“
I have a funny story about your dad,” John says, looking at me sideways.
I groan. “Oh no. What did he do?”
“It wasn’t him; it was me.” He clears his throat. “This is embarrassing.”
I rub my hands together in anticipation.
“So, I went over to your house to ask you to eighth grade formal. I had this whole extravagant plan.”
“You never asked me to formal!”
“I know, I’m getting to that part. Are you going to let me tell the story or not?”
“You had a whole extravagant plan,” I prompt.
John nods. “So I gathered a bunch of sticks and some flowers and I arranged them into the letters FORMAL? in front of your window. But your dad came home while I was in the middle of it, and he thought I was going around cleaning people’s yards. He gave me ten bucks, and I lost my nerve and I just went home.”
I laugh. “I…can’t believe you did that.” I can’t believe that this almost happened to me. What would that have felt like, to have a boy do something like that for me? In the whole history of my letters, of my liking boys, not once has a boy liked me back at the same time as I liked him. It was always me alone, longing after a boy, and that was fine, that was safe. But this is new. Or old. Old and new, because it’s the first time I’m hearing it.
“The biggest regret of eighth grade,” John says, and that’s when I remember--how Peter once told me that John’s biggest regret was not asking me to formal, how elated I was when he said it, and then how he quickly backtracked and said he was only joking.
”
”
Jenny Han (P.S. I Still Love You (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, #2))