The lovable straight-guy friend

Fic. This is the character self-portrait of the best friend of the boyfriend, for the Appointments & Disappointments series. 

 I was exactly eighteen. For my birthday I wanted to go out with the boys smoke some shisha and weed, drink local chhyang and beer, and just shoot the shit. The feeling of being surrounded by people you care about the most, in a thick haze of smoke, with your favourite music playing in the background is amazing. Instead, I ran around trying to wingman my best friend who was trying to get on with this girl who was clearly uninterested in him. He said that was the thing that he wanted the most in his whole life, and as a gift to him, I gave him my day. On my own birthday. It was alright. You can hang out with the boys any day of the week, but your friend's chance with a girl he really really likes comes only once.

He said he would be there for me anytime I needed his help. In the end he chickened out, said it could wait a few more years. I coached him for three hours on how he could convince my parents. My only sibling, the person who taught me to live, to get friends, was in trouble and needed my help. He was in love with a Canadian woman, and couldn't tell it to our parents. Over phone my brother told me I was the only one who could bear his secret. I was sixteen.

I was thirteen. We were on a trip to Pokhara. There was a group of girls from the famous women's convent staying at the hotel next door. I was a shy boy, as I always am. My friend said he'd help me figure things out. He introduced me to four girls, and promised to get numbers of other guys if they hung out with me and gave me their numbers. I went red as a tomato and said I didn't need any help. A nerdy girl who was not involved at all took an interest in me, we talked all night long, and the following day. We still keep in touch, she wants to go abroad and I don't. She tries to convince me otherwise sometimes.

We have been inseparable friends since. My parents absolutely loved him. I was the sidekick to all his ridiculous antics, he got into all sorts of trouble, the teachers told me to avoid his company. We hit it off pretty quick, despite him being outgoing and social, and me just...nice and funny. He was a new student in the school also. We had moved in from the east to Kathmandu. I was eleven.

I was eight. I fell from the second floor, they took me to the nearby health posts, eleven stitches they gave me on my forehead and hands. I recovered after a couple of months. My parents decided then, they could let go of my older brother, but they'd always want me by their child. They told him I was their favourite child, and he agreed. He said that made him like me more, I was a lovable child.

It doesn't make any sense. It was a strange memory, sometimes I remember it at my body goes stiff and gets cold. I don't know why I'm saying this. I may have cried, covered myself in my blanket and closed my ears. There were loud noises, and cries. Don't care on knowing what they could have been. I didn't know what the noises were. It was not my house. I don't remember where I was. I was six.