Always and Forever, Lara Jean (To All the Boys I've Loved Before #3)(2)

“They’re all gone, but I might have some more at home, if Kitty didn’t eat them all.” I dip my arm out the window and let it hang. Not many more nights left like these, where it’s cool enough to need a jacket.

I look at Peter’s profile out of the corner of my eye. Sometimes I still can’t believe he’s mine. The handsomest boy of all the handsome boys is mine, all mine.

“What?” he says.

“Nothing,” I say.

Ten minutes later, we are driving onto the University of Virginia campus, only nobody calls it campus; they call it Grounds. Peter parks along the side of the street. It’s quiet for a Friday night in a college town, but it’s UVA’s spring break, so a lot of kids are still gone.

We’re walking across the lawn, his hand in mine, when I’m hit with a sudden wave of panic. I stop short and ask, “Hey, you don’t think it’s bad luck for me to come here before I’m actually in, do you?”

Peter laughs. “It’s not a wedding. You’re not marrying UVA.”

“Easy for you to say, you’re already in.”

Peter gave a verbal commitment to the UVA lacrosse team last year, and then he applied early action in the fall. Like with most college athletes, he was all but in, so long as his grades stayed decent. When he got the official yes back in January, his mom threw a party for him and I baked a cake that said, I’m taking my talents to UVA in yellow frosting.

Peter pulls me by the hand and says, “Come on, Covey. We make our own luck. Besides, we were here two months ago for that thing at the Miller Center.”

I relax. “Oh, yeah.”

We continue our walk across the lawn. I know where we’re going now. To the Rotunda, to sit on the steps. The Rotunda was designed by Thomas Jefferson, who founded the school, and he modeled it after the Pantheon, with its white columns and big domed top. Peter runs up the brick steps Rocky-style and plops down. I sit down in front of him, leaning back and resting my arms on the tops of his knees. “Did you know,” I begin, “that one of the things that makes UVA unique is that the center of the school, right there inside the Rotunda, is a library and not a church? It’s because Jefferson believed in the separation between school and church.”

“Did you read that in the brochure?” Peter teases, planting a kiss on my neck.

Dreamily, I say, “I learned it when I went on the tour last year.”

“You didn’t tell me you went on a tour. Why would you go on a tour when you’re from here? You’ve been here a million times!”

He’s right that I’ve been here a million times—I grew up going here with my family. When my mom was still alive, we’d go see the Hullabahoos perform because my mom loved a cappella. We had our family portrait taken on the lawn. On sunny days after church, we’d come picnic out here.

I twist around to look at Peter. “I went on the tour because I wanted to know everything about UVA! Stuff I wouldn’t know just by living around here. Like, do you know what year they let women in?”

He scratches the back of his neck. “Uh . . . I don’t know. When was the school founded? The early 1800s? So, 1920?”

“Nope. 1970.” I turn back around and face forward, looking out onto the grounds. “After a hundred and fifty years.”

Intrigued, Peter says, “Whoa. That’s crazy. Okay, tell me more facts about UVA.”

“UVA is America’s only collegiate World Heritage UNESCO site in all of the United States,” I begin.

“Never mind, don’t tell me more facts about UVA,” Peter says, and I slap him on the knee. “Tell me something else instead. Tell me what you’re looking forward to most about going to school here.”

“You go first. What are you most excited about?”

Right away, Peter says, “That’s easy. Streaking the lawn with you.”

“That’s what you’re looking forward to more than anything? Running around naked?” Hastily I add, “I’m never doing that, by the way.”

He laughs. “It’s a UVA tradition. I thought you were all about UVA traditions.”

“Peter!”

“I’m just kidding.” He leans forward and puts his arms around my shoulders, rubbing his nose in my neck the way he likes to do. “Your turn.”

I let myself dream about it for a minute. If I get in, what am I most looking forward to? There are so many things, I can hardly name them all. I’m looking forward to eating waffles every day with Peter in the dining hall. To us sledding down O-Hill when it snows. To picnics when it’s warm. To staying up all night talking and then waking up and talking some more. To late-night laundry and last-minute road trips. To . . . everything. Finally I say, “I don’t want to jinx it.”

“Come on!”

“Okay, okay . . . I guess I’m most looking forward to . . . to going to the McGregor Room whenever I want.” People call it the Harry Potter room, because of the rugs and chandeliers and leather chairs and the portraits on the wall. The bookshelves go from the floor to the ceiling, and all of the books are behind metal grates, protected like the precious objects they are. It’s a room from a different time. It’s very hushed—reverential, even. There was this one summer—I must have been five or six, because it was before Kitty was born—my mom took a class at UVA, and she used to study in the McGregor Room. Margot and I would color, or read. My mom called it the magic library, because Margot and I never fought inside of it. We were both quiet as church mice; we were so in awe of all the books, and of the older kids studying.