Confronting my own boyfriend

I was taken back to the virtual reality he created. This time, I could see the excess of brightness that made everything looking creamy white to the touch of the sunlight. I remember him saying that he inserted this bright filter in Ethan’s game to add up to the fantasy of the story during development. For people to remember it was just a game and to not take anything serious, but it was fucking too serious for me, at that point.

We were in the middle of a whole green open area in the middle of that fake city. He was sitting on the grass underneath a tree’s shadow contemplating directly into the sun. I had my regular Omega Psi black jacket I had usually worn in real life, my white undershirt and black jeans. He was wearing a weird maintenance blue one piece uniform, like the janitors. I walked up to him, noticing from the three buttons opened on the unit, that he still had the pecs tattoos and his virtually enhanced muscles.

“Carl?” I called him, my voice echoing throughout the entire city.

He didn’t respond to me, but I knew he knew I was there. After all, he's the damn almighty god of this place.

“I really did it, didn’t I?” He asked nobody. He lowered his eyes from the sky and looked at the horizon behind me, concentrating.

I heard thunder, big rocks crackling and loud thuds coming from northwest of the city. He was shutting everything down, deleting the map files from the server.

“Carl, why did you do this? Do you have any idea how dangerous my magic is?” I lowered myself in front of him.

“I don’t. Because you never told me you had such powers. You never trusted me. You never cared about me.” The sadness on his face was sincere. I knew him that much.

“There is a reason why I didn’t announce it to everybody. Shit happens when I do this, don’t you see it now?” I pointed to the fake campus dismantling behind us. Buildings were smashing into each other and streets were folding on itselves like pancakes. The city was closing into us.

“I thought you loved me.” His voice quieted down to a whisper. “I had prepared everything for you. I paved your way into my relationship with Jeff just for you to come and save me from him. I waited for you until that night at the restaurant.” He lowered his head between his legs and continued. “That night, when he proposed to me, and only me, in front of our friends, I looked at you and you were cheering for us two. Happy that we were going to be married without you, weren’t you? Did you even care about me? About how I felt that night?”

“Carl, this was what Jeff wanted. We’ve talked about this! This was all meant to be you and him together, forever. Your love story is so beautiful it doesn't have space for me anymore.” I caressed the side of his hair.

“You know this is not true. You know this is not how I feel. You know I love you, Michael. But I have no patience anymore.” He let a tear fall at the end of his sentence.

“Jeff talked to me before proposing, Carl. He wanted us to do it together, the three of us. But I—” I paused. “I’m scared, alright? By the end of the semester, I’ll be back to New York, working for my father. You know that, Jeff knew that and I wasn’t going to make this an issue and get in the way of your happiness. But I do love you, Carl. You’ll always have a special place in my heart.” I pulled him in for a hug but he didn’t accept it, neither rejected it. He was just an inanimate human doll in my arms.

“Not that love. I want what he has.” He opened his right hand and showed me my green stone ring on his palm.

My body went limp, I instantly got up and took a few steps back away from him, Superman running from kryptonite. I didn’t know where he found it, nor what it held inside, but that was the stone I was delivered with a very big warning note not to use it until I was ready. For what? I don’t know yet to this day.

“Where the fuck did you find this?” I harshly asked him. He crossed a line nobody ever did before with me. If he wanted to hijack all my crypto coins, steal all my money from my bank account or even kill me, that’s fine, he could’ve had his reasons. But to play me with my Secrecy Stone, something I never told him about, that was it for me.

“You know where. I wanted you to—” He closed his palm and got up, coming in my direction.

“Stop!” I raged at him and took another step back, preparing my arms to use my powers on him.

“Wasn’t it wonderful, Michael? Wasn’t it so good when we were in love here? When I conquered you like you did with me back in freshman year? Wasn’t it wonderful having nobody, not even Jeff, between us? Weren’t you truly in love in my arms everyday?” His tears were uncontrollable. “You took it away from me again and now I want you to feel what I feel. The emptiness an unrequited love leaves behind.” His face went mad this time.

“I don’t want to see what’s inside it. This isn’t even the real one, we’re in VR.” I blurted out with my right index up, trying to defend myself.

“We are, aren’t we? Take a look at what I found out about this.” He tossed it down to the grass and stepped on the stone, crushing it. All the sound effects stopped for me to hear the glassy cracking sound under his foot.

“No!” I roared.