Margot Covey and Josh’s former romance

Margot Covey and Josh’s former romance matters in the novel less as a fully recounted courtship than as a relationship whose ending continues to shape how the people around it understand love, distance, and what it means to let go. Lara Jean Song Covey remembers it as having become too serious; Josh, while still professing enduring love for Margot, describes their separation as inevitable. The gap between those accounts leaves the romance tender but unresolved, and makes it a measure against which Lara Jean considers her own relationship.

Identity and Background

The story supplies little about the beginning or everyday course of Margot and Josh’s romance. Its significance emerges instead through what Lara Jean recalls and what Josh later tells her. Lara Jean identifies the relationship as one that became heavy, while Josh describes Margot as someone he still cares about and will always love. The available account therefore establishes lasting feeling without suggesting that the two are still together or that either is pursuing a reunion.

The breakup is associated with Margot leaving for Scotland, Margot's study destination. Josh says she was right to end things when she left, because continuing the relationship would only have made the eventual separation harder. But he also insists that the outcome would have been the same even if she had not gone. Distance is thus part of the circumstances surrounding their breakup, not, in Josh’s account, its sole cause. The text does not specify the precise timing or give a fuller explanation of what made the relationship untenable.

A Caution in Lara Jean’s Ideas about Love

At Starbucks, while doing homework with Peter Kavinsky, Lara Jean imagines dating as it was practiced in the 1950s: people could go on dates without immediately making the relationship serious. She catches herself after nearly saying that she wants people their age to be in love, because Peter has not said that he loves her, and then explains the appeal of keeping dating casual. Her example from her own family is Margot and Josh. She remembers her sister wishing that she had not let their relationship become so serious, and uses that regret to explain why a breakup should not make former partners unable to share a room or remain friends.

This recollection makes Margot and Josh a practical counterpoint to the lighter courtship Lara Jean hopes to preserve. It does not establish that Margot herself gave Lara Jean a detailed account of the breakup, nor does it explain exactly what seriousness meant to either partner. Instead, the relationship appears through Lara Jean’s interpretation: its emotional weight seems to have made separation harder, so she wants to guard against the same outcome in her own romance. The later conversation with Josh complicates that interpretation. He does not deny that the relationship ended; he explains the ending as unavoidable, even apart from Margot’s departure.

Josh’s New Relationship and Lara Jean’s Reaction

After the breakup, Josh begins seeing Liza Booker, a senior from his comic-book club. Lara Jean notices an unfamiliar car at Josh’s house, then sees Liza and Josh come out together. After Liza drives away, Lara Jean calls to Josh and asks whether they are a couple. He approaches her and confirms that they have been spending time together, though he says it is not serious and that he likes Liza.

Lara Jean’s reaction is shaped by loyalty to her sister, not detached curiosity. She says she cannot believe Josh is with someone who is not Margot and compares Liza unfavorably with her sister. She recognizes that the remark is mean, and clarifies to herself that she is speaking up for what Margot and Josh used to be, not because she knows Liza. Her response shows that Margot’s former place in Josh’s life remains emotionally vivid to her, even though the relationship has ended.

When Lara Jean asks why Josh did not choose Margot, he corrects the premise: he says that he did not choose Liza over Margot, and that he and Liza barely knew each other in January. Lara Jean presses him about why he and Margot did not try again. Josh replies that the relationship was not going to work out. He distinguishes still caring for Margot and loving her from believing they could make the relationship last. His position allows affection to persist without turning it into a claim that they should reunite.

Meaning and Limits of the Ending

Josh’s explanation resists a simple story in which Scotland alone broke up the couple. He says Margot was right to end things when she left because continuing would have made the separation harder, but adds that they would have reached the same ending even if she had stayed. That distinction leaves the underlying cause unstated. Lara Jean senses that Josh will say no more and acknowledges that the matter belongs to him and Margot; she even allows that Josh himself may not fully understand it. The narrative preserves that uncertainty rather than resolving their history through a definitive account.

The exchange also separates the persistence of love from the continuation of a relationship. Josh’s statement that he will always love Margot does not cancel his acceptance of the breakup, and his new attachment to Liza is not presented as proof that Margot meant little to him. For Lara Jean, the encounter makes the old romance newly present: she sees Josh’s new relationship through the memory of his life with her sister. Margot and Josh remain apart, while their still-meaningful past continues to inform Lara Jean’s ideas about how serious love can become and what remains after it ends.