Page 49 of Weather Girl

“Okay,” I say quietly, and that’s what we do for the rest of the session.

•••

THAT SUNDAY, I meet up with Alex and Javier for boozy brunch at an upscale diner Javier is trying to poach a chef from.

“This kimchi hash is to die for,” he says between bites. “Imagine what she could do in our kitchen.” Javier’s place, a Cuban fusion restaurant called Honeybee Lounge, is consistently getting rave reviews, but he has his heart set on a Michelin star.

“Isn’t poaching a chef kind of morally questionable?” I drag my fork through my stack of pancakes. He’s not wrong; everything here is amazing. And I probably shouldn’t be the judge of anyone’s morals.

“Happens all the time in the industry. Especially if you have a rock star chef who’s not getting the attention they want, which I suspect is the case with Shirley Pak, given the very casual, not at all morally questionable conversation we had over drinks last week.”

“I guess that happens in TV, too.” I tilt my head toward the ceiling, pretending I’m calling up to the universe. “If the Today show wants me, feel free to let me know any time!”

“Don’t worry, I’ve already sent them the photos of your billboard.” Alex takes a sip of his mimosa, his freckled cheeks already prosecco-flushed. “God, it’s weird being out without the twins. It’s almost too quiet, isn’t it? Shouldn’t someone be screaming?”

Javier nudges him. “Quiet can be a good thing.”

This would be the perfect time to tell my brother and brother-in-law about Russell, but especially after confiding in Joanna, I’m not sure how much vulnerability I have left in me.

All around us, groups of friends are toasting one another and laughing and stealing food off each other’s plates. For the past couple months, I’ve been thinking I lost all these friends to Garrison. Sure, they were all his friends first, but I’m struggling to remember who I had before that. Later in college, I had a few close classmates, but we all split for different cities after graduation. There were a couple people in Yakima, including their chief meteorologist, whose goal was to keep that job for the rest of his career. He wanted to be the Yakima weatherman, and while my dreams were different, I could respect that.

When I got back to Seattle, I had Alex again. My hope of hopes was that eventually I’d have Torrance, too. I’m friendly with meteorologists at other stations, to the point where we chat if we see each other at industry events, and while we always promise to grab coffee sometime, it never happens.

I excuse myself to use the bathroom, dreading the feat of engineering that is unbuttoning my jeans with one arm in a sling. On my way there, I spy a familiar blond head at a two-top across the diner.

My first instinct is to swing by and say hello. But when her tablemate comes into view, I’m so startled I have to rush into the bathroom for fear of letting out an audible gasp. I don’t trust my eyes or my brain until I reenter the dining room, slowly, slowly. Because that is Torrance Hale, and the man she’s sitting across from, her hand on his forearm, is not Seth.

I stumble my way back to our table, where the view is more obscured but feels about a thousand times safer. The guy looks about Torrance’s age, maybe a bit younger, with overly styled brown hair and a silver hoop in one ear. They’re dressed casually, which of course for Torrance still means flawless lipstick and a sweater that probably cost more than a month of my rent. Sure, he could be a relative... but the way she’s leaning forward, giggling at something he’s saying is decidedly date-like.

“You all right?” Javier asks. “You look a little spooked.”

“Fine,” I choke out, spilling water down the front of my shirt.

It seemed like Torrance and Seth were getting along. I don’t think I imagined that. And not just getting along—actually enjoying each other’s company. The conversation on the retreat, that lack of passive-aggressive signs in the newsroom, the yacht...

Maybe the truth is that we’ve never had control over them at all.

18

FORECAST:

Look to the sky for a dazzling natural phenomenon; temperatures reach all-time highs toward the evening

“FAIR WARNING,” I say when Russell picks me up for our first official date the following Saturday in an aging Subaru, “this is going to be extremely nerdy.”

“Good.” He leans over to kiss me, and I’m thinking it will be a peck hello, but it’s deeper, longer than I imagine, one hand sliding into my hair. It’s midmorning, and I can still smell the clean citrus of his soap. “I feel like I need to ease back into this. We can’t go rock climbing or ax throwing right away.”

“You did a lot of ax throwing five years ago?”

His mouth pulls into a crooked smile I want to bite right off his face. “Guess you’ll never know.” When he starts the car, the Hadestown soundtrack starts playing. “Elodie was messing around with my phone. My Spotify is show tunes and only show tunes.”

“A hero.”

I put our destination into Google Maps but I won’t let him see where we’re going. This week, we’ve stolen kisses in the Dugout or in the kitchen when no one else is there, but they always end too soon. We’re not hiding it, necessarily, but I think we’re reluctant to go public before we’ve had the chance to discuss what it means. And now that we’re finally on a date, I’m determined to make it the best first date I can.

“Technically,” Russell says as we head toward I-5 from my Ravenna neighborhood, “we’ve already been on a date. It was just Torrance and Seth’s.”

I groan. “Let’s leave them at work today.”

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