End Game: A Gamer Romance

by Swallow, Lisa

  I’ve spent time alone with Aaron before, once for an entire weekend, without seeing anybody else. I know him well enough to doubt he’ll physically hurt me.

  “Where do you want to go?” I ask. “Because you’re not coming back to my place.”

  “Come back to mine.”

  “Which hotel are you staying in?”

  “No, my place.”

  Confusion sweeps in, battering back against the Watertight Chest containing my emotions. “You live in Perth now?”

  “I did once. Remember I told you that? I never sold my house when I left.”

  My mind races, grasping at every word. More lies? No, what are they called these days? Alternative facts? “This is because there was someone else, right? Was she the long distance? And now she’s moved out?”

  He tips his head. “Your brain works very fast at jumping to conclusions.”

  “And your mouth works very slowly at telling the truth.”

  A second smile of the day appears. “You deserve better.”

  “Damn straight.”

  “So, will you come to my place and let me tell you everything I should’ve months ago?”

  I pick my purse from the floor and place it on the table in front of me, gripping the handles. He means, do I let him back into my life? Even if just for the afternoon?

  Aaron knows my curiosity and need for answers will overcome the hurt.

  “Okay, but I don’t understand why we can’t just have the chat somewhere neutral.”

  He straightens. “Okay. Neutral. Good idea. Can you drive us to the beach?”

  31

  The sun sets over the ocean, streaking orange and red across the wide Perth sky. On his last visit, Aaron and I visited this beach. We walked along the sand together as the sun set, as with today. Was this a deliberate choice by Aaron? That night, my chest fluttered as if filled with faerie dragons—bigger and more vigorous than butterflies. Tonight, I’m watching a romantic sunset with a man whose romantic interest in me sank as quickly as the sun.

  We sit on a wooden bench, close to the edge of a pathway leading through the scrub and down to the beach. The late afternoon breeze intensifies as evening rolls in. I shove my hands into jacket pockets against the cooling evening; I’m as cold outside as I’m attempting to stay on the inside.

  “How long have you been in Perth?” I ask, staring down at my shoes.

  “About a month.”

  “And you never came to see me?” I swallow back the words; at how needy I sound.

  “I wanted to, but I was lost… I mean, I was in Perth but not really around.”

  I drop back against the bench and scrunch my hands deeper in my pockets.

  “Maybe you should just tell me exactly what’s going on. Seriously, I have never in my life met anybody as vague or as capable of dodging questions the way you can. At first, I swore you must be a lawyer.”

  Aaron shakes his head with a wry smile and sits forward, elbows on his knees. He looks at the beach below the lookout we’re on, silent for long enough the fluttering starts in my chest again. “There’s a girl.”

  Finally. The words I expect but didn’t want to hear. “Right.”

  “But it’s more complicated than that. We aren’t together anymore, but she’s still in my life. I don’t see her often but recently I had to.”

  “Oh. Do you have a kid with someone?”

  “No kid. No marriage. No divorce. Just a girl.”

  Inside, I scream who? why? where? And stop being bloody obtuse. “This girl… you and her… the whole time we were together?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she lives in Perth?”

  He nods, unable to hold my look.

  I swallow down the rising upset. “So you did lie. You cheated on someone when you were pretending to be with me.”

  Aaron turns to face me, shifting slightly until our legs touch. I jerk at the contact. “It’s complicated.”

  “Omigod,” I breathe out and laugh. Weird, semi-hysterical, are you fucking kidding? me laugh. I stand. “I accept your apology for your lies. At least you finally had the guts to tell me.” I run both hands across my head, unsure what to do apart from walk away before my pain erupts into angry words. “I think we should leave, I’ll drop you to your hotel. Oh, no, wait… your home.”

  Aaron reaches out and grabs my hand. His cool fingers wrap around mine, gripping tight, as if holding onto me more than physically.

  “Yeah, that sounded like a bullshit response. There is a story, but it’s not as shitty as that. Please listen.”

  I pull my fingers from his. “I’m not sure I want to hear anymore.”

  “I find it strange you’ve never travelled.” Aaron chews his lips and looks the other way. “I couldn’t wait to see the world and I’ve travelled a lot in the past. That changes your life, you know? The world opens up and things change. I didn’t realise exactly how much travelling would change my life.”

  “You told me you travelled, and that I should.” The wind gusts cooler and I pull up the hood on my jacket.

  “Yes, live life because you never know what’s around the corner.” He blinks rapidly.

  “Why are you telling me this? You met her overseas and that’s what changed your life? Honestly, hearing your whole love story will not help the situation.”

  “No. That’s not what I’m telling you.” Aaron gestures at his legs. “The scars under my tattoo are from an accident I had in Greece. We were touring Europe and spent a few days on the islands exploring on a moped. The holiday was amazing, we were caught in the freedom—how life’s fun and nothing can go wrong.” He drags both hands down his face and stares at the horizon again. “Well things went really fucking wrong for us.”

  The scars, hidden behind images I could never decipher, blended together. A montage of his journeys?

  We?

  “What happened?”

  “I was driving too fast; inexperienced on the rough, winding roads.” His jaw hardens. “I lost control of the bike. Hit a tree.”

  I flinch at the thought. “Shit.”

  “Yeah. I broke my legs and ripped enough skin off to match 3rd degree burns.” He gestures at his jeans-covered legs. “But I was lucky.”

  “That’s not my definition of lucky,” I say with a small laugh.

  “Jessica. I can’t remember much, how she ended up this crumpled…mess. I don’t know how long I lay there in more pain than I’ve ever known, calling out to her. I couldn’t fucking move. I didn’t know if Jessica was alive or dead. Finally, someone passing stopped and helped us.”

  I sit heavily on the bench next to him. “Did she die?” I ask hoarsely.

  He covers his face and grips his hair with both hands. “Jessica’s told me over and over since that day she wishes she’d died.”

  Hearing pain in a man’s voice, especially one I realise I really never knew, hits me hard. I never imagined I could feel anything for Aaron again, determined to remain numb when he asked me to listen to him.

  “So she’s alive?” I whisper, my imagination conjuring horrific situations. Aaron’s story isn’t unusual to me; I have friends who had an accident in Bali where tourists often ride mopeds. They were also stuck injured by the side of the road until someone came by who could call an ambulance.

  But nothing as serious as Aaron’s story.

  “Yes. But she doesn’t live the life she planned.” He swears and then sits back against the bench and looks at the sky. “Jessica’s quadriplegic. She lives in Perth with her parents and I see her sometimes. Recently she’s been unwell. Really sick.” He snorts. “As if losing her life once isn’t sick enough.”

  I curl a hand around his, hoping to bring him back to here and away from the road in Greece, covered in blood and pain. “Does she blame you?”

  He shakes his head. “We’d been together years—since high school. We were at uni together too, then worked at the same company. Our lives followed the same direction and I always thought it would.
Never imagined something would stop us.”

  “You love her.”

  “Yes.”

  I hold my breath, dizzying myself. Why did I come here? Expose myself to this?

  “Afterwards, Jessica refused to stay in a relationship with me, told me it wasn’t fair to be tied to her.” Aaron’s voice breaks and my heart tears; not for myself but for the pain they’ve both suffered. For the girl he wants to love, but she won’t allow him in.

  “This happened three years ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “And now?”

  “She’s been in hospital again. I mean, yeah, she spends a lot of time in and out of hospital, but this time it’s a clot. Embolism. Complications. Things have been tough. I try to visit her every few months anyway, when I’m in Perth on business, and Jessica usually refuses to see me. Her parents want me to stay away because they say my visiting upsets her, but I feel I needed to this time, you know?”

  What do I say? I know nothing of his situation, only the bare bones of a horror story I couldn’t imagine being in. Boy meets girl, perfect couple, and tragedy tears them apart; a sick joke by the gods. But Aaron has part of himself still attached, and however hard she or he try to sever, he can’t let go.

  “How is Jessica now?”

  “This time she has an excuse not to talk to me, because she’s not conscious a lot of the time.”

  My stomach twists, guilty because I’m seeing myself in her situation and relieved I’m not. The idea life could end or lurch in a different direction, suddenly, with such finality, never crossed my mind. Nobody I know in life ever faced something like this. Tragedy has never touched my ordinary, closeted life.

  “I’m sorry.” I cringe at the useless platitudes which could hardly touch the surface of his hurt.

  “Yeah.” He rubs a hand across his face again. “The girl you saw me with? That was her sister, trying to persuade me to go back to Sydney.”

  “But you didn’t go?”

  “No. I couldn’t. Not until I’d resolved what the hell was happening with Jessica, and until I saw you and explained. I needed to make peace with everything. Took me years to realise, but now…maybe I’m ready.”

  “I wish you’d just told me all this originally, Aaron. Then I’d know where I stood and what the situation was. Why didn’t you?”

  “We play to escape reality, right? And we exist as different people in game. Every time I saw you in person, I was the guy from game with his girl from the game and that made everything okay to me. We were Thor and Sin and I didn’t feel guilty about Jessica because she wasn’t part of our life. I mean, part of that life I lead. Ugh. This sounds confusing, I hope you know what I mean.”

  “Sorta kinda,” I say with a smile. “Thor and Sin, great team.”

  He takes my hand again, fingers warm against my cool ones. “But that’s why I’d spent my time stuck in the game and avoided people. Nothing outside existed when I was Thorsday; no pain or guilt. The problem is, you existed outside and I stepped outside too. I pretended we remained in our game world when we were alone, but I lied to myself. You were real. We were real. I had to admit you were Evie and you knew Aaron.”

  “Your heart was with somebody else in reality,” I whisper.

  “No, for the first time ever it wasn’t and the guilt ate at me. Not loving her anymore felt wrong. Very, very wrong. I was falling for you, living a new life, and she had none. Not the one she wanted, anyway.”

  A couple pass with a small white dog, a young girl running ahead of them and half tripping down the sandy lane to the beach below. We exchange an evening greeting—or I do; Aaron stares into space, stuck in his memories.

  I grasp at words but none fit. I’m unable to know what to say in a situation where a man tells me a tragic story; love challenged and lost, lives changed forever. Nothing in my life ever touched me in this way. No tragedy ever touched my world, even amongst people in my life I know and love. But how could life touch me if the most painful thing that ever happens can be cured with health potions in a computer game?

  “I’m sorry.” The words carry on the wind, away from here because they don’t belong. Pathetic. No response from Aaron. “Thank you for telling me. I think I understand more now.”

  Aaron turns his head to mine and reaches out. He places his fingertips on my face. “I don’t blame you for wanting to walk away.”

  “From what? There’s nothing to walk away from, Aaron.”

  Aaron’s look remains unwavering. “Wrong. I came to see you because there is something. Because I finally allowed myself to step outside of the past and look to the future. Alison, Jessica’s sister, has told me repeatedly for three years that I need to move on. It’s taken those years, but I’ve had to accept this is guilt, not love. That walking away from Jessica isn’t a cruel act that makes me a heartless bastard. It’s what Jessica needs. She has nothing for me.” My eyes widen. “No, I mean she has no love for me. That I have to let her go.”

  Aaron takes his hand away and I catch his fingers, gripping them tight. I understand his avoiding connection with the world, with me, but right now he needs grounding.

  “Do you still love her?” I ask.

  “I finally admitted to myself that I don’t. There’s no future, like I thought there’d be no future for us.”

  “You still think that?”

  “I don’t know.” He places his other hand on mine. “In the beginning, I thought if I told you more about Aaron that you’d react to who I am and judge me for my actions. How could you accept somebody who leaves the girl he said he wanted to spend his life with, because of the way she is now? How could you think I’m a good person?”

  “The fact you cared deeply and wanted to stay makes you a good person, Aaron. But like any relationship, if it’s over, it’s over. Three years is a long time to cling on.”

  I swallow against how harsh I sound, unable to imagine the heartache Jessica faced on top of the physical pain she’s in. How can I say that love would never survive?

  “I know.”

  “And now?”

  “And now you. The unicorn girl who eats liquorice and draws pictures from other worlds; the one she lives in with me. The girl who stepped from Thorsday’s perfectly controlled world into his one filled with chaos and uncertainty.“ He draws a deep breath and cups my face. “Evie, I haven’t allowed myself to connect with anybody the way I do with you. Not since Jessica.” I cast my eyes down, heart twinging at her name.

  I convinced myself this man broke my heart because he couldn’t commit to long distance, and that he had other girls elsewhere.

  But instead, guilt weighed him down and trapped him inside an event from years ago.

  “Do you want to move on?” I ask.

  “Yes.” I wait for the words ‘with you’ but he shrugs his jacket closer and looks back to the sea. “I understand now I need to make new decisions in my life. I’ll return to Sydney. I’ll let Perth go and every memory it holds.”

  I’m crushed; stupid Evie expecting this man to declare his feelings for me now he’s managed to disentangle guilt and love in his mind.

  “Good idea,” I say in a soft voice.

  “Thank you for listening. I just wanted you to understand why I behaved like a coward. I hid from everything, that’s all.”

  “I do understand.” I stand and dig my hands deep into my pockets, unable to hug him because he may not hug me. “My mind’s blown because I never expected anything like this, but I don’t judge you.”

  He gives me a weak smile and wipes away the final scraps of the anger I hold against him. “You want to leave?”

  “Do you?” I whisper.

  He switches his gaze back to the horizon. “Not yet.”

  Aaron takes my hand, gripping tight as if clinging onto me, and we sit in silence watching the sky darken.

  *

  The journey across the city takes less time later on a Saturday evening, and the exhaustion after the adrenaline of my day flows in. T
he emotional headfuck from Aaron hasn’t helped, his words on repeat in my head. The tragedy. I don’t blame him, but honesty from the start would’ve helped.

  I pull the car outside a small, single-storey house, bordered by a small pebbled garden and grey wall, and I listen to my heart beating in my ears over the engine’s hum.

  “Do you want to come inside?” he asks.

  I stare in surprise. “I thought your conversation was thanks and goodbye.”

  He gives a soft laugh. “Sinestre and Thorsday aren’t going anywhere. Unless you’re leaving the guild.”

  “No way.”

  “And I have more to say to you. Come on in.”

  Aaron’s house holds an eerie emptiness, cool and half vacant. The kitchen’s strewn with dishes, something I’m used to from visits to Tyler and friends, but there’re no magnets on the fridge. No pictures on the wall.

  The lounge room’s as empty, but has ornaments arranged on shelves between books and a large poster from the game covering one wall. Unable to find a conversation starter, I walk to examine the items. I touch a carved box lightly with my fingers, recognising the style.

  “Bali,” he says.

  He picks up a jade elephant. “China.”

  “Your travels?” I ask. “Is that the canvas that makes your tattoos?”

  He nods. “Images to represent most countries. My souvenir from Greece isn’t so good.”

  I swallow and turn away. I won’t let him go there. “So, Thorsday, what will you bring me from the kitchen? What level’s your alchemy skill? Because I need a Potion of Rejuvenation.”

  “Tea or coffee only, sorry.”

  The buoyant joking covers my hurt, because I don’t want to add guilt over how he hurt me. What Aaron did, lying to me, was wrong, but he doesn’t need something else to beat himself up about. He never promised me a thing; never told me he loved me.

  I chew my lip and look around the empty room. All doors surrounding us are shut, as if this is the only room he uses besides the kitchen.

  Of course…

  “This is where you lived with Jessica, isn’t it?” I ask as I follow him into the kitchen.

  Aaron doesn’t turn around from his drink-making.