CHAPTER 8 JACKSON
JACKSON
Delilah waits until the last possible second to slip into the booth, dropping herself into the chair next to me without meeting my eye. I stare at her, watching the way she twists her fingers around the cord of her headphones.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
She didn’t look okay in the hallway. She looked sad. Like whatever light source shines out from the middle of her was set to dim. She took a phone call, then wilted like a flower.
She forces herself to smile, looking at the desk in front of me instead of anywhere close to my face. “Why do you have three pages of handwritten notes?”
I cover them with my palm. “Delilah,” I say, ignoring the question. “Are you okay?”
Her sigh is small. Quiet. A fraction of her usual energy, dulled down into too-small pieces. “I’m fine. Though now I’m concerned I don’t have three pages of handwritten notes.”
“You don’t seem fine.”
She rolls her eyes up to the ceiling, tugging her headphones over her ears. Some of her hair tangles around the band. “Thanks for that,” she says, but there’s no bite to it. Not like there was a week ago.
“No, I mean—” I reach forward and gently straighten the hair that’s stuck, smoothing it back behind her headphones. I have to shift closer to do it, my chair bumping against hers. “It’s okay if you’re not fine. I can wait.”
Her eyes snap to mine, curious.
“I mean,” I correct myself again, cheeks heating, “the show can wait. We don’t have to start until you’re ready.”
I don’t let go of the hair that’s twisted around my finger. I rub my thumb over it, unconscious. It’s so soft, and she smells like cherries. I angle my body in front of hers so she has some privacy if she needs it, my shoulders blocking her out from the people who are still moving around the room.
“I’m fine,” she says again, softer this time, her eyes dancing back and forth between mine. “Thank you, Jackson. I’m okay.”
“Okay.” I let go of her hair and drop my hands to my lap beneath the desk. I curl them into fists.
A throat clears on the other end of the table. Aiden is staring at me, his eyes narrowed in thought. “You ready?” he asks.
I turn toward Delilah. “Are you?” I ask.
She nods. This booth was barely made for one person, let alone three. We’re so close I can count every freckle across the bridge of her nose.
It only takes three minutes into the broadcast to realize this might be my own personal hellscape.
Delilah wiggles every ten seconds, and with the way we’re smashed together, I can’t get away.
Our bodies are pressed together knee to thigh.
Maybe my anxiety is manifesting with hyperfixation, because every time she even thinks about moving, I swear to god it shaves five years off my life.
Delilah tries to shift but it only ends up pressing more of her against more of me. In a fit of desperation, I reach under the desk and grab her thigh, fingers tightening in a silent plea to stop wiggling. She sucks in a sharp breath and I abruptly move my hand away.
No more touching.
“Welcome to Heartstrings, Baltimore. I’m your host, Aiden Valentine, and we have two guests in the booth with us tonight. You know them both, but you’re about to know them better. Say hello, Jackson and Delilah.”
Delilah wiggles in her seat, excited. I clench my jaw so tight I fear something might snap.
“Hello, Baltimore.” Her full mouth quirks and her eyes find mine. “Hello, Jackson.”
I lean forward so fast I slam my face into the microphone. Static explodes in our headphones. “Hello,” I say around a wince.
One word and I’m already sweating, a tingling sensation in the back of my throat and in the palms of my hands. I stare hard at my notes and try to collect myself, but the urge to start spewing random facts about the weather is strong.
At least I haven’t blacked out yet, I guess.
I kind of wish I would. Because being hyperaware of how dramatically I’m spiraling isn’t exactly a good time.
“I hear there’s a storm headed our way,” Aiden says. The words piece together slowly, swimming like soup through my brain.
Storm. Headed. Our way.
I’m three seconds behind this broadcast, on a time delay while I watch Aiden and Delilah interact from behind a thick piece of glass.
“Yes,” Delilah says. “That’s the rumor. A winter storm is set to hit sometime next week. A little late in the season, which gives it the potential to smash some snowfall records.”
Both of them shift their attention to me. I make a wheezing sound directly into the microphone.
Delilah’s forehead creases in concern. “We’ve been talking about it on the air for the past couple of days as a possibility, but it seems like all the major factors have locked into place now. While the weather system will stretch the length of the coast, Maryland is smack-dab in the worst of it.”
Beneath the desk, Delilah’s hand grabs mine. She squeezes tight, and some of the fog clears.
“Sounds serious,” Aiden says, fiddling with the wrapper of a chocolate mint. “Is there anything people should do to prepare?”
“I don’t want to cause panic, but you should start stocking up on nonperishable goods.
Not, like, end-of-days stocking up, but maybe an extra can of soup or two.
Check on your neighbors, especially the elderly.
Make sure they have a plan to keep warm and safe if the power goes out.
And make sure your home is equipped with flashlights, batteries, and portable heaters.
” She grins. “You should also definitely break out the sleds. Fed Hill is going to be amazing with the snow.”
She’s so good at this. Comfortable. Confident.
She tucks her legs up beneath her in the half-crooked rolling chair someone found wedged in a closet at the end of the hall and scoots herself closer to the desk.
Like she wants to climb directly into the microphone.
Like she can’t hold on to her own enthusiasm.
Whatever happened in the hallway, she’s back to herself now, her brightness all the way up.
Aiden laughs. “Oh yeah? Got big sledding plans?”
He picks up a pen and lobs it at my head. I yank my attention away from Delilah.
Participate, he mouths.
“I don’t have a sled,” I say dumbly. My voice sounds like I smoked six packs of cigarettes before stepping into this room. Like I’ve pressed my mouth directly to an exhaust pipe.
Delilah bumps against my shoulder. “You can borrow mine.”
My answer is immediate. “No, thank you.”
She slowly swivels in her chair, facing me fully. “What? Is my sled not good enough for you?”
“More than twenty thousand people visit the emergency department each year with sledding-related incidents.” I press my finger to the side of my glasses, adjusting them. “And there’s a road at the bottom of Federal Hill.”
“Obviously, I’d sled the other way. Away from the road. I’m not advocating for anyone to sled directly into the road, Jackson.”
“I know that.”
“Where did you find that statistic? Do you keep them in a little notebook?” She glances at the paper in front of me. “Is that why you have those notes?”
“No. These are weather notes.” Heat climbs the back of my neck. “What about you? You just have a sled at your house? Ready for Federal Hill?”
“Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I?”
She drives a pale pink Volkswagen Beetle and her jacket makes her look like a sparkly purple doughnut, so I guess owning a sled is not outside the realm of possibility for Delilah Stewart.
“Because we live in Maryland where the average annual snowfall is twenty-one inches,” I say. “Last year it didn’t even snow at all.”
“Yes, and I was devastated. My doughnut sled sat sadly in the corner of my dining room from November to March.”
“Doughnut sled?”
“Yes. My sled is in the shape of a doughnut. It has strawberry sprinkles.”
And she told me she doesn’t like sprinkles.
“So it’s an inner tube.”
“An inner tube snow sled, yes.”
“Inner tubes are not sleds, Delilah.”
A devastating smile starts somewhere around her eyes and slips down to play at her mouth. “You’re getting tied up in semantics, Jackson.”
I don’t even know what we’re talking about anymore. Just that there’s a fire in my belly the longer I look at her, welling up and over like a tide. Frustration, maybe. Confusion, likely. Bewilderment, potentially. Probably an odd and distracting combination of all three.
Our knees knock together beneath the desk as I turn fully toward her and that heavy, hot feeling grips me by the throat. When Aiden said participate, I’m not sure he meant like this.
“Are you bringing the doughnut on the trip?”
“I wasn’t planning on it, but now I might. Now, maybe all of my reporting will be done from inside the doughnut.”
“Good segue, guys.” Aiden throws another pen at my head, but this one goes sailing two inches past my temple.
“Jackson and Delilah will be covering the storm from Garrett County. You can expect live broadcasts on conditions and any relevant, up-to-date information including how the snowfall is looking for those doughnut sleds.” Aiden grins.
“Our boy is leaving us for the big leagues, Baltimore.”
“I wouldn’t say that. We’re just—” I nudge my glasses with my knuckles. “We’re taking a trip. For the—for the snow. We’re going to tell you everything you need to know about . . .” My voice drifts. Delilah stares at me.
“Snow,” she finishes for me when my mouth continues to move soundlessly. “We’re going to tell you everything you need to know about the snow. That’s right. But for now, Baltimore, back to you.”
She shoots me a subtle thumbs-up and I want to hurl myself through the glass wall of this soundproof booth.
“Excellent. On that note, we’re going to cut to our first song.
Stay tuned, everyone.” “Winter Wonderland” by Harry Connick Jr. starts to trickle through the headphones as Aiden taps his way across his keyboard.
He wrenches his off and tosses them on top of an empty cookie box he forgot to clear. “That was good, you guys.”
I drop my forehead to the middle of the desk and keep it there. “Which part? The part where I couldn’t remember the word for snow?”
“It’s an improvement over you yelling about the snow.”
I roll my head to the side against my notes, squinting blearily at Delilah. I feel like I’ve just gone seven rounds and lost every one. “Do you really have a doughnut inner tube in your house?”
“Of course I do. I don’t lie about doughnut sleds.” She offers me a tentative smile. “Should I bring it on our trip?”
“No.” I think about it. “Actually, maybe. I can use it to sled directly into Deep Creek Lake when the broadcast starts going south.”
“While I’d pay good money to see that, I think you’re going to do just fine. Apparently, all I need to do is find something to antagonize you about during each broadcast until you forget about your weather rambles. That seemed to work, didn’t it?”
“I guess,” I grumble. I was so distracted by Delilah, I forgot to be nervous. I frown and the paper beneath my cheek crinkles. “I really don’t know why Maggie wants me to do this.”
“Because no one knows weather systems better than you, with the exception of the woman sitting to your right,” says a voice from the doorway. Maggie is wedged in the half-open door of the booth, tapping at her phone with a weary look on her face. “And because I need the win.”
“What is it?” I ask.
She slips her phone back into her pocket. “Orion,” she says. “They’re still interested in our programming.” She pauses and presses two fingers to the middle of her forehead. “They’ve upped the price again.”
The satellite giant has been after our station for two years now, and they’ve only gotten more aggressive after the runaway success of Heartstrings last February.
For some reason, they want our programming, and they’re not inclined to take no for an answer.
Maggie has been doing her part to push back against their advances, determined to keep our little station local.
But Orion has been throwing Hail Marys to the tune of six-figure acquisition deals.
Our ownership team has started paying attention.
“If Orion gets their hands on us, we’ll turn into segmented programming. They’d bleed everything local out of us until we’re just another husk of Top 40 hits. But if I can make the case to ownership that local content still performs well, then—”
“Then maybe they’ll finally tell Orion to shove it,” Aiden summarizes.
“You got it.” Maggie’s eyes find mine. “And there’s nothing more local than a freakishly strong snowstorm, barreling straight toward us.
If we can prove that we can keep the lights on ourselves without whatever snake oil Orion is selling, we should be able to shut them up once and for all.
But we’ve gotta back it up with strong numbers. ”
My hands flex on the headphones until the plastic creaks. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Delilah shift. “No pressure, then.”
Maggie’s face softens. “You’re brilliant, Jackson. I wouldn’t put you in this position if I didn’t have full confidence in you. Try to enjoy it, yeah? Try to have some fun.”
There’s that word again. Fun. It scratches at the inside of my skull until my shoulders pull tight.
I’ve never had much use for fun. I’ve relied on practical, predictable, probable, and logical.
The best path forward has always been the one I can clearly see laid out in front of me in perfectly manageable steps.
But that hasn’t exactly served me well. I think somewhere along the way, I got so settled in my routines and habits and plans that now I’m trapped by them. They twist around me like vines, holding me in place. Keeping me from moving forward.
The damned garden gate, sealed shut.
I don’t want to be like this.
“We can do that,” Delilah says. She offers me another careful smile. “We can pull it off. Right, Jackson?”
“Yeah,” I agree, hoping I sound like I mean it. “Absolutely.”