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.”
Margot breaks in. “Daddy, I let her have a few sips of my drink—that’s it. She really doesn’t have any tolerance. Frankly, it’s something she should work on before she gets to college. Don’t blame Trina.”
Daddy looks from Margot to Trina and back to Margot. She is standing shoulder to shoulder with Trina, and in that moment they are united. Then he looks over at me. “You’re right. This is all on Lara Jean. Get in the car.”
On the way home we have to pull over once so I can throw up again. It’s not the pomegranate martini that’s making me want to die. It’s the look on Peter’s face. The way the light in his eyes went away. The hurt—if I close my eyes I can see it. The only other time I’ve seen him look that way was when his dad didn’t show up at graduation. And now that look is there because of me.
I start to cry in the car. Big sobs that make my shoulders shake.
“Don’t cry,” my dad says with a sigh. “You’re in trouble, but not that big of trouble.”
“It’s not that. I broke up with Peter.” I can barely get the words out. “Daddy, if you could’ve seen the look on his face. It was—terrible.”
Bewildered, he asks, “Why did you break up with him? He’s such a nice boy.”
“I don’t know,” I weep. “Now I don’t know.”
He takes one hand off the steering wheel and squeezes my shoulder. “It’s all right. It’s all right.”
“But—it isn’t.”
“But it will be,” he says, stroking my hair.
I made the right choice tonight. I did, I know it. Letting him go was the right thing.
I can see the future, Peter. That way lies heartbreak. I won’t do it. Better to part while we can still see each other in a certain way.
37
I WAKE UP IN THE middle of the night crying, and my first thought is, I want to take it back. I’ve made a huge mistake and I want to take it all back. Then I cry myself back to sleep.
In the morning, my head throbs, and now I’m the one throwing up in the bathroom, just like the girls at Beach Week, only there’s no one to hold my hair back. I feel better after, but I lie on the bathroom floor for a while in case another wave of nausea hits. I fall asleep there, and wake up to Kitty shaking me by the arm. “Move, I have to pee,” she says, stepping over me.
“Help me up,” I say, and she drags me to my feet. She sits down to pee and I splash cold water on my face.
“Go eat some toast,” Kitty says. “It’ll soak up the alcohol in your stomach.”
I brush my teeth and stumble downstairs to the kitchen, where Daddy is cooking eggs and Margot and Trina are eating yogurt.