Chapter Text
There’s never a good time to let someone know you forgot them. Awkward, stilted sounds that leave one’s mouth that lets the other know that they weren’t an important enough memory to last.
But for Lara Jean, there was the added weight of frustration. Her memory wasn’t so bad that she couldn’t remember an entire person, especially one that was important enough to dedicate an entire letter to.
She thought she’d given up her letters when she started dating Peter. At least, the part where she wrote letters to her more intense of infatuations. Peter Kavinsky was it. Done. Every romantic little note and letter henceforth would be dedicated to him.
Until they weren’t.
Peter Kavinsky was a lovely boyfriend. A boyfriend she loved. And that’s probably what made their breakup all the more bitter. He was a good person, she was a good person, and they loved each other. But that wasn’t enough to be good people together, to continue to grow and fit into each other’s lives in a way that didn’t make them fear for tomorrow.
When they broke up, Lara Jean hung up to an overheated phone informing her that she’d been talking for the past five hours and thirty-seven minutes. A month later, Peter Kavinsky flew to New York City for one last date. They both cried, but Peter had to wave down a taxi because she could barely see the road through her tears. Lara Jean Song-Covey, literature lover and overthinker extraordinaire, knew she would look back on this moment and feel grateful that she had such a phenomenal first boyfriend and emotionally intelligent breakup complete with closure and mood lighting at an expensive Italian restaurant she knew she’d never go to again.
But that was the terribly distant future, years and years from now where she wasn’t busy sobbing so hard that she felt she was going to throw up. (She may have thrown up).
Months had gone by, and she bided her time at the bookstore she’d landed a job at. Gen still would whisk her away at the end of her shifts, and Kitty would text her at one in the morning because she didn’t care about the time difference and couldn’t wait to tell her big sister about her life in Korea. Life still stung, but there were beautiful pockets of time where the pain wasn’t as sharp, laying outside her peripheral just enough that she could enjoy the moment.
Sunday morning was one of those times. The crowds were quieter, so as an opener Lara Jean had the pleasure of unpacking the latest shipment against the backdrop of the early morning sun. She ran her hands along the new covers of Jane Eyre and thumbed through some of the newer translated titles, making a mental note of which ones she’d set aside for herself. She’d been reading more Korean literature, dreaming of the day she’d read the original texts. Pausing her work to walk behind the register, she searched for her notepad to write down one of Han Kang’s titles. Lara Jean hadn’t used it in a while, too focused on her studies to consider external texts, but when she finally found it, she found an unexpected guest had tagged along.
The notepad was snugly tucked between the cash register and the wall, partially covered by bookmarks and receipt paper that had yet to be thrown away. With much effort, she tugged it out from where it had been stuck, and a small folded piece of paper came right out with it, plopping at her feet with a small sound that seemed to echo throughout the bookshop.
Checking the door to make sure no one was coming in, she bent to pick it up, immediately recognizing the paper from one of her notebooks from last semester, a small lay-flat that she admittedly spent too much money on. Folded up as if it were a note to be passed in class, there was nothing but a heart on the cover. Upon further inspection, it was rather thick, two pages instead of one and as she peeked inside she could see the familiar swoop of her j’s and p’s.
When did I write this?
Not a single memory came to mind. Not like when she wrote things in the past, be it a frustrating series of notes trying to decode her professor’s lectures or sitting at her desk back in Virginia, writing to boys she was half in love with. Nothing. It was confusing, a confusion that only grew when she unfolded the letter. If she could even call it that. It was in Lara Jean’s handwriting, but it was less of a letter and more a bunch of lines haphazardly thrown onto the same page in an effort to find meaning.
Yesterday you leaned forward to help me with the books I was carrying, and a single curl fell across your face. If I reached out to tuck it away, would you let me?
Lara Jean could feel the muscles shift in her face beneath her furrowed brow. The style definitely sounded familiar, hearkening back to the poetry class she took a semester or two ago. But who helped her carry books? She usually didn’t carry too much at once to begin with, not after she dropped a crate a couple weeks ago that left her with a sore thigh and a major sense of deja vu that lingered for days. But according to this, according to her, someone had helped her, and she couldn’t even remember that they existed, much less that she found them moving enough to write an erratic letter for.
The other day I dreamed about you. You asked me for another book, something sweet and cozy like the book I gave you last time. You looked just as sad in my dream as you did in real life. Sometimes I wonder what it would take to make you happy. You look like you carry this huge weight on your shoulders, and I just wish something could ease what you’re going through (even if it’s not me).
Scratched out was the name of a book she’d read months prior, about a hopeful girl and a magical town that sold dreams for a living. She loved the book, and vividly remembered reading it, and could even recall several customers that she recommended it to.
All except one.
She thumbed through the pages to find more of her own voice that she couldn’t remember. Lines that were written, scratched out, and rewritten. Trailed off thoughts of affection that only increased in intensity as the letter grew in length.
One line, towards the beginning, jumped out at her. So much so that she read it over and over, transfixed in a way that prevented her from hearing the bell of the bookshop door ring as it swung open.
Though it’d probably be better if you didn’t have the same name as my ex.
Peter Kavinsky was a good boyfriend that she loved and chose to let go. And now here she was, a year or so later, falling for another Peter.
“Excuse me?”
Lara Jean hit her knee on the counter from how sharply she jumped at the sound, startled at the other person in the shop she previously thought was empty. Her face screwed up in pain, and she turned her back to the customer in a futile effort to regain her composure. At the very least, she had the mind to tuck the letter away, refolding the worn out pages and tucking them into her back pocket. She took a deep breath and turned back around, a fake smile plastered to her face that quickly fell when she came face to face with the owner of the voice.
“Hello, how can I- oh my god, are you okay?”
The first thing Lara Jean noticed were the cuts. Little cuts littered the man's face and, combined with the scars on his hands and the skin that peeked out from beneath his jacket, made him look like he got in a fight with the expressway and lost.
“Oh, yeah. Yeah,” the man timidly replied, hiking his backpack higher up on his shoulder and adjusting the cup of coffee in his other hand. “Just tried skateboarding for the first time. Didn’t really work out,” he finished weakly.
“Oh, gosh, I’m sorry,” Lara Jean answered, discreetly trying to rub the pain from her knee as she took a closer look at the man before her. He was terribly cute, no doubt about that, with warm brown eyes and a strong jawline. His head slightly turned down, looking to where she rubbed her knee, when a curl fell into his face.
A single curl.
“Do you need help finding anything?” she said with a strained voice, hoping he thought its source was the subsiding pain in her leg and not the anticipation blooming in her chest.
“Oh, yeah,” he said cooly, resting his coffee cup on the counter as he reached to open his backpack and explain.
“A while ago I read this book and I wanted to know if you had anything similar. Just something relaxing, y’know?”
Lara Jean wasn’t one to choke on her spit, but she did. Right then and there on an early Sunday morning, as a cute guy reached into his backpack and pulled out a well-loved copy of The Dallergut Dream Department Store and set it on the counter next to his coffee. It had tabs and dog-eared pages. A story about a hopeful girl, in a magical town, that sold dreams for a living.
“Are you okay?” he asked, the concern on his face clear as day. His hand tensed and hesitated, as if he wanted to reach out to her but thought better of it.
She let her coughing fit linger, palm out to let him know she didn’t need help, though she didn’t bother to answer his question. Lara Jean wasn’t entirely sure she was okay, and in that moment, she didn’t care to lie to the handsome stranger. She was suddenly hyperaware of the letter, still tight and tucked away in her back pocket. She hadn’t done anything wrong, wasn’t even sure her suspicions were correct, but the innocuous pages tucked into her jeans still felt like terribly damning evidence. Lara Jean looked at the book again, and knew she was wrong. She was wrong, and her suspicions were incorrect, and she would ask this pretty man a silly question and embarrass herself. And it’d be okay, because if the world could still turn after she broke up with her first love, it would still turn now.
So she squared her shoulders, softly running her hands over the cover of the book and noticing that his eyes followed the path of her fingers.
“I know this is a random question,” she began, eyes glued to the cover she’d seen a million times, “but is your name Peter?”
She looked up, knowing she was wrong. The awkwardness would last a moment, and she would help him find a new book, knowing full and well she’d replay this moment as she lay her head down to sleep that night. But when her eyes found his face, a face so stricken with shock and confusion as if he’d seen a ghost, she realized she’d been right. He looked so beside himself that she wasn’t sure she was all that happy she was right, but she was. A beautiful man named Peter stood in front of her. A man she was deeply infatuated with and dedicated one of her infamous letters to.
And she couldn’t even remember who he was.