Westley has always known Claire. She's always been a constant in his life, whether it be as his babysitter, his secret Santa, as his pretend-girlfriend, his confident, as the person he could always rely on.
But she's also always been the girl he lov...
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I'm fifteen and I don't have a date for homecoming. When I complain about it to my friends at school they start teasing me, saying I should ask my girlfriend Claire. I'm still hearing about this. It sucks. I just want them to say something like oh don't worry, we'll all go together, you won't have to be alone but my friends are dicks apparently.
If Claire was still here I would have told her. Not to ask her to come with me. I don't actually want that... well that's not exactly true, a small stupid part of me kind of wants to ask her so she can come with me and I can rub my friends' faces in it. And an even smaller part of me daydreams about actually dating her. I usually shut that little voice in my head pretty quickly. That's never going to happen. I'm not an idiot.
I ask my dad to bring me to a shop to rent suits but he always forgets about it. So, in the end I don't go.
I'm feeling really down about it, probably more than I should, until someone knocks at our door the night of homecoming.
Claire smiles at me when I open the door, with her dimples and her pink lips. I throw myself in her arms and she laughs, hugging me back.
I have no idea when she got back in town, I have no idea how she even knew about homecoming and about how alone and miserable I was that night, but I should have known Claire would pull through. She always does.
We don't go to homecoming, of course, instead she brings me to the arcades and we spent the entire evening, until the employee there kicks us out, playing every game, laughing like idiots.
I haven't had that much fun in forever. Not since my mother has died for sure.
When we're out of the arcade, Claire brings me to an ice cream shop and buys us sundaes.
"They'll be other dances," she tells me, like that even matters now. "Don't worry. You'll have another chance to spend the evening with a pretty girl. Trust me, in ten years from now, you won't even care about sitting this one out."
I stare at her while she eats her sundae, oblivious to my gaze. I want to tell her that I'll still care about tonight in twenty years from now, but it has nothing to do with homecoming and everything to do about the way she smiled at me saying it, her hand brushing through my hair, pushing it back from my forehead.
She'll always see me as her little brother, and that's fine, that's great, it means she will always have a place in my life. I'll always be like her little brother, but she'll always be my first love.
