The Last Game



Marcus slammed the controller down so hard that it bounced off the coffee table and clattered to the floor. The words "GAME OVER" flashed mockingly on the screen, accompanied by his character's final death animation. Across the couch, his best friend David sat quietly, still holding his own controller with a barely concealed smile.

"This is complete garbage!" Marcus spat, running his hands through his disheveled hair. "The controls weren't responding right. And that last hit was totally unfair – there's no way you should have been able to reach me from that distance."

David had beaten him seventeen times in a row at their favorite fighting game. Not that Marcus was counting. Each loss had wound him tighter, like a spring being compressed beyond its limits. What had started as friendly competition had morphed into something ugly and personal.

"Maybe we should take a break," David suggested carefully, setting his controller down. He'd seen this pattern before – the reddening face, the white-knuckled grip, the increasingly desperate excuses. Marcus had always been this way, ever since they were kids playing pickup basketball in the schoolyard. Every loss was because of a crooked rim, a lucky shot, or the sun in his eyes.

"No," Marcus snapped, snatching his controller from the floor. "One more round. I'm not ending on that cheap shot." His voice had taken on that familiar edge, the one that made David's stomach twist with anxiety. It was the tone that had cost Marcus his tennis scholarship after he'd thrown his racket at an opponent, the same tone that had ended his last three relationships when friendly board game nights turned into screaming matches.

David glanced at his watch. "Actually, I should probably head home. It's getting late, and I've got that early meeting tomorrow." He started to stand, but Marcus grabbed his arm.

"Just one more game," Marcus insisted, his grip uncomfortably tight. "I know exactly what you did wrong this time. I've figured out your pattern."

The silence that followed was deafening. David looked down at his friend's hand on his arm, then back at Marcus's face. Something shifted in the air between them – fifteen years of friendship suddenly balanced on a knife's edge.

"You know what the pattern is, Marcus?" David said quietly, pulling his arm free. "The pattern is that every time you lose at anything, you make it everyone else's fault. And I'm tired of walking on eggshells, trying to decide if I should let you win just to avoid another explosion."

Marcus recoiled as if he'd been slapped. "Let me win? You think you've been letting me win?"

"Sometimes, yeah. Because it's easier than dealing with..." David gestured vaguely at the scattered controllers and Marcus's tense posture. "This. All of this. When was the last time you actually enjoyed playing anything? When was the last time you could just... have fun without keeping score?"

The question hung in the air like smoke. Marcus opened his mouth to argue, but for once, no excuses came. He looked around his apartment – at the dented wall where he'd thrown a chess piece last month, at the shelf of participation trophies he kept hidden behind his "real" wins, at the empty spaces where friends used to gather for game nights.

"I don't know," he finally whispered, and it was perhaps the most honest thing he'd said in years.

David picked up his jacket, pausing at the door. "When you figure it out, give me a call. I miss playing with my friend who used to laugh when he lost." He left quietly, the click of the door echoing in the silent apartment.

Marcus sat alone in the harsh glow of the "GAME OVER" screen, realizing that maybe he'd been losing at something far more important than video games all along.