kind of on a break. . . . But I’m . . . optimistic.”

Kitty pokes my cheek, makes a dimple with her pinky. “You’re smiling,” she says, and she’s smiling too. She cuddles closer to me. “Make up with him today, okay? I want Peter back.”

“It’s not that simple,” I say, though maybe it could be?

“Sure it’s that simple. He still likes you a lot—just tell him you still like him, too, and boom. You’re back together and it’ll be like you never kicked him out of our house.”

Haven’s eyes go even wider. “Lara Jean, you broke up with him?”

“Geez, is it so hard to believe?” I narrow my eyes at her, and Haven opens and then wisely closes her mouth.

She takes another look at the picture of Peter. Then she gets up to go to the bathroom, and as she closes the door, she says, “All I can say is, if that boy was my boyfriend, I’d never let him go.”

My whole body tingles when she says those words.

I once had that exact same thought about Josh, and look at me now: It’s like a million years have gone by and he’s just a memory to me. I don’t want it to be like that with Peter. The farawayness of old feelings, like even when you try with all your might, you can barely make out his face when you close your eyes. No matter what, I always want to remember his face.



When it’s time to go, I’m putting on my coat and Peter’s letter falls out of my pocket. Margot picks it up. “Another letter?”

I blush. In a rush I say, “I haven’t figured out when I should give it to him, if I should leave it in his mailbox, or if I should actually mail it? Or face to face? Gogo, what do you think?”

“You should just talk to him,” Margot says. “Go right now. Daddy will drop you off. You go to his house, you give him the letter, and then you see what he says.”

My heart pumps wildly at the thought. Right now? Just go over there, without calling first, without a plan? “I don’t know,” I hedge. “I feel like I should think it over more.”

Margot opens her mouth to respond, but then Kitty comes up behind us and says, “Enough with the letters. Just go get him back.”

“Don’t let it be too late,” Margot says, and I know she’s not just talking about me and Peter.

I’ve been tiptoeing around the subject of Josh because of everything that’s happened with us. I mean, Margot’s forgiven me, but there’s no sense in rocking the boat. So these past couple of days I’ve stayed silently supportive and hoped that was enough. But Margot leaves for Scotland again in less than a week. The thought of her leaving without at least talking to Josh doesn’t feel right to me. We’ve all been friends for so long. I know Josh and I will mend things, because we’re neighbors, and that’s how it goes with people you see a lot. They mend, almost on their own. But not so for Margot and Josh, with her so far away. If they don’t talk now, the scar will only harden over time, it will calcify, and then they’ll be like strangers who never loved each other, which is the saddest thought of all.

While Kitty’s putting on her boots, I whisper to Margot, “If I talk to Peter, you should talk to Josh. Don’t go back to Scotland and leave things like this with him.”

“We’ll see,” she says, but I see the hope that flares in her eyes, and it gives me hope too.





2


MARGOT AND KITTY ARE BOTH asleep in the backseat. Kitty’s got her head in Margot’s lap; Margot’s sleeping with her head back and her mouth wide open. Daddy is listening to NPR with a faint smile on his face. Everyone’s so peaceful, and my heart is thumping a million beats a minute just in anticipation of what I’m about to do.

I’m doing it now, this very night. Before we’re back at school, before all the gears shift back to normal and Peter and I are nothing more than a memory. Like snow globes, you shake them up, and for a moment everything is upside down and glitter everywhere and it’s just like magic—but then it all settles and goes back to where it’s supposed to be. Things have a way of settling back. I can’t go back.