When our hot chocolate gets cold, we can’t bring ourselves to care.
27
FORECAST:
The calm before the storm
“YOU TEND TO say ‘right now’ a lot,” the talent coach says. Matter-of-fact, not an admonishment.
On a monitor in the weather center, I watch myself deliver last Tuesday’s forecast. Right now you can see showers moving in this evening. And we’ll take a look at your seven-day forecast right now.
I haven’t had this kind of feedback since my college internship at one of KSEA’s rival stations. Melissa, the talent coach, is exactly right. Now that it’s been pointed out, it seems so obvious. But I’m not embarrassed—I’m learning.
“And you had a lot of slides too fast there.” Melissa points to the screen. “You could slow those down a bit more.”
“Absolutely, I can see that now. Thank you.”
Across the studio, Torrance is chatting with one of the cameramen. She catches my eye and gives me a wink, and I bite back a smile.
For the past couple weeks, I’ve floated. My body forgets to be tired when I wake up at two in the morning, and even when Russ is sleeping over or I’m at his place, he never complains about my early starts, though he drags me back into bed on more than one occasion. He’s always too warm and too attentive for me to decline.
We spend most nights together the weeks Elodie is at her mom’s, sometimes at my place and sometimes at his, though I’m partial to his fireplace. When he has Elodie, we eat gelato in the park and help her with her homework and make plans to see The Prom when it comes to Seattle in the summer. I take my antidepressants and never worry whether he’s watching me, never hiding.
Since the reorg, the station has been calmer than I could have hoped. Caroline Zielinski has been easy to work with, both understanding and decisive in all the ways a manager should be, always open to one-on-one meetings and eager to help me set professional goals. And as a mentor, Torrance is . . . well, she’s still Torrance.
But she’s also more available than she’s ever been. We have regular lunch meetings, and she spends more time telling me about her career trajectory, even teaming up with me on a big air pollution story we’ll debut on Halestorm once it’s ready. It’s a role she takes seriously, and I’m grateful for that. Even if sometimes I still have to sneak into her office to water her plants.
And I have a mentee of my own, a bright and eager junior from the University of Washington named Sophia who dreams of one day working for the National Weather Service.
Melissa and I go through more clips, and she pauses to replay a moment where I’m speaking too quickly and have to gasp for air. “It’s a weird one to have to remind people to do, but don’t forget to breathe,” she says with a smile.
And I’m really trying.
* * *
? ? ?
ELODIE’S MUSICAL IS at the end of March, and she gives it her all, transforming into the wicked Queen of Hearts, complete with an evil cackle I didn’t know this sweet twelve-year-old was capable of. We wait for her in the middle school lobby with a bouquet of red roses, to match the song, and after hugs and congratulations, she hands the flowers back to Russ and promptly asks if she can grab burgers with her friends. She’s still in full makeup, red hearts painted around her eyes, face smudged with white.
“Thank you love you bye!” she calls as she practically flings herself out into the parking lot with the Cheshire Cat and Tweedle Dee.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever felt older than I do right now,” Russ says with a laugh as we follow her outside.
I lean in and rub a hand along his stubble. “That would explain all the gray hairs.”
“But they make me look distinguished, right?”
“Extremely.” I drag his face down to mine, and it’s in that spark of a moment that it happens. There’s nothing grand or explosive about it—just Russ and me in a middle school parking lot on a Thursday night.
I think I love him. It’s the softest starburst of a realization that turns my world blurry at the edges. We’ve barely been together a month, and yet there it is, golden-bright and impossible to ignore.
I keep it there in my heart, a little secret, but I imagine he can tell in the brush of my lips, the way I tuck my face into his neck and whisper jokes into his skin. Until I’m ready, that’s how I’ll let him know.
And then the blizzard hits.
28
FORECAST:
Ninety percent chance of absolutely everything going to hell
SNOW IN SEATTLE is a unique phenomenon. People tease us about not being able to handle a few inches of snow, or about the year our former mayor infamously botched the city’s response to a major snowstorm, plowing only the streets in front of his house and other city officials’。 The roads were sanded instead of salted, and for two weeks, Seattle essentially ground to a halt. I was thirteen and fascinated by all of it, even when I couldn’t feel my hands after my mom, Alex, and I dug out our car.
Half the time, though, Seattle only gets an inch of snow or less each year, and it’s those off years that are a little less predictable.
This year, the flurries start on a Sunday evening in early April, and I’m overcome with that maybe-school-will-be-canceled-tomorrow giddiness I knew so well as a kid, especially as I sip coffee from a KSEA mug at Russell’s house, fireplace crackling next to me. When I wake up at two, it’s dark and quiet and perfect, the entire street blanketed with white.
“Come back to bed, weather girl,” Russ whispers. I’m on the afternoon shift today, a rare day we can go in together, and yet my internal clock forced me awake at my usual time.
I open his curtains wider and jab a finger at his backyard. “But . . . snow.”
“It’ll still be there in a few hours,” he says, but he pushes himself into a sitting position, hair mussed and eyes half-closed, and we watch the weather for fifteen minutes before falling back asleep.
I’ve stopped fighting with the hair straightener and let my hair be wavy on camera, at first because it meant more time with Russell, and then because I realized I liked it better that way. It’s a small change, but it surprised me to learn something new about myself in my late twenties: that I prefer my natural waves.
I will never not love a snow day, especially when I’m working. I only get a few more hours of sleep, waking up early to make breakfast for Russ and me, fumbling my way around his kitchen. It’s worth it for the way his face lights up when I present my attempt at snowflake-shaped pancakes, dusted with powdered sugar.
At KSEA, we have a tradition during the first snow of the year, if we’re lucky enough to get one. We call it the Winter Olympics, splitting into teams for a full day of office games and food, low-partition walls be damned. I don’t recall ever seeing Torrance and Seth participate, yet there they are, Seth immersed in a game of paper clip relay in the middle of the newsroom while Torrance clutches a stopwatch and tracks points on a whiteboard below the bank of TVs. She got here early to set up and rearrange desks, and I have to wonder if she’s making up for lost time.
“Really coming down out there.” GM Fred Wilson has finally decided to emerge to impart this bit of wisdom. He helps himself to a brownie from a spread in one corner of the newsroom. “Don’t go too wild,” he calls to us, shoving a bite into his mouth as he disappears down the hall.