When I was in third grade, I met a friend. His parents lived in my neighborhood, and we happened to get along. He stayed my friend, through middle school, all the way into high school. We liked the same music. He was one of the funniest people I'd ever met. Even when he started spending time with a different crowd than I did, we stayed friends, and made it a point to go out and go drinking or go see a band every once in a while, to keep in touch. He was my best friend, and that's what you do.
He dated a girl for a while, and then he broke things off with her. I met her, and wanted to date her, so I asked him if it would make him uncomfortable, and he said no. After all, he broke up with her in the first place, right? So I dated her. Then she and I got married. And a couple of years later, he broke into our house, raped her, and killed her in front of me.
Apparently he still had feelings for her. Before I killed him, one of the men he brought with him that day told me that my friend had been pining for her all that time, but he'd broken up with her, so he hadn't known how to tell me I couldn't see her. Then that curdled, went bad around the same time he got into drugs, and then, like magic, there we all were, in a room together, while he won her back by beating her to death and sexually assaulting her after she was mostly unconscious, and I was mostly paralyzed.
He made a mistake.
I never did manage to get my hands on him. I killed two of them. Two of the others went to jail. Him, I don't know where he's gone. And it's best if I don't know. Because being best friends since third grade doesn't change the unspeakable things I would do to him if I could get him alone in a room.
I understand, theoretically, how it happened. But I don't condone. And I can't forgive.