The Way I Loved You ✓

32. To All The Boys I've Loved Before

To All the Boys I've Loved Before is a 2018 American teen romantic comedy film based on Jenny Han's 2014 novel of the same name. The movie follows Lara Jean Lara who writes secret, soul-baring letters to her five crushes, but never meant to send them. When her secret love letters somehow get mailed to each of her five crushes, Lara Jean finds her quiet high school existence turned upside down. [Source: Wikipedia, IMDb, Netflix]

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Fact: Emily had only ever loved one boy.

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Chapter Thirty Two: To All The Boys I've Loved Before

Life goes on, that was what I was telling myself, sitting on my chemistry stool. As soon as Wong came in, there would be a quiz.

I really wished my life were like the books. The protagonists never had to deal with something as insignificant as a chemistry quiz when they were going through a rough time.

The protagonists also didn’t have to sit next to the guy who had rejected them, that one they were also hopelessly in love with, I thought, sliding my eyes sideways to where Nathan Callahan sat, facing the front.

I wanted to hate him so much. But I never could. I knew where he was coming from. I knew what he thought about himself. I wished I could somehow make him see himself.

The past week had been excruciating, sitting beside him almost every day. I remember that one time I accidentally knocked my elbow with him, and he jumped like I had electrocuted him.

Now Nathan sat on his stool like a puppet, stiff and lifeless.

He had gone back to his default settings; moody, detached, unfriendly, alone. But I knew, somewhere beneath those facades, lived the guy whom I had fallen for; kind, sarcastic, charming. Someone who could do better than this, someone who needed to come back to his senses, fast.

My chest started to ache for that guy, that Nathan Callahan. I missed him so terribly that I could feel it in my bones.

He had put up an impenetrable wall that I couldn’t see through. But I wanted so desperately to take it down. I wanted so badly for him to turn to me, smirk, and—

I looked down at my knee. Nathan’s palm was wrapped over it. He was pressing down my foot. I realized why. I had been tapping it unconsciously this whole time.

But he was touching me. My knee. His palm was wrapped over me, and I traveled back in time to my bedroom, to some dreams I had had about his hands, to that time when he hovered over me and almost made me beg, in an instant.

I tried to stop myself. But it was no fucking use because he squeezed my knee.

I felt that shock travel up my body, shooting over from my knee to my thigh, directly to my center. My stomach jumped, and I shuddered. I turned to him sharply.

Nathan was looking down at his own hand on me like it was some foreign artifact, like he had no control over his own limb, like it had a mind of its own.

He blinked, and then blinked again.

Then his eyes met mine. We sat there with his hand on my knee, like there was a bomb between us. Everything turned into a blur, and only his eyes were the focus of my universe, like it always had been. He breathed out shakily, like he was equally affected, and it twisted my heart on itself.

“Sorry,” He whispered.

My eyes burned. My heart ached. My breath seized.

I could feel the sound around us dying. I knew in the back of my mind Wong had walked in, and he was distributing the papers for the quiz.