Weather Girl(81)

“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.

Russell appears by my side, shaking his head. “Like clockwork,” he says before his gaze shifts to Torrance. “I’ve never seen her like this. I’ve never seen either of them like this.”

“I think they’re happy.”

“Happy, or high on cheap grocery store cake?”

“Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive.”

Eventually, we’ll have to do real work, and there’s a lot of work waiting for me in the weather center this afternoon, but this is such a welcome shift in the station atmosphere that I can’t tear myself away quite yet. I’m dreaming, too, of the sledding Russ and I have planned later today at the huge hill near his house.

I’m taking my turn in paper clip relay—a contest to see which group can straighten a paper clip the fastest, and you can only start after the person in front of you finishes—when Torrance approaches me, twirling a whiteboard marker between her thumb and index finger.

“Ari, do you have that press release from the city about their new snowplows? I think they sent it back in January. My inbox is a mess right now.”

“Oh—yeah. Of course.” My computer’s on the other side of the room, so I tug my phone out of my pocket, search for the original email, and forward it to her. Then I turn back to the game, fingers poised on the wire of my paper clip. In front me, Hannah Stern is about to finish. Russell’s on the other team, headed up by sports anchor Lauren Nguyen and undefeated, and I’m not about to let them win.