Have your cake and eat it too

“Have your cake and eat it too” becomes a pointed accusation when Peter applies the saying to Lara Jean’s romantic choices. His gesture toward the cake table ties the familiar expression to the scene’s literal cakes, while his words turn it into a charge that she wants incompatible things at once.

The Saying in Context

During their confrontation, Peter refers to their breakup and recalls that Lara Jean had wanted to be someone’s number one girl. He argues that she now does not want a number one guy, then gestures at the cake table and says, “You want to have your cake and eat it too.” The saying compresses his accusation into an image: he sees her as trying to keep the benefits of competing choices rather than commit to one.

Lara Jean’s Reply

Lara Jean answers, “I hate that saying. What does it even mean? Of course I want to have my cake and eat it too—otherwise what’s the point of having cake?” Her reply deliberately takes the expression literally. Where Peter treats having and eating the cake as incompatible desires, she points out that eating it is precisely the purpose of having it. The joke does not settle their disagreement: Peter frowns and insists that she knows he is not talking about cake.

Accusation and Ambiguity

The exchange makes the idiom do two jobs at once. For Peter, it is a reproach about Lara Jean’s romantic position; for Lara Jean, its literal logic is so obvious that the saying seems absurd. That gap sharpens the conflict: his metaphor presents her as refusing to choose, while her retort challenges the metaphor rather than accepting his description of her. The cake on the table gives the argument a concrete prop, and the saying’s conventional meaning remains in tension with its perfectly reasonable literal reading.