P.S. I Still Love You

On their way home from the New Year’s dinner, Lara Jean asks her father to drop her off at Peter Kavinsky’s house; he does so. Peter greets her coolly at his doorstep, and Lara Jean changes her mind about giving him the letter. Instead, she says simply that she wanted to wish him a Happy New Year and hopes that they can be friends. As she is turning to leave—not looking forward to walking home in the freezing cold in her formal clothes—Peter sees the note sticking out of her coat pocket. He wrestles with her for the note and reads it in front of her. His demeanor softens, and the two of them kiss.   

Peter’s younger brother, Owen, comes outside and invites the two of them in for hot cider. Lara Jean meets and makes small talk with Peter’s mother; while Peter is out of the room, she asks Lara Jean softly to “be easy with his heart” (20). Peter then drives Lara Jean home; the two of them kiss in his car.

Once Lara Jean is home, Kitty tells her that Margot is upset because she has broken up with Josh once and for all. Lara Jean sends Kitty up to Margot’s room with hot tea, then follows her. She finds Margot on her bed, crying. Margot tells Lara Jean that Josh did not want to have a long distance relationship any more. Lara Jean tries to console Margot, telling her that Josh missed her when she was gone and that their break-up is for the best.

Lara Jean tells Margot about her meeting with Peter. Margot, who has had sex with Josh, gives Lara Jean advice about sex and love. Lara Jean apologizes for what happened between her and Josh, and Margot forgives her. Lara Jean puts cold spoons on Margot’s eyes to ease the swelling caused by her tears.

Peter invites Lara Jean to a movie while she is watching TV at home with Kitty and their new puppy, Jamie Fox-Pickle. Kitty gives Lara Jean a hard time about whether or not she and Peter are girlfriend and boyfriend, and Lara reflects that she isn’t sure, and doesn’t even know what she wants: “After what Margot said last night about taking things slow and being careful with my heart and not going to a point of no return, maybe it’s good to exist in a place of unsureness for a while” (31). 

Lara Jean texts to ask Margot, who is out shopping with her friend Casey, if she can borrow some of her clothes for her movie date. She decides on Margot’s Fair Isle sweater.

At the movies, Peter and Lara Jean run into Genevieve, Peter’s ex-girlfriend and Lara Jean’s ex-best friend. Genevieve, who is with her friend Emily, ignores the two of them, even though they are all watching the same movie. Genevieve’s presence makes Lara Jean uncertain, as does Peter’s arm around her during the movie; she wants to watch the movie, rather than make out.

Afterwards, even though they have eaten a lot of candy during the movie, Peter takes Lara Jean out to dinner at a soul food restaurant. There, they reflect on their date and on the strange beginnings of their relationship; Lara tells Peter that she feels as if they have done everything backwards. They decide to draw up a contract for their relationship, stating what each of them needs from the other. Neither one of them mentions Genevieve’s presence at the movie.

While Lara Jean is home watching pet videos with Kitty, she receives a message from her friend Chris (who is also Genevieve’s cousin). Chris tells her to look at an anonymous Instagram account called Anonybitch. Lara Jean does so and discovers that someone has posted a video of her and Peter making out in a hot tub; someone recorded the video during the high school ski trip. Someone has also spread a false rumor that she and Peter had sex during that trip, and Lara Jean is upset because in the video they appear to be having sex.

Lara Jean calls Peter, but he is at lacrosse practice. She eats dinner with her father and sisters, trying to contain her panic. Later, while she is strategizing in her room with Kitty and Margot, Chris climbs through her window. Looking at the comments beneath the video, the girls talk about how it is mainly Lara Jean who is being shamed. Chris also points out that Lara Jean looks “hot” in the video, and that Peter is giving her “protection” because he is more popular than she is (51).

Peter finally calls Lara Jean back and tries to reassure her. Afterward, Chris speculates that Genevieve (with whom she does not get on) posted the video out of jealousy. Lara Jean finds the accusation hard to believe, pointing out that Genevieve first cheated on Peter. She recalls friendship bracelets that she and Genevieve exchanged as girls.

Lara Jean gets ready for school in a nervous mood. She tells her father that she has her period to explain her distraction and lack of appetite. Peter picks her up at her house and drives her to school; in his car, he shows her on his phone that he got the Instagram video removed.

Even so, Lara Jean receives a lot of unwelcome attention at school. Both kids and teachers question her about the video in a way that is concerned, prurient, or occasionally both. Lara Jean runs into Genevieve in the bathroom and confronts her about posting the video. While Genevieve affects bemusement and unconcern, Lara Jean recognizes Genevieve’s old quirk of lifting one side of her mouth when she is lying.

While Peter drives Lara Jean home from school, she tells him that she is sure that Genevieve is the culprit. Peter is skeptical but tells Lara Jean that he will talk to Genevieve about it that night. At home, Lara Jean tells Kitty and Margot that the school day was not as bad as she had thought it would be. She is sad to realize that Margot will be returning to Scotland the following day.

The Song Covey family has dinner and discusses the summer ahead. Margot says that she may remain in Britain when her semester abroad is over, because she is interested in an internship at the Royal Anthropology Institute. The whole family scolds Lara Jean for her own lack of summer plans, and—partly in order to get them off of her back—she improvises that she may intern at the Belleview retirement home.

Peter calls Lara Jean after dinner, telling her that he spoke to Genevieve and that he is sure that she is not the one who posted the video: she is having too much of a difficult time right now. Lara Jean remains privately skeptical.

The Song Covey family sees off Margot before her father drives her to the airport to go back to Scotland. While they are gathered around the family car, their neighbor Ms. Rothschild comes out of her house with her own dog. Jamie Fox-Pickle runs across the street to say hello to this other dog and urinates on Ms. Rothschild’s shoe. Lara Jean is impressed by how gracefully Ms. Rothschild brushes this off and notes that Ms. Rothschild looks pretty this morning.

Lara Jean goes off to school in an optimistic mood. Once at school, she and Peter stop by the computer lab, so Peter can print out an English paper. When they turn on one of the computers, they discover that someone made their hot tub photo a meme and made it a screen saver for all the school computers.

At a class assembly, someone hijacks the school president’s video presentation with the hot tub meme. An outraged Peter rushes the stag declaring that he and Lara Jean never had sex and that he will kill whoever posted this video. He is hustled off the stage. He later tells Lara Jean that he got out of being suspended from school because he is so generally well-liked.

That night, Lara Jean stays home from Peter’s lacrosse party, deciding to bake cookies instead. While she is in her bed, Peter knocks on her window; she reluctantly lets him in, telling him that her father is home. He says that he will just stay a while, and the two of them cuddle on her bed. Lara Jean is mildly disturbed by a comment he makes about how much he loves spooning, even though she enjoys the spooning itself.