He Drove His Female Intern Every Day. I Vanished After the Storm Chapter 06

He Drove His Female Intern Every Day. I Vanished After the Storm Chapter 06

Ethan rushed into the underground parking garage.

The moment he got into his car, the dashboard warned him that he was almost out of gas.

He slammed his hand against the steering wheel.

By the time he walked out of the garage, rain was pouring down.

He opened a ride-share app.

Fares were several times higher than usual, and the estimated wait was ninety-seven minutes.

Ethan stared at the screen.

For the first time, he had no idea what to do.

For the first time in over a year, he took the light rail again.

The train was packed, and the stuffy air made him irritable.

Someone stepped on his shoes, leaving a dirty footprint.

When he transferred to the bus, he had to wait in the rain for more than forty minutes.

More than two hours later, after taking the light rail and a bus, he finally reached the old apartment building.

His dress shoes were completely soaked.

The cuffs of his pants were wet too.

For the first time, he realized just how miserable Seattle rain could be.

Back when he and Eileen used to commute home together, they talked the whole way.

Two hours never felt long.

But Eileen had been making this trip alone for an entire year.

Standing in the hallway, Ethan finally admitted it.

He really was an asshole.

He punched in the door code.

Wrong.

Ethan frowned and carefully typed it in again, one number at a time.

Wrong again.

That was when he realized something was seriously wrong.

He started pounding on the door.

“Eileen! Eileen, please open the door! I know I was wrong!”

There was no answer.

The motion-sensor light in the hallway went dark, then flickered back on when he started pounding again.

Finally, the door opened from the inside.

A strange man stood there, looking wary.

“Who are you?”

Ethan froze too.

“Who are you?”

The next second, he shoved his way inside and grabbed the man by the collar.

But the moment he stepped through the door, he realized something was wrong.

The furniture was still there.

The couch.

The desk.

The dining table.

Everything was the same.

But everything personal belonged to someone he didn’t know.

The travel magnets on the fridge were gone.

The decorations Eileen liked were gone.

The photos on the walls were gone.

A large box sat by the door.

It was filled with all of Ethan’s belongings.

The stranger shoved him away hard.

Ethan fell to the floor, and a sharp pain shot through his palm.

A tiny shard of glass had pierced his skin.

He stared down blankly.

Why was there broken glass here?

“So you’re that guy.”

The man pointed impatiently at the box.

“Take your stuff and get out. I only kept this box of junk because the previous tenant left behind so much furniture, and I was happy with that.”

When Ethan remained sitting on the floor, the man became even more annoyed.

“Are you leaving or not? If you don’t get out, I’m calling the police and reporting you for breaking in.”

Ten minutes later, Ethan stood in the lobby on the first floor, holding the box in his arms.

Eileen had moved out?

How was that possible?

“How would I know where she went? Weren’t you her boyfriend?”

Only then did Ethan finally understand.

When Eileen had said she wanted to break up that night, she hadn’t been speaking out of anger.

It hadn’t been an empty threat.

He had truly lost the girl who used to make him the center of her world.

San Diego rarely had gloomy weather.

I had just locked my bike outside my apartment building when Megan called.

“Ethan came looking for me again. Am I seriously the only friend of yours he knows? Now he’s panicking? Where was all this concern before?”

“Sorry he’s bothering you,” I said.

“It’s fine. I brushed him off and told him to stop contacting me.”

Megan sighed.

“So how’s San Diego?”

“Pretty good.”

My new apartment was close to the office.

It only took ten minutes to get there by bike.

I had also adopted an adorable puppy.

The weather was dry, and there was plenty of sunshine.

The umbrella I used to carry in my bag all year now stayed buried in a storage cabinet.

My new coworkers were easy to get along with too.

Right after I started, I was assigned a challenging new project.

One day, I was discussing it with a client over the phone when a sudden commotion broke out on the other end.

A few seconds later, someone else took over the call.

“Eileen!”

It was Ethan.

“You’re in San Diego? Where in San Diego? I’ll come find you right now!”

That was all he managed to say before the call was cut off.

I didn’t pay much attention to the incident.

The new project was too important.

It took up all my time and energy.

Even so, Ethan had been contacting me from different numbers lately.

At first, the messages came from numbers I didn’t recognize.

[I bought all the furniture again.]

[But it’s not the same. The apartment doesn’t feel like our home anymore.]

[Thank God the community recycling center hadn’t gotten rid of that box yet. Five years of memories, and you really didn’t want a single thing?]

[I sold the car.]

[It rained really hard today. The water on the road by the bus stop came up over my ankles.]

[I’m sorry. I only understand now.]

When I read the last message, I remembered the feeling of wet fabric clinging to my legs.

I smiled.

It wasn’t that he was only realizing it now.

He had simply forgotten.

He’d forgotten how long it took to get home.

He’d forgotten how brutal that commute was in the rain.

And he’d forgotten that once, we’d made that commute together.

But now…

I was starting to forget too.