Page 60 of Glitched Play

"I didn't."

"You did."

Then she turns to me, completely unconcerned. "Don't take it personally. That's just Witt. He protects his quiet the way other people protect their hearts."

My gaze shifts back to him before I can stop it.

He looks away.

A small, painful twist pulls inside my chest.

Noelle leaves twenty minutes later after hanging the dress in my room, making me promise not to second-guess it, and inviting me to her house "whenever the silence gets creepy." Then the penthouse becomes quiet again. Too quiet, somehow, after a morning filled with laughter and movement and Noelle's effortless way of making me feel like I was already included.

I stand in my guest room staring at the emerald dress hanging from the closet door.

It looks beautiful. But it’s also temporary the same as me living here.

Just like my mug sitting on the nightstand instead of in the kitchen where it might bother Witt's perfect row of black ones.

Maybe I should look harder for a place.

The thought settles heavily.

I haven't had time. Between the move, the new job, the rookie program, and trying to prove I deserve every penny they're paying me, house hunting has become a tab open in my browser that I keep minimizing. But this is Witt's space. His routine. His quiet. His carefully built world. And maybe I'm standing in the middle of it, laughing too loud, touching too much, wanting things I have no business wanting.

Don't get comfortable, Maci.

Comfortable is how people forget temporary means temporary.

twelve

. . .

Maci

Letter 354 Rune

Home isn't always a place.

Sometimes it's the first person who makes the world feel quiet.

Sunday afternoon, I piddle around my room and for some reason, I open the box that says More Important Stuff. Glitch’s letters.

One of the last ones.

Rune,

I have rewritten this more times than is reasonable, which is inefficient and therefore irritating, but every version sounded wrong. Too formal. Too abrupt. Too much like an ending, and I do not like endings I did not choose.

You have been quieter lately. I noticed before I wanted to notice. Your messages got shorter. Your letters took longer. You stopped arguing with me about impossible boss fights and stopped sending terrible drawings of our characters in dramatic poses. Statistically, people grow out of things. Games. Habits. Other people. I know that.

I do not know how to calculate what it means to grow out of someone who was never technically yours.

That is the problem with what we built. It was made of safeguards and rules and encrypted chats and voice changers and mail-forwarded letters, but somehow it became the most real thing in my life anyway. You know pieces of me no one else does. Not my co-workers. Not my family. Not the people who think they understand me because they read my profile somewhere.

You know the version of me who loses patience with tutorials, who hates when developers confuse difficulty with laziness, and who once stayed awake for thirty-one hours because you said I could not beat your score.

You were correct, by the way. I could not. I still maintain the controller input lag was suspicious.