Last Girl Ghosted(27)

When the elevator arrives, we both climb on. My shoulders are tense, pulse racing. Maybe there will be key-card security and an abrupt end to this errand; in fact, I’m hoping for it, aware that my heart is stuttering with dread.

But when he presses the button for the eleventh floor, the elevator starts to move. We stand awkwardly side by side as the red light travels, illuminating one number after the next with a pleasant ding. He is close, barely an inch between us, though there’s plenty of room for him to be farther. I am aware of his heat, of his scent. A kind of warm sandalwood, maybe.

The ride seems long, the elevator slow.

What will we find when it opens?

Will you be sitting at a desk, diligently working, embarrassed for me to see that you haven’t disappeared at all? That you’re just done with me?

Maybe you’ll bluster with embarrassment. Maybe you’ll rage. Perhaps you’ll cut and run from this detective who has questions about a missing girl, someone you dated. How will you answer the thousand questions I have?

Will it be a busy office? Posh and populated with smart people sitting behind big computer screens. Maybe it will be gray and run-down, flickering fluorescent lights, rickety furniture.

But it’s none of these things. It’s just an empty space, lights out—a reception desk, a small room filled with a scattering of white, modern desks, and ergonomic swivel chairs, some file cabinets. We step into the small foyer, and the elevator doors close behind us. Quiet, the aura of abandonment hums.

“You’re sure this is the place?” asks Kirk, with a frown.

“No,” I admit. “I’m not.”

“Hello?” he calls out, but his voice just bounces around the empty space.

He walks into the main area, starts looking in desks. Not knowing what else to do, I follow, feeling like an interloper.

The desktops gleam with newness; slim drawers clean and empty. Everything seems unused, one of the chairs still with remnants of shrink-wrapping. There are no personal items—coffee cups or framed pictures. Even the wastepaper baskets are pristine. I lose myself for a time, looking for any other little piece of you. I’m wearing your watch. It’s far too big for my wrist. When I put it to my ear, its ticking is loud, a beating heart.

We open closet doors, peer into an empty conference room.

I’ve been tingling since I saw that article, felt the newsprint against my fingers. I run from my past, want nothing to do with the person I used to be. She’s dead and gone. For the first time in a long time, I can feel the darkness breathing on the back of my neck, a hand reaching from beyond the grave.

I’ve escaped her darkness into the life I’ve built in the light. It’s a little lonely, sure. But at least I can help people, have friends, an adopted family thanks to Jax, a home. Dear Birdie would say: You can choose and create the life you want. You are the author of your reality.

That reality was enough for me before you. Before you awakened a hunger to be known.

Inside my bag, my phone is vibrating. I ignore it, but no sooner than it stops, it starts again. Glancing around for Bailey Kirk, I don’t see him, but hear footsteps, the sound of cabinets opening and closing in a room behind a closed door—probably a break room.

The phone keeps vibrating, and I reach in to dig it out as I keep walking, coming to a stop by a desk in the only office with a door, its back wall a floor-to-ceiling window. The number is unknown, but I answer anyway.

“Hello?”

There is only silence on the line. Then the sound of someone breathing. I clench the receiver, pull it closer. “Who’s there?”

I look through the glass to the office building across the street.

There, in the window, is a large dark form. I know the shape of your shoulders, the way you carry yourself—tall and a little stiff, your movements slow and careful like you’re afraid to cause yourself pain.

Is it you?

“Is it you?” I say out loud, moving closer to the window. But the dark form there moves away. I put my hand on the cool glass.

I hear something. The rumble of a voice in static. But I can’t make out the words.

“Adam.”

The light goes out across the street. The line goes dead. My breath leaves me.

“Hey?” Bailey’s voice startles me, making me jump and spin to face him.

“Woah,” he says, lifting a hand. “Sorry. Find anything?”

I shake my head, all my words jammed up in my throat.

“Who was that?” he asks.

“It was him. I saw him,” I say. “There. I think.”

He frowns at me, looks out the window as if to see what I was staring at. But there’s just a busy office like this one might have been. People going about their business, their lives, a whole other universe. The window where he stood is dark. There was someone there. Wasn’t there? But it doesn’t make sense. How? Why?

“You saw him? In the office across the street?” he asks.

“He’s—gone.” There’s a note of despair in my voice that shames me. I see a flash of empathy—pity?—move across his face.

We look at each other for a moment and then both bolt for the street, not bothering with the elevator, jogging down eleven flights of stairs, our footfalls echoing loudly off concrete walls. We burst through the metal door that leads outside.

Bailey runs into traffic, holding out his hand, drivers stopping short, leaning on their horns in protest. I follow. On the opposite sidewalk, I scan the street, up and down, looking for you. You’re taller than most people. If you’re here, you’ll be easy to pick out of the crowd. I want to see you so badly, run after you and grab your hand, ask you what the hell is going on? But I don’t see you. Just a street full of strangers. Other strangers.