To Keep Going On

1. Regrets...

"The site looks good, what do you say Forth?"
"Forth.. Forth!! YO FORTH!"

"Huh?" He looked up from where he sat in surprise. Tim, his best friend and executive director, watched him with worried eyes.

"You okay?" Tim asked.

Forth looked down with a thin smile. "I haven't been okay in a while Timmy"

Tim sat down beside Forth with a sigh. "Seven Years.. been a long time" 

"Is it? Not long enough" Forth sighed again.

Tim patted Forth's shoulder. He'd been with Forth a long time, through sotus and moon contest, the freshmen year, all the fights and parties and games, he was there that day too, he was there when Forth went crazy and broke down for that guy. That poor guy. Tim always sighs thinking of that guy who got so much hurt for what reason? 

Thinking of who betrayed and hurt that guy must have felt, how broken he must be, sometimes, even he himself would've had hard time feeling sympathetic to Forth had he not known the pain Forth had put himself through. All the shit he had accompanied Forth through. The fights, races, alcohol, crying and hurting himself. 

"No matter how much time passes by it doesn't get easy, does it?" He sighed.

Forth looked around the field with a lost look on his face. 

Tim went on. "You could look for him again you know. Em.. harder this time. We're with more resources now. Look!! You can't live your whole life with this guilt. You can't keep on regretting. You're not even thirty! You.. you have to move on"

"What?" Forth asked sharply and Tim bit the inside of his cheek.

"I.. I'm sorry.."

"Move on from Beam?" Forth let out a bitter laugh. "Guilt? This torture, this pain, it's not just guilt Timmy" Forth said miserably. "And you think I didn't look hard enough Tim? Every second of my life, I live in regret, those few words... I ruined my life with my own damn hands! My love. I'm not living with guilt, I hate my guts! I deserve it"

Tim looked down at his hands but didn't speak as Forth took deep breaths.

"I just want to know.. I wanna know that he's.. he's out there somewhere and.. and that he's okay" Forth's voice cracked. "That he eats and sleeps and he smiles, God he.. he really needed to smile more, he was so grumpy all the time! And food, he.. told me once.. he got hungry when he remembered me, can you believe the guy?" Forth chuckled. 

Tim at him with a slight smile. He had listened to Forth talk on and on about his Beam for hours at a time. He had heard it all. But he still sat there and listened to his friend. "Him? Grumpy? The Beam Baramee and grumpy?" he joined in the laughter. Forth would only talk about Beam once in a while, times he had these bad days when all the pain and loneliness becomes too much.

But he never let anyone know how he felt. To a normal eye, Forth was the most successful businessman in the country, it took time, a lot of time, but he managed to go on with his normal life sometime after Beam Baramee disappeared from the face of Earth.

But Tim, the only one out of his best friends who stuck with him after what he did to Beam, even after graduation and Forth taking over his family business, saw how he struggled to keep it together, burying himself in work, not having a life outside of field and construction, spending rest of his time locked up in his house with plants. 

Tim saw how Forth stopped looking at people, he stopped playing, he stopped hanging out with the gang, he stopped drinking, he gave up all the part of his life before Beam happened to him. He gave up living as his guilt ate him up. Tim felt sorry for the man who once was the feared and most intimidating hazer but there was nothing, at all, that he could do to help. Forth did this to himself, his ego ruined his own happiness, something that could turn out beautiful. He broke someone's heart in a snap, without even realizing the extent of damage it did to himself.