Best Friend

Jericho Rivero oftentimes regards his roommate, Nathan Lopez as his best friend. He found Nathan’s company buoying his own life in the city, considering that he came from a not-so-wealthy family, relying only on an academic scholarship to finance his studies. His Aunt from overseas pays for his rent, and almost every time Nathan lends to him his gadgets, most especially the laptop which he uses to encode his term papers, or for playing games when he wants to burn some time. Every first week of the month, Nathan would receive his allowance from his parents, and Jericho knew what it meant: they’d spend a weekend night bar-hopping and pick-up girls whom they’d immediately bring to a hotel.
There was something in Nathan, and Jericho knew it was because of his fame in the university as heartthrob and one of the top players of the university’s basketball team, which Jericho always admired.
“I won’t be back until evening,” Nathan said to a half-asleep and half-awake Jericho, whose face was still buried on his pillow. Of course, how could Jericho forget? The basketball team has begun their all-day practice and training every Saturday.
“All right,” Jericho mumbled, all the while thinking about the fact that he would be alone in the room the whole day.
“Lock the door if you’ll leave,” Nathan reminded him. He was dressed in the team’s jersey from last season, with his brand new basketball shoes.
“Won’t leave,” Jericho said.
“Good. Take care of my stuff then,” Nathan replied. “You may use the laptop if you want to. I’ll leave the ipad too.” When he left, Jericho went back to sleep.
A gentle sunlight was pouring from the windows when Jericho woke up. He went to the bathroom in their dorm-room, and splashed water to his face. When he came back to the room, he had a long, good look at Nathan’s nook in the room, and slightly shook his head. Nathan’s bed wasn’t fixed, his gadgets and earphones scattered, with pieces of clothing and underwear enclosed beneath his bed or under his pillow.
Jericho fixed the bedsheet, placed Nathan’s iPad and PSP on the bedside table with the laptop, sorted the scattered clothing placing the dirty ones on Nathan’s empty humper and the clean ones in Nathan’s dresser. Inside, there was also a half-empty pack of Lucky Strike which he immediately pocketed. When he was done with the sorting and the cleaning, Jericho looked at what he has done. He knew Nathan would be happy.
He didn’t feel like eating, so he just lit some of the cigarettes, his head out of the window of the room, tapping ashes at the street, while looking at the variety of people passing by below. When he felt he had enough nicotine in his system, he went to the bathroom and took a shower, to remove the cigarette smell.
When he was done, he opened Nathan’s dresser, and searched for some clean underwear, boxer shorts, and an old basketball jersey with “Lopez” printed on the back. The clothes felt light and comfy in his body.
Jericho felt hungry so he stepped out and went to a carinderia and ate a light lunch: some ginisang ampalaya and a cup of rice, downed it all with a bottle of Sparkle. He smoked two cigarettes on the way back to the dormitory, while eyeing the people who were walking with him, hoping they were someone he knew, so that he may invite them to his room, just so he’d have company.
Returning to the room, he sat on Nathan’s bed, toyed with the PSP for a while, and then later played Temple Run 2 and Dumb Ways to Die on the iPad. When he got bored of it, he opened Nathan’s laptop.
What immediately greeted Jericho upon plugging the laptop and unfolding the screen was that Nathan left her Facebook account logged in. He smiled just by imagining how careless Nathan could be. He read Nathan’s notifications, some were about Likes on photos of him and his girlfriend, as well as some comment replies. He hovered the mouse over the Log-Out link, but he received a message.
“Why aren’t you calling?” It was Liz, Nathan’s girlfriend.
Jericho thought about what to say before he pressed the keys. “I’ve been busy. Basketball stuff.”
Liz took time replying. Jericho browsed her Timeline, looking at her selfie photos, some with Nathan, and some pictures were also taken with Jericho. He wondered if Nathan have done to her the stuff he does to the girls they pick-up. He smiled for a second, imagining Liz’s moans.
“I know you’re avoiding me. You know that I know the schedule of your basketball practice. Don’t lie to me.” Liz typed back.
“I’m not. You know I love you. Things have been difficult these days. I needed space.” Jericho smiled. He phrased it exactly the way Nathan would put it.
“You never called me. Never even messaged me here in Facebook. That was for a week. What were you expecting, that I’d be fine afterwards?”
“Go on. Be mad. I’ve told you my reason. If you don’t believe me, then don’t. I don’t want to waste time trying to convince your or anything.”
A long while passed. Jericho knew Liz, and he knew that she easily gives up on their arguments. He proved it when she and Nathan argued in front of him. Nathan walked away, and Liz ran after him.
“I’m sorry.”
He smiled and slowly shook his head. “I’m sorry too.”
“Let’s just talk later, okay? I’ll call you.”
“Ok.”
She said that her big sister’s going to use the PC so she logged out. Jericho logged-out Nathan’s Facebook and logged-in his own. There was nothing much to it so he signed out after a few minutes and played Skyrim, and played his character, where he slayed a few puny orcs on the way to the main town to meet his bride. They had a romantic conversation.
After a while, he decided to watch a movie, but for some reason he forgot the folder where Nathan kept his downloaded movie files. It wasn’t under “movies” or “downloads”. What was that? he tried remembering until he didn’t want to watch anything anymore, but just kept browsing on folders, viewing some word documents, pictures of Nathan with other girls, with his friends, with Liz, until he stumbled on the folder “Natnat private”. He double-clicked on it and saw some video files with numbers as file names.
He opened one, and the smiling face of Liz welcomed him on the screen. She was on a bed, and she was naked. Nathan appeared from the left side of the screen, and he was naked also.
Realizing what file he had found, Jericho, in a hyped pace, took the laptop and lay on Nathan’s bed, where he stripped from the waist down. The sight of Liz’s breasts set his mind ablaze. Slowly he stroked his hard-on.
On climax, he lost control and squirted everything on Nathan’s bed. Some got on the laptop.