Chapter 71: Wait, What?

Imagine all the things Lena could have said instead.

“I’ve realized I’m gay,” she might have said, and okay, that explains that. I'd be her straight best friend and I'd remind myself that it didn’t mean I’d been that bad a boyfriend.

“I’m seeing another guy,” she might have said, and that would’ve felt way worse because maybe I really had been that bad. But, still, fair enough. You might say, how could she! Not emotionally, if you’ve been paying attention, because one thing she and I agreed on was that we had broken up. Geographically, because we hardly left the apartment. To which I’d say, she could’ve the same way she and I met, dating online. Or she could’ve meant Raul the pizza guy.

“I’m a hyper-advanced alien,” she might have said, “and now that you’ve been peacefully conquered, we need to hit up Arthur C. Clarke so he can write the tell-all.” I knew that wasn’t what the book I still hadn’t finished reading was about. Way too personal for golden age sci-fi.

But I genuinely think I would’ve understood it better than what she’d actually said.

Lena pulled away from me.

“I...” I stood there gawping. My mouth worked its way around the words. Left my brain playing catch up. “I broke up with you.”

She made a tiny, angry, desperate sound. I hated it. She whispered, “Guess it’s true what they say.”

“Huh?”

“Be careful what you wish for.”

It startled a laugh from me.

She whirled, shaking.

I spread my hands. “It’s not funny!” God, wasn’t it! “It’s just, I’d had the exact same thought when you told me why you moved in.”

“I guess we’re just on the same wavelength.” She laughed, too, but she didn’t sound surprised and she sure as hell didn’t sound amused. Try bitter.

I wanted to hug her again, but was almost certain I shouldn’t. My shoulders slumped. “We’re definitely not. I don’t understand at all.”

“Uh-huh.” Her eyes narrowed.

I reached out. My hand hovered over her arm. She shuffled her feet until she bumped into my touch. I asked, “Why do you think I was the one who broke up with you?”

She opened her mouth.

I cut her off. “Don’t say ‘you just said so,’ because you’ve known me long enough to know I was just trying to figure out what the hell you were talking about.”

She tsked, which confirmed I’d known her long enough to know when she’d retreat into pedantry.

Instead of answering me directly, though, she said, “When was the last time we went out, Cam?”

I guess knowing we had similar instincts, she added, “Before Third Eye.”

I started to answer.

I couldn’t.

We’d gone to grocery stores and libraries and the Monday game nights. Maybe Micro Center on Sunday mornings, when one of us had the money to buy some new electronic crap.

I knew Lena didn’t mean those trips, any more than she meant our daily grind for Materials since we started playing Third Eye.

When had we last gone on a date?

When she first moved in, I’d tried to take her out all the time. She'd complained a lot, got quiet when people packed the light rail or we went to a theater with too many patrons. In retrospect, I’d probably gotten lucky that our first IRL date was to a movie I seemed to be the only fan of. “I thought you didn’t like going out.”

“I don’t,” she said. “I liked when you took me, sometimes.”

“We couldn’t,” I said. “Everything was locked down.”

“Mrm.” She sighed. “If somebody told teenage me that she’d basically spend a whole year locked in a two-room apartment with her boyfriend, she’d have lit up like a candle. God. Teenagers are so dumb.”

“The worst.” I rubbed my eyes. “So you do miss it?”

“... Yeah.”

“We can go again, now,” I said. “I’ve always liked to. I... can’t treat you until next month. I really am sorry, but you know I’m broke.”

“We don’t have to,” she said. “How about this? When was the last time we played a co-op game? Not with a big group, just you and me in duo queue?”

Besides Third Eye, I knew she meant. To whatever degree it was cooperative.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Something from a Humble Bundle?” Half of our computer game libraries came from monthly charity collections.

“You kept saying you weren’t interested and skipping a month.”

“Okay, but –”

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“I can check this one on my Steam library,” she said, “but I don’t have to. It was EDF. Four.”

“You think I broke up with you,” I said slowly, “because we haven’t played Earth Defense Force Five?”

“Or World Brothers.”

“I heard that one sucked.”

“Yeah, same.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t have to be EDF, although if you don’t want to play Japan’s greatest Z-movie simulator it says some grim shit about your tastes.”

“We can play EDF –”

“We haven’t played anything together,” Lena said, “for two years.”

Could I pick at her statement and find some exception? Something we played on our phones, or on a different PC game launcher like GoG or Epic, or on the rarely-used Switch on her nightstand?

Yeah, probably.

Did it change her point?

No.

My hand fell away from her arm.

“I’m not gonna ask when was the last time we had sex,” she said. “I don’t have to. I remember the last time we didn’t.”

Sweltering though the apartment was, I felt a chill down my spine. “This is about my birthday.”

Her expression told me it was.

This would have been... Jesus. Over a year now. I rechecked the numbers in my head to give myself an excuse not to engage. Fifteen months ago.

I’d forgotten it was my birthday but I knew I’d forgotten something, because Lena spent the whole day conspicuously not saying anything about whatever it was. Snapping too much, grinning too hard. A bundle of nerves.

It weirded me out, so I avoided her most of the day.

That night, she let me get changed first. First time for everything. I realized it was my birthday while I was in the bathroom and thought that was a weird idea for a gift. Not underwhelming, even, because it was nice to not have to fight over the bathroom for once. Just weird.

Well, I’d been right about the oddness of her gift ideas.

I’d gotten my PJs on and returned to the bedroom. I found she’d already changed. Into nothing except a sort of poncho of Dollar Tree wrapping paper, tied off with a bow of that kind of stringy Christmas ribbon cats love to eat. She’d gone to bed. Mine.

It was the silliest, weirdest thing I’d ever seen. The ribbon on its own would’ve been over the top, but at least comprehensibly sexy. The wrapping paper pushed it into absurdist territory.

Now as then, I looked away. Unlike then, it didn’t startle a laugh out of me. “I’m sorry, Lena, but the vibe was just too bizarre. We don’t so much as kiss for weeks –”

“Months.”

“– and all of a sudden you’ve gift wrapped yourself?” I shook my head. “It’s not supposed to be you giving yourself to me, it’s supposed to be something we both want!”

Her eyes flashed. “You think I’d do that if I didn’t want to?”

“I...” Sighed. “... did. Obvs.”

“What was ‘obvs’ to me,” Lena said, “was that I was right, and you were really, really not into me anymore.”

Back then, when I’d looked away, Lena had waited until she realized I wasn’t going to turn back to her, then, without a word, slunk out of my bed and back to where her pajamas were folded on hers. She’d dragged the room divider out and, I assumed, put her PJs on before she went to bed. She’d had them on by midnight, anyway.

I knew, because I’d lain awake all night cursing myself.

Because I’d found her absurdly sexy. Not her ridiculous costume. But the sentiment. “I’m yours!” It was too... unbalanced. Too intense. It was fucked up! It was! Wasn’t it?

I was. Wasn’t I?

Finally I’d gotten up, gone to the divider and nudged my head around. I’d wanted to ask Lena, but she’d gone to sleep with her head buried under her pillow. Her costume was crumpled in her wastebasket. I thought I’d done enough damage without waking her up. Or I was just a coward. I slunk back to bed.

And after that?

Well. We’d been living “after that” ever since.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

When my eyes opened, I saw Lena’s staring up at me, wide, brimming with tears.

“I didn’t break up with you,” I said.

She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

I wanted to look anywhere but at her face, at the expression I’d put there. So that was new. I forced myself to hold her gaze. “I was just such a shit boyfriend that you couldn’t tell the difference.”

Her laugh dislodged the sob she’d been holding back. “I’m sure I’ve got a few rough edges here and there.”

“Maybe a couple.” I tried to smile.

I think she did, too, and I think she probably did about as good a job as I did.

Tentatively, I spread my arms. I wasn’t about to embrace her again, now that I understood why I had no right to.

Shit boyfriend? Shit friend by any measure. I’d let us become little more than roommates. We’d drifted as far apart as two people who shared all the same interests and lived together in five hundred square feet could.

Until Third Eye got us interested in – obsessed with – the same thing again.

If it hadn’t forced us to work together, forced me to face how I felt, forced her to face her past, would I have ever realized? If the game hadn’t pushed us, coaxed us, tempted us?

Was this clarity what the devs had offered me to keep me more grateful than afraid? What Bernie had been to Lena, what I suspected Erin had gotten?

If so, it worked.

Lena stepped forward and wrapped her arms around my waist. Not grabbing, not clinging. An ordinary hug. Rather, the kind that should’ve been ordinary.

I gave it back.

When she sniffled, I tried resting my chin on her head and she gave me a tentative squeeze.

We stood there for a long time and we could’ve stood there forever, as far as I was concerned. Eventually, though, I felt her lean back so she could look me in the face again.

She blinked furiously. Despite the streaks of tears on her cheeks, she showed me a broad smile different from the nervous grin I’d once mistaken for a delighted one.

I put on the most serious voice I could. “Lena.”

“Cam?”

“Are you,” I asked, “seeing anybody?”

I knew she got what I was calling back to, because her smile only widened. “No. Can you believe it? My last boyfriend was so shit, he even admitted it!”

“Didn’t know what he was missing,” I said. My voice lowered. “Would you like to be?”

She squeezed her arm between us and poked me in the chest. Quoting herself from that awkward Discord exchange all those years ago, she said, “Are you asking me if I’m aro?”

“I’m asking if you’d like to date me, dummy,” I said.

She drew in a breath. “Yes.”

“That was a lot quicker than over Discord.” When we did this exchange the first time, it had taken her almost five minutes of typing and deleting before I finally saw that one wonderful word in our chat history.

“Over Discord, I didn’t get to see how hot you looked when you asked.” Her smile turned crooked. “Also, I got the panic attack out of the way in advance this time.”

I leaned forward and kissed her forehead. Then, as she tilted her head back, her nose, then her lips.

We probably stayed like that for a few minutes, too. I lost track.

When we finally broke for air, Lena nestled her head against my chest and whispered, “We’ve got a lot of time to make up.”

“You’re right.” I ran my fingers through her hair. I leaned forward like I meant to kiss her again.

I breathed, “I’ll get EDF installed.”

Her laughter rang through the apartment.