Lucas and Peyton.
She's Got Time.
---
She waits for him to pack his things after English. He smiles, his eyebrows raising briefly as their eyes meet, and they walk out of the room together. They leave the building whilst he talks in unusually hushed tones about the book he's reading and she listens with an air of nonchalance. He takes long ungraceful strides and she takes short regular steps, but they move in between the throngs of students at the same pace.
Another day passes and they drift farther apart. She thinks he's with the short clever girl or with the slightly taller and not-so-clever brunette, but she doesn't know and she's too scared to ask.
He no longer passes her a headphone when he listens to music in second period lunch. They no longer talk about F Scott Fitzgerald or the other obscure things they have in common at the tops of their voices (Lucas Scott could be loud when he wanted to be). They mention those things, occasionally, but it makes things awkward so he goes back to small talk and she sits and listens. "We are so alike" slipped out of his mouth once and the memory of that moment both haunts her and makes her smile. They'll always be alike.
She hears him talking about how he wants to get married. How he wants to propose to the girl of his dreams. She knows where he got his ideas from when nobody else in the room does, and she wonders if maybe one day she could be the girl of his dreams.
Maybe.