An Excerpt from "The Game"

The Game is a short story about a boy and a girl who love eachother. That's really all you need to know. A few friends have used this as a reading at their weddings, which was amazingly flattering... If you care to use it for that, please do. I'd love to hear about it. - bjf

It appeared to outsiders that they were at odds. He would test her patience and try to charm his way out of it. She would try impose her will through loosely crafted arguments based on creative feminine logic. He would put on magnificent displays of rhetoric and manipulation, because he liked it when she caught him trying to get away with something. She liked it too.

Over time though, it became obvious that this was not a fight, or a contest. It was a game. Two sides, back and forth. Advance and defend. A game that was almost as much fun to watch, as it was to play.

In this game, however, keeping score was never necessary. It was like children playing tic-tac-toe. The minute one round was over, they'd scrawl out another cross-hatched board, barely paying attention who had been victorious only seconds earlier. Even if they had kept score, it would have still been tied after a hundred years of play. Sometimes he'd win, sometimes she would. And sometimes, when it was needed, they'd remind the spectators that they were actually on the same team all along and would do anything for each other.

Before each other, they hadn't discovered anybody who could play the game at their level, nor anybody who wished to. But they found each other... and in each other a worthy adversary, a constant companion, and a best friend.

And they played the game for years and years, until one of them died. The person left standing being defeated by the heart's greatest loss... and yet, still victorious because everyday they had spent together, the game brought into their hearts the greatest joy and love. Again, it was a tie.