Lara Jean and Peter's Senior Trip to New York City

Lara Jean and Peter Kavinsky's senior trip to New York City is both a school excursion and a private passage through the last stretch of their life together in high school. Amid the city’s crowds and the class’s awkward games, Peter stages a promposal with a teddy bear, brings Lara Jean a still-warm cookie from Levain Bakery, and invites her to watch the sunrise from a hotel roof. The trip’s romantic gestures do not erase the uncertainty ahead; instead, they give the couple a way to picture a future together while the familiar shape of school is ending.

Departure and the City

The trip begins on a bus, where Lara Jean sits beside Peter and Chris sits with Lucas. Lara Jean had expected it might be difficult to persuade Chris to join the senior trip, but New York’s appeal made the invitation easy: Chris had never been there either. The group’s first hours on the road bring a different kind of social discomfort. Peter starts Never Have I Ever, and Lara Jean pretends to be asleep because she has little experience with the sexual and drug-related subjects that dominate the game. When Gabe suggests Truth or Dare, she feels trapped on the bus, unable to escape the intrusive questions she has avoided at parties.

Her discomfort is sharpened by the previous year’s hot tub video scandal. Lara Jean is self-conscious about what classmates might assume about her and Peter, a couple for a year if their earlier fake relationship is counted, and she knows that admitting she is a virgin could make her feel more exposed, not less. Peter’s laughter when the games subside offers some relief; she suspects he too would rather keep their private life from becoming a subject for the senior class. Their closeness here is quiet rather than performative: they share the unease without needing to make it public.

New York overwhelms the students with its scale and speed. Lara Jean experiences it as a city with its own heartbeat, crowded and sophisticated beside the comparatively sleepy Charlottesville and even the familiar bustle of Washington, DC. On the subway, Chris nearly loses her balance when the train stops; she remarks that the experience is different from DC. The city’s pace also catches Peter out: an older woman yells at him for walking while looking at his phone, and the class laughs at the rare sight of him embarrassed. The episode makes the group’s tourist status visible, while the hurried city keeps moving around them.

The Empire State Building Promposal

At the Empire State Building, Lara Jean asks Peter to take a selfie with her by the elevators. The height at the top makes her light-headed, and Ms. Davenport tells her to sit with her head between her knees until the nausea passes. When Lara Jean gets up and looks for Peter, she finds that he has disappeared. She hears him calling after a security guard, who has noticed a red backpack left on the floor.

The backpack is part of Peter’s planned promposal. He tries to persuade the guard to squeeze the teddy bear inside, but the guard refuses; Peter squeezes it himself, and the bear squeaks out its invitation for Lara Jean to go to prom with him. The plan is interrupted because leaving a bag unattended in New York alarms the guard. He warns Peter to be more aware, explaining that the city is vigilant about anything suspicious. The romantic surprise briefly becomes a security incident, and Peter jokes that somebody reported his book bag and ruined his promposal.

The interruption does not spoil the gesture. Lara Jean takes the teddy bear from the bag, hugs it to her chest, and tells Peter she loves it. Peter explains the scene he had imagined: she would turn the corner, find the backpack near the telescopes, pick up the bear, and squeeze it. Lara Jean points out the practical gap in that plan—she would not have known to squeeze it. The exchange leaves the proposal imperfect but unmistakably theirs, shaped by Peter’s elaborate intent and the comedy of circumstances beyond his control.

Small Gestures and a Shared Horizon

The next day, a springlike March morning gives the trip a more leisurely, romantic texture. Lara Jean and Chris photograph the Imagine mosaic in Strawberry Fields in Central Park, while Peter disappears from the group. As the students prepare to move toward Sheep Meadow for a picnic, Lara Jean begins to worry that Mr. Jain or Ms. Davenport will notice he is missing. Peter jogs back just before they leave, apparently unconcerned, holding a brown paper bag.

Inside is a still-warm chocolate chip cookie from Levain Bakery. Lara Jean is delighted by the thoughtfulness, and she makes sure Chris hears her praise. The gesture stands out because Peter is sweet but, in Lara Jean’s view, not usually this romantic; following the promposal, it is the second romantic act in a row. Chris takes a piece of the cookie, then reaches for more, and Peter snatches the bag away so Lara Jean can have a bite. The small tug over the treat makes the scene communal and playful, without changing the fact that Peter has brought it especially for Lara Jean.

Before dawn, Peter knocks on Lara Jean’s hotel-room door and asks her to watch the sunrise on the roof. He has brought coffee and tea, and he is wearing a UVA hoodie. As they go up, the city is still dark but beginning to wake. Peter lends Lara Jean his hoodie, which is warm and carries the scent of the detergent his mother uses. The domestic detail sits beside the wide view: from the roof, Peter looks across the water toward the city and imagines that they might live there after college, perhaps in a skyscraper with a doorman and a gym.

Lara Jean imagines something different: a brownstone in the West Village, near a bookstore. Their visions are not identical, but Peter answers that they will figure it out. The exchange does not settle where they will live or what college will bring. Its significance is in the possibility they can still speak in shared-future terms, each offering a distinct picture and leaving room for the other.

What the Trip Holds

The trip’s most memorable scenes move between public interruption and private attention. A backpack left on the floor draws the vigilance of a New York security guard; a paper bag with a warm cookie becomes a small declaration of care; the rooftop conversation makes an imagined life together briefly tangible without pretending its details are decided. The class excursion remains a group experience, but its defining moments for Lara Jean are the gestures she and Peter make inside it.

That mixture gives the trip its transitional weight. Lara Jean and Peter’s relationship has already survived a period when it was partly a performance, and the bus games expose how wary they remain of other people’s judgments about intimacy. In New York, Peter’s promposal turns their next shared milestone into a scene Lara Jean can hold onto, while the sunrise conversation looks beyond high school without supplying a guaranteed plan. The city is unfamiliar and overwhelming; their future is likewise open. They leave the trip with a teddy bear, a memory of a cookie, and the beginnings of a conversation about what life together could mean.