BIRTHDAY BREAKFAST AT THE DINER was a bit of a tradition with Margot and Josh and me. If my birthday was on a weekday, we’d wake up early and go before school. I’d order blueberry pancakes, and Margot would put a candle in them, and they’d sing.
The day of my seventeenth birthday, Josh sends me a Happy Bday text, but I get that we won’t be going to the diner. He has a girlfriend now, and it would be weird, especially with no Margot. The text is enough.
For breakfast Daddy makes chorizo scrambled eggs, and Kitty’s made me a big card with pictures of Jamie pasted all over it. Margot video-chats me to wish me happy birthday and to tell me my present should be arriving that afternoon or the next.
At school Chris and Lucas put a candle in the donuts they got out of the vending machine and they sing me “Happy Birthday” in the hallway. Chris gives me a new lipstick: red for when I want to be bad, she says. Peter doesn’t say anything to me in chemistry class; I doubt he knows it’s my birthday, and besides, what could I even expect him to say after the way things ended between us? Still, it’s a nice day, uneventful in its niceness.
But then, as I’m leaving school, I see John parked out front. He’s standing in front of his car; he hasn’t seen me yet. In this bright afternoon light, the sun warms John’s blond head like a halo, and suddenly I’m struck with the visceral memory of loving him from afar, studiously, ardently. I so admired his slender hands, the slope of his cheekbones. Once upon a time I knew his face by heart. I had him memorized.
My steps quicken. “Hi!” I say, waving. “How are you here right now? Don’t have you school today?”
“I left early,” he says.
“You? John Ambrose McClaren cut school?”
He laughs. “I brought you something.” John pulls a box out of his coat pocket and thrusts it at me. “Here.”
I take it from him, it’s heavy and substantial in my palm. “Should I… should I open it right now?”
“If you want.”
I can feel his eyes on me as I rip off the paper, open the white box. He’s anxious. I ready a smile on my face so he’ll know I like it, no matter what it is. Just the fact that he thought to buy me a present is so… dear.
Nestled in white tissue paper is a snow globe the size of an orange, with a brass bottom. A boy and girl are ice-skating inside. She’s wearing a red sweater; she has on earmuffs. She’s making a figure eight, and he’s admiring her. It’s a moment caught in amber. One perfect moment, preserved under glass. Just like that night it snowed in April.
“I love it,” I say, and I do, so much. Only a person who really knew me could give me this gift. To feel so known, so understood. It’s such a wonderful feeling, I could cry. It’s something I’ll keep forever. This moment, and this snow globe.
I get on my tiptoes and hug him, and he wraps his arms around me tight and then tighter. “Happy birthday, Lara Jean.”
I’m about to get into his car when I see Peter striding over to us. “Hold up a second,” he says, a pleasant half smile on his face.
Warily I say, “Hey.”
“Hey, Kavinsky,” John says.
Peter gives him a nod. “I didn’t get a chance to say happy birthday, Covey.”
“But—you saw me in chem class…,” I say.
“Well, you left in a hurry. I have something for you. Open up your hands.” He takes the snow globe out of my hand and gives it to John. “Here, can you hold this?”
I look from Peter to John. Now I’m nervous.
“Hold your hands out,” Peter prompts. I look at John one more time before I obey, and Peter pulls something out of his pocket and drops it into my palms. My heart locket. “It’s yours.”
Slowly I say, “I thought you returned the necklace to your mom’s store.”
“Nope. Wouldn’t look right on another girl.”
I blink. “Peter, I can’t accept this.” I try to give it back, but he shakes his head; he won’t take it. “Peter, please.”
“No. When I get you back, I’m gonna put that necklace back around your neck and pin you.” He tries to hold my eyes with his own. “Like the 1950s. Remember, Lara Jean?”
I open my mouth and then close it. “I don’t think pin means what you think it means,” I tell him, holding the necklace out to him. “Please, just take it.”
“Tell me what your wish is,” he urges. “Wish for anything, and I’ll give it to you, Lara Jean. All you have to do is ask.”
I feel dizzy. All around us, people are exiting the building, walking to their cars. John is standing beside me, and Peter is looking at me like we’re the only two people here. Anywhere.
It’s John’s voice that makes me break away. “What are you doing, Kavinsky?” John says, shaking his head. “This is pathetic. You treated her like garbage and now you decide you want her back?”
“Stay out of it, Sundance Kid,” Peter snaps. To me he says softly, “You promised you wouldn’t break my heart. In the contract you said you wouldn’t, but you did, Covey.”
I’ve never heard him sound so sincere, so heartfelt. “I’m sorry,” I say, my voice whisper-thin. “I just can’t.”
I don’t look back at Peter as I get into the car, but his necklace is still dangling from my fist. At the last second I turn around, but we’re too far away; I can’t see if Peter’s still there or not. My heart is racing. What would I regret losing more? The reality of Peter or the dream of John? Who can’t I live without?
I think back to John’s hand on mine. Lying next to him in the snow. The way his eyes looked even bluer when he laughed. I don’t want to give that up. I don’t want to give up Peter, either. There are so many things to love about them both. Peter’s boyish confidence, his sunny outlook on life, the way he is so kind to Kitty. The way my heart flips over every time I see his car pull up in front of my house.
We drive in silence for a few minutes, and then, looking straight ahead, John says, “Did I even have a shot?”
“I could fall in love with you so easily,” I whisper. “I’m halfway there already.” His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. “You’re so perfect in my memory, and you’re perfect now. It’s like I dreamed you into being. Of all the boys, you’re the one I would pick.”
“But?”
“But… I still love Peter. I can’t help it. He got here first and he… he just won’t leave.”
He sighs a defeated kind of sigh that hurts my heart. “Goddamn it, Kavinsky.”
“I’m sorry. I like you, too, John, I really do. I wish… I wish we got to go to that eighth grade formal.”
And then John Ambrose McClaren says one last thing, a thing that makes my heart swell. “I don’t think it was our time then. I guess it isn’t now, either.” John looks over at me, his gaze steady. “But one day maybe it will be.”
