Always and Forever, Lara Jean

Lara Jean is decorating eggs for Easter, with one made to look like Marie Antoinette especially for Stormy, an elderly woman whom Lara Jean visits regularly at the Belleview retirement home. While she does this, she video chats with her older sister, Margot, who is studying at a university in Scotland. She and her sister contemplate what life will be like if she gets into UVA, and whether she will gravitate harder toward her Asian heritage, or whether she might join a sorority. Margot advises her to make friends outside of Peter’s circle. For spring break, Margot is bringing her boyfriend Ravi home with her; he’s an older, sophisticated British Indian. Lara Jean is excited for double dates and that she and her sister are in love at the same time.

Lara Jean goes to Belleview to visit Stormy. She drops a basket of eggs off at reception and finds out there are two new volunteers from UVA working there. Stormy loves her egg and says she will show it off to her frenemy, Alicia Ito. Stormy asks her about upcoming school dances, and then gives Lara Jean a present in a velvet ring box. It is her pink diamond, which Lara Jean has a hard time accepting but resolves to keep safe.

In the afternoon, Lara Jean makes chocolate chip cookies (she is trying to perfect the recipe) and waits for them to cool with Kitty and Peter in the kitchen. Lara Jean has been making a lot of cookies recently. They are about to watch Romeo + Juliet (1996). During the movie, Kitty and Lara Jean discuss Leonardo DiCaprio, but they shush Peter when he tries to weigh in. Lara Jean wonders about love at first sight, but she believes the pair “could have made it work, if they had only lived” (48).

Afterward, Lara Jean despairs that she and Peter did not have a good meet-cute like Romeo and Juliet. Peter claims to remember how they met, but he won’t confess it to her. She and Peter sit outside on the porch before he has to help his mother in her furniture shop; Lara Jean wishes his mother would like her more, but she recognizes she lost some credibility when she broke up with Peter the year before. She has told Peter he should break up with Lara Jean so he can date around during university. Peter does not have a strong relationship with his father, since his parents divorced and his dad moved away; his father is trying to reconnect, but Peter isn’t interested. Lara Jean wants to meet him, but Peter is reluctant. Lara Jean’s mother died, so loss of a parent is something they consider a common bond between them. They decide to go as 1996 Romeo and Juliet for Halloween at UVA, and they are both excited about participating in the traditions at their university together.

For the first day of Senior Week, the theme is school spirit. There is a different theme for each day leading up to their class trip, which will be a weekend trip to New York City as voted on by the class. Although there are still several months left before prom, people have started making elaborate “promposals,” including Darrell filling Pammy’s her locker with red roses—and vandalizing the door with the word PROM? spelled out in petals. Lara Jean has brought cookies, and her friends devour them at lunch. After school, she watches Peter play lacrosse while thinking about her father and his relationship with Ms. Rothschild, or Trina, who began as his neighbor until Kitty pushed them together. At dinner, her father asks if she’s stressed about college acceptance letters since she’s been baking so much, but she insists it’s the perfectionist in her. Trina offers to bring Lara Jean to SoulCycle with her; Kitty laments that she is too young to attend, though she’ll be 12 soon. Lara Jean’s family is also confident she will get into UVA. Lara Jean is obviously concerned and finds it difficult to fall asleep that night.