Title: Never going to Happen
Author: EmpressV
Rating: G
E-mail: empressvader01@hotmail.com
Timeline: maybe slight references. to "Tempest"
Pairing: Lana/Pete (friendship)
Summary: Lana and Pete have a talk about Whitney.
Disclaimer: Smallville is a product of the WB.


Lana sat on the blanket wearing a jacket Whitney had left behind. There
last picnic together had been right in this spot. It had all been so simple
when Whitney was here. He had been easy to hold on to when things failed,
when there was no one else, but she would be lying if she said she loved
him, because she didn't. She had never loved him. The problem was, she let
him leave thinking her kiss good-bye was a something more than good-bye.
She had never promised to wait for him, but that was only because she
didn't have the nerve to say no. He was in love with her, he believed that
when he would return home to find her waiting on him with open arms. She
knew better, how many things had changed just this year, how many things
would change in a year more?

"Lana?" a voice questioned. She turned and saw Pete standing there and
checked to see if Clark or Chloe was with him, since she rarely saw him
without one or the other.

"Hey Pete?"

"You thinking about Whitney? I noticed you're wearing his jacket."

"Yeah," she seemed to drift off into her own head as she spoke. "He gave it
to me way back when we first started going out. It was cold out and he just
gave it to me. I had on a jacket, but it was really thin. He had on these
short sleeves. I know he froze all the way home, but he wouldn't take his
jacket back." Lana smiled to herself seeming to return to present with
Pete. "He was always so delicate with me, it was different than how he was
with everyone else. Really, sweet"

"You really miss him?"

"I guess I do," Lana said to herself. "Want to sit down?"

"I don't want to disturb you, I just wanted to say hi."

"I'd actually like some company."

He sat down.

"It's going to be weird going back to school and not seeing Whitney," Pete
said.

"It's probably good that he's gone," Lana said. "Maybe he'll out grow me."

Pete was taken aback. "What?"

"I wasn't growing or at least we were growing apart," Lana told him. "I
held onto him because it was easy, I was changing so much and even as I
embraced it, it scared me too. But Whitney was my place to go when
everything else got confusing. But he was just that, nothing more "

"Are you saying you didn't like Whitney anymore?"

"I liked Whitney, perhaps on some level I even loved him...as a friend. But
I wasn't in love with him anymore, I don't know if I ever was. He wasn't
the man in my dreams."

"So who was?" Pete asked.

Lana didn't answer and he looked into her eyes. "Is it a guy we all know
with the last name Kent."

Lana's head dropped. "Maybe, maybe not. It doesn't matter. That ship has
sailed, his eyes are elsewhere. Besides, so many things changed in this
past year who knows what will happen in the future."

"Yeah, maybe we'll fall in love and get married."

She laughed. "Like that will ever happen." She stopped and looked at him
realizing he wasn't laughing. "Unless you were serious."

They studied each other for awhile and then burst out laughing.

"Never happen," Lana said.

"Not a million years," Pete agreed.

END