25/08/2026
At 6, I promised my best friend we'd go to prom together—12 years later, mom said I could go with him only on ONE condition and revealed the shocking truth.
Milo and I became best friends in first grade over dinosaurs and a mutual hatred of raisins.
He had Down syndrome.
It never defined us.
Not once.
He was funny, stubborn, brutally honest — he once told me my drawings looked "like potatoes with arms," and he wasn't wrong.
The day our teacher announced her wedding, the whole class argued about cake flavors.
Milo calmly declared his own wedding would have chocolate cake and absolutely no boring songs.
A boy laughed.
"Who's gonna marry you?
Nobody will."
I watched something in Milo's face fall.
"That's stupid," I said.
"Somebody's gonna love Milo."
He looked at me.
"Would you?"
"Maybe.
But first we gotta go to prom."
He held out his pinkie.
"Promise?"
"Promise," I said, and locked mine around his.
Twelve years passed.
Different classrooms.
My parents' divorce.
My first heartbreak, the night he showed up with ice cream and said, "I told you that guy was an idiot."
By senior prom, going together wasn't some old promise I felt obligated to keep.
He was my best friend.
There was nowhere else I wanted to be.
He arrived in a suit, corsage in hand, grinning like he'd won the World Series.
Mom opened the door — and her smile vanished the instant she saw him.
Upstairs, she locked my bedroom door.
"You can go tonight," she said.
"But only under one condition."
Her hands wouldn't stop trembling.
"There's something I need to tell you first.
About him.
About me."
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