Unrequited Love ( Boy X Boy )

Day-5

Today is March 4th, 5 more days to his wedding. I wish I could stop the passage of time, I am not yet ready to lose him to someone else. I thought I was prepared , afterall I had my entire life to prepare me for this eventuality. Yeah, I have loved him for all of my 30 years of miserable life.

We met when we were in kindergarten, he was sitting next to me sobbing silently into a bear printed kerchief. It was a rainy day and his socks were all wet and was making a squeaking noise as he trembled. I don't know why I still remember those details, but I can't forget those tear streaked puffy eyes. I passed him the candy I was clutching in my hand and tried giving him a smile looking all friendly. He took the candy from my hand and held my hand tightly. 

We became best friends growing up, inseparable as our parents would describe us. I have always been the nerdy one and he was the outgoing one. He had many friends other than me, his basket ball team members, his school orchestra friends and his neighborhood friends. I only had him. Thinking back, in some way we fitted well together. He will cover me for crafts and sports and I will hand him my homework for him to copy. Even if we were put into different sections, we always stuck to each other. Two boys, very different to outside world , yet very same in many ways. 

We usually rode our bicycles to school together, he would come by my house and ring bell till I run out of my house. We would then discuss the latest book we read or the series we were watching on our way. He was really into sports and he loved playing basket ball after school. I have never been the one who would follow sports, but I did it for him. I would read up all the sports columns in the news paper so that I will have something to talk to him when I met him the next day. I was always the quiet kid to others, but I always had many things to say when I was with him. 

When we were in our 9th standard, he got his first love confession. He came running to me just after , bragging about how the prettiest girl in his class had confessed to him with a big box of chocolates and how he had gracefully accepted the chocolates and her. That was the first time I really felt the fear of losing him. I realized that day that my feelings for him was much more than what was allowed between friends. It terrified me and I was not able to sleep for days. Whenever I dreamt, I would dream that it was me who had given him that box of chocolates and confessed to him and it was I who got accepted by him. I was restless and very very scared. I couldn't tell anyone what was going on, and I really had no one to tell either.  

He stopped going back home with me to hang around with her after the school. The time we spent together gradually went down and I buried myself in studies to cover up my loneliness. I felt guilty whenever we met, like I was doing something that is not acceptable or is forbidden. He started noticing the change in me and one day asked me if there is something that I am hiding from him. I told him it was nothing, that I am just concentrating on my studies.  

The love affair lasted 3 months, he broke up with her and was miserable for a while. He called me one day ,we sat in a small ice-cream shop near our school and talked about love, girls and life. He told me that she was such a drama queen and how she was very restrictive and clingy. He swore that he will never fall in love ever again and made me promise that I will never fall for a girl either. His promise lasted about 6 months and he found himself another girlfriend while mine lasted my entire life.

My phone rang suddenly pulling me from my thoughts, it was mom. When I say mom, it's actually his mom. I call his mother mom just like he does , I remember she insisted that I do when we were still in school. She called to remind me to pick him up from airport tomorrow, his flight was landing in early hours in the morning. I had promised her that I would go to pick him up. It's almost 2 years since I last saw him. He moved to US as part of an onsite assignment and continued to live there for 2 years. He met the girl there and fell in love with her. They have only dated for a year before he popped up the marriage proposal. She agreed and here we are.

His parents were against the marriage in the beginning, he called me in the middle of the night one day and begged me to go talk to them. So, it became my duty to convince his parents to let him marry the girl. I don't know how I manage to do that as they were worried that it was just like one of his many affairs in the past and it wouldn't last. To be frank, I was also worried about that as well, but if it's something he wanted, I could never say no. I somehow managed to get them to agree and everything followed smoothly. I was there when the girl's parents came to meet his parents, when they fixed the date , when they booked the hall. I arranged everything and helped whenever I can. I think it was my way to atone to the sin of loving their son.

I messaged him and asked him to text me when he lands. It's really getting late and I should sleep. I pop the sleeping pill from the bottle that I kept at the bedside table and closed my eyes. It's all going to end very soon, I promised myself before I passed out.