Part Four: The Walk Home

As they walked, they talked. The man asked about the boy's school. The boy talked about his classes, about his one best friend Arjun who understood him, about the other kids who sometimes said mean things.

"They say my parents are going to get divorced," the boy said matter-of-factly. "And they say when they do, I'll be sent to an orphanage."

The man stopped walking for a moment.

"That's a terrible thing to say," he said.

"Yeah," the boy said. "But kids say terrible things sometimes."

"That's true," the man said. "They do."

They started walking again.

After a while, the man asked, "Do you have a best friend? You mentioned Arjun."

"Yes," the boy said. "He's my bestest friend. We play all the time. He's the only person who really understands me. He never makes fun of me, even when the other kids do. When the other kids said mean things about my parents, he told them to shut up and leave me alone."

The man felt something warm in his chest. The knowledge that this boy had someone. That he wasn't completely alone.

"That's good," the man said. "It's good to have someone like that."

The boy looked up at the man. "Do you have any best friends?"

The man was quiet for a long moment.

"I had one," he said finally. "His name was Arjun too, actually. Which is funny."

The boy's eyes widened. "Really? The same name?"

"Yeah. We hung out all the time in university. We had so much fun together. We were inseparable. I thought we'd be friends forever."

"What happened?" the boy asked. "Did you fight?"

"No," the man said. And his voice had gotten quieter. "We didn't fight. We just... after university, life happened. We both got busy. We went our separate ways. Our daily hangouts turned into daily video calls. Then the calls became less frequent. Then they turned into texts. And then... then at some point one of us stopped texting, and the other one didn't reach out, and eventually we just lost touch completely."

He paused.

"And now I don't even know where he is," the man continued. "I don't know what he's doing. I don't know if he's married or has kids or any of it. I just... lost him."

The boy was quiet.

"That's sad," the boy said finally.

"Yeah," the man said. "It is."

They walked a little more in silence.

Then the boy asked, "What about a girlfriend? Do you have a girlfriend?"

The man laughed. But it was a different laugh than the one he'd laughed before in the stadium. This was a laugh that held a lot of sadness. A laugh that came from somewhere deep.

"I had one," he said. "I did have a girlfriend."

He stopped walking for a moment and looked up at the sky. The boy stopped walking too and waited.

"She was the most beautiful person I've ever seen," the man said slowly. "Not just on the outside. On the inside too. She was kind. She was funny. And her laugh... her laugh would make my heart race. Just hearing her laugh would make me feel alive. And her eyes... I could look at her eyes forever and never get bored."

The boy listened. He didn't interrupt.

"We lived together for five years," the man continued. "Five years. And it was good. Most of it was good. But somewhere along the way, things changed. She started to want something different. She wanted a different life. A life that didn't include me."

The man's voice had gotten very quiet.

"One day she just told me that she couldn't see a future with me. And I asked her if she was sure, and she was sure. She left. And I haven't seen her since. But I heard from a friend that she's getting married soon. To someone else."

He paused.

"And I'm happy for her," he said. "Genuinely. I hope she's happy. I hope she has the life she wanted."

He said it like it was true. But the boy could hear the whole story underneath it. The pain. The loss. The kind of heartbreak that never really goes away.

"Do you miss her?" the boy asked.

"Every day," the man said. "But not in the way that makes me wish she was still with me. I miss her the way you miss someone you knew was always meant to leave. You're grateful they were there, but you understand they had to go."

The boy didn't say anything. He just reached over and took the man's hand as they walked.

They walked like that for a while, hand in hand, the man and the boy, not talking. And it was enough.