WAKE UP WITH KSEA 6 AT 5! WE’RE ALWAYS HERE 4 YOU, it proclaims in aggressively bold letters. And there’s our Colgate-toothed weekday morning team, all of us looking natural and not at all uncomfortably posed: Chris Torres, news. Russell Barringer, sports. Meg Nishimura, traffic. Ari Abrams, weather.
And an unmistakable whitish-gray streaked across my smiling face, blotting out my left eye and half my nose and ending in a beautiful bird-shit dimple.
My face only.
Chris and Russell and Meg keep on grinning. WE’RE ALWAYS HERE 4 YOU, my ass.
“Well. I’m sufficiently humbled,” I say after a few moments of stunned silence. “At least my hair looks okay?”
“Am I allowed to laugh?”
A sound that might be a giggle escapes my own mouth. “Please. Someone has to.”
My brother cracks up, and I’m not sure whether to be offended or to join him. Eventually, I give in.
“We’re taking your picture with it anyway,” Alex says when he can breathe again. “It’s your first billboard. That’s a huge fucking deal.” He claps a hand on my shoulder. “The first of many.”
“If this doesn’t haunt the rest of my career.” I follow him out of the car, my Hunter boots splashing through a puddle that turns out to be deeper than it looks.
“Say, ‘KSEA 6 Northwest News: where we really give a shit,’？” he says as I position myself beneath the billboard and mug for the camera. “？‘KSEA 6: what you watch when the shit hits the fan.’？”
“How about, ‘Breaking news: Alex Abrams-Delgado is a piece of shit’？” I say it in my best TV voice while giving him the middle finger.
* * *
? ? ?
“THANKS FOR DOING this,” I say once we’ve grabbed a table inside the donut shop. I brush damp bangs off my forehead, hoping there’s a spare hair dryer in the KSEA dressing room. “I would’ve gone with Garrison, or with someone from the station, but . . .”
Alex braves a sip of his donut-shop coffee and grimaces. “I get it. I’m your favorite person in the world.”
“You are,” I say. “But Cassie’s a strong second place. Don’t take that privilege lightly.”
“I could never.” He empties a compostable packet of sweetener into his cup. “How are you doing, by the way? With . . . everything?”
Before the everything he’s talking about, my brother and I saw each other about every month. Now I’m draped across his couch once a week while his chef husband ladles comfort food directly into my mouth.
“There are good days and bad. I’m not sure what today is yet, or if that’s a literal sign from the universe that things are about to go to, well, you know.” I wave a hand toward the billboard outside before taking a bite of a chocolate old-fashioned. “You’re not going to tell me to get back out there, are you?”
That’s the worst side effect of a breakup. Let me breathe for a moment before I attach myself to someone else who’s only going to end up disappointing me.
I rub the place on my finger where the engagement ring used to be. I figured its imprint would last longer than a few days, and I wasn’t sure how to feel when my skin no longer carried the evidence of our relationship. Truthfully, I never thought I’d be that attached to a ring—until Garrison asked for it back. In his defense, it was a family heirloom. In my defense, he’s a human trash can.
A human trash can I’ve barely been able to stop thinking about since the breakup five weeks ago, when I moved out of our spacious Queen Anne rental and into the studio apartment just big enough for me and my feelings. Our friends felt like they needed to pick sides, which is why these days, my sole confidants are my brother and a precocious preschooler. At least now I can say Garrison’s name out loud without wanting to curl up inside one of those nest pillows Instagram is always advertising to me. I think they’re meant for dogs, but I can’t be the only person who desperately wants one. The algorithm must know I need it.
“Absolutely not. Not until you’re ready.” Alex reaches for another sweetener packet. “At least you hadn’t put any deposits down. Silver linings, right?”
“Mmm,” I say noncommittally. Wedding planning was another one of those excitement-anxiety knots for me, though most of the time, anxiety had been winning. Whenever we started talking about it, I’d freeze with indecision. Spring or fall? Band or DJ? How many guests? Even now, it’s enough to make me itch inside my cable-knit sweater.
But what Alex said sticks in my brain. Because silver linings—they’re kind of my thing. Any time I sense negativity beginning to simmer inside me, I force it away with one of my practiced TV smiles. Leap right over that murky puddle. Keep myself dry before I risk sinking deeper into the darkness.
“We should have these donuts more often,” I say, even though it’s an entirely unremarkable donut.
Alex must be able to tell I’m not eager to dig up more history because he launches into a story about Orion’s determination to lose his first tooth.
“He was trying that old string-and-a-doorknob trick,” Alex says. “Only, he completely missed the doorknob part, so I found him sitting in his room with all this string hanging from his mouth, waiting patiently for a tooth to loosen up.”
“And why didn’t you send me pictures immediately?” I ask, and he remedies this.
Once we’ve both moved on to our second donuts, my phone lights up with a notification, and I tap it to find an email from Russell Barringer, sports.
If he’s emailing me, it can only be about one thing.
Weather girl,
Seth put up new signs today. Torrance found one on her oat milk and she’s livid. Just wanted to let you know you might be walking into a hurricane.
“I should get going,” I say to Alex. “Or, we should get going so you can drop me off.”
“Something with your boss?”
I do my best to temper my sigh so it doesn’t sound as long-suffering as I feel. “Isn’t it always?”
We’re about to get up when a thirtysomething guy with a soaked umbrella stops in front of our table and stares right at me. “I know you,” he says, wagging a finger at me as rain drips onto the linoleum.
“Oh, from the news?” I say. It happens on occasion, strangers recognizing me but for the life of them unable to figure out why. Usually they’re disappointed I’m not my boss, and honestly, I’d feel the same way.
He shakes his head. “Are you friends with Mandy?”
“I am not.”
My brother waves an arm out the window at the billboard. “Channel six. She does the weather.”
“I don’t really watch TV,” he says with a shrug. “Sorry. I must have been thinking of someone else.”
Alex is shaking with silent laughter. I elbow him as we head to sort our trash into its proper bins.
“I’m so glad my pain is hilarious to you.”
“Gotta keep you humble somehow.” Before we leave, Alex waits in line to grab a few dozen donuts for his fourth-grade class. “Guilt donuts,” he explains. “It’s state testing week.”
“It’s a wonder some of us make it out of school with only minor psychological wounds.”