text: Dear Claire. You will never read this. I know that, because you died today. In a car accident on the interstate. Some drunken idiot rammed you into the railing, where you and your father died on impact. I regret that I didn’t say these things to you earlier. If I did, maybe you would be here today, and not in some other place. You know that I don’t believe in heaven, but I’d like to picture you there. With the saints and with your sister. The two of you never got to know each other, but I hope you do now. I should have said this earlier. I love you, Claire. I won’t say that I’ve loved you since the day we met, because that would be a lie. I took me almost two years to see the shining light that is you. Do you remember the party we had this summer? When we drank cider with our friends and stole dad’s scotch when they had left? How we laughed at Pam and Jims wedding? That was the second I knew I loved you. On that couch, seeing Pam and Jim getting married. But I was always a coward. So I waited and waited, tried to get closer to you. And we got closer. You said that I was your only real friend. You know that you are among my closest friend, possibly the closest. Do you remember that time we went water skiing? How I could not for the life of me get up, yet you managed it on the first try. Or maybe the movie we saw, when we weren’t alone. I still felt like we were alone. Like no one else in the universe mattered, in that moment. And what about the first snow of the season? How we were standing outside with our eyes glued to the sky. How I grabbed your hand and you grabbed mine back. I should have said something then. The night when you wanted to talk will always haunt me. How you crept into my bed, way past midnight. How we talked about philosophy and math, movies and books, the future and the past. How we eventually got too tired to talk and just laid there, holding each other. I felt at peace then. The only time in my life that I’ve really felt at peace. If you were here, you would understand. You know how fucked up my life has been. You were the one thing I saw as a way to leave my past life behind. But now you’re gone. Dead, soon to be buried. I’ve bought a suit. Not rented or borrowed, I bought one. It was the suit I was gonna wear to prom. Remember, how you helped me pick it out. It was gonna be a surprise that I bought it. I looked forward to it. The suit that you helped pick out for one of the most festive days of my life will be used for the saddest. Maybe saying something to you would not have changed things. You could have rejected me, ending our friendship. Had that happened, you would be attending my funeral instead of me yours. But maybe you would have felt the same. And then you could have been here with me instead of in that car with your dad. I don’t know. Nothing could have been different, or everything could have. I don’t know. I never will. I love you, Claire. I haven’t always loved you, but I probably always will. A small part of you will live on inside me, just as I would have lived on in you. I love you. I’ll see you soon.