It was supposed to be a celebration. A surprise. Dino’s birthday. My then girlfriend Ruth had a plan. A “cake.” Made of beer cans. Ingenious.

We arrived, present in hand. And realized the surprise was on me.

We weren’t the only ones. A crowd of strangers, Dino’s new friends, laughed, drank, existed with an ease I’d never known.

I tried to join them. Failed. Half-smiles. Awkward nods. Sentences that never landed.

Here’s the part I spent years misunderstanding: you’d think a best friend, seeing you struggle, would throw you a rope.

No. Sometimes he checks the room first. Looks at you struggle. Watches you drown.

“Look at him sweating.”

I froze. I hadn’t merely failed to belong; I had become the entertainment. Laughter. Knowing glances. They’d been primed for this. I was the joke before I arrived.

Underneath, something lingered: a slip of words days before, easily overlooked but impossible to forget.

“You hate me, right?”

The room stilled. Someone shuffled. Dino said nothing. His face — surprise, guilt — said more than words could.

I turned. Walked away. Silence stretched behind me, taking whatever remained of our friendship. Hot tears burning my eyes.

The next morning, Dino messaged. Half bemused, half scolding.

With the quiet finality of a door closing, I let him go. But time does not close all doors as neatly as we would like.

It never occurred to me that a friendship could end for one person and continue for the other.

For 11 years, the invitations continued, which suggested, at least on his end, that nothing essential was lost. I found this both comforting and deeply suspicious. Like being told a house is still standing when you distinctly remember watching it burn.

“Let’s grab a drink.” “We should all meet, you and Beau, like old times.”

I answer, in the same way one might say “Yes, soon” warmly but with no real intention of doing so. The thought of his company now feels like an odd sort of dread.

I have learned that strangers can feel warmer than old friends; they bring no memory of your failures. Friends arrive with a list of evidence.

There was one time. An invitation came. A play. He was performing. An actor now. I wondered if seeing him on stage, at a safe distance, might make it easier.

I sat in the audience, watching him become someone else entirely.

When it ended, there was applause. People greeted him. Congratulations. I lingered at the edge of the theater, an observer to a life that had continued without me.

We spoke. Smiled. Passed an entire evening without mentioning any of it. We talked. Laughed. And the whole time, I had the sense that if I stopped trying, even for a second, there’d be nothing left to hold it up.

We said goodbye outside the theater. He told me to take care. Familiar, yet strange. I smiled.

“Beer soon.”

“Next time. Next time.”