“Oh no, I think you’re mistaken. He’s just my friend.”

I said it again. Just as I had said it to the women at the run down grocery store, and my parents, and now, to my great exhaustion, the president of Wii Club. He looked at me, a bit startled, with that overt hint of confusion and disbelief that I had grown so very used to seeing. I knew where the disbelief came from. It was our fault, anyway. We were horrible actors. No matter what I would say to alleviate the false presumptions, we couldn’t make them believe that there was nothing more to this friendship.

Because there was more. Infinitely, tragically, we could not avoid the obvious tells of a deeper past.

He stood there, as he always did in this situation, letting me ramble and look like a clumsy murderer trying to cover the blood stains. But there was blood everywhere, and any dog with half a sense of smell could sniff it out.

The kid addressed my claims with a laugh that was just as awkward as I felt, and then he moved on. I looked at the man next to me with a language he knew all too well. He could always read my eyes, just as I could his. It was our special skill. He had a way of expressing so much in his eyes. He was that green eyes and curly brown hair combination that I had mostly read in books than seen in real life. Or maybe I had only gotten close enough to him to realize the color of his eyes, unlike any other before him. It was hard to make male friends, especially when I held a want for love so strongly that it deterred the patience for a friendship. He had certainly become my longest and closest male friendship. But the desires of the past still lingered. This is why I can recall the color of his eyes and the way they sparkle in front of me.

After a moment of gazing at two freshman boys battling Bowser to save Princess Peach, he bumped my shoulder with his elbow. Leaning down, he cupped his hand to my ear, his warm breath sending tingles down my neck as he whispered, “That guy was pretty cute, right? He was checking you out.”

I pulled away to smile and roll my eyes at him.

“I know.”

He lit up at my cocky remark, intended only to be a statement on my intuitive prowess. Even if the kid was interested, the simple presence of this man squashed any dreams that he might have had as he came up to talk to me.

He leaned in again to whisper, and I almost couldn’t take it anymore. I squeezed my legs together as he asked, “do you want me to help you out? I can go talk you up.”

I relaxed my leg muscles.

“I’m not interested,” I replied. I didn’t whisper in his ear. The action wasn’t necessary for me, as a room with intermittent periods of silence and noise did nothing to heighten the risks of my statement being overheard.

He pouted a bit.

“I’m perfectly happy with myself. I’m not looking for anyone right now,” I said this to him, but the words felt empty. It was hard to convince myself that I was actually following my word, especially when my dreams from the previous night warned me that I wasn’t anywhere over our previous situation.

“Vince, you want in?” The president of Wii Club called out, and the man of my past and present gave him a high-five and moved to the couch. I stood behind him until the snack table popcorn called to me.

The president came up to me, and I leaned against the table as I talked to him. Vince turned in his seat, his gaze momentarily searching before landing on me.

I gave a small wave, and he replied with a pursed smile, a wave, a glance at the president, and a return of his efforts to the game.

I too, returned to the game, my fingers running cold as my mind turned fuzzy with contradicting thoughts of him. I chatted with the president, and we enjoyed a little debate on the first moon landing until Vince returned from his game to switch out so that I could play a round.

The night ended with a dirty joke and some oversharing. I always struggled to keep my mouth shut when it came to sexual curiosities and personal tidbits. It never failed to shut him up. We had agreed to not dive into sexual topics. It always led to dangerous territories, and trying to convince him to try again had gotten too exhaustive and overplayed. The new strategy, otherwise known as no strategy at all, was to dismiss the thoughts in the search for self-fulfillment. Longing for love had become too habitual and tiring. It led to nothing. Just like seeking him had led to an emptiness in my gut and a slow tightening in my heart. I had grown used to it, but ever so often, I would be reminded of it when he would smile at me a certain way or mention a cute girl he saw. The jealousy pained me, made me hate the person that I would become whenever he was out of my sight. It made me hate that the high, the ecstasy of my free and flirty self, would alwats leave with him, and I would be left looking at other girls, wondering what they had that I didn’t. He wasn’t healthy for me, so a detox would have been a smart option. But I am a yearning creature, so therefore a rocky friendship remains, and I try to cut him out of my heart.

The more I see him, I’ve found, the more I have dreams where he touches me. He wants me so bad in these dreams, he begs me to give him attention and share it in front of others. But this is merely the reverse of the real world. In the real world, he has the controller, and I am the character lacking autonomy. He is unaware of this, but it is everything to me. I let myself become a willing pawn, just as he cannot let me go out of a sense of loyalty to a weak friendship or a guilty love for the attention I give. I could not tell you which is the case, as the game shuts down whenever he is away, and I am left with less than I thought I had. The beginning was plentiful, but now I am bare, grabbing for my identity again so that, one day, I can overcome to game of love and heartbreak.