Short Story Example About Friendship: A Complete Story and How It Works
Quick answer: An original short story about friendship, two men and a standing Friday order at a Peckham takeaway, with a breakdown of how the story shows loyalty without saying it.
A friendship story fails when it tells you the two people are close. It works when it shows a habit between them and then puts the habit under strain. The original story below is about two men in their forties, a takeaway, and a Friday order that one of them keeps placing after the other stops turning up. There is no speech about what friendship means. The breakdown afterwards shows how the story carries loyalty through an object and a routine.
Two Jollof
Every Friday for eleven years Tunde and Marcus had eaten at Mama Ade's on Rye Lane, same table by the fridge, same order: two jollof, one with extra plantain, because Marcus had a sweet tooth he pretended was Tunde's. Then Marcus's marriage ended, and he stopped coming. He answered texts with one word. He did not answer calls. Tunde kept the table. He kept the order too, both plates, and ate his own while the second went cold across from him, and Mrs Adeyemi, who had watched them since they were boys in school uniform stealing chin chin from the counter, said nothing and boxed the second plate at the end of the night without being asked. Six Fridays. Seven. On the eighth, Tunde was reading the sports pages with his fork in the wrong hand when the chair scraped and Marcus sat down in it, thinner, shaved badly, and looked at the plate in front of him as though it might be a trick. 'Extra plantain,' he said. 'You never liked it.' 'I don't,' Tunde said, not looking up from the paper. 'Eat it before she charges me for the box.' Marcus ate. Neither of them mentioned the seven Fridays, or the wife, or the one-word texts. At the counter afterwards Mrs Adeyemi charged them for two jollof and one extra plantain, the way she had every week, and did not charge for the seven boxes, and Tunde noticed and Marcus did not, and Tunde decided that was fine.
How the story carries friendship
The first sentence establishes the routine in detail, right down to the plantain, and gives the friendship a small private lie: the sweet tooth Marcus blames on Tunde. That lie becomes the currency of the reunion. When Marcus says 'You never liked it' he is admitting the eleven years, and when Tunde says 'I don't' he is refusing to make it a moment. That exchange is the whole emotional climax, and it is eleven words long.
The second plate is the object that does the work a speech would otherwise have to do. Ordering it, letting it go cold, having it boxed: each week is an act of loyalty that costs money and a small humiliation, and the story counts the weeks so the cost accumulates. Mrs Adeyemi is the witness, and she is given her own gesture, the uncharged boxes, which lets the story end on a kindness Tunde receives rather than one he gives.
Nothing is resolved about the marriage. The story understands that friendship between these two men is not talking about it, and it honours that by not talking about it either.
Writing your own friendship story
Start with a shared habit specific enough to be theirs alone: a table, an order, a private joke about who likes what. Break the habit from one side. Let the loyal friend keep the habit at a cost. Bring the other back without an apology and let the habit itself do the forgiving. A third character who has watched them for years can carry the sentiment you should keep out of the dialogue.
What writers can take from this
- Give the friends one private lie or joke; it will pay off at the end.
- Show loyalty as a repeated act with a price, not a declaration.
- Keep the crisis offstage; the story is the friendship, not the divorce.
- Let a bystander carry the tenderness so the friends do not have to.
- End on something one friend notices and lets go.
Try it yourself
Write a story of under 500 words about a friendship kept alive through a routine that only one person is maintaining. The other person must return before the end, and neither may apologise or explain.
Questions
What makes a friendship story different from a romance?
The absence of a question. Romance asks whether two people will be together; friendship stories usually assume the bond and test it with time, distance or silence. The tension is about whether the habit survives, not whether it begins.
How do you write male friendship without it feeling cold?
Let the warmth travel through objects and actions rather than words. Two Jollof puts all its feeling into a plate of food and a refusal to look up from a newspaper. Readers feel more when characters say less.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working writers. Updated September 2026.
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