Chapter Text
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA
Lara Jean's POV
LARA JEAN USED TO THINK THAT GOODBYES WERE SUPPOSED TO BE DONE IN A CERTAIN WAY.
There should be a final conversation, maybe a long hug, maybe tears if the situation called for them. Someone would say something meaningful, the other person would nod sadly, and then they would walk away knowing that this was it. The end. A clean little period at the end of a sentence.
Unfortunately, real life had never been particularly interested in following the rules of a good romance novel.
Sometimes, a simple goodbye would be a box left half packed on the floor and had three weeks left before moving to New York. Sometimes, it was finding an old movie ticket between the pages of a book and having to decide whether keeping it counted as sentimental or simply refusing to clean properly. Sometimes, it was realizing that an entire section of your closet still belonged to a version of yourself you weren't sure you were ready to leave behind.
And sometimes, goodbye was Peter Kavinsky.
Well, that one was harder to admit.
Lara Jean sat cross legged on her bedroom floor, surrounded by three boxes labeled KEEP, DONATE, and JUNK in her father's unmistakably practical handwriting. She had been staring at the labels for the better part of five minutes, mostly because deciding what parts of her life belonged in which box felt suspiciously similar to deciding what parts of herself she was taking to college.
Her room was slowly losing the personality she'd spent years giving it. The shelves were emptier, the walls were beginning to look bare, and all that remained was the pale turquoise paint she had once loved.
It was supposed to be exciting.
And it was.
Well, mostly.
But excitement and sadness had always been annoyingly capable of existing at the same time. Lara Jean was, unfortunately, a sucker for complicated feelings. If you had possible given her a life changing moment and she would somehow find a way to feel nostalgic about it before it had even happened.
She picked up a framed photograph from beside her bed and brushed her thumb over the corner of the frame, smiling softly at the frozen image of her with her mom and her two sisters when they were younger.
Moving to New York had been her dream for so long that she had imagined every part of it. The tiny apartment. The classes. The cafés she would inevitably pretend were her second home. The possibility of becoming someone slightly more sophisticated than the girl who still had a drawer full of miffy hair clips.
She just hadn't imagined how much leaving home would mean leaving behind, too. Peter was the most obvious example. That whole break up was the hardest part of it.
Maybe one year and six months was supposed to be enough to prepare her for this. One year and six months of her being someone's person. Of knowing exactly how he took his coffee, which movies made him laugh the hardest, and what kind of silence meant he needed space. One year and six months of birthdays, late night conversations, inside jokes, ordinary afternoons that somehow became memories before she even realized she was making them.
It hadn't been forever.
But it had been long enough.
Long enough for Peter to become woven into the smallest parts of her life. Long enough for his name to feel familiar in her mouth, for his presence to feel natural beside her, for Lara Jean to stop wondering what it would be like to have someone and simply start assuming she would always have him.
Until she didn't.
They had been broken up for months now.
Months should have been enough time to stop thinking about him when a certain song came on. Enough time to walk past the places they used to go without feeling that strange little ache in her chest. Enough time to hear someone say Peter's name without wondering what he was doing, who he was with, or whether he ever thought about her, too.
She had told herself she was getting better. And, for the most part, she was.
There were days when Peter barely crossed her mind. Days when she could go hours without remembering that there had once been a time when he was the first person she wanted to tell everything to. And then there were the other days, when moving on felt less like progress and more like starting over.
It was strange, losing someone who had once occupied such a huge part of her everyday life. One time, she had picked up her phone to text him something funny before remembering that she didn't do that anymore. The days when she passed a familiar place and suddenly remembered exactly what they had talked about there. The days when a song played in the background and, for three minutes and forty-two seconds, she was seventeen again and everything between them was still possible.
Peter was the person who made her believe that the kind of love she wrote about in her letters and imagined in the stories inside her head could actually exist outside of them. For a while, Peter had been the easiest person in the world to choose.
Maybe that was the frustrating thing about moving on. It wasn't the part that she couldn't handle it, it was that she was grieving the part that she had lost.
Sure, it had been months
Because suddenly every little thing seemed to have a memory attached to it, and Lara Jean was beginning to suspect that memories had terrible timing. But the closer moving day came, the more real everything felt. And maybe that was why Peter seemed to be everywhere. Not literally, of course. That would be ridiculous.
Everywhere around her has a hint of Peter Kavinsky in it.
Lara Jean didn't want Peter back. At least, that was what she told herself. All she wanted was for the ending to make sense.
Because there had been no betrayal. No dramatic screaming match between to lovers. No villain hiding behind a conveniently placed curtain, probably scheming on something that could possibly turn things for the worse. They hadn't stopped caring about each other, either, which Lara Jean privately thought was terribly inconvenient.
They simply reached a point where their futures stopped fitting neatly beside each other.
Peter had his plans.
Lara Jean had hers.
And somewhere between talking about college and imagining what came next, they had realized that loving each other didn't automatically mean they were supposed to follow the same path.
That was the part Lara Jean struggled with most. If someone hurt you, you could be angry. If someone betrayed you, you could leave with your dignity and a playlist full of revenge songs. But what were you supposed to do when the person you were leaving was still someone you loved?
So Lara Jean did what she always did when her feelings became too complicated to organize in her head.
She wrote them down.
The letters started after the breakup. Of course, she had wrote ones of her undying crush for him when she was in her younger teens, but this whole situation was a whole lot different from her older ones.
At first, there was only one.
Then another.
Then another.
Some were about memories she didn't want to forget. Some were about things she wished she had said differently. Some were apologies. Some were questions she knew she would never ask out loud.
And some were simply Lara Jean trying to understand how someone could be such an important part of her life and still become someone she had to leave behind. She never planned to send them. That would have been insane.
They had already broken up. What exactly was she supposed to say? 'Hi, Peter. I know we haven't been together for months, but here's a collection of all the feelings I apparently couldn't say to your face. Hope you're having a nice day.'
Absolutely not.
She would rather dig a hole in the backyard and bury herself in it than face the humiliation of actually handing those letters to him. At least six feet underground, she wouldn't have to make eye contact.
The letters were never meant for Peter. Not anymore. They were for Lara Jean.
It's a way for her to say goodbye at her first love, and something that would help her move on from this. And maybe, once she left for New York, she could finally close that chapter. At least, that was the plan.
"Lara Jean,"
She looked up when Kitty appeared at her bedroom door, carrying an innocent smile on her face for someone that had already decided she was about to be helpful, whether Lara Jean wanted help or not.
"No," Lara Jean immediately shuts off that thought.
The 11 year old teen frowned, letting out a disbelief scoff with her hands crossed in front of her. "I haven't even said anything." She stated with the most disdain tone in her voice.
"I know what you're doing, and you're definitely not getting some of my clothes." The older of the two warned, impossibly using her older sister's voice.
"UGH, come on Lara Jean! I just wanted to have some of your clothes." Kitty whined, stomping her foot like a whiny baby.
"Kitty, you have tons of clothes that Dad had bought for you," Lara Jean stated, stepping behind her to grab one of her journals from her desk before walking back over to where the boxes were. She crouched beside to it, peering up to glanced over to her sister. "Why would you need my clothes for?"
"Because some of your clothes are vintage!" The younger girl stated matter of factly. "And do you know who loves vintage more than you? ME!"
Lara Jean was bemused at the younger girl's expression, tried her best to laugh. Somethings never changed.
Kitty could walk into her room claiming she was there to help and somehow end up trying to steal half of her wardrobe within five minutes.
"Besides," Kitty continued, walking deeper into the room, "you're moving to New York. So 50/50 chance, you'll get newer clothes there."
"That is not how clothes work." Lara Jean retorted back.
"It is how I think clothes work." Kitty shrugged.
Lara Jean lets out a sigh before giving her a tight lipped smile. "I'll see what I can do. For now, you have to help me clear these up."
Kitty rolled her eyes but smiled. For a while, the two sisters worked together, sorting through the pieces of Lara Jean's childhood. Every few minutes, Kitty would hold something up and ask whether it was something Lara Jean wanted to keep or donate.
As Kitty dug through the deeper parts of Lara Jean's wardrobe, searching through piles of clothes and forgotten boxes, her sister's phone suddenly rang. The familiar ringtone echoed through the almost empty room, filling the silence that had settled after hours of packing.
Lara Jean looked up, startled with a hint of frustration settling on her face. "Wait-"
She quickly moved toward her desk, nearly tripping over a box she had left open on the floor. She caught herself just in time, grabbing her phone before it stopped ringing. With a quick glance at the screen, she answered. "Hello?"
Kitty barely paid attention as she continued sorting through the things inside the wardrobe. She had already accepted that helping Lara Jean pack meant discovering things her sister had forgotten she owned.
"Hey, Lara Jean, do you still need these"
Lara Jean turned her head at Kitty's question. Her sister was standing near the closet, holding two boxes. One was an empty cardboard box that looked like it had been forgotten for years, while the other was an old wooden jewelry box with chipped paint along the edges.
Lara Jean was already distracted by the voice on the phone, barely looking back as she tried to continue the conversation.
"Uh, yeah," she answered without much thought. "I don't need those."
Kitty nodded, accepting the answer immediately. "Okay," She stated.
Still holding the phone to her ear, Lara Jean turned back toward her desk, unaware of the decision that had just been made.
Still behind her, Kitty looked down at the old jewelry box one last time. The jewelry box looked old, but not useless. The kind of thing someone else might appreciate if it was cleaned up and fixed. She ran her fingers over the chipped paint, wondering why Lara Jean had kept something like it for so long if she didn't want it anymore.
With a small shrug, Kitty placed it inside the donation box. It was just another old thing.
At least, that was what she thought.
Neither of them noticed that hidden inside the worn wooden box were pieces of a past Lara Jean had never truly been ready to let go of.
And neither of them realized that the box was about to travel much farther than either of them ever expected.