The digital storm had a strange, insulating effect. As the blogs churned and the comments piled up, Derek and I created a bunker of our making. He barely left my apartment, conducting bar business via phone and text, a steady, grounding presence amid the noise. We ordered takeout, watched terrible movies, and pretended the outside world didn’t exist for hours at a time.
But the silence from one corner of that world was deafening.
Marcus.
His silence was a physical weight in the room, a ghost at our makeshift table. Derek checked his phone constantly, a flicker of hope dying in his eyes each time there was no notification from his best friend. He didn’t talk about it, but I saw the guilt etched into the new lines around his mouth, the way he’d sometimes stare blankly at a wall, lost in a
