This is a true story but I edited some details for anonymity. Happened about 10 years ago. Sorry for grammar and format. Wrote it on mobile. There are three parts. See comments for the last two.
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Come on, we all want you to come”
Alex’s tone seemed genuine which surprised me. Besides his penchant for debauchery, my best friend was known to others for his unrelenting sarcasm.
After 15 years of friendship, my working theory was that his rhetoric was a defense mechanism from a childhood lost to a series of traumas. Whereas I had grown up in an unremarkable middle class neighborhood with two stably employed parents, Alex bounced from foster home to foster home and spent his last two years of high school homeless. We were unlikely best friends.
Nevertheless, we had both recently graduated college together and found jobs in the greater Chicago area and shared a small apartment. We did everything together despite our friend circles succumbing to the ebb and flow of life.