Chapter Text
and isn’t it just so pretty to think
all along there was some
invisible string
tying you to me?
sunday night, mid-april
Peter
I’m waiting at the bar when it happens: a woman comes up next to me and orders a martini, “lemon twist, no olives” she says, and I look over at the sound of her voice. Her head is down – black hair sleekly parted and pulled back to a flawless knot at the base of her neck. She’s looking away and one of the bartenders puts my beer in front of me and I take a long swig before looking back at her. There is no way it is Lara Jean Covey – no reason why she’d be at a law conference in Santa Barbara yet…she pulls out a phone and swipes at a lock screen that looks suspiciously like a trio of Korean American sisters and checks her messages.
I see her martini coming and the room is packed on the first night so I take another sip then a deep breath and turn to her, “Hi,” I start and she looks up at me and our eyes meet and it is her and that’s it – that’s all I can get out of my mouth.
“Peter Kavinsky” she says, her voice even and not sounding surprised at seeing me, “hello there.” She coolly tips her glass to her lips and drinks and I try to recover from my shock.
“Are you a lawyer?” I say and I know I sound incredulous but honestly, the last thing I ever imagined Lara Jean to be was a lawyer, she wanted to be a writer. “Or are you just really impressed by the cocktails served by the annual Attorneys of America Conference?”
She squares her shoulders that are in a fitted black blazer that hugs her waist in a way that is hard to ignore, “I’m a lawyer. Like you.” I nod, still struggling to process all this, “good to see you, Peter. Enjoy the conference.” Then she turns and slips into the sea of dark power suits.
Lara Jean
It took every ounce of discipline to not freak out when finding myself standing next to my ex-boyfriend at the bar in the Four Seasons Biltmore ballroom on the first night of the conference.
I knew Peter was an attorney. It had been his dream since high school. When we broke up our junior year of college, he was prepping for the LSAT and obsessively rotating his top law school preferences. On a Christmas break when I was in law school, I ran into his mother at the grocery store back home and she proudly told me he was a second year at Columbia. I could have said I was 2L at Harvard, but just said to wish him luck and then hid from her in the cereal aisle until I hoped she had left.
And the odds we’d run into one another at one of these things was always in the back of my mind – just a bit. I wasn’t sure what he practiced but he was in a gorgeous navy suit and the fees to come to these things are so steep it’s only worth it if your firm is footing the bill, so my guess is he’s a litigator or maybe even criminal defense. If I hadn’t been so emotionally exhausted on the flight here, I would have read through all the registration materials and reviewed the participant lists, something I normally do as conference prep so I can line up some networking opportunities. Then I would have been prepared instead of wandering right up next to him and instead of asking him what he did, where he worked, how he was – you know, a normal human adult conversation, I acted as if he was a random guy I shared the elevator with and bolted to hide in the ladies room – basically the cereal aisle all over again.
Peter
I try to make my way out of the ballroom to the lobby where registration was set up. I need to get my hands on the attendance roster and see where she works and what her specialty is. I never look at all the stuff they send you when you sign-up for these conferences but clearly if I had, I could have been better prepared for what just happened. Then again, running into Lara Jean Covey again has been something I’ve longed for and dreaded in equal measures for years.
There is no one at the table anymore but there are materials out and a mounted iPad that I swipe through to find the info I need. I keep checking over my shoulder to see if she’s going to appear again, out of nowhere when I haven’t seen her in nearly ten years, but there’s no sign of her.
LJ Covey – Davis/Miller Entertainment Partners LLP (New York City)
I click the link and I’ll be damned – she’s an entertainment lawyer. I start to read her bio and see she was top of her class at Harvard Law, but behind me a door opens and I can hear the speeches are starting and honestly, I’d rather hear her tell me about herself then read it off a website. I’d like the chance to talk to her even if it’s just a casual catch up and not the overdue heart-to-heart we never got to have. So, I’m going to read all the conference info when I get back to my room and plan out a way to find her again that is not at all like some creepy stalker ex-boyfriend even though that is exactly what it feels like I am.