Chase Me If You Can(27)
I give him my best skeptical look. “Let me guess. You’re going to be the one who decides which of us that is?”
Even if this is his way of sticking me with the tab, he’s covering gas, so unless he plans on ordering half the menu wherever we go, it’s probably a fair deal. Not that I want to sign up for him tearing apart my work at the end of the day.
“Nah. We’ll decide together. Unless you’re telling me you can’t be objective about your own work?” Wes shrugs, utterly unbothered. “If we don’t agree, you pay for you and I pay for me. Doesn’t need to be complicated.” It’s only when I don’t immediately respond that his expression tightens. “I can be objective. I’m not screwing with you.”
Reading Wes is more difficult than it should be. Screwing with people is his specialty, as those guys at the gas station learned the hard way not even a week ago. Then again, they definitely deserved it.
“Fine. I’m in.” I move toward the fence, glad I have my ultrawide lens already on. The monster of a storm looms above us like an apocalypse, dwarfing houses dotted across the fields. It’s spooky, sure, but it also creates a fantastic sense of scale. The storm spinning almost lazily above the farmhouses renders them little more than tiny dark squares popping out from the green of the grass.
At the far end of the group, I finally find Tracy and Matt. She catches my eye and jerks her head toward Wes with raised eyebrows. I’m already shaking my head when she adds a goofy thumbs-up.
To my surprise, instead of heading for Matt on Tracy’s other side, Wes waves and shouts a hello, then aims straight for me. Just like the other night, we move around each other easily as we squint at our cameras to make adjustments. Except this time, when he squeezes by me to adjust his angle and his fingertips graze my back, I’m hyperaware of his touch.
Inconvenient when I’m trying to forget how good it felt to be wrapped up in his arms—when I’m trying to remind myself that just because I get so little affection in my day-to-day life, it doesn’t mean habitual-flirt Wes meant a damn thing.
The first splats of rain are refreshingly cool on my bare shoulders as the warm inflow winds continue to rush past us to power the storm. We’ll have to move before the hail catches up, but for now I get low to the ground and tilt my lens up. The angle leaves only a thin strip of the field in my shot, allowing the storm to overtake the frame.
As soon as I release the shutter, a lightning bolt smashes out of the storm, close enough that a boom of thunder follows seconds later. A whoop goes up from the line of photographers along the fence, quickly followed by a chorus of Please tell me someone got that and various curses. Holding my breath, I quickly scroll back to check my shot. I’m almost certain my shutter was open, but daytime lightning without a tripod can be borderline impossible. With so much ambient light for the camera sensor to pick up on, getting a clean shot that isn’t washed out is a tricky balance of exposure and luck.
I feel the heat of Wes at my back just before he murmurs too close to my ear, “Looks like I’m buying you dinner.” And then, louder so the others will hear, “Sloane got it! Perfect CG!”
His excitement is contagious, and for a few seconds, everyone crowds around me to see the shot of crisp cloud-to-ground lightning. There’s a flurry of introductions to the new faces, though Tracy manages to slip in a murmured “Looks like you’re getting along?” that I pointedly ignore.
I’m so used to flying under the radar that suddenly finding myself the center of attention is a little overwhelming, in the best way possible. It’s also not something I’d ever expect of Wes, the way he thrusts me into the spotlight and steps back to let me enjoy it without saying another word.
There isn’t much time to linger. With the storm powered by an outflow boundary—the atmospheric line in the sand between storm-cooled air and the typical heat of the region—we travel steadily east until twilight sets in. The storm is still producing so much lightning we don’t need to be that close to it in the dark, so we decide to grab some night shots while it lasts.
The storm has faded to little more than flickering flashes of lightning on the horizon by the time we pull off I-40 somewhere east of Amarillo. Wes points at the diner attached to the truck stop we pass on the way to our hotel. “Might not be gourmet, but I’m a man of my word. That place has killer waffles.”
It doesn’t look like much, the parking lot flooded with bright lights and the neon Diner sign half burnt-out. Tired and hungry, I shrug and turn around. Even waffles won’t be enough to lure me out of my hotel room once I’m within falling-down distance of a bed and strong air-conditioning.
“Yep,” Wes declares fifteen minutes later when the server drops a massive pile of whipped cream and banana slices in front of him. “Just like I remember.”
He gleefully pours syrup over the whole mess, the waffles themselves barely visible under a mountain of toppings. My own selection is probably boring by his standards, a little powdered sugar, butter, and sliced strawberries sprinkled across a singular waffle.
“Where on earth is that all going?” I ask with a laugh, too tired to remember to have a filter. “You can’t possibly eat that whole plate.”
Wes shoves his fork into the pile and emerges with a chunk of waffle dripping with syrup and whipped cream. “Challenge accepted.” He laughs at my scowl, swallowing down a bite before sawing off another. “I’ve got my own waffle iron at home. I could eat these things every day.”