The last, best, best friend.

"You're my best friend." The man said.

I blinked. What? How can I be this man's best friend?

"Thanks" was all I could get out. I couldn't say the words back, it felt disloyal.

I had a best friend, a man I'd grown up with. He hasn't called in months, I haven't either. Neither of us are the boys who stayed up late talking about life in tents. I'm not the boy who used his bug spray to light fires in a dry bush. He's not the boy who, for some reason, didn't have much trouble with it.

Or was she my best friend? She's the last person I'd said "You're my best friend" to, and we were certainly very close to each other. She's the person I reference as my best friend the most, and mostly to make a point. "My best friend..." I say, as if I have the right to brag about my friendship with her.

And these days, we don't talk much. I don't know what to say anyways. I have a lot I want to talk with her about, but she's got a boyfriend now, and I won't try to compete with him for talking time with her, it wouldn't be right.

Of course my first best friend, we were like brothers, and we haven't had a conversation in 18 years or so. He's married now, but I know very little past that.

Then it hit me. I'm all grown up. "Best friends forever" is a childish thing to say to each other. Life moves on, and I don't think I'm supposed to have best friends anymore. So this latest guy, he's my last, best, friend, and he's the last best friend I'll ever get to have.

Friends, these days, help each other out, then move on when life forces them to. We keep in touch, passively watching each other through electronic eyes. Until the day that we realize we don't know this person or that anymore.

I hate that it got easy to stop being friends with people. Friendship became a thing of ones and zeroes. "We used to be friends" stopped being a heartbreaking sentence, and started being a tragic thought three mouse-clicks away from a hyperlink hatefully labeled "unfriend".

Echoing our world of no-contest divorces, we now ask permission to be friends with each other, then relax in the knowledge that instead of any commitment to actually be a friend to that person, we can "unfriend" and "block" the person from our lives before it gets too complicated.

Friends, these days, meet for burgers, then tap away on smart phones with people who aren't there. Conversations with friends, interrupted by conversations with friends. A subtle, tragic reminder that some friends aren't deemed worthy of being paid attention to. A reminder that friendship is an inconvenience, and really takes a lot of work.

I know that, now.

A true friend of mine was there for me before, during, and after the darkest hours of my life. The man I had trusted and confided in most sat and watched in silence while I was led away in the aftermath of one of my best (that word again) friends abusing all the trust I had given him. The contrast haunts me to this day, how I failed to spend time with the people who ended up my best friends until it was too late.

Maybe...maybe I don't want another best friend. I'm too old, and too cynical, to say to any one person "you matter more than the rest of them" and have any expectation of that being reciprocated. I think, maybe, that I just want friends, and those I have. While I miss having a "best friend", such is the way of life. I guess I grew up.

(I'm intentionally not touching on the sort of best friend that I'll marry. That's not the point of this post.)