Chapter Text
It’s my first night at UNC, and I’m alone. After the last box has been unloaded from the car, after Daddy and Trina and Kitty have given me my final hugs and departed, after I’ve hung up all my dresses and put my toiletries caddy in the bathroom down the hall and made my bed and changed into my pajamas, I lean on my desk and take a deep breath. My roommate Priya is flying in from California, and she won’t get here until tomorrow morning, so her side of the room is still bare and her standard-issue blue vinyl mattress looks weirdly naked. In contrast, my side already feels like me – I’ve hung up fairy lights and the floral bunting I sewed myself, Command-stripped all my photos to the wall, and stocked the bottom drawer of my desk with my scrapbooking supplies. And I feel...I don’t know how I feel. Happy and sad and excited and scared and nostalgic and hopeful, all at once. I love beginnings. I hate endings. This feels like both.
I grab my phone to check the time and am startled to realize it’s almost midnight. I also have two texts from Peter that I missed during my several-hours-long efficiency tornado of organizing and decorating.
Peter Kavinsky: Send me a pic of your room once it’s all set up!
Peter Kavinsky: Also, no worries if you can’t call tonight, I saw you this morning so it doesn’t count. But the contract goes into effect tomorrow, and be warned, there will be consequences for failure to meet the terms of our agreement.
Before I’m even really aware of what my fingers are doing, I’m FaceTiming him. He picks up after just two rings.
“Hey, college girl,” he says, smiling at me, and immediately, equal parts joy and longing fill my chest. I miss him. Already, I miss him. I can feel tears threatening to spill out, but I furiously blink them back. I’m not going to make Peter regret being at UVA without me, and I’m not going to let myself give up on UNC before I even start. I’m going to be happy, dammit. I’m going to give Chapel Hill my best shot.
“Hey, college boy,” I say back, and if my voice comes out a little croaky, Peter either doesn’t notice or knows me well enough not to comment on it. I clear my throat and raise an eyebrow at him. “‘Consequences for failure to meet the terms of our agreement’? Really?”
“Get used to it, Covey. I’m pre-law, remember?”
“Yes. The key word being pre. You haven’t even started class yet,” I point out.
“But I have seen Legally Blonde, thanks to you, so you only have yourself to blame,” he says.
I crack up in spite of the mixed emotions warring within me. Peter has that effect on me, even over FaceTime. He’s like my own personal sun, burning all the clouds away. “So? What are these consequences?”
Peter levels a wicked grin at the camera that makes me blush. “That’s confidential.”
“Objection!”
“Overruled. How was moving in?”
“It was fine. Everything’s pretty much unpacked, and my roommate doesn’t move in until tomorrow, so I have the place to myself tonight. How was practice?”
“Pretty good, actually,” Peter says, and I feel a little weight lift off my heart. Preseason training has been kicking his butt since it started this week, and I was so worried that between watching the meteor shower last night and seeing me off this morning, he wouldn’t get enough sleep. “The team’s kind of falling into place, and I really like the guys. Well, most of them. But wait, I want to see your room! Gimme a tour.”
I open my mouth to ask him what he meant about the team, but decide against it. I’ll ask him tomorrow, or the day after. Tonight, our first night of official long-distance, is not the night for delving into any negative emotions. I want only positive vibes to traverse the 190 miles between us. So I hop off my desk and grin at the camera. “Hey, MTV, I’m Lara Jean. Welcome to my crib!”
Peter laughs as I switch to the not-front-facing camera. “So here are my super dope fairy lights…and the totally sick bunting I sewed that day you made us marathon all the Godfather movies…”
“Ohhh, so that’s what that was,” Peter says. “It looks way less grandma-y when it’s all hung up.”
“I told you it would!” I pull open my scrapbooking drawer and point the phone inside. “This is my incredibly rad stash of pinking shears and Mod Podge and washi tape…” I close the drawer and turn to the wall next to my bed. “And these are the…um…” I wrack my brain for more 2000’s-era MTV slang.
“Clutch? Phat? Bangin'? Off the chizzain?” Peter suggests helpfully.
“Thank you, the mega phat photos of my hella clutch friends and family and my majorly bangin’ but also completely ridiculous boyfriend,” I finish, zooming in on the absurd photo that Peter, per our contract, has stipulated should occupy pride of place on my wall.
Of all of the very cute options we have, Peter just had to choose this one. I was already going to bring our prom portrait, the Sixteen Candles homage we posed for that same night, a collage of all our matching Senior Week and Halloween costumes, and one picture of me kissing his cheek after a lacrosse game he won, in which Peter looks sweaty and exhilarated and adorable (I just look sweaty). But Peter insisted on the addition of one that I wasn’t even in – a random, poorly lit shirtless mirror selfie he sent me when I was in Korea, his six-pack flexed in all its tanned glory. As if this were not bad enough, he had this terrible selfie blown up and professionally framed. I wish I were kidding.
I shrieked aloud in horror when Peter unveiled it, while we were hanging out at his dorm room at UVA on a rare evening when he didn’t have practice (student athletes get to move in two weeks early for preseason). Far from being deterred by my reaction, he pointed at me triumphantly. “Exactly,” he said. “You’re going to have guy friends, and that’s totally cool, obviously, but statistically, some of them will catch feelings for you because you’re, you know, you, and when they come by your room for the first time, the first thing they see will be this , and they’ll be like, ‘Whoa, Lara Jean must be really obsessed with this guy if she’s into him enough to want to frame this tacky-ass picture, so maybe let’s just ask out Susie from Bio 101 instead.’”
I opened my mouth to try and unpack that logic, and then closed it again, because honestly, what was the point? Feebly, I said, “You can’t make me hang this up. It’s ridiculous. You’re ridiculous.”
Peter held up a finger as if he had been expecting this argument. “May I remind you of the last page of my scrapbook, which, I might also remind you, was placed there by you?”
I sighed, because of course I did remember the last page of his scrapbook: a photocopy of the last page of my yearbook. Our amended long-distance-relationship contract, with both of our signatures at the bottom.
“Article Three: ‘Lara Jean will put up a picture of Peter’s choosing on her wall,’” Peter read aloud, and smirked at me, holding up the selfie. “Well, this is the picture of Peter’s choosing. Pretty sure it's legally binding. Sorry 'bout it.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t. You love me.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“But you loooove me,” he sang. “Admit it.”
“Uh-uh.”
Peter carefully placed the photo back on his desk and then turned around and pounced on me, pinning to the bed and tickling me mercilessly until I yelped “Okay, okay, yes, I love you, stop it,” at which point he stopped tickling me and slowly ran his hands up my body until he was holding my face, and said “I love you, too." Then we made out until his roommate Anders barged in and told us to get a room, and Peter was like “I AM in my room,” and for a minute I was seriously concerned that I had Yoko Ono’d their budding friendship, but then Anders spotted the Tupperware of snickerdoodles I had brought, and long story short, we’re all cool now, and Anders has promised that whenever I visit Peter, we can have the room to ourselves as long as I provide compensation by way of baked goods.
Anyway, every time I look at that terrible framed photo, it makes me think of that day and smile. Not that I’ll admit it to Peter.
“Oh, that’s perfect,” Peter says now, sounding much too gleeful. “Anyone who sees this will for sure be like, ‘oh, crap, she’s taken.’ And you’ll get to look at my abs every day. They look even better than I remembered, actually.”
“Do you need to be alone with yourself right now? If you want, I can just go, and then your phone screen will basically be a mirror.”
I’m quite proud of myself for that dig, especially when Peter lets out a surprised peal of laughter. “Damn, Covey. Savage. And dirty. College has already changed you.”
“Well, we all have to grow up sometime,” I say.
“Go back to front-facing.”
I do, and for a moment, we both smile at each other like dorks.
“I should probably go,” Peter says, breaking the silence. “I have practice in the morning, and then a bunch of freshman orientation stuff, since everyone else is finally moving in.”
“Yeah, I should go to sleep too,” I say, and then hesitate. “Peter?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I ask you something kind of weird?”
“Why are you asking for permission? You ask me weird shit all the time, Covey.”
“It’s more of a request than a question.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “What is it? Do you want me to tattoo your face on my back?”
I want to change course and say something jokey, like, no, actually, I want him to tattoo my face on his butt, but I’m suddenly feeling so homesick and Peter-sick, and I don’t want my first last call to end, and the words that drop out of my mouth are, “Will you fall asleep with me? Like, I get into bed and you get into bed and we stay on the phone until we both fall asleep?”
He looks at me tenderly, so tenderly, and I know he can see the uncertainty and fear and vulnerability that I’ve been trying so hard to cover up for his sake, but it’s all right, because I can see those things in his face too, and we’ll get through them. Separately, and together. “Of course,” he says. "Then we won't have to say good night."
Peter falls asleep first, and I lie awake for a little while longer, listening to his slow, staticky breath coming out of my speakers. And for a moment, as I am lulled to sleep too, it doesn’t feel like there are 190 miles between us at all.