Alfie a Short Story

Alfie

Where to begin this uncanny tale of romance.

If this is even considered a romance? Maybe it is, rather than a romance on finding a person to romantically love, I found a person who I can certainly, and most confidently say, am willing to stay with for the rest of my life. Not in the nuclear family sense of living, but as Plato would call it a platonic soul mate that would be here for my needs. And who would have thought that a simple message would help me find, not just him, but myself as well.

My arrangement with Alfie is far from what people would call ideal or conventional. We are a couple but we are open to let each other meet other people too, we have sex but we also have our separate rooms. We consider each other as our soulmates, if not romantic then platonic. But even before this uncanny relationship with Alfie started to take form to reality, this has always been our arrangement even when we were teenagers in high school.

There was something about high school that would change the dynamic between old childhood friends. One moment you’re both playing video games and plotting down your summer schedule, the next – the first day of school to be precise – you’re completely different strangers. One suddenly got a sudden growth spurt and is now obsessed with muscle building, and is joining sports varsity teams and hanging out with jocks; while the other is left with tons of baby-fat and height that seems to stop growing, and a lifelong subscription to a non-athletic extracurricular and a handful of friends whose conversation starters feel like it was written by a group of sitcom writers, because none of them are used to having a normal conversation that’s not on topic for the day’s episode.

It's no denying that high school does make one think if they’re better off with other friends, while others make the big leap and actually find their crowd, there are some who are just stuck. Or afraid to try at all. And like any other cliche books or movies or shows, I am one of the general populace of high school who is stuck in the rut. If given a label by the cliche American shows, this little group of ours are the nerds and geeks at the corner. The “late bloomers” who suffer from fitting in, who have a hard time trying to start a conversation with anyone that is not our own. And the lucky one who got puberty’s glow up was one of our own.

Alfie’s sudden shift of friends was not a surprise to our little group, there have been talks with Albert and Peter of Alfie, one day, who would leave us for the supposed “cool kids”. There was no denying, Alfie was handsome, he had the charm, the enthusiasm and was built for sports. He would probably be with those kids who played rugby in the field if it weren’t for his asthma. Every Phys Ed, he would have his inhaler with him, get a puff, before joining us for the run around the school track field. There was even a time where he was taken to the hospital because some bloke thought it was funny to throw his inhaler away while he desperately needed it.

Alfie’s possible popularity and abandonment of us was Albert’s favorite topic of choice whenever it was just me and him, or him and Pete. I don’t know why though, and maybe I should have said something to stop that absurd thinking so his unreasonable hatred towards Alfie would just stop. So he would stop having a grudge towards a person who has never done anything to him.

But I decided to stay silent, and let him talk and talk, and I listened and sometimes zoned out.

When high school came, Alfie suddenly started hanging out with a group of popular kids, one of them was Harvey, the boy who almost killed him by throwing away his inhaler. His time with them did not go unnoticed by many of our schoolmates, and those who knew him as part of our group started to finally see that he was actually hot, and decided that his asthma is not something to make him less of a human being. He would still say “hi” to us, whenever he would pass by our lockers.

On the first day of school, he stuck with us: he gave Peter and Albert their secret handshake, and me he would always poked my cheeks. Ever since we were children he would do that, and said that they were just poked them whenever he could. We went to our classes, still did our projects, then lunch came and he was taken by his newly made friends who he spent the time with in football camp or something, and since then his stops by our lockers became short, lunches with him were rare, he even started joining the other kids in group projects than have us. Then there was news of him switching lockers with a bloke called Edwina so he could be close to the gym locker area. He got into the school football team. Then the next few terms, he made sure to have classes with this new found friends and rarely with us.