Weather Girl(18)

When the door to the Dugout opens and someone says, “In here,” I’m in such a state that it takes me a moment to register the voice as Russell’s. He opens the door wider, beckoning me inside. The Dugout isn’t super high-tech or anything, but it’s quiet. There’s Russell’s desk, and those belonging to our other sports reporters and anchors, most of them strewn with sports equipment and memorabilia, the walls covered with jerseys and pennants and posters of athletes. Maybe there was something to Chris Torres’s football theory.

It’s stunningly, blessedly empty.

“Thought maybe you needed to hide as much as I did.” He gestures to a free chair at the empty desk next to his before leaning back in his own chair. He looks so casual here, so right. The kind of comfort I’ve never managed to grasp at the station. “Everyone’s out to lunch, but I had a story to finish up.”

I finally let out a breath, collapsing into the chair he rolls over to me. Out there, my emotions were on the verge of taking over. In here, I’m safe. “Thanks.”

“Hey,” he says, leaning forward, a little worry-divot appearing between his brows, right above his glasses. “Are you okay?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

He reaches for a candy jar on his desk and holds it out to me.

“You guys really do have privacy in here,” I say as I grab a handful. The sugar helps. A bit. “All we have out there are our low-partition workspaces. And those do approximately nothing to shield us from the Hales.”

“Somehow, I get the feeling you didn’t come in here to talk feng shui.”

I crunch down on a mini Snickers. “I am so fucking naive.”

At first, I’m surprised I say it out loud. I don’t make a habit of swearing at work, and I don’t do anything nearly as aggressive as the way my teeth are tearing apart this Snickers. It must be last week’s drunken gripe fest that’s made me okay talking to Russell like this. Letting him see a less polished version of Ari Abrams.

Russell’s brows crease again, his eyes growing concerned. They really are a brilliant shade of blue. “What do you mean?”

“Torrance apologized to me this morning. She got here early, told me how embarrassed she was about what happened at the party. She even said she’d take me to lunch, like we’re friends, when we’ve never gone out to lunch together before.” I shake my head and unwrap a 3 Musketeers. “I really let myself believe her.”

“I get it. Even in here, sometimes I feel completely . . .” He motions to the walls around us. “Trapped.”

Trapped. That’s exactly the right word for it.

“What we talked about on Friday,” I start slowly. “Are you still—is that still something you might be open to?”

“We were both pretty plastered. I had the headache all weekend to prove it.” He drapes his hand over a baseball on his desk, rolls it in a circle. “But . . . I’m serious about it if you are, Ari.”

I’m not used to hearing my name from him. It’s always been weather girl, and there’s something about my name that snags my attention. Something that turns me serious, if I wasn’t already.

“I just want to not dread going to work,” I say plainly. “Yes, I’d love to be valued a little more. I’d love to take on some bigger weather stories. But I used to look forward to work all the time, which is maybe a weird thing to say when it requires getting up at what most people would consider an ungodly hour. But it’s true. I love my job. I don’t love the way Torrance and Seth run this station, and it’s clear neither of them has plans to leave. Even if this means we spend more time around them and quite possibly lose our minds in the process . . . I want to at least try.”

“I know you’re not into sports,” Russell says as he tosses the baseball once in the air before catching it. “But that kind of sounded like you were a coach giving a halftime pep talk to a losing team.”

“Hopefully it wasn’t prophetic, then.”

He holds up a finger, one corner of his mouth quirking into a smile. “Ah, but that’s the great thing about sports. We love an underdog story.”





6




FORECAST:

It’s raining gelt (and chardonnay)

THERE’S A LIMIT to the number of times one can hear the dreidel song without losing one’s mind. I hit that limit about a dozen I have a little dreidels ago, and yet I paste on my sunshine smile for my niece and nephew, who could probably keep playing until midnight without getting bored.

“I have a little dreidel, I made it out of . . .” Cassie says from where she’s sitting on the living room rug, a heap of gelt and pennies spread between her and her brother. We’re all wearing matching menorah light-up sweaters Alex got us for Hanukkah last year, and she keeps scratching at the collar of hers.

“Pizzadillas!” Orion shouts, showing off his adorable jack-o’-lantern smile. He finally lost his first tooth over the weekend, and I can’t remember ever being that proud of something. Oh, to be five again.

“What’s a pizzadilla?” I ask from the couch, where Javier and I have been both playing and refereeing the game.

“A quesadilla with a pizza on top!” Orion gets so excited, he flings the dreidel across the room. “I thought you were smart, Aunt Ari.”