Dear Ace,

When we met freshman year and the teacher asked if that was your real name and you just smirked and said yes and tilted your chair back on two legs and I stared at you and you winked...

I never thought I'd fall this far.

We're seniors now and you're my best friend and you sit on my back porch and smoke cigarettes when you're mad and curse and stomp and rattle the swing. We talk about religion and the future and about getting out of this town and never looking back. We talk about people we know and things that happened and how stupid the people at my job are. We talk about how scared we are.

We talk a lot about how we feel, but I've never told you. I've never told you how much I love your green eyes and your blond hair that shines in the setting sun and is soft beneath my fingers when you fall asleep in my lap in front of the TV. I've never told you how mad I get when my dog crawls in your lap rather than mine. I've never told you how beautiful you look when we lay in the grass in my backyard at night and you raise your hands to frame the stars.

I don't tell you about the letters in my desk drawer. I don't tell you about the pens I've wasted and the pages I've defaced with your name and your laugh and your smile. I live in fear of you finding them.

I love you, Ace. I love the way you dance through the willows by the river in the summer, the only time I've ever seen you so carefree. I remember once I brought the girl I was seeing with us and you didn't dance and everything felt so wrong and that's when I realized. I love the way you got so mad when Pokemon Go came out and I picked Mystic over Valor just to piss you off. I love the way you can't cook and I love you for teaching me how to whistle and I love you for holding my hand in the haunted corn maze. I think about that more than I should.

We graduate in a few weeks. You'll sit eight rows behind me and make faces at the back of my head and laugh when I turn around and you won't know. We'll take pictures together and I'll feel the warmth of your arm around my torso through the graduation gown and you won't know. We're planning parties with our parents and your grandma will come to both of them and pinch your cheek and you'll roll your eyes at me and you won't know. After your party we're gonna steal beer from your dad and camp by the river in the bed of my truck and we'll tell so many stories and you won't know.

Maybe you'll leave without knowing.

Maybe one day this summer I'll kiss you by the river, and maybe you'll slap me.

Maybe I'll tell you before you leave for New York and never think about me or the willows or this town ever again.

Maybe you'll never know.

But I had to write it down somewhere people will see, where someone other than me will remember. I had to put it somewhere I could find and see forever.

I love you.

-Arthur