Weather Girl(61)

Torrance Hale is blushing.

“Amazing, huh?”

“Against all odds, yes. Even if part of me is waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“And . . . you haven’t been seeing anyone else?” I ask, thinking back to when I saw her at brunch. If we’re intruding on some other relationship, I have to know.

“A couple dates here and there,” she says, dismissing this with a wave of her hand, and the relief is immediate. “Nothing serious.”

“Seth has seemed . . . less antagonistic lately. Maybe it’s because you two have been spending so much time together.”

“Huh. I didn’t know you two were close.” She lets go of the plant and reaches for another bottle of wine. “Anyway. I don’t want to get too sappy because it doesn’t go with my brand, but this is fun. Thank you. Even if it’s the least wild girls’ night in the history of girls’ nights.”

Against all odds, Torrance Hale and I might be becoming something I never anticipated.

We might be something like friends.



* * *



? ? ?

“I WANT TO tell you a secret,” Torrance says from the armchair, legs dangling off one side of it. From where I’m sprawled across her couch, decorative pillows in a heap on the floor, I can’t see her face. I thought drunk Torrance was weird, but happy-drunk Torrance is even weirder. “Did you know”—hiccup—“my last name isn’t really Hale?”

“What? What is it?”

Her head pops up as she repositions herself in the chair, regarding me with a serious look. “Dalrymple. It’s Scottish. For the first twenty-five years of my life, I was Torrance Dalrymple. No one could spell it, let alone pronounce it. Then when I was going into broadcasting, I thought it would be easier, and maybe even catchy, if my name matched the job. There were so many meteorologists who had gimmicky names, like Storm Field or Johnny Mountain. I didn’t want it to be too obvious, like Torrance Tornado or something.”

“Torrance Barometric Pressure really rolls off the tongue.”

“I wanted it to be believable. So . . . Torrance Hale. And then Seth added Hale to his last name when we got married, though I didn’t ask him to. It was his idea, to make my fake name feel more legitimate, I guess. Like I could have really been born Torrance Hale and grown up to be a meteorologist.” She pauses for a moment. “Sometimes it all feels fake,” she continues, and suddenly, that happy-drunk sheen is gone. “The faces we wear on TV. All the smiling. Even my name is fake.”

“Nothing you do has ever felt fake to me.”

“I’m sure there are plenty of people online who’d say otherwise.”

“Don’t tell me you read our Facebook comments after all this time.” It’s the darkest hellhole of our social media, reserved for older people who haven’t quite grasped the concept of social media and/or assholes who are more honest and vile than on any other platform.

“Not often, unless I’m tagged in something that’s impossible to avoid. People call me a slut because I have the audacity to have breasts. Because I’m blond. Because my skirt stopped above my knees. Because I wore red. Because I laughed with a male anchor.”

I lift my glass to that. “To casual misogyny. May it kindly fuck off forever.” Some of the comments I got when I started at KSEA, mostly from men, still live rent free in my head, and I hate it. Wonder if the carpet matches the drapes. Jump to 2:36 to see her cleavage. There’s a chance of showers in my pants. It’s endless, even if you stop looking. No matter how many people you block, they always have a way of finding you, through tags or emails or DMs. “We could wear a burlap sack, and people would still be talking about whether it’s too tight.”

“That shade of burlap is all wrong for your skin tone.”

“How could you have picked such a sexy sack?”

After we stop laughing, Torrance turns protective. “Are you doing okay, though? Have you gotten anything really bad? You don’t need me to put a hit on anyone, do you?”

I’m not sure she’s kidding. “No, no, just the usual. I can handle it now, but it was rough at first.”

That hangs between us for a few moments. I wish Torrance and I could have talked about this back when I started. When I wondered whether I’d made the right career choice after all, because as much as I loved the weather, there were always going to be people out there who assumed I was only there to smile and point.

I wonder if this silence means she wishes the same thing.

“The best revenge,” she says, “is just being really fucking good at your job.”

I reach for a wedge of bread, chewing it thoughtfully. Torrance was right—this is fun. Maybe we’ve only grown close because of some gentle manipulation, but I want to believe it would have happened regardless.

“If I’m being honest,” I say, and at this point it’s only half the Chateau Ste. Michelle chardonnay talking, “I felt a little adrift when I started at KSEA. You were one of the reasons I wanted to work there. I watched you all the time growing up—I know I mentioned that in my interview.” At the time, I’d been embarrassed, worried I’d made her feel old. But she just brushed it off, and it made me like her even more. Until, of course, I started working with her. “I’m not sure if you remember this, but you actually gave me an award. For high school journalists, about ten years ago.”