Chapter Text
There is a very specific type of loneliness that only exists in New York City.
Back in Virginia, loneliness was quiet and wide open. It was sitting on the window seat in my bedroom with a mug of Earl Grey, watching the rain hit the oak tree in the front yard, feeling the cozy, aching nostalgia of a song you used to love. But New York loneliness is loud. It hums at a thousand vibrations per second. It smells like roasted nuts, stale subway air, and wet concrete. It pushes past you on the sidewalk carrying a garment bag and three iced coffees, completely oblivious to the fact that you are currently standing on the corner of 4th and Mercer, wearing a vintage yellow beret, trying very hard not to cry over a bagel.
It had been three weeks since Kitty and Dad hugged me goodbye at Washington Square Park, leaving me in a dorm room that smelled faintly of industrial pine cleaner and the lingering anxiety of three hundred eighteen other freshmen.
Living in Greenwich Village was supposed to be a page straight out of my grandest, most cinematic dreams. I had mapped it out on Pinterest boards for months: long afternoon study sessions in Washington Square, vintage thrifting in Soho, finding a tiny local bakery that made perfect macarons, and writing long, elegant letters to Peter.
Except real life rarely abides by a Pinterest board.
Peter and I were trying. We really were. We had a scheduled FaceTime every evening at eight o'clock—six o'clock his time at Stanford. But Palo Alto was sunny and gold, full of lacrosse practice, dorm barbecues, and new friends whose names I couldn't keep straight. New York was gray, fast, and overwhelming. When we spoke, our conversations felt stretched thin, like dough that had been rolled out one too many times. We were clinging to the ghosts of who we were in high school, tip-toe-ing around the vast, silent ocean of distance stretching between us.
To cope, I did what I always did when my heart felt like an overstuffed suitcase: I wrote letters, and I baked.
The problem was that dorm ovens are notorious for running twenty degrees too hot. My first attempt at dark chocolate sea-salt cookies resulted in a batch of charred hockey pugs that set off the smoke detector on the fourth floor of Weinstein Hall, forcing seventy-five half-dressed teenagers onto the sidewalk at one in the morning.
That was how I found myself looking for off-campus housing before September had even turned its leaf to October. Through a miraculous stroke of luck—and a very lengthy, desperate phone call from Dad to a distant cousin of a neighbor—I managed to sublet a minuscule studio apartment on the top floor of an old, five-story brick walk-up on Perry Street. The stairs squeaked, the radiator clanked like a haunted typewriter, but it had a real, working gas oven and a windowsill wide enough for a pot of sweet basil.
On this particular Tuesday, the rain was coming down in long, gray sheets. My arms were completely numb. I was hauling three overflowing tote bags: one stuffed with heavy English Literature textbooks, one containing my precious vintage stationery kit—complete with my brass wax seal, pastel envelopes, and fine-tip calligraphy pens—and a third carrying a bakery box filled with my latest attempt at blue-berry lemon scones.
I ducked into The Daily Grind, a tiny, subterranean coffee shop three steps below street level. It smelled divine—espresso beans, damp wool, and cinnamon.
I dumped my heavy totes onto a small, round marble table near the window and let out a breath so dramatic Margot would have scolded me for it. I collapsed into the bentwood chair, unbuttoning my mustard-yellow wool coat and taking off my wet beret.
Pulling my cream-colored journal out of my bag, I stroked the smooth leather cover. Writing to Peter Kavinsky wasn't working anymore because I couldn't bring myself to write the truth on a screen. But on paper? Paper was safe. Paper kept secrets.
I opened my pen, dipped into the ink, and began to write:
Dear Peter,
I think distance isn't just about miles.
It's about momentum. You are moving forward so fast in California, and 1 am standing on a rainy corner in Manhattan, feeling like I'm wearing someone else's shoes. I love you. I do.
But sometimes I wonder if we are holding onto a memory because we're too afraid to see what happens if we let go...
A sudden, sharp blast of cold wind hit the back of my neck as the front door opened.
Startled out of my deep, poetic trance, my elbow caught the edge of my stationery tote. In one terrifying, slow-motion disaster, the bag tumbled off the chair.
My life effectively scattered across the damp wooden floorboards.
"Oh, no, no, no," I gasped, dropping to my knees immediately.
Pastel pink envelopes, loose sheet music, vintage brass stampers, my favorite pink fountain pen, and my unmailed letters went fanning out across the floor like a deck of cards dropped by a very clumsy magician. One of my letters—the raw, deeply personal one I had just written—was sliding dangerously close to a muddy puddle near the entrance.
"I’m so sorry—let me help you with that."
A soft, raspy voice sounded right above me.
Before I could reach the damp letter, a pale hand reached out and snagged it by the corner, inches from the muddy water.
I looked up.
Standing—or rather, kneeling—in front of me was a boy. He was wearing a worn, oversized dark gray hoodie with frayed cuffs, faded jeans, and a pair of beat-up sneakers that looked like they had survived a minor war. He had dark, messy brown hair that stuck out in every direction as if he’d spent the morning walking through a wind tunnel, and eyes that were a deep, clear hazel with a kind of sadness I had only ever seen in romcoms.
He was young—maybe my age—but there was a heavy, quiet shadows under his eyes. It was the kind of tiredness that doesn't come from staying up late studying; it was a bone-deep, lonely exhaustion.
"Got it," he said softly, holding out the letter. His fingers were long and slender, with faint calluses along the knuckles. "Saved it just in time.”
"Thank you," I breathed, taking the paper back against my chest like a shield. "I think my heart actually stopped for a second. This paper is imported from Japan. It’s handmade mulberry silk paper. If it gets wet, it turns into mush.”
The corner of his mouth twitched upward into a small, tentative smile. It transformed his whole face, lighting up the melancholy in his eyes. "Well, we definitely can't let handmade Japanese mulberry paper go to mush. That sounds like an international tragedy."
I felt a sudden, unexpected flush warm my cheeks. "It really is. I'm Lara Jean, by the way."
He hesitated for a fraction of a second. A strange, fleeting look passed over his features—a mix of caution and something terribly sad, as if he were waiting for me to say something else. When I just sat there holding my stationery, he let out a tiny, almost imperceptible breath.
"Peter," he said quietly.
My eyes widened. "Peter?"
He blinked, suddenly looking nervous. "Yeah? Is... ?"
"Oh! Yes, of course," I said quickly, feeling my face grow even hotter. "It’s just—my boyfriend's name is Peter. Well. Long-distance boyfriend. It’s a very popular name, obviously. Very classic."
"Right," he said, rubbing the back of his neck with a sheepish grin. "Classic."
Together, we began gathering the scattered pieces of my life off the floor. He was surprisingly nimble, gathering three pens and a stack of mint-green envelopes in one swift, fluid motion that looked almost impossibly graceful for someone wearing such an oversized hoodie.
"You have a lot of letters," he observed softly, handing me a neat stack.
"I write a lot," I confessed, sitting back on my heels as he helped me load everything back into my canvas tote. "My sister Kitty says I have an unhealthy obsession with stationery, but I think there’s something important about physical mail. In a world full of texts that disappear, a letter is something you can keep in a hatbox under your bed forever."
Peter paused, holding my brass wax seal in his palm. He looked down at it, his expression softening into something remarkably gentle. "A hatbox under the bed," he repeated quietly, as if testing the words. "That sounds... nice. Like keeping a piece of time."
"Exactly!" I said, delighted that he understood. Most boys—aside from my Peter, who had learned to appreciate my quirks over time—would have laughed. "It’s about capturing a moment before it slips away."
I noticed then how thin he looked under that dark hoodie, and how the wet cold of the autumn rain seemed to cling to him.
Impulsively, I reached into my third tote bag and pulled out a small, wax-paper bag containing two of my homemade blueberry lemon scones.
"Here," I said, holding it out to him.
He looked from the bag up to my face, startled. "Oh, no, I couldn't—"
"Please," I insisted, shoving it gently toward his hands. "It’s a thank-you for saving my Japanese paper from a watery grave. Besides, I made way too many, and my dorm room oven was a disaster, but my new apartment has a proper gas oven and they actually turned out quite nice. The lemon glaze has real zest in it."
Peter looked at the bakery bag, then back at me. A genuine, bright smile broke across his face, chasing away the shadow of fatigue that had been hanging over him. "Real zest? Wow. I haven't had homemade baking since..." He stopped himself, his voice trailing off into a quiet space, but his smile remained. "Thank you, Lara Jean. That's really nice of you.”
"Consider it a custom of the Neighborhood," I smiled, using one of Dad's favorite old phrases.
He froze for half a second, a strange, brilliant light flashing in his hazel eyes before he laughed softly. "Yeah. A friendly neighbourhood gesture from a friendly neighbourhood girl."
We stood up together. He ordered a plain drip coffee—the cheapest item on the board, I noticed—and I grabbed my warm chai latte. We said our polite goodbyes, he wrapped his thin jacket tighter around his shoulders, gave me a small wave, and pushed out into the rain.
I watched him go through the fogged-up window of the coffee shop, feeling a strange, lingering warmth in my chest. There was something so intensely sweet, yet heartbreakingly quiet about him. He felt like a character from a classic Russian novel—a lonely hero wandering through the snow, carrying the weight of the whole world on his shoulders without telling a soul.
I finished my latte, packed my totes meticulously, and set out into the drizzle to walk the four blocks back to my new apartment building.
The building on Perry Street was an ancient red-brick beauty covered in dying ivy. The front stoop was wet, and the heavy oak front door always required a very specific double-kick at the bottom to unlatch.
I wrestled with my keys, my tote bags cutting into my shoulders, trying to push the heavy door open with my elbow.
"Need a hand?"
I nearly jumped out of my yellow flats.
Standing on the step right behind me, holding a brown paper grocery bag containing a single loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter, was the boy from the coffee shop. His dark hair was entirely plastered to his forehead from the rain, and he was holding one of my blueberry lemon scones half-eaten in his hand.
I stared at him. "Peter?"
He blinked at me in total shock, his jaw dropping slightly. "Lara Jean?"
"What are you doing here?" I asked, clutching my tote bag. "Did I drop another letter?"
"No," he said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder toward the street, then at the building door. "I... I live here."
"You live here?" I gasped. "I live here! I just sublet the studio on the top floor two days ago!"
Peter looked up at the five flights of stairs visible through the glass door, then back at me. A slow, genuinely amazed smile spread across his face, crinkling the corners of his hazel eyes.
"Top floor?" he asked, stepping past me to gently take the heaviest of my textbook bags off my shoulder. "That's Apartment 5B, isn’t it?"
"Yes!" I said, my heart doing a strange little fluttering hop. "How did you know?"
Peter unlocked the heavy oak door with a smooth turn of his key, holding it open for me with a bow that was equal parts chivalrous and absurdly endearing.
"Because," Peter said, his voice laced with a warm, quiet amusement that instantly made the cold New York rain feel miles away, "I'm in 5A. We're neighbors, Lara Jean."
The heavy oak door clicked shut behind us, cutting off the rush of Manhattan traffic and leaving only the rhythmic drip of rain against the hallway windows.
Carrying my heaviest textbook tote with effortless ease, Peter led the way up the squeaky wooden staircase. Five flights of stairs in a historic Greenwich Village walk-up is no joke—by the third floor, my lungs were burning and my yellow flats felt heavy as lead. But Peter walked up the steps with a light, almost floating grace, barely breathing hard, even with a bag of groceries tucked under his arm.
"Here we are," he said, stopping at the fifth-floor landing.
The narrow hallway smelled of old wood, floor polish, and faintly of vanilla. Straight ahead were two doors facing each other: 5A on the left, 5B on the right.
"Let me get your bag," I said, reaching for my tote.
"Hold on a second," Peter murmured, balancing his grocery bag against his hip as he fished his keys out of his pocket. He unlocked 5A, pushing the door open just enough to set his brown paper bag inside on the floor.
Because the door swung wide open, I couldn't help but peek inside—and the sight made my heart squeeze with a sudden, sharp ache.
Apartment 5A was practically barren. There were no posters, no colorful rugs, no cozy clutter, and no sign that a Ninteen-year-old boy actually lived there. In the corner sat a narrow twin mattress on the floor, made up with a single dark blue blanket. A tiny wooden desk held a second-hand sewing machine and a desk lamp, and near the small kitchenette stood a solitary folding chair. That was it. No photos on the walls. No personal trinkets. It looked less like an apartment and more like a pit stop for a ghost.
Peter must have noticed me looking, because he quickly reached out to pull the door shut, a faint, embarrassed flush creeping up his neck. "Sorry. Haven't really... had time to decorate yet."
"Oh," I said softly. The sheer, overwhelming
loneliness of his apartment hung in the air like a cold draft. I looked down at my own key ring, then up at his tired hazel eyes. "You know... I was actually just about to brew a pot of coffee. And I have a fresh batch of dark chocolate sea-salt cookies sitting on my counter. Well—the ones that didn't burn, anyway. Would you like to come in for a minute?"
Peter paused, his hand resting on the brass knob of 5A. For a second, he looked genuinely startled, as if no one had invited him inside anywhere in a very long time. "Are you sure? I don't want to intrude—“
"You saved my letters," I insisted, unlocking 5B and swinging the door wide. "It’s the least I can do. Plus, my sister Margot says it’s poor manners not to welcome your next-door neighbor properly."
A soft, hesitant smile touched his lips. "Okay. Yeah. Coffee sounds amazing."
If 5A was a blank slate, 5B was a colorful explosion of my inner life.
Over the past three days, I had spent hours turning the tiny studio into a home. A dusty rose velvet rug covered the hardwood floor. Fairy lights draped across the small brick fireplace mantle, casting a warm, golden glow across the room. A vintage floral armchair sat in the corner next to a stack of my favorite novels, and the small kitchen counter was neatly arranged with ceramic jars, cookie tins, and my brass kettle.
"Wow," Peter breathed softly, stepping over the threshold and carefully setting my textbook bag near the door. He looked around the room with a sense of quiet wonder, his gaze lingering on the warm lights and the soft colors. "This is... really cozy, Lara Jean.”
"Thank you! It’s still a work in progress," I chirped, hanging my yellow coat on the standing rack. "Make yourself at home! Take off your shoes if you want.”
While I filled the kettle with water and set it on the gas stove, Peter walked slowly around the small living area. He moved gently, almost reverently, taking care not to bump into anything.
Then, his eyes caught the wall beside my small writing desk.
I had created a little photo gallery there—twine stretched between two brass nails, holding up a dozen fairy-lit Polaroid pictures with mini wooden clothespins.
Peter stopped in front of it. He hands went deep into the pockets of his dark hoodie as he leaned in to look closely at the photographs.
"Who are all these people?" he asked quietly. His voice carried a strange, delicate curiosity—not nosey, but deeply wistful, like someone looking through the window of a warm house on a freezing night.
I smiled, drying my hands on a tea towel as I walked over to stand beside him.
"That's my family," I said, pointing to a photo taken on our front porch in Virginia. "That's my dad—he’s an orthopedic surgeon, the kindest man in the whole world, though he still tries to treat us like we're eight years old. And those are my sisters. That's Margot, the oldest. She went to college in Scotland and is basically the organized adult of our family. And that's Kitty, the youngest. She’s absolute chaos, but she has a heart of gold. She’s actually the reason I’m renting this apartment."
Peter nodded slowly, staring at Dad’s warm smile and Kitty’s mischievous grin in the photo. "They look really happy. Is that your mom?" He asked, looking at Trina on the picture.
“She‘s my stepmom. Funny story actually— Kitty set her and Dad up.“ I said, seeing how a little smile appeared on his face.
"We're very close," I admitted softly. "It’s hard being this far away from them. My mom passed away when I was little, so the four, well now five, of us have always been a tight unit. The Covey Girls."
Peter didn't say anything for a moment, but I saw his jaw tighten slightly, a shadow of deep, unspoken grief moving across his eyes. "I'm sorry about your mom," he whispered.
"Thank you," I said gently.
His eyes shifted to the right, stopping on a large, glowing Polaroid from last spring.
It was my prom picture. In it, I was wearing my vintage floral prom dress, laughing, while Peter— my Peter, was wearing a sleek black tuxedo with a pink boutonnieres matching my dress—had his arm thrown around my waist, kissing my cheek with a triumphant, dazzling smile.
"Is this... Peter?" the boy beside me asked quietly, gazing at the photo.
"Yes," I said, a soft, familiar ache fluttering in my chest. "That’s Peter. Kavinsky."
"He looks..." Peter hesitated, a faint, self-deprecating smile touching his lips as he glanced down at his own worn hoodie and beat-up sneakers. "He looks like a movie star. Or a star athlete."
"He was the lacrosse captain," I smiled, nostalgia wrapping around me like a warm blanket. "He’s at Stanford now. It’s funny—when I first met him in middle school, I thought he was just another popular boy. But he turned out to be so much more than that. He drives a classic sports car, loves chocolate chip cookies, and he used to drive across town just to buy me my favorite Korean yogurt drinks."
Peter’s eyes remained fixed on the photo of my Peter. There was something intensely thoughtful about the way he studied him—not jealous, but deeply reflective, as if contemplating the very concept of being known and loved so completely by someone.
"You really love him, don't you?" Peter asked softly.
"I do," I answered honestly, stepping back toward the kitchen as the kettle began to whistle. "Or... I’m trying to figure out how to love him from three thousand miles away. Long distance is harder than the movies make it look. Sometimes it feels like we’re both holding onto a rope, but the rope is stretching so thin it might snap.“ He seemed to understand the pain of missing someone he loved, so I asked him, “Do you have a girlfriend?”
“I do.” He answered immediately, “MJ.” then as if remembering something he whispered, “Well I had.” I immediately understood what he mean— poor boy, grieving the dead of his love. “I’m sorry Peter.”
“It’s alright.” He answered, with me giving him the towel to dry himself up a bit.
I poured the hot water into my French press, the rich, toasted aroma of fresh coffee filling the room. I arranged four dark chocolate sea-salt cookies on a floral porcelain plate and brought them over to the small table, pulling out two chairs.
"Coffee's ready," I called out warmly.
Peter turned away from the photo wall, stepping toward the table. For the first time since I met him on the coffee shop floor about an hour ago, the heavy, lonely shadow in his hazel eyes seemed a little lighter.
He sat down, picking up one of the cookies with a soft smile. "To the Neighborhood, right?"
"To the Neighborhood," I agreed, sitting across from him with my mug held in both hands. "And to 5A and 5B."