Page 88 of Weather Girl

“Well. That’s all I came here to say.” He gets to his feet, dusting off his pants. “Oh, and I think you have a Funyun in your hair.”

•••

“IT’S LOOKING GREAT,” the doctor says, gesturing to my X-ray on her computer. “I can’t see any evidence of the fracture. I’d say you’re healed.”

“Completely?” I stretch out my left arm, flexing my fingers. “There’s still a little pain when I type for long periods of time, and I don’t have nearly as much strength as I do in my right arm.”

“That might be the case for a bit longer,” she says. “Let us know if it gets worse, but as far as we’re concerned, the fracture has healed nicely. You’re good as new.”

It’s strange, leaving the medical center without another appointment on the books. Even stranger: how badly I want to tell Russell. There’s too much I want to share with him, both large and insignificant—that Javier got his chef, that somehow my GOOD VIBES ONLY sweatpants have become my favorite article of clothing, that Seth was at my house and I lived to tell the tale.

But I don’t.

And after a while, even the dullest whisper of pain fades away, and then it’s just a memory.

32

FORECAST:

Thick layers of existential fog beginning to clear toward the end of the week

AVOIDING RUSSELL BECOMES a game, and if we were keeping score, I like to think I’d make it to the championships. Aside from our mostly opposite schedules, I’ve become stealthy, coming to the station with a full face of makeup so I don’t run into him in the dressing room, doing most of my work in the weather center, eating lunch at my desk or with Torrance.

Two weeks after the Winter Olympics, we collide in the kitchen. I’m washing out my mug and he’s come in for a coffee refill, his own mug dangling from the crook of his index finger. bring them back, the mug says, along with a logo for the Seattle Sonics. The mug is so Russell that it makes my heart ache.

“Oh—sorry.” He backs away from the coffee maker, which is a full five feet from the sink. “Did you want—”

“No, you go—” I say, both of us stumbling over the other’s words. Forcing myself to take a deep breath, I shut off the water and turn around, letting my damp hands flap awkwardly to my sides. “Hey.”

“Hi.”

Even when we’ve passed each other in the newsroom, I’ve tried my best not to get a good look at him. He’s been a blur, a sketch, a blueprint of a person. But here in front of me, all those details that make him Russell fill my senses to the point where my knees go weak.

He’s in a forest-green blazer and blue button-up a shade lighter than his eyes, a shadow of scruff along his jaw. It doesn’t look amazing. I don’t want to grab the lapels and press myself against him and sniff his neck. That would mean I’m not over him, and I have to be over him. At the very least, I have to be on my way there.

Otherwise, it would mean that he could have my darkness and my sunshine, and despite everything Joanna said, everything Seth said, I want a guarantee he won’t run when it gets hard. I want something I know he cannot give me: certainty.

“This doesn’t have to be awkward,” he says gently.

“I don’t think I got that memo.”

“It was on one of Seth’s latest signs. Garamond, size twenty.” Then he makes a face. “Too soon?”

I match his grimace even as I’m biting back a laugh. “Maybe a little.”

“But... you’re doing okay? I saw you on Halestorm on Friday. You were great.”

I try not to think about what it means that he watched it. Probably just that he works here and it’s difficult to ignore, not that he misses me.

“It was great,” I say. He’s jammed my neural pathways so thoroughly that in this moment, I can’t even remember what Torrance and I talked about.

“Great.” Apparently, neither of us knows another adjective. He turns to the coffee maker. “I’m just going to—”

“Right, of course,” I say, and for a few blessed seconds, the sound of coffee grinder covers up our awkwardness. Once it goes silent again and he sips his coffee, I force a smile. “And you’re doing okay?”

The sudden question must startle him because he misses his next sip entirely, sending liquid spilling down his shirt.

I snatch up a paper towel, running it under the faucet before approaching him with it. “I hope that wasn’t too hot. You have to be on camera later, right?”

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