Chapter 17
seventeen
. . .
Witt
Encrypted Voicemail: Glitch
Sometimes the hardest system to update is the one that taught you how to survive.
Monday morning, I ask Dara to find Maci an apartment.
The decision is logical.
Temporary housing means temporary, not long term. Maci needs a permanent place in Austin, preferably within fifteen minutes of the arena, with secure parking, reliable internet, minimal commute variables, and enough space for her excessive number of keyboards. I tell myself those are the reasons.
Dara does not believe me.
She stands in front of my desk holding her tablet against her chest, watching me with the same expression she uses when I’ve reorganized the office supply closet under the pretense of improving operational flow.
“You want me to find Maci an apartment,” she says.
“Yes.”
“Because she asked?”
“No.”
“Because she complained about the penthouse?”
“No.”
“Because she’s uncomfortable?”
“No.” Dara waits and she knows I dislike waiting when it’s weaponized. “It’s inappropriate,” I say.
“For whom?”
“Both of us.”
“You don’t believe that.”
Of course I believe it. I crossed the lines and kissed her.
“I do.”
“You don’t.”
The office is silent except for the servers humming behind the wall. I look toward them because machines are easier. Machines do not stand in front of my desk and interpret things I haven’t said.
Dara sighs softly. “Witt.”
I tap one finger against the edge of my desk.
Once.
Twice.
Then stop.
“I don’t trust myself to remain objective.”
The sentence lands harder than expected.
Dara’s expression changes. She’s not surprised. She understands and that is worse.
For several seconds, she doesn’t say anything. Then she nods once and makes a note on her tablet. “I’ll start looking.”
“Discreetly… and don’t tell her yet.”
Her stylus pen stops tapping.
I look up.
“The launch is this week. That’s all she needs to worry about,” I add.
Dara studies me for a beat too long. “Is that the reason?”
“It’s one of them,” I admit, giving a woman like Dara more information then she needs to calculate what’s happening in my head.
She nods again, but this time it feels less like agreement and more like permission she doesn’t want to give. Then she turns toward the door.
Before she leaves, she glances back. “For the record, distance doesn’t fix everything.”
“No,” I say, returning to my screen. “But it improves visibility.”
“No, a clear day without fog or rain improves visibility and enables someone to see farther down the road,” Dara says as she closes the door.
The office is quiet again and I’m alone with my thoughts. I hate that Dara out analogied me and analogied isn’t even a word but it fits.
Visibility.
Fog.
Distance.
Future.
God, she’s good.
I should feel better now that I have Dara refocused on finding Maci an apartment.
I don’t.
By late afternoon, I’m on a plane to Chicago for a team-owner summit I could have attended virtually if investors didn’t enjoy pretending in-person meetings make ideas more valuable.
The flight is smooth. The cabin is quiet. My laptop is open on the tray table, and a draft presentation sits untouched on the screen while the clouds spread beneath the window in soft white layers.
I should work, instead, I realize I haven’t checked the encrypted chat in four days.
Four days.
Ninety-six hours.
That number should have been impossible.
For nearly ten years, checking that chat was automatic.
Airports. Hotel rooms. Backseats of rideshares.
Three a.m. coding spirals. Convention centers full of people shouting over demo screens.
I checked before takeoff, after landing, between meetings, before sleep.
Even when Rune wasn’t online, the act of looking felt like keeping a door unlocked.
Now, for four days, I have not touched the handle.
The guilt is immediate.
I open the chat.
No new messages.
Of course.
The last one is still mine.
Unread.
Or read and unanswered.
The system doesn’t tell me anymore.
I stare at the empty message box, and the memory comes so clearly it interrupts the hum of the plane.
I was sixteen the first time we played together.
My headset was cracked on one side, held together with electrical tape because replacing it felt unnecessary when I understood exactly how it was broken.
She appeared in the lobby with a username I didn’t recognize, chose the hardest difficulty before I could object, and immediately died within three minutes because neither of us knew the map.
I remember typing:
That was inefficient.
She answered:
We’re not losing. We’re gathering data.
Then she respawned.
Died again.
Typed the same thing.
We’re not losing. We’re gathering data.
I remember smiling.
I remember because it surprised me.
Back then, I didn’t smile much unless one of my brothers forced it out of me through irritation. But this anonymous girl behind a screen had turned failure into strategy with one sentence, and suddenly losing didn’t feel like losing. It felt like research.
Rune did that.
She took the parts of life I found frustrating and reframed them until they made sense.
For years, that was ours.
A shared language.
A world built out of letters, late-night gaming, encrypted messages, and rules designed to keep everything safe.
No names.
No photos.
No locations.
No real voices.
And we never broke the rules. Now I wish we had. She’d be a force in my company and it makes wonder why I never told her about it or asked her to join me. We’d be gaming all night and working together all day.
But we built a system.
It protected us.
Until it became the thing that kept us apart.
My fingers hover over the keyboard.
I type:
I miss talking to you.
The words sit there, small and unacceptable. That simple sentence is too revealing, so I delete them.
Then I type:
Hope you’re okay.
That one is worse.
Because it sounds casual, and nothing about the ache beneath my ribs feels casual.
I delete that too.
The cursor blinks. Waiting for me.
She doesn’t owe me a goodbye.The realization is quiet and a little painful, knowing that the one person that understands me has disappeared from my life.
Rune didn’t leave today. She left months ago. I have simply been standing in the empty doorway, waiting for someone who may have already made peace with never coming back.
My chest tightens, and I close the laptop. An errant thought crosses my mind.
When one door closes, another one opens.
For the first time, I let the blank message remain blank.