Always and Forever, Lara Jean Read online

  The security guard bends down and picks it up. “Is this yours?” he demands.

  “Uh, yeah—”

  “Why did you leave it on the ground?” He unzips the backpack and pulls out a teddy bear.

  Peter’s eyes dart around. “Can you put that back inside? It’s for a promposal for my girlfriend. It’s supposed to be a surprise.”

  The security guard is shaking his head. He mutters to himself and starts looking in the backpack again.

  “Sir, please just squeeze the bear.”

  “I’m not squeezing the bear,” the security guard tells him.

  Peter reaches out and squeezes the teddy bear and the bear squeaks out, “Will you go to prom with me, Lara Jean?”

  I clap my hands to my mouth in delight.

  Sternly the security guard says, “You’re in New York City, kid. You can’t just leave a backpack on the ground for your proposal.”

  “It’s actually called a promposal,” Peter corrects, and the security guard gives him a look. “Sorry. Can I just have the bear back?” He spots me then. “Tell him Sleepless in Seattle is your favorite movie, Lara Jean!”

  I rush over. “Sir, it’s my favorite movie. Please don’t kick him out.”

  The security guard is trying not to smile. “I wasn’t going to kick him out,” he says to me. To Peter he says, “Just be more aware next time. In New York, we’re vigilant. If we see something, we say something, do you feel me? This is not whatever little country town you guys are from. This is New York City. We do not play around here.”

  Both Peter and I nod, and the security guard walks away. As soon as he’s gone, Peter and I look at each other and break out into giddy laughter. “Somebody reported my book bag!” he says. “My promposal got fucked.”

  I take the teddy bear out of his bag and hug it to my chest. I’m so happy I don’t even tell him not to cuss. “I love it.”

  “You were going to turn the corner, and see the book bag right here by the telescopes. Then you were going to pick up the bear, and squeeze it, and—”

  “How was I going to know to squeeze it?” I ask.

  Peter pulls a crumpled piece of paper out of the bag. It says, Squeeze Me. “It fell off when the security guard was manhandling it. See? I thought of everything.”

  Everything except the ramifications of leaving an unattended bag in a public place in New York City, but still! It’s the thought that counts, and the thought is the sweetest. I squeeze the bear, and again he says, “Will you go to prom with me, Lara Jean?” “Yes, I will, Howard.” Howard is, of course, the name of the bear from Sleepless in Seattle.

  “Why are you saying yes to him and not to me?” Peter demands.

  “Because he asked.” I raise my eyebrows at him and wait.

  Rolling his eyes, Peter mumbles, “Lara Jean, will you go to prom with me? God, you really do ask for a lot.”

  I hold the bear out to him. “I will, but first kiss Howard.”

  “Covey. No. Hell, no.”

  “Please!” I give him a pleading look. “It’s in the movie, Peter.”

  And grumbling, he does it, in front of everybody, which is how I know he is utterly and completely mine.

  * * *

  On the bus to our hotel in New Jersey, Peter whispers to me, “What do you think—should we sneak out after bed checks and come back to the city?” He’s mostly joking. He knows I’m not the type to sneak out on a school trip.

  His eyes go wide when I say, “How would we even get to the city? Do taxis go from New Jersey to New York?” I can’t even believe I am considering it. It’s so unlike me. Hastily I say, “No, no, never mind. We can’t. We’d get lost, or mugged, and then we’d get sent home, and then I’d be so mad we missed out on Central Park and everything.”

  Peter gives me a skeptical look. “Do you really think Jain and Davenport would send us home?”

  “Maybe not, but they might make us stay at the hotel all day long as punishment, which is even worse. Let’s not risk it.” Then: “What would we do?” I’m playing pretend now, not really planning, but Peter plays along.

  “We could go hear some live music, or go to a comedy show. Sometimes famous comedians do surprise sets.”

  “I wish we could see Hamilton.” When we drove through Times Square, Lucas and I craned our heads to see if we could get a glimpse of the Hamilton marquee, but no such luck.

  “Tomorrow I want to get a New York bagel and see how it stacks up against Bodo’s.” Bodo’s Bagels are legendary in Charlottesville; we’re very proud of those bagels.

  Putting my head on his shoulder, I yawn and say, “I wish we could go to Levain Bakery so I could try their cookie. It’s supposed to be like no chocolate chip cookie you’ve had before. I want to go to Jacques Torres’s chocolate shop too. His chocolate chip cookie is the definitive chocolate chip cookie, you know. It’s truly legendary. . . .” My eyes drift closed, and Peter pats my hair. I’m starting to fall asleep when I realize he’s unraveling the milkmaid braids Kitty pinned on the crown of my head. My eyes fly back open. “Peter!”

  “Shh, go back to sleep. I want to practice something.”

  “You’ll never get it back to how she had it.”

  “Just let me try,” he says, collecting bobby pins in the palm of his hand.

  When we get to the hotel in New Jersey, despite his best efforts, my braids are lumpy and loose and won’t stay pinned. “I’m sending a picture of this to Kitty so she’ll see what a bad student you are,” I say as I gather up my things.

  “No, don’t,” Peter quickly says, which makes me smile.

  * * *

  The next day is surprisingly springlike for March. The sun is shining and flowers are just beginning to bud. It feels like I’m in You’ve Got Mail, when Kathleen Kelly goes to meet Joe Fox in Riverside Park. I would love to see the exact garden where they kiss at the end of the movie, but our tour guide brings us to Central Park instead. Chris and I are taking pictures of the Imagine mosaic in Strawberry Fields when I realize Peter is nowhere in sight. I ask Gabe and Darrell, but no one’s seen him. I text him, but he doesn’t reply. We’re about to move on to Sheep Meadow for a picnic, and I’m starting to panic, because what if Mr. Jain or Ms. Davenport notices he’s not here? He comes jogging up just as we’re about to go. He’s not even out of breath or the least bit concerned he almost got left behind.

  “Where were you?” I demand. “We almost left!”

  Triumphantly he holds up a brown paper bag. “Open it and see.”

  I grab the bag from him and look inside. It’s a Levain chocolate chip cookie, still warm. “Oh my God, Peter! You’re so thoughtful.” I get on my tiptoes and hug him, and then turn to Chris. “Isn’t he so thoughtful, Chris?” Peter’s sweet, but he’s never this sweet. This is two romantic things in a row, so I figure I should praise him accordingly, because the boy responds well to positive reinforcement.

  She’s already got her hand inside the bag, and she stuffs a piece of cookie in her mouth. “Very thoughtful.” She reaches for another piece, but Peter snatches the bag away from her.

  “Damn, Chris! Let Covey have a bite before you eat the whole thing.”

  “Well, why’d you only get one?”

  “Because it’s huge! And it cost, like, five bucks for one.”

  “I can’t believe you ran and got this for me,” I say. “You weren’t nervous you’d get lost?”

  “Nah,” he says, all proud. “I just looked at Google Maps and ran for it. I got a little turned around when I got back in the park, but somebody gave me directions. New Yorkers are really friendly. All that stuff about them being rude must be bullshit.”

  “That’s true. Everyone we’ve met has been really nice. Except for that old lady who screamed at you for walking and looking at your phone,” Chris says, snickering at Peter, who scowls at her. I take a big bite of the cookie. The Levain cookie is more like a scone, really dense and doughy. Heavy, too. It really is like no chocolate chip cookie I’ve ever
tasted.

  “So?” Peter asks me. “What’s the verdict?”

  “It’s unique. It’s in a class of its own.” I’m taking another bite when Ms. Davenport comes up and hustles us along, eyeing the cookie in my hand.

  Our tour guide has a pointer that looks like the Statue of Liberty’s torch, and he holds it up in the air to shepherd us through the park. It’s actually pretty embarrassing, and I wish we could just go off by ourselves and explore the city, but no. He has a ponytail and he wears a khaki vest, and I think he’s kind of corny, but Ms. Davenport seems to be into him. After Central Park we take the subway downtown and get off to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. While everyone else is in line for ice cream at Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory, Peter and I run over to Jacques Torres’s chocolate shop. It’s Peter’s idea. Of course I ask Ms. Davenport for permission first. She’s busy talking to the tour guide, so she waves us off. I feel so grown up, walking through the streets of New York without any adults.

  When we get to the store, I’m so excited, I’m shaking. Finally I get to try Jacques’s famous chocolate chip cookie. I bite into it. This cookie is flat, chewy, dense. Chocolate has pooled on top and hardened! The butter and sugar taste almost caramelized. It’s heaven.

  “Yours are better,” Peter says, his mouth rudely full, and I shush him, looking around to make sure the girl at the register didn’t hear.

  “Stop lying,” I say.

  “I’m not!”

  He is. “I just don’t know why mine aren’t like his,” I say. “It must be the industrial ovens.” It seems I’ll just have to accept my not-quite-perfect chocolate chip cookie and be content with good enough.

  As we step out the door, I notice a bakery across the street called Almondine and another one on the opposite corner called One Girl Cookies. New York is truly a city of baked goods.

  Peter and I walk back to the ice cream shop holding hands. Everyone is out on the pier, sitting on benches, eating their ice cream, and taking selfies with the Manhattan skyline behind them. New York keeps surprising me with how pretty it is.

  Peter must be thinking the same thing, because he squeezes my hand and says, “This city is awesome.”

  “It really is.”

  * * *

  I’m sound asleep when there is a knock at the door. I wake up with a start. It’s still dark outside. In the bed across the room, Chris doesn’t stir.

  Then I hear Peter’s voice on the other side of the door. “Covey, it’s me. Want to go watch the sunrise on the roof?”

  I get out of bed and open the door, and there is Peter, in a UVA hoodie, holding a Styrofoam cup of coffee and a cup with a tea bag hanging out the side. “What time is it?”

  “Five thirty. Hurry, go get your coat.”

  “Okay, give me two minutes,” I whisper. I run to our bathroom and brush my teeth and then I fumble around in the darkness for my jacket. “I can’t find my jacket!”

  “You can wear my hoodie,” Peter offers from the doorway.

  From under her blanket Chris growls, “If you guys don’t shut up, I swear to God.”

  “Sorry,” I whisper. “Do you want to watch the sunrise with us?”

  Peter shoots me a pouty look, but Chris’s head is still under her blanket, so she doesn’t see. “No. Just leave!”

  “Sorry, sorry,” I say, and I scurry out the door.

  We take the elevator to the top, and it’s still dark outside, but it’s beginning to get light. The city is just waking up. Right away Peter shrugs out of his hoodie, and I put my arms up and he slips it over my head. It’s warm and smells like the detergent his mother uses.

  Peter leans over the edge, looking across the water to the city. “Can’t you picture us living here after college? We could live in a skyscraper. With a doorman. And a gym.”

  “I don’t want to live in a skyscraper. I want to live in a brownstone in the West Village. Near a bookstore.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” he says.

  I lean over the edge too. I never would have pictured myself living in New York City. Before I came here, it seemed like such an intimidating place, for tough people who aren’t afraid to get into a fight with someone on the subway, or men in suits who work on Wall Street, or artists who live in SoHo lofts. But now that I’m here, it’s not so scary, not with Peter by my side. I steal a look at him. Is this how it goes? You fall in love, and nothing seems truly scary anymore, and life is one big possibility?

  7

  It’s a six-hour trip back to Virginia, and I’m asleep for most of it. It’s dark out by the time we pull into the school parking lot, and I see Daddy’s car parked up front. We’ve all had our own cars and been driving ourselves around for so long, but pulling into the school parking lot and seeing all the parents waiting there for us feels like being in elementary school again, like coming back from a field trip. It’s a nice feeling. On the way home, we pick up a pizza and Ms. Rothschild comes over and she and Daddy and Kitty and I eat it in front of the TV.

  After, I unpack, do the bit of homework I have left, talk to Peter on the phone, and then get ready for bed. But I end up tossing and turning for what feels like eternity. Maybe it’s all the sleep I got on the bus, or maybe it’s the fact that any day now, I’ll hear from UVA. Either way, I can’t sleep, so I creep downstairs and start opening drawers.

  What could I bake this time of night that wouldn’t involve waiting for butter to soften? It’s a perpetual question in my life. Ms. Rothschild says we should just leave butter out in a dish like she does, but we aren’t a leave-the-butter-out family, we are a butter-in-the-refrigerator family. Besides, it messes with the chemistry if the butter is too soft, and in Virginia in the spring and summertime, butter melts quick.

  I suppose I could finally try baking the cinnamon roll brownies I’ve been playing around with in my head. Katharine Hepburn’s brownie recipe plus a dash of cinnamon plus cinnamon cream cheese swirl on top.

  I’m melting chocolate in a double boiler and already regretting starting this project so late when Daddy pads into the kitchen in the tartan robe Margot gave him for Christmas this past year. “You can’t sleep either, huh?” he says.

  “I’m trying out a new recipe. I think I might call them cinnabrownies. Or sin brownies.”

  “Good luck waking up tomorrow,” Daddy says, rubbing the back of his neck.

  I yawn. “You know, I was thinking maybe you’d call in for me and I’d sleep in a little and then you and I could have a nice, relaxing father-daughter breakfast together. I could make mushroom omelets.”

  He laughs. “Nice try.” He nudges me toward the stairs. “I’ll finish up the sin brownies or whatever they’re called. You go to bed.”

  I yawn again. “Can I trust you to do a cream cheese swirl?” Daddy looks alarmed and I say, “Forget it. I’ll finish making the batter and bake them tomorrow.”

  “I’ll help,” he says.

  “I’m pretty much done.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Okay then. Can you measure me out a quarter cup of flour?”

  Daddy nods and gets out the measuring cup.

  “That’s the liquid measuring cup. We need the dry measuring cups so you can level off the flour.” He goes back to the cupboard, and switches them out. I watch as he scoops flour and then carefully takes a butter knife to the top. “Very good.”

  “I learn from the best,” he says.

  I cock my head at him. “Why are you still awake, Daddy?”

  “Ah. I guess I have a lot on my mind.” He puts the top back on the flour canister and then stops and hesitates before asking, “How do you feel about Trina? You like her, right?”

  I take the pot of chocolate off the heat. “I like her a lot. I think I might even love her. Do you love her?”

  This time Daddy doesn’t hesitate at all. “I do.”

  “Well, good,” I say. “I’m glad.”

  He looks relieved. “Good,” he says back. Then he says it again. “Good.”
r />   Things must be pretty serious if he’s asking me such a question. I wonder if he’s thinking of asking her to move in. Before I can ask, he says, “No one will ever take the place of your mom. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do.” I lick the chocolate spoon with the tip of my tongue. It’s hot, too hot. It’s good that he should love again, that he should have someone, a real partner. He’s been alone so long it felt like the normal thing, but this is a better thing. And he’s happy, anyone can see it. Now that Ms. Rothschild’s here, I can’t picture her not here. “I’m glad for you, Daddy.”

  8

  All morning long I’ve been checking my phone, just like pretty much every senior at my school has been doing all week. Monday came and went with no word from UVA, then Tuesday, then Wednesday. Today is Thursday, and still nothing. The UVA admissions office always send out acceptances before April first, and last year, notices went out the third week of March, so it really could be any day now. The way it goes is, they put the word out on social media to check the Student Info System, and then you log in to the system and learn your fate.

  Colleges used to send acceptance letters in the mail. Mrs. Duvall says that sometimes parents would call the school when the mailman came, and the kid would jump in their car and drive home as fast as they could. There’s something romantic about waiting for a letter in the mail, waiting for your destiny.

  I’m sitting in French class, my last class of the day, when someone shrieks, “UVA just tweeted! Decisions are out!”

  Madame Hunt says, “Calmez-vous, calmez-vous,” but everyone’s getting up and grabbing their phones, not paying attention to her.

  This is it. My hands tremble as I log in to the system; my heart is going a million miles a minute waiting for the website to load.

  The University of Virginia received over 30,000 applications this year. The Committee on Admission has examined your application and carefully considered your academic, personal, and extracurricular credentials, and while your application was very strong, we are sorry to inform you . . .