by Jenny Han
a couple of years later
Dearest Belly,
Right now I am picturing you today, on your wedding day, looking radiant and lovely, the prettiest bride there ever was. I picture you about thirty or so, a woman who’s had lots and lots of adventures and romances. I picture you marrying a man who is solid and steady and strong, a man with kind eyes. I am sure your young man is completely wonderful, even if he doesn’t have the last name Fisher! Ha.
You know that I could not love you more if you were my own daughter. My Belly, my special girl. Watching you grow up was one of the great joys of my life.
My girl who ached and yearned for so many things . . . a kitten you could name Margaret, rainbow roller skates, edible bubble bath! A boy who would kiss you the way Rhett kissed Scarlett. I hope you’ve found him, darling.
Be happy. Be good to each other.
All of my love always, Susannah
Oh, Susannah. If you could see us now.
You were wrong about a couple of things. I’m not thirty yet. I’m twenty-three, almost twenty-four. After Jeremiah and I broke up, he went back to live in the fraternity house, and I ended up living with Anika after all. Junior year, I studied abroad. I went to Spain, where I did have lots and lots of adventures.
Spain is where I got my first letter from him. Real letters, written by his hand, not e-mails. I didn’t write him back, not at first, but they still came, once a month, every month. The first time I saw him again, it was another year, at my college graduation. And I just knew.
My young man is kind and good and strong, just like you said. But he doesn’t kiss me like Rhett kissed Scarlett. He kisses me even better. And there’s one other thing you were right about. He does have the last name Fisher.
I am wearing the dress my mother and I picked out together—creamy white with lace cap sleeves and a low back. My hair, my hair that we spent an hour pinning up, is falling out of the side bun, and long wet strands of hair are flying around my face as we run for the car in the pouring rain. Balloons are everywhere. My shoes are off, I am barefoot, holding his gray suit jacket over my head. He’s got one high-but-not-too-high heel in each hand. He runs ahead of me and opens the car door.
We are just married.
“Are you sure?” he asks me.
“No,” I say, getting in. Everyone will be expecting us at the reception hall. We shouldn’t keep them waiting. But then again, it’s not like they can get started without us. We have to dance the first dance. “Stay,” by Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs.
I look out the window, and there is Jere across the lawn. He has his arm around his date, and our eyes meet. He gives me a small wave. I wave back and blow him a kiss. He smiles and turns back to his date.
Conrad opens the car door and slides into the driver’s seat. His white shirt is soaked through—I can see his skin. He is shivering. He grabs my hand, locks my fingers into his, and brings it to his lips. “Then let’s do it. We’re both wet already.”
He turns on the ignition, and then we’re off. We head for the ocean. We hold hands the whole way. When we get there, it is empty, so we park right on the sand. It’s still raining out.
I jump out of the car, hitch up my skirt, and call out, “Ready?”
He rolls up his pant legs, and then he grabs my hand. “Ready.”
We run toward the water, tripping in the sand, screaming and laughing like little kids. At the last second he picks me up like he is carrying me across a threshold. “If you dare try and Belly Flop me right now, you’re going down with me,” I warn, my arms tight around his neck.
“I go wherever you go,” he says, launching us into the water.
This is our start. This is the moment it becomes real. We are married. We are infinite. Me and Conrad. The first boy I ever slow danced with, ever cried over. Ever loved.
Turn the page to read the letters
Conrad sent to Belly!
Even now, all these years later, I still read them—Conrad’s letters to me when I was studying abroad in Spain. Just every once in a while, I pull them all out and sit down and read each one. I know them all by heart, but they still touch me, they still make me feel it all over again. . . . To think that once we were both very young, and very far apart, and still finding our way back to each other.
Dear Belly,
Firstly—I don’t even know if I should be writing you, if this is allowed. I hope it’s allowed. I hope you don’t throw this away without even opening the box—because if you do, you’ll miss out on something very important. Okay, fine, something that was once very important. To you.
I went over to your house to fix your mom’s computer. I went into your room to use the printer and I saw Junior Mint sitting on the bookshelf, looking incredibly pathetic. Remember him? Polar bear, wears glasses and a very stylish scarf? I won him for you at the ring toss? Do you remember how you used to go over to the ring toss and just stare at the polar bears because you wanted one so bad? I probably spent thirty or forty bucks trying to win you that damn bear.
Apparently, he misses you irrespective of that fact that you left him behind. He feels lost without you. I’m serious, that’s what he told me. Pathetic, right?
So here he is. Be nice to him, will you?
Conrad
Dear Belly,
This is weird, writing you like this. I think the last time I wrote someone an actual letter was a thank-you card to my grandma. For graduation money, I think. My mom was big on thank-you cards. Oh, by the way, you’re welcome for Junior Mint. Laur told me you said thanks. Geez, I was hoping for a thank-you card, but I guess we can’t all be as polite as me. Haha.
I should be working on biochem, but I’d rather be talking to you. Laurel says your Spanish is getting better. She told me you got lost the other day trying to hunt down a pack of Sour Patch Kids. Sour Patch Kids? Really? You’re too grown-up for Junior Mint but not for Sour Patch Kids, huh?
Here’s the biggest bag I could find. It’s economy sized. The next time I see you, I’m sure you’ll be toothless. But happy. I really do hope you’re happy.
Conrad
Dear Belly,
So far I’ve written you two letters and you’ve written me—well, none. . . . Which is fine. Go ahead and feel free not to write me back. Seriously, don’t feel obligated or anything. Even though I’ve sent you two handwritten letters and two gifts. . . . But seriously, don’t write back. I’m serious. It’s better this way. I like hearing my news secondhand, from Laur.
Speaking of news, she told me you met some Spanish guy named Benito, and he rides around on a scooter. Really, Belly? A guy named Benito with a scooter? He probably wears leather pants and has a long stringy ponytail. I don’t even want to know. Don’t tell me. He probably looks like a model and weighs 100 pounds and writes you poetry in Spanish. I don’t know what you see in a guy like that, but I don’t know what you ever saw in me either, so I guess there’s no accounting for taste, right?
Don’t forget—don’t write back.
Conrad
Dear Belly,
You didn’t write back. I thought for sure you would, you used to be so bad at following directions, now look at you. . . . Kidding. Actually I’m not—remember that time you tried to make box potatoes au gratin and you forgot to put in the cheese?
Speaking of potatoes au gratin, your mom made some for Thanksgiving. Laurel invited us to dinner—my dad and Jere and me. I wasn’t sure if Jere would come, but he did. It was awkward as hell. But then Steven put on football and we all just sat and watched and it was better. During the half, Jere asked if I’d heard from you, and I said no. He said you’d been chatting online. He said you cut your hair shorter, that it makes you look older, more mature. Then Laur showed us pictures of when she came to visit you. I want to go there some day. I heard you aren’t hanging out with that guy Benito anymore. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. . . .
By the way, it looks good. Your hair. I don’t think it makes you look older, though. Younger,
if anything.
I might as well be completely honest here, because who even knows if you’re reading this . . . you might have thrown it out without opening it, which is your right. But I’ll go ahead and say it—it killed me a little that Jere’s seen you, talked to you.
But I don’t think he hates me anymore, which is the important thing.
Also—in case I haven’t made it clear . . . I think about you a lot. You’re pretty much all I think about. Just so we’re clear.
Conrad
Dear Belly,
It’s Christmas here. I guess it’s Christmas where you are too. I went to the summerhouse for a few days. I kept thinking I’d turn around and see you—stuffing your face with chocolate pretzels, or sliding around the downstairs living room in those god-awful mistletoe pajama pants. I bet my mom bought them for you. She used to buy Jere and me matching Christmas sweaters. There’s one horrible family portrait of all of us in red button-downs and reindeer bowties. It’s basically a blight on humanity. I hid it in the attic one night and no one’s seen it since. If you’ve been a very good girl this year, maybe I’ll show you when you come back. My gift to you.
You know what you could give me? A letter back. Hell, I’ll even take a postcard. Or an e-mail. Anything. I just want to hear from you. I want to know how you’re doing. By the time you get this, Christmas will have passed—I hope it was a nice one.
Merry Christmas, Belly. Remember last year? Me and you at the summerhouse? Best Christmas of my life.
Love,
Conrad
Dear Conrad,
When I come home next spring, you’d better show me that family portrait. Don’t you dare try to get out of it. Oh, and I’ll be taking it with me, since it’s my gift and all.
And yes. I do remember. Of course I remember. It was my best Christmas, too.
Write back soon,
Belly
For years he kept it in his wallet, soft and creased into a million little folds. He said it kept him going. Kept him hoping. He said he wanted to keep it with him always, but I said we should keep the letters together, where they belong. And he did show me the family photo. It’s hanging up in our living room.
Read an excerpt from Jenny Han’s new novel,
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before!
What if all the crushes you ever had found out how you felt about them . . . all at once?
Lara Jean Song keeps her love letters in a hatbox her mother gave her. They aren’t love letters that anyone else wrote for her; these are ones she’s written. One for every boy she’s ever loved—five in all. When she writes, she pours out her heart and soul and says all the things she would never say in real life, because her letters are for her eyes only. Until the day her secret letters are mailed, and suddenly, Lara Jean’s love life goes from imaginary to out of control.
I like to save things. Not important things like whales or people or the environment. Silly things. Porcelain bells, the kind you get at souvenir shops. Cookie cutters you’ll never use, because who needs a cookie in the shape of a foot? Ribbons for my hair. Love letters. Of all the things I save, I guess you could say my love letters are my most prized possession.
I keep my letters in a teal hatbox my mom bought me from a vintage store downtown. They aren’t love letters that someone else wrote for me; I don’t have any of those. These are ones I’ve written. There’s one for every boy I’ve ever loved—five in all.
When I write, I hold nothing back. I write like he’ll never read it. Because he never will. Every secret thought, every careful observation, everything I’ve saved up inside me, I put it all in the letter. When I’m done, I seal it, I address it, and then I put it in my teal hatbox.
They’re not love letters in the strictest sense of the word. My letters are for when I don’t want to be in love anymore. They’re for good-bye. Because after I write my letter, I’m no longer consumed by my all-consuming love. I can eat my cereal and not wonder if he likes bananas over his Cheerios too; I can sing along to love songs and not be singing them to him. If love is like a possession, maybe my letters are like my exorcisms. My letters set me free. Or at least they’re supposed to.
1
JOSH IS MARGOT’S BOYFRIEND, BUT I GUESS you could say my whole family is a little in love with him. It’s hard to say who most of all. Before he was Margot’s boyfriend, he was just Josh. He was always there. I say always, but I guess that’s not true. He moved next door five years ago but it feels like always.
My dad loves Josh because he’s a boy and my dad is surrounded by girls. I mean it: all day long he is surrounded by females. My dad is an ob-gyn, and he also happens to be the father of three daughters, so it’s like girls, girls, girls all day. He also likes Josh because Josh likes comics and he’ll go fishing with him. My dad tried to take us fishing once, and I cried when my shoes got mud on them, and Margot cried when her book got wet, and Kitty cried because Kitty was still practically a baby.
Kitty loves Josh because he’ll play cards with her and not get bored. Or at least pretend to not get bored. They make deals with each other—if I win this next hand, you have to make me a toasted crunchy-peanut-butter-sandwich, no crusts. That’s Kitty. Inevitably there won’t be crunchy peanut butter and Josh will say too bad, pick something else. But then Kitty will wear him down and he’ll run out and buy some, because that’s Josh.
If I had to say why Margot loves him, I think maybe I would say it’s because we all do.
We are in the living room, Kitty is pasting pictures of dogs to a giant piece of cardboard. There’s paper and scraps all around her. Humming to herself, she says, “When Daddy asks me what I want for Christmas, I am just going to say, ‘Pick any one of these breeds and we’ll be good.’”
Margot and Josh are on the couch; I’m lying on the floor, watching TV. Josh popped a big bowl of popcorn, and I devote myself to it, handfuls and handfuls of it.
A commercial comes on for perfume: a girl is running around the streets of Paris in an orchid-colored halter dress that is thin as tissue paper. What I wouldn’t give to be that girl in that tissue-paper dress running around Paris in springtime! I sit up so suddenly I choke on a kernel of popcorn. Between coughs I say, “Margot, let’s meet in Paris for my spring break!” I’m already picturing myself twirling with a pistachio macaron in one hand and a raspberry one in the other.
Margot’s eyes light up. “Do you think Daddy will let you?”
“Sure, it’s culture. He’ll have to let me.” But it’s true that I’ve never flown by myself before. And also I’ve never even left the country before. Would Margot meet me at the airport, or would I have to find my own way to the hostel?
Josh must see the sudden worry on my face because he says, “Don’t worry. Your dad will definitely let you go if I’m with you.”
I brighten. “Yeah! We can stay at hostels and just eat pastries and cheese for all our meals.”
“We can go to Jim Morrison’s grave!” Josh throws in.
“We can go to a parfumerie and get our personal scents done!” I cheer, and Josh snorts.
“Um, I’m pretty sure ‘getting our scents done’ at a parfumerie would cost the same as a week’s stay at the hostel,” he says. He nudges Margot. “Your sister suffers from delusions of grandeur.”
“She is the fanciest of the three of us,” Margot agrees.
“What about me?” Kitty whimpers.
“You?” I scoff. “You’re the least fancy Song girl. I have to beg you to wash your feet at night, much less take a shower.”
Kitty’s face gets pinched and red. “I wasn’t talking about that, you dodo bird. I was talking about Paris.”
Airily, I wave her off. “You’re too little to stay at a hostel.”
She crawls over to Margot and climbs in her lap, even though she’s nine and nine is too big to sit in people’s laps. “Margot, you’ll let me go, won’t you?”
�
�Maybe it could be a family vacation,” Margot says, kissing her cheek. “You and Lara Jean and Daddy could all come.”
I frown. That’s not at all the Paris trip I was imagining. Over Kitty’s head Josh mouths to me, We’ll talk later, and I give him a discreet thumbs-up.
* * *
It’s later that night; Josh is long gone. Kitty and our dad are asleep. We are in the kitchen. Margot is at the table on her computer; I am sitting next to her, rolling cookie dough into balls and dropping them in cinnamon and sugar. Snickerdoodles to get back in Kitty’s good graces. Earlier, when I went in to say good night, Kitty rolled over and wouldn’t speak to me because she’s still convinced I’m going to try to cut her out of the Paris trip. My plan is to put the snickerdoodles on a plate right next to her pillow so she wakes up to the smell of fresh-baked cookies.
Margot’s being extra quiet, and then, out of nowhere, she looks up from her computer and says, “I broke up with Josh tonight. After dinner.”
My cookie-dough ball falls out of my fingers and into the sugar bowl.
“I mean, it was time,” she says. Her eyes aren’t red-rimmed; she hasn’t been crying, I don’t think. Her voice is calm and even. Anyone looking at her would think she was fine. Because Margot is always fine, even when she’s not.
“I don’t see why you had to break up,” I say. “Just ’cause you’re going to college doesn’t mean you have to break up.”
“Lara Jean, I’m going to Scotland, not UVA. Saint Andrews is nearly four thousand miles away.” She pushes up her glasses. “What would be the point?”
I can’t even believe she would say that. “The point is, it’s Josh. Josh who loves you more than any boy has ever loved a girl!”
Margot rolls her eyes at this. She thinks I’m being dramatic, but I’m not. It’s true—that’s how much Josh loves Margot. He would never so much as look at another girl.
