TO ALL THE BOYS I'VE LOVED BEFORE AU

CHAPTER 1 - SIX LETTERS, FIVE PEOPLE

(Scroll to the last slide for the main character /playlist)

Your letters were your most prized possessions. They were yours, and yours only.

They were something you wrote when you had a crush so intense you felt like you needed to snap out of it or otherwise you'd collapse.

So you wrote letters to try to find closure. Detailed letters that contained every unfiltered and embarrassing thought and feeling you could find in yourself. Everything you noticed about them, everything you wished you had with them, everything you wanted to say but couldn't.

You never sent them, of course. That idea was completely off the table. They remained inside the little blue box with the white ribbon buried in the back of your closet, from where you would occasionally take them just to read them again and reminisce on the thoughts a younger version of you once had about those different people. They were all stamped and addressed, but never, ever posted.

They were six in total, addressed to five different people.

The first one ever written had been for Eli, from seventh grade. Adorable little Eli, who was one of the biggest nerds you'd ever seen, always too shy to talk around others, but who would go on excitedly about a tv show or a comic book series he liked for hours around you after getting paired for a project got him to warm up to you.

Eli, who was trembling like crazy before kissing you on a game of spin the bottle, right before running home crying because some girl thought it would be funny to comment on how she wouldn't have let him kiss her with "that mouth" as she said with disgust, if she were you. You, in turn, couldn't feel more different from that bullshit thought of hers after that messy seventh grade first kiss.

That letter was followed by a new one, addressed also to him, but the new him this time around, many years later, in sophomore year- Hawk, not Eli.

Hawk, who had decided to "flip the script", as he called it, by changing his entire aesthetic, the way he dressed and the way he did his hair, showing up to school on a random day with a blue dyed mohawk and a brand new attitude. And you liked it.

Confident Eli seemed happier even though he sometimes acted like a bit of an asshole and, as much as you didn't want to admit it, looked really, really hot. He was still Eli, but this Eli wasn't afraid to flirt with you, which evoked brand new feelings in you.

Therefore, a new letter.

The second letter you ever wrote was addressed to Demetri, from eight grade, who you met around the same time as Eli.

Demetri, who would talk to you about superheroes and binary language and would be so excited about it that you didn't care to tell him you couldn't understand a word of what he said.

Demetri, who was so kind as to go to your house to help you with your part on the biology project you were partnered with him in, who would offer to tutor you when you told him you had any difficulty in something he was good at, and who you got closer to after realizing you shared a lot of classes.

The third letter you ever wrote was adressed to Robby Keene, who you became closer to after ditching the homecoming dance in your freshman year to hang out by yourself at the bleachers- which apparently was Robby Keene's favorite smoking spot, as you came to find out that night.

The whole event seemed to be proving itself to be a complete waste of time, as Demetri and eli weren't there and Samantha LaRusso had managed to dragged Aisha to dance with her, leaving you all alone.

Apparently high school dances could be pretty lame, no matter what all high school movies from the 80's had been telling you.

You had asked if you were interrupting something and he told you it depended on whether you'd be snitching on him or not.