Weather Girl(15)

“That’s the one where one of the Lindsays gets her ears pierced with the apple, right?” He pantomimes this with his hands, knocking his glasses askew again. “That freaked me out as a kid.”

“Yep. Iconic. God, Dennis Quaid was hot in that movie. He was my first crush, actually. And my first—” I break off because Russell does not need to know that Dennis Quaid as a rugged Napa Valley winemaker was so formative for my burgeoning sexuality that he was the first guy I pictured when I discovered another use for a high-pressure showerhead. “He was peak DILF,” I finish awkwardly.

“DILF?”

“Dad I’d like to—”

“Oh.” There’s something strange in Russell’s expression, which I’ve gathered is his go-to expression. “I think we’re getting off track. What I’m trying to say is, I really think we could do this. We work more closely with them than anyone at the station, right?”

Maybe we do, but I still barely know Torrance. The first year I worked with her, I was reconciling the real version of her with the idol I’d grown up with. It was sobering, to have that vision of her erased. Now I just try to stay out of her way. I don’t know what she does for fun. I don’t know what ended her marriage or what it would take to get her to give Seth another chance.

It’s still laughable, but I can play along.

“So we’d, what, write steamy love letters and sign their names?” I say.

“Or trap them in a stalled elevator and get them to remember all the good times they had together.”

“Light candles in one of their offices and play some Marvin Gaye.”

He taps the bridge of his glasses. “See? We’d be unstoppable if we tag-teamed this.”

I allow myself to picture a Torrance who sets biweekly meetings with me and watches my clips to give me advice. Without all their ex-marital strife, I want to think it would be a possibility.

“Fine, fine,” I say. I’m still joking—at least, I’m pretty sure I am. “I’m in.”

He raises his fifth or sixth drink to mine. “To peace and harmony at KSEA 6.”

“That, I’ll cheers to.”

Russell sets down his glass and checks the time. “Holy shit, it’s almost two in the morning.”

“This is usually the time I wake up.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know how you early morning people do it.”

“I like it,” I say. “There’s a different kind of energy in the mornings. It’s exciting to know you’re the first person someone’s hearing from that day.” I’ve had some coworkers who mainline caffeine pills to make it through the morning, but I’ve only ever needed a bit of coffee and the joy of weather forecasting models. “Tomorrow’s gonna be brutal, though.”

We pay our tabs—yikes—and when we get to our feet, he reaches out to prevent me from toppling over with a firm hand.

I’m going to regret all of this tomorrow. It’ll be something we laugh about in the break room—can you believe we wanted to get Torrance and Seth back together?

At least it gave me a flicker of hope for a few minutes.

“Good night, sports dude.” I give him this salute that’s meant to be cute but probably looks unhinged, given my current state of inebriation. I’m not sure I’ve ever saluted someone before, but it suddenly seems like the right way to say goodbye.

He returns the salute. On him, it really is cute. “And you have a good morning, weather girl.”





5




FORECAST:

Some unwelcome introspection with a glimmer of hope on the horizon

A GOOD MORNING, it is not. Sunlight streams in through the window across from my bed, my blackout curtains shoved to the side. My head is pounding and my tongue is too large for my mouth and my throat feels like I swallowed a vacuum cleaner filter and washed it down with straight vinegar. It’s the most expensive hangover I’ve ever had.

I almost faint when I check the time on my phone. One o’clock in the afternoon on a Saturday, which means I slept through the equivalent of an entire morning shift. When I started this job, I relied on Tylenol PM to help me fall asleep and energy drinks to keep me awake. Now I maintain the same schedule on weekends, or at least very close to it.

Garrison never loved my semi-backward schedule, even if I did. I do miss the way he’d cuddle me when I woke up when it was still dark out, his warmth almost enough to keep me in bed. I haven’t cried about it for a couple weeks, and that feels like progress. The last time was when I was watching Netflix and The Crown popped up as “something you might be interested in,” and I started bawling because yes, not only was I interested in it, but we’d watched the entire series on his account. The idea that my own Netflix account didn’t know about my love of royal melodrama and therefore didn’t care about my breakup was, in that moment, unfathomably inconsiderate.

What I kept from him, the subject of our final fight, wasn’t a big thing—in fact, it was quite small. Thirty pills about the size of my pinky nail, my prescription refilled each month at the nearby Bartell Drugs. The bottle had fallen out of my purse in our rush to get our Halloween costumes ready. My depression was under control, manageable, the way it had been for years with the exception of a couple medication changes when side effects wouldn’t go away and a new therapist when I moved back to Seattle from Yakima. I take those pills every morning, just as I’m doing now, plodding over to the bathroom and opening up the medicine cabinet.