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Here’s how it starts.
Bored college students, plus too many bottle of the cheapest wine they could find, plus Peter Kavinsky’s knack for procrastinating, plus the ghost in Chris’s bathroom.
“Wait I got it!” Peter somehow jumps onto to the coffee table, teetering way too close to the edge before Lucas and Greg grab him. “For my project.” He pauses for dramatic effect, leaning dangerously toward Lucas. “Ghost Adventures.”
Chris swirls her glass of wine and snorts. “You’re drunk, PK. Get off my table before you break it.”
“I’ll need your bathroom.”
Lara Jean’s staring at him upside down, her legs hanging off the back of the couch, Chris’s head resting on her stomach.
They’re all crowded in Chris’s living room, too many of them for Lara Jean to keep track of at the moment.
“Peter I swear to god if you puke everywhere you are cleaning it up.” Chris threatens him with a pretzel stick, and Lucas instantly dives away from the table.
“Noooooo.” Peter thankfully gets off the table, choosing instead to sit on top of it so he can be closer to Chris, which also leaves his knee rather close to Lara Jean’s face.
She pokes it for good measure.
“I mean, I need your bathroom because that’s where the ghost is.” His eye brows knit together. “I mean, that’s what Gen said.”
“Ugh.” Chris thrusts her wine glass out to Peter. “If you can remember her name then you are not drunk enough.”
Peter downs the wine glass, and reaches for the bottle that Chris passes him next.
“You do have a ghost right?”
“Yeah. His name is Dave.”
Lara Jean pokes Peter’s knee again.
Peter’s eyes go wide. “Did he tell you that?”
“No, dumbass. That’s what we named him.” Chris grabs the wine bottle back. “Why do you need my ghost?”
“Because,” Peter says, drawing out the word. “My project is to do a youtube spoof of a reality show. You have a ghost. So we can do Ghost Adventures.”
Greg grabs a pretzel and nods. “Can I be the one who gets scratched?”
“Of course. Only if Dave wants to scratch you though.” Peter nods, like the sentence he just said was practical.
"Does this mean we all have to buy Ed Hardy tee shirt?" Lucas asks, but Chris smacks his arm.
"God, no." Peter shivers and Greg pretends to throw up. Or maybe he's not pretending.
Peter takes out his phone and starts typing obnoxiously loud in Lara Jean’s opinion.
She pokes his knee again, and this time, he catches her, his hand shooting out and trapping hers on his knee, still looking at his phone, the other hand still typing away.
His hand is warm.
Warm, and much softer than she was expecting.
His eyes slide from his phone to hers.
Lara Jean’s breath catches in her throat.
“Can I help you?”
Her hand is trapped between his hand and his knee, and her other hand is tangled with Chris’s, and his eyes are staring into hers, and suddenly the room becomes just a little too warm.
Peter Kavinsky. AKA her first ever college crush. AKA love letter recipient number 4. AKA her best friend’s cousin’s ex, who is still somehow friends with Chris.
He’s beautiful. In that rugged, all American boy way, dark curls and eyes that glitter, and soft, warm hands. She fell in love with him the moment he walked into her British Lit class, and probably would have stayed in love with him longer if he didn’t open his mouth, only to refute the point she had made.
Or if he hadn’t dated the girl that made Lara Jean’s life hell in her lab class, who never did the work and always blamed Lara Jean.
Or he if he hadn’t become friends with Chris and weaseled his way into her life and stole her snacks and always argued against her movie choices.
“Your knee is in my face.”
She’s drunk. Drunk and upside down, and Peter Kavinsky is beautiful.
“Do you want in on the adventure?” he asks, instead of moving his knee or his hand.
“Duh.”
He flashes her one of his signature smiles, and she blames the flip in her stomach on the alcohol.
He still doesn’t move his hand.
Lara Jean doesn’t move hers either.
It’s nice.
“Okay!” Chris says, suddenly swinging her legs off the side of the couch, knocking into Peter and Lucas in the process. “You can use my bathroom. And my ghost. Tomorrow. LJ and I are going to bed now.” She stands, dragging Lara Jean right side up and off the couch with her as she goes.
The world tilts.
She tilts.
Peter Kavinsky catches her arms.
“Woah, there LJ,” Lucas says, jumping from his spot on the floor to catch Chris from the pull back. “You guys all good.
“Everything is swimming,” Lara Jean says, and she drops back onto the couch. “I need a moment.”
Chris falls next to her and Lucas shoves a glass of water into her hands. “Drink. The whole thing. Before you stand again.”
Lara Jean nods, and then the next thing she knows, she wakes up on the couch, tangled with Chris and Lucas, head pounding hard enough that she just wants to go back to sleep. Peter and Greg are within arms reach on the floor.
There’s wine bottle and pizza boxes and shoes littering the carpet.
And that’s how We Ain’t Afraid Of No Ghosts starts.
xXx
They put the video on YouTube. Nothing happens expect for the light flickering in such a way that it answers a question, and for some unknown reason, it gets hits. Enough that they decide to make another, and another, and another, until they have a huge following an email from Travel Channel giving them the summer to make a few episode that could possibly be picked up for TV, and that’s how they are here.
In the middle of a graveyard in the middle of night, Lara Jean rubbing her knees together because even though it’s the middle the summer, apparently it’s too cold for just tights.
Lucas is fiddling with one of the spirit boxes, checking the batteries and taking base readings.
“You cold, LJ?”
Lara Jean stops moving and turns to him. “Maybe.”
He grins and tosses her a pack of batteries and one of the mic packs.
“Maybe you could ask Peter for his jacket.”
Lara Jean goes to slap his arm but he dances out of her reach before she can. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“No?” Lucas raises an eyebrow at her, and she glares at him.
Lucas James was also a recipient of her unsent love letters, falling in and out of love with him quicker than she did with Peter. He introduced her to his boyfriend the second time they hung out, and since then, they had become almost as close as her and Chris.
“I think you need to stop reading comments on our videos.”
Lucas rolls his eyes. “I think you need to stop denying your feelings.”
Lara Jean feels herself flush, and she hates herself for it. Because she refuses to believe she has a crush on Peter Kavinsky. That ended in freshman year. But, since they started We Ain’t Afraid of No Ghosts, they had been spending even more time together. For some reason she picked him name out of the hat more often than anyone else, making them partners. Sometimes, they would stay up late in his dorm, him editing their footage, her sifting through Chris’s historical notes on their next location so she could create the scripts for the stories they were going to tell.
Sometimes he would walk her to class so they could bounce ideas off each other before presenting them to everyone else at their weekly meetings, and sometimes she would bake his favorite cookies for road trips just so she could see him smile, and sometimes, she would grab his hand first when something actually spooked her.
But only sometimes.
“I do not having feelings for Peter Kavinsky,” Lara Jean says, sticking her tongue out for good measure.
Chris walks by at that exact moment, eyebrows disappearing into her hairline.
“Denial is only a step toward acceptance,”Chris teases, holding her hand out for a high five from Lucas.
Lara Jean groans. “Guys.”
They both smile at her innocently.
“Have you seen the fanfiction people write about them?” Chris says, taking the camera Lucas gives him and positioning it.
“No! I bet it’s scandalous.”
“Chris, you have not read fanfiction about me,” Lara Jean says, glaring at her best friend.
“I haven’t read it. But I have totally seen it. Pretty sure half the internet has a bet on when you two will finally get together.”
“Where is this even coming from?”
Lucas and Chris share a look, and Lucas shrugs.
“You do watch our videos right?” Lucas says.
“Yes. We all watch them through together.”
Chris bites the inside of her cheek, trying to stop her smile. “LJ, you could literally cut the sexual tension with a butter knife when the two of you are on screen together. It’s even stronger when you and Pete are the double team.”
A gust of wind blows through and send goose bumps up Lara Jeans legs. She really should have though to pack a pair of jeans.
Something cracks behind them, causing all three of them to jump before Lara Jean can answer.
“Chris! The hat is needed, it’s team picking time.” Greg crosses his arms over his chest and stares at them, leaning against one of the trees. “What’s wrong? You guys look like you’ve seen a ghost?”
He flashes them a shit-eating grin, and it takes everything for Lara Jean to not toss her flashlight at him.
“Nothing. We’ll be there in a minute,” Chris says. She clips her camera in place, and offers Lucas a hand to help him up.
“We are not talking about this until this episode is over,” Lara Jean says. She grabs the spirit box that Lucas had just finished testing and starts making her way toward base camp, where the Peter and Greg were setting up one of the fancy new cameras the producers had given them access to.
Peter glances up when he hears her, a smile instantly growing on his face.
“Excited, Covey?”
She ignores the way her stomach jumps, and offers him a smile back.
“You betcha.”
xXx
Peter presses play on the camera and runs back to the group, sliding next to Lara Jean.
“And, action.”
Chris dramatically takes off her hat and shakes out her hair, and then everyone drops their name into the hat.
Chris goes first, continuing the drama, pausing for effect, before turning her paper toward the camera. “Lucas.”
She winks at him, and Lucas throws his arm around her shoulder.
Peter goes next, and every part of Lara Jean is hoping her chooses either Greg or Chris. Anything but her name.
Not because she likes him.
Only because everything Lucas and Chris said had gotten to her, and she doesn’t want to be alone with Peter on tonight’s investigation. Because it will only lead to her acting awkward, and then Lucas and Chris teasing her mercilessly about it later.
Peter’s less dramatic than Chris, closing his eyes and sticking his hand into the hat.
He opens his name card and the right side of his lip quirks up.
“LJ.”
Her heart jumps to her throat and Chris winks at her this time.
It’s okay. Greg can still choose Peter’s name, making them the trio team.
Greg is somehow even more dramatic than Chris, closing his eyes and humming a song, taking his sweet time rooting around in the hat.
He bring the piece of paper close to him face, and then same shit-eating grin he had on earlier appears.
“Christine.”
Lucas whoops and throws his other arm around Greg, and Lara Jean feels a little unsteady.
Peter’s hand brushes against her wrist and she jumps.
“You okay, Lara Jean?” Peter asks, positioning his hand held toward her. There’s concern in his eyes, and she takes a shaky breath.
“Yeah. I just feel a little off.”
They don’t lie for the camera. If they find nothing, they find nothing. And she’s not really lying, per say, if she says the place makes her feel weird.
She does feel weird, and jumpy, and cold, and all of those things could add up to her being slightly affected by the ghost town they are in.
Lara Jean twists her own hand held toward him, just in time to catch the way he smiles at her.
“Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.”
And oh.
Oh.
Lara Jean sees it now.
But that’s how Peter is. He’s charming, and he’s a great friend, and he’s impossible not to smile at.
So she smiles back.
“We’re taking the Saloon!” Chris says, crashing between them. “You guys can get the court house and jail.” She presses a quick kiss to Lara Jean’s cheek.
“Catch ya on the walkies, babe.”
xXx
“Do you want to do the history, or do you want me to?” Lara Jean asks, the two of them making their way down the super creepy hallway that connects the jail and courthouse.
One of their very expensive cameras is trained at the other end, and Lara Jean is currently looking at Peter doused in green through her even fancier night vision camera.
They’ll tape the history twice, each group doing their own version, the best version or a mix of the two chosen in post production.
It was one of the ways they incorporated something that benefited all of them in the project.
Peter and Greg are both film students, working on directing, taping, and editing. Lucas is in engineering, so he worked on the technology, finding the best versions of ghost hunting gear, tinkering with them making them better. Chris was studying history, most of the research on the areas and choosing most of the spots they taped in, also being the most sensitive on the team, according to one of the many psychics they had worked with. And Lara Jean was studying English and creative writing. So she wrote the ‘scripts’. Most of what they say on the show is reactions. But the history of the places and the ghosts stories were typically collections of Chris’s research and Lara Jean’s ability to write it in a way that doesn’t feel like a history lesson.
“Um...” Peter’s eyes glow on the camera screen. “I’ll do it.”
“Okay.” Lara Jean stops where she is. She makes sure Peter is a few steps ahead of her, camera trained on his back before she takes a few steps and catches his elbow. “So. Tell me about this place.”
Peter jumps into the explanation, complete with hand movements, facial expressions, and a dramatic turn right into her, flashlight under his face and eyes crossed.
Lara Jean laughs, pushing him away as she rolls her eyes.
“Ridiculous,” she says, turning her flashlight into onto one of the doors, almost scaring herself when it reflects off the window glass. She steps into the room, swinging the light around again, until it stops on Peter, standing the doorway.
“You feeling better?” He asks, his hand held dropping to his side.
It’s a small action. But it means a lot. He’s checking on her because he wants to make sure she’s okay. And he’s not taping it because he wants her to feel comfortable.
“Yeah.” She turns away from him to look at some of the graffiti lining the walls. “Do you feel colder in here, or is that just me?”
Peter pauses. “Maybe. Those tights not the best idea huh?”He teases.
“It’s summer.”
“Do you want my sweatshirt?” He asks, and it’s almost enough for Lara Jean to scream. If Chris and Lucas hadn’t got in her head, she might have said yes. But now all she can think about is what the YouTube comments would say.
“No,” she says, almost too quickly. “Thank you, though, Peter.
“You are squashing my attempts at being chivalrous.” He leans in close to her for a moment, stupid beautiful smile on his face. “And a chance for everyone to see how cute you look in sweatshirt many sizes too big for you.”
Her heart skips a beat. She moves to respond, when the scream echos around them.
She instantly grabs his hand. And instantly regrets it.
He wraps his hand around hers before she can retreat, pulling the walkie from his belt.
“Guys?” He says into the radio, leading Lara Jean out of the room.
“It’s Chris.” Greg’s voice cracks out of the walkie talkie.
“Is she okay?” Lara Jean grabs the radio from Peter, and takes off down the hallway, dragging Peter behind her.
“I-” Greg pauses, and Lara Jean all but breaks into a sprint to get to the saloon across the ghost town. “She’s really shaken up.”
Lara Jean crashes into the saloon, dropping Peter’s hand as she rushes over to where Chris is, huddled on the floor with her knees brought to her chest. Lucas has an arm around her and Greg is by the camera. She falls to her knees, and pulls Chris into her arms.
“What happened?”
“It flew. At my face, and I freaked.” Chris shudders, before pushing herself up. “I’m fine. I just need a minute to collect myself.”
Greg hums from his spot at the camera and the other boys go and join him as Lara Jean helps Chris stand.
“You see that?” Greg asks, pointing at the screen.
Peter leans in closer, his face lit up by the tiny screen. “I think so. We might be able to slow it down and blow it up once we’re finished.”
Chris pushes her way to the camera and shoves the boys out of the way. “We caught something?”
They rewind it and play it again, and it’s fast, but even Lara Jean can see it. A blur headed straight toward Chris, a split second of an image.
It’s something. Chris’s entire demeanor changes. “Guys we caught something.” She’s almost buzzing with excitement now, and she grabs Lara Jean so she can push her. “Go, back to the courthouse, let’s see if we can get anything else.”
“Are you sure-”
“LJ.” Chris shoots her a look over her shoulder as she grabs her hand held and starts marching toward the hall the thing came from. “Go find us some more ghosts.”
xXx
They make their way back to the really creepy hallway, and Peter tugs her sleeve just before they enter the room again, pulling her into a camera blind spot.
“You sure you are okay?” He asks. He scratches the back of his neck, and her stomach sort of flips.
“Yeah. This place just brings out the spooks huh?”
“Yeah.” Peter’s staring at the floor, and there’s a tension in his shoulder she can’t place.
“Are you?”
His eyes shoot up and land on hers, and she feels like he can see right through her. Like every thought and moment she’s imagined in her head is visible on her face.
“Totally.” He stands up straighter, and the tension disappears, almost like it never happened. “Let’s go check the temperature of that room.”
They maneuver one of the fancy camera’s into the room, and then he pulls out the thermal reader, and starts taking readings, but Lara Jean can’t focus. She’s stuck inside her own head, running over every interaction they’ve had with the past week, how he sat next to her on the bus ride, and how on the first night in the hotel he asked her if she wanted to get the pizza with him, and the way he smiled when he pulled her name out of the hat and…
“Lara Jean, don’t move.”
Lara Jean freezes, only moving to make sure her camera is pointed at him,
“Why?”
Peter tilts his head, staring at the thermal camera. “You’re in a cold spot. Do you feel anything?”
“If this is another attempt to give me your sweatshirt, Kavinsky, I swear I will hit you with my flashlight.”
He winks at her over the camera before shaking his head.
“No. The rest of the room is red and orange, but all around you is blue.”
Goosebumps rise on her arms, and she suddenly feels very, very cold. “Oh. Yeah, I feel it.” She holds out her hand, and she’s shaking. “Look at the goosebumps.”
It’s the two of them here, in this room, breathing and talking and moving, but suddenly, it is very, very quiet.
Peter’s by her side in a few steps, his hand running along forearm.
Suddenly her arm, is very, very warm.
“Anything else? Like do you see anything. Or do feel scared, angry, lightheaded?” His hand traces its way up her shoulder, and she feels a whole lot of things, but she doesn’t know if any of them have to do with ghosts.
“Umm...”
She wobbles. Lara Jean does not wobble ever, especially not over cute boys.
“Woah,” Peter wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her over to on the random abandoned chairs in the room. “LJ, speak to me.”
The worst thing that’s ever happened to her was getting a head ache in one of the abandoned asylums they visited the first season on the show. Chris was usually the one who had intense reactions. Lara Jean usually just heard noises or on one occasion saw something move.
“I just, I can’t think straight.”
He squats on the ground in front of her, his eyes searching her face. “Do you wanna go? We have whatever Chris saw, and we can do some readings from outside. If you’re not feeling well-”
“No!” Lara Jean shakes her head. “No, I mean, obviously something is here. If it is I want to find it. I want to learn more.” She’s covered in goosebumps again. “Get the Spirit box, maybe something will come through.”
Peter nods and then runs to the other side of the room toward his backpack, and comes back with the spirit box, crouching in front of her again, resting his arm along her knees as he fiddles with the contraption.
The box erupts into static and she flinches. No matter how many times they use, it always makes her jump, the too loud sound breaking through the quiet of the night.
But they don’t hear anything. At one point, it almost sounds like the box says run, but it’s too short of a word to count.
Peter refuses to let her stand though, instead opting to sit crosslegged on the ground in front of her chair. He shuts off the box and pulls out the thermal camera again, and unearths a trusty, old fashioned recorder from the depths of his backpack.
“You’re still blue,” he says, voice soft, like he’s afraid of speaking too loud. “Are you okay?”
Lara Jean nods, and pulls her knees up to her chest. “I think I should ask the questions first. Since it seems to be affecting me most.”
Peter nods and holds out the recorder, once again letting his wrist rest on her knee.
And for a moment, everything stills. Like he’s grounding her. She can think again, can feel his skin through the thin fabric of her tights, and Lara Jean feels safe.
“Is there someone here with us?”
They listen for a moment, ears straining, trying to hear anything.
“Did you die here?” Peter asks.
“Do I remind you of someone?”
“Do you want to hurt us?”
“Do you want to move on?”
They continue like that, back and forth, asking and waiting and asking, until Lara Jean feels warm again, and the cold spot vanishes. They listen back, but they only get the occasional rustle, nothing concrete enough to call evidence.
The recorder clicks, and they are enveloped in silence again.
But they don’t move. Peter’s eyes are on her, and her hand is resting over his, and they should leave this room and scope out some other places, or find the others, or anything, but Lara Jean is almost afraid to breath.
Partly because she doesn’t want to stand up and suddenly feel sideways again, and partly because Peter is looking at her like he’s trying to find the right words to say. And she doesn’t know if she wants him to say something or say nothing.
The radio crackles to life, and they both jump, Lara Jean cursing loudly as Peter scrambles for the walkie.
“What?” He asks, his eyes jumping over to Lara Jean again, and she can see him mentally cataloging that she is okay. She knows because she is doing the same thing.
“Chris is throwing up.” Greg doesn’t sound like himself. It takes Lara Jean a moment to realize he sounds scared. “I don’t know, man, something about this place feels off.”
Peter checks his watch. “Okay, you guys get Chris out of there and into the van. LJ and I will do a super quick walk around for the rest of the rooms we haven’t hit, and then we’ll be out. We’ve been here for a few hours now, and with the preinterviews and whatever flew at Chris earlier, we’ll have enough footage. And if we don’t, fuck it.”
Lara Jean is already pulling herself out of the chair and fixing her hand held to the hallway, silently indicating to Peter to follow.
“I want to know what it is though,” Chris’s voice is weak over the walkie, and it takes everything in Lara Jean to not sprint across the town again.
“Not when you are sick from it. If we push too hard, it could hurt you.”
Typically, they are a democracy, a five person group, where no one is in charge, and everyone has a vote. But there are moments, like these, where Lara Jean knows that Peter is the one leading them through this. And he very rarely puts out that front, but his voice has that twinge of authority, and she knows they can hear it even over the radio. “We aren’t doing this to get hurt. We set out to find ghosts and demons and hauntings, and I think it’s pretty clear there is something here. And if it’s not communicating in ways that are peaceful, I say we leave it be until another time.”
Peter slides his hand free hand around her elbow just before she exits the hallway into jail. They had walked through here earlier, done some test readings and a group question session.
“Fine.” Chris grumbles, and then the walkie cuts out and Peter tugs at her again.
“My head hurts just looking at that place. I don’t want to pass out on you. Don’t think you can carry me all the way out of here.” He winks, and she knows he’s trying to dissolve the tension, to help her relax, and it works somehow.
“I’m stronger than I look.”
That draws a real smile out of him. “Don’t I know it, Covey.”
And then he grabs her hand, and doesn’t let go until they meet back up with the others outside.
xXx
They’re all crowded Lara Jeans and Chris’s bed, Greg fiddling around with the video of Chris’s attacker, trying to slow it down and get a clearer picture.
Chris felt instantly better the second they left the town, and everyone is buzzing with energy from it.
Everyone’s squished together, trying to see if the image comes through clearly, but Lara Jean pulled herself back from the group, and cuddled up in her own sweatshirt, opting to click through the photos she took on her phone instead.
Unlike Chris, her supposed haunting ailments only lessened from leaving the premise of the ghost town, the after effects still living in her skin. Her head is still buzzing and she still feels unsteady, and all she really wants to do is sleep it off, but they got so much evidence tonight, that it might be good enough for the Travel Channel to show them on TV instead of as web series, so no one else wants to sleep yet.
She gets to the end of her photos, not even processing half of them, when her phone buzzes in her hand, startling her enough that she almost drops it.
Wanna go for a walk?
She meets Peter’s eyes over Lucas’s head, and throws his head toward the door, and she nods, pushing herself off the bed before she can change her mind.
“I need some air,” she says, and Peter’s off the bed in a next second, and Lucas, Chris, and Greg all give them the same look at the same time, which is almost creepier than anything that happened at the ghost town.
Chis winks at her and Lara Jean rolls her eyes, before making her way toward the door.
“Watch out for ghosts.”
Lara Jean thinks about flipping them off, but Peter slips out the door behind her, and she doesn’t want to think about her friends, or how they will tease her later, or how they maybe, actually, sorta found some ghosts.
She doesn’t really know what she wants to think about.
“I know I’ve asked you this like a hundred times today, but is everything cool?”
They wander out of the incredibly fancy hotel the Travel Channel put them up in and into the connected garden, the air even colder in the early morning light, the sun just starting to pop out over the horizon.
“That place threw me off. The thing with Chris, the cold spot, the sounds we heard around the court room. I don’t know,” she shrugs and pulls her arms closer around her. “The whole idea started off as a spoof, and I never thought I believed in ghosts, and then we started this, and things started happening, but this feels like, the most intense place we’ve ever been too.” She stops and glances at the garden around them, trying to steady herself. “We should do after action interviews. If we get them to come down now the lighting is pretty good.”
“Hey, don’t change the subject on me.” Peter knocks her shoulder, and she’s thrown back into reality, back into the fact that she’s out in the garden with Peter Kavinsky right now, and he’s the whole reason for her mind being in a scramble worthy position in the first place.
“This is your fault you know.”
“What?”
“You started this whole thing with Dave the bathroom ghost, and then you were so good at editing and being relatable and promoting us on the internet, and charming the Travel Channel people. And then you just flirt with me all the time and Chris and Lucas get in my head and make me confused and unconcentrated which is exactly how the ghosts and demons want you so they can mess with you mind and-”
He’s kissing her. He’s kissing her, and his lips are soft, and his hand comes up to cup her jaw, and Lara Jean cannot make a complete thought.
He pulls back, and it takes a second, but then his eyes go wide and he takes three steps away from her dragging his hand through his hair. “Shit. Sorry. I should have asked you first, or like just not kissed you out of nowhere.”
Lara Jean is still stuck in the spot he kissed her, her brain taking a little too long to catch up.
Peter stops walking and turns back to her.
He looks crushed. Like he wants to reverse time and take it back.
But she doesn’t want him to take it back.
“Shhh.”
“What?”
Lara Jean finally moves, her brain finally catching up with everything else.
“I said shh.” She stands on her tip toes and wraps her hand around his shoulders, pulling him down closer to her height again.
“Why did you kiss me?”
“God, Lara Jean, I thought it was obvious. I thought you knew I was flirting with you.”
“I’m a little oblivious. That doesn’t answer why you kissed me.”
“Would you believe me if I said the ghosts made me do it.”
“No.”
He licks his lips, and Lara Jean wants to kiss him again. But she needs him to answer her.
“Lara Jean, I’ve been into you for months now. Since before we even started this whole thing. I just didn’t know how to bring it up, and then we started We Ain’t Afraid and it seemed like telling you would just make things awkward. But then you said that I got into you head, and I thought, I should tell you now, because, god Lara Jean, you are driving me crazy. I just needed to tell you, but then I reacted before I should have and-”
She tugs him down the rest of the way until she can kiss him. This time her brain is working correctly, and she appreciates everything about this moment.
How he slides his hand around her waist and pulls her closer, how his hair feels under her fingertips, how his teeth catch on her lip when she sighs and he smiles against her mouth.
She pulls back when she needs to breath, and he knocks his nose against hers. “Why did you kiss me?”
“Because you made my brain so scrambled that I almost got possessed by a ghost.”
“Please don’t get possessed. That would be super cool for the show, but like super uncool for everything else.” Peter says, brushing a piece of hair behind her ear.
“You wouldn’t want to kiss a ghost?” She says, teasing.
“No,” he presses his lips against hers, almost too fast to even be a kiss. “The only person I want to be kissing is you.”
And oh.
Oh.
That shoots a bolt of heat through her entire body, and she tries to hide her face in his chest so he can’t see her blush.
“Wow. Would you want to kiss me as a ghost?” She asks, because there’s a lot of things running through her mind right now. But their particular brand of flirting for the past couple of months has been her being completely oblivious and making stupid comebacks to hide the fact that she liked him, so she falls back into it.
“Probably.” He tilts her chin up until she’s looking at him again. “Can I kiss you?”
She nods, and then he’s kissing her again and the sun is rising behind them, and they have to catch a bus in a few short hours to get to their next location, and they should record after interviews, and they might have caught a ghost on camera, and his hand slips into the back pocket of her pajama pants, and she stops thinking.
She’s kissing Peter Kavinsky and for the next few moments, that’s all she needs to think about.
xXx
Here’s how it starts.
Five kids and two cameras and a ghost in a dorm bathroom. A summer full of possibility and then 10 more cameras, and more ghosts, and a kiss in a garden at 4 A.M.
“Coming up on this season of We Ain’t Afraid of No Ghost’s...”
Chris falls onto the couch next to Lara Jean and passes her a glass of champagne that probably costs as much as their tuition.
“I can’t believe they decided to put us on TV.” Chris says, clinking their glasses together. On the screen in front of them, scenes of their investigation flash, and Chris’s scream from when they caught something on camera echos as the preview fades.
The room erupts into applause, and its crazy to Lara Jean how this started with them getting wine drunk on Saturday night, and now they are in some fancy executives apartment in Vancouver, watching their first ever episode on TV.
“Guys, the Ghost Adventure dudes tweeted us,” Greg says, and then he crashes onto the couch next to them, Lucas and Peter are leaning over the back so they can see it. Greg is excitedly typing back, and Lara Jean pulls out her phone so she can snap a picture of the five of them, something she can post on instagram later when she thanks everyone for watching.
Peter catches her and then he leans over and presses his lips against her cheek, and then everyone is groaning or rolling their eyes at them, but Lara Jean snaps the image anyway before dropping her phone and turning so she can kiss him properly.
The groans grow louder, and Lara Jean flips them off. “You guys literally set this in motion, so you’re not allowed to complain.”
“I can and I will complain as much as I want.” Chris says, and Lucas and Greg nod their heads in agreement, and Peter just grabs her hand and pulls her off the couch and out to the fancy porch and pulls her in for another kiss.
And this is her life now. She hunts ghosts and kisses Peter Kavinsky because he’s her boyfriend, and she works with her best friends and now they have a TV show that the guys of Ghost Adventures liked enough to tweet about.
Peter pulls back she’s breathless over one kiss. “I’m really glad you weren’t possessed by a ghost. And that you decided to hunt ghosts with me.”
“I’m really glad you asked me to come along.”
And then he’s kissing her again, and this is their beginning, and their present, and their future all wrapped into this moment.
She wouldn’t have it any other way.