I

The rain started at midnight and did not stop for six hours. Dave Sullivan was awake because of it, lying in his bed in the apartment they shared on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, listening to the sound of water against the window and wondering why Alex was not back yet.

They had been roommates for two years. Alex was a programmer—smart, quiet, the kind of person who could sit in front of a computer screen for fourteen hours without getting up. Dave was nothing special. He worked at a bookstore, liked to play pickup basketball on weekends, and tried not to think too hard about the future.

At 2:17 AM, the door opened. Alex walked in soaked, his hair plastered to his forehead, his eyes red. He had been drinking. Dave knew this because Alex never drank.

"Alex?" Dave said, sitting up.

Alex didn't answer. He walked past Dave's bed into the bathroom and closed the door. Dave heard the shower turn on.

He lay back down and tried to sleep, but sleep did not come.

The next morning, Alex was different.

Not dramatically. Not in a way that anyone else would have noticed. But Dave noticed. Alex made coffee instead of grabbing a granola bar and rushing out. Alex asked Dave how his shift at the bookstore had gone. Alex sat at the kitchen table for ten minutes instead of eating in front of the computer.

"Did you sleep?" Dave asked.

"Yeah," Alex said. "I slept fine."

But his eyes were clear. For the first time in two years, they were clear.

II

Alex started coding again in March. Not the half-hearted tinkering he had been doing before, but real, focused, intense coding. He disappeared into his room for twelve hours at a time and emerged only for food and coffee.

"What are you working on?" Dave asked one evening.

"A game," Alex said.

"A game?"

"An indie game. Small team. Just me for now."

Dave had never thought of Alex as creative. He thought of him as technical—a person who solved problems, not one who created things. But watching Alex talk about the game, Dave saw something he had never seen before. Passion.

The game launched in November. It was called Mirror and it was about a man who wakes up in his apartment and realizes he has been given a second chance. The reviews were good. Then great. Then the best indie game of the year.

Alex became famous.

Not internet famous. Real famous. Magazine covers. Television interviews. Speaking invitations at conferences across the country. People who had never noticed Alex in the hallway of their apartment building now knew his name.

Dave watched it all from the sidelines. He was proud. He was also terrified.

III

Alex moved out in June. He had bought a condo in Cambridge, assembled a team of twenty developers, and raised three million dollars in venture capital.

"I'll still live nearby," Alex said, helping Dave pack the last of his boxes from Alex's old room.

"I know," Dave said.

They stood in the empty room for a moment. The walls were bare. The floor was bare. Dave could see the outline of the desk Alex had sat at for three years.

"Thanks," Alex said.

"For what?"

"For being there."

Dave wanted to say something. He wanted to say that Alex had been there too, that they had been friends, that the apartment felt different now that Alex was gone. But the words stuck in his throat.

"Take care of yourself, Alex," he said instead.

"You too, Dave."

IV

Six months later, Dave sat in the apartment alone. The room across the hall had been converted into a home office. Dave liked it that way. It gave him something to look at when he could not sleep.

He had started reading again. Real books, not the ones he sold at the bookstore. He had read twelve in the past six months. He was on his thirteenth.

The phone rang. It was Alex.

"Hey," Alex said. "I'm in the neighborhood. Want to grab dinner?"

"Sure," Dave said.

They met at a Thai place on Newbury Street. Alex looked different—sharper, more confident, dressed in clothes Dave had never seen him wear before. But when he laughed, it was the same laugh. The same awkward, slightly too-loud laugh that had made Dave choose this apartment in the first place.

"How are you?" Alex asked.

"Good," Dave said. "You?"

"Busy. The new game is going well. We're hiring. I need someone to manage the office. You interested?"

Dave looked at his friend—this brilliant, extraordinary person who had leapt into the future and was now reaching back to pull him along—and felt something shift inside him.

Not jealousy. Not sadness. Something quieter than both of those things.

Acceptance.

"I'll think about it," Dave said.

And he meant it.