Lara Jean and Chris's Trip to Chapel Hill

Lara Jean and Chris's Trip to Chapel Hill is the spontaneous college visit that makes Lara Jean's unexpected admission possibility at the University of North Carolina feel tangible. What begins with a wait-list update becomes a journey through a campus that resembles the future Lara Jean thought she wanted, but is not the same as it. With Chris beside her, she tests a new way of thinking: rather than assume she will not be happy there, she considers the possibility that she could be—and that choosing it need not mean abandoning Peter.

The Opening: An Admission and an Impulse

Lara Jean is missing Peter while he is away when an email from UNC admissions announces that her application has been updated. She clicks through and discovers she is off the wait list. The news unsettles the future she had been weighing between UVA and William & Mary, but it also creates an immediate option where there had been uncertainty.

Chris responds not with a long deliberation but with a spontaneous road trip. When Lara Jean asks when they could visit, Chris says they should go right now; she has already checked the drive and insists it is three hours and twenty-five minutes. The decision to leave at once turns the admission update into an encounter with the place itself, before Lara Jean has settled on what it should mean.

The drive gives the friends time together rather than a formal campus tour. They surf radio stations, sing along, and talk about whether Chris should dye the front of her hair pink. The hours pass quickly. They arrive in just under three hours and thirty minutes and find a parking space on Franklin Street, UNC's main street. The pace and companionship make the visit feel exploratory: Lara Jean is not yet committing to a new school so much as allowing herself to see it.

A Campus That Is Familiar, Yet Distinct

At first, UNC strikes Lara Jean as similar to UVA: maple trees, green lawns, and brick buildings. The resemblance makes comparison unavoidable, but it does not erase the difference between the two places. Chapel Hill is quiet because many students have gone home for summer break, though students in sundresses, sandals, khaki shorts, and UNC baseball caps still cross the campus.

The Old Well gives the visit its most concentrated image. Set between two brick residence halls, it is a small rotunda, like a miniature version of the one at UVA, with a drinking fountain at its center. A large white oak rises behind it; hot-pink azaleas surround it, their color recalling the lipstick Stormy used to wear. Lara Jean finds the spot enchanting. Chris asks whether people make wishes there, and Lara Jean remembers hearing that students drink from the fountain on the first day of classes for good luck—or straight As.

The familiar architecture and the distinctive Old Well together complicate Lara Jean's comparison. UNC is not a blank alternative to UVA: it offers recognizable features as well as details that belong to it alone. The visit gives her concrete surroundings in which to imagine attendance, rather than leaving the choice as an abstract ranking of colleges.

Staying a Little Longer

When it is time to go, Lara Jean hesitates. She cannot explain the reluctance, but she is not ready to leave and wonders what it would mean if she never returned. Her phones are dead, so she and Chris cannot take pictures; Chris jokes that they will have to keep the memory in their hearts, as in the old days. Instead of treating the lack of photographs as the end of the visit, Lara Jean goes to a bench facing one of the brick buildings and asks to stay longer.

Chris sits beside her, fiddling with the stack of bracelets on her arm, and says she wishes she could come there with Lara Jean. The remark briefly shifts the visit from college choice to friendship and separation. Lara Jean is caught off guard by Chris's pensive tone and does not correct her when she speaks as though Lara Jean might attend UNC. Their exchange makes the possibility feel shared, even though the decision belongs to Lara Jean.

Lara Jean recognizes that Peter is what is missing wherever she might go, whether William & Mary or UNC. Chris asks why Lara Jean could not spend a year at UNC, pointing out that either school would leave her away from UVA and that the distance to Peter would differ by only about an hour. Before Lara Jean can answer, Chris runs onto the lawn, kicks off her shoes, and does cartwheels. Her playful movement contrasts with the seriousness of the question she has raised: a future can be approached through experiment, not only through certainty.

Choosing to Risk Happiness

Alone with her thoughts on the bench, Lara Jean considers the possibility that she could come to UNC and end up loving it. The question that frightens her is not simply whether the campus will suit her; it is whether liking it might make her unwilling to leave after a year. She turns that fear around. If the point is to find a place where she can be happy, why assume in advance that she will not be? The visit shifts her from guarding against an unwanted outcome to imagining a hopeful one.

Lying back on the bench, Lara Jean looks up at two trees whose branches reach across the walkway and meet. She wonders whether she and Peter could be like them—far apart but still touching—and admits to herself that she might be happy at UNC, might even picture herself there. The image does not resolve the practical or emotional difficulty of distance; it gives her a way to imagine connection without requiring the two of them to occupy the same place.

The thought leads Lara Jean back to Stormy's advice from their last meeting, when Stormy gave her the ring: “Never say no when you really want to say yes.” Recalling that counsel, Lara Jean can treat the college decision as an act of choosing rather than merely accepting loss. The visit ends without a settled enrollment choice, but its decisive consequence is internal: UNC becomes a future she can genuinely consider, and happiness there becomes a possibility worth risking.