CHAPTER 9 DELILAH
DELILAH
“This is so much fun,” Jackson deadpans from the driver’s side of the news van, his hands flexing on the wheel. “This is the most fun I’ve ever had in my life.”
I launch a peach ring at his head, smirking when it bounces off his temple and lands somewhere in between the armrest and the center console. He slowly turns, giving me the most haughty, offended look I’ve ever seen.
I immediately descend into giggles.
“You’re just mad I disregarded the timetable.”
“What timetable?” he grumbles.
“The one you think I didn’t see.”
Jackson picked me up in front of my tiny Hampden row home this morning just as the sun was edging its way over the horizon.
He stood at the curb, two cups of coffee in his hands, and one of those sleek, efficient winter coats hugging the strong lines of his body.
He didn’t let me haul my suitcase down the steps.
He just wordlessly held out the coffees until I gave in, then slotted my roller board with the broken wheel and my doughnut sled neatly in the back of the van.
He was surprisingly quiet about the sled, only sparing the doughnut a quick, scathing glance.
Then we bickered in the narrow street for seven minutes about who was going to drive. I only relented when Jackson pointed out that as passenger, I could control the radio and snack distribution.
“You’re going to let me eat in the van?”
He had placed his hands on his hips and leveled me with a stern look from behind his glasses. “I’m not a monster, Delilah.”
Unfortunately for me, radio control turned out to be a bust. The only two stations the van gets are NPR and a static-filled salsa mix. I vetoed the conga drums right away, but maybe I shouldn’t have.
“Not to be dramatic, but if I have to listen to one more second of BBC World Service Newshour, I am going to fling myself from this vehicle.”
Jackson snorts. “You don’t like NPR?”
“I love public radio, but I don’t like whatever medieval-medicine episode we’ve been listening to for the past one hour and twenty-three minutes.” I burrow down further in my seat, shivering. “It’s depressing.”
I don’t want to hear about holes in skulls and rare fungal diseases and whatever implements they used to use to crack people open. I want to eat peach rings off my fingers and sing along to Whitney Houston.
But this van is not outfitted with any sort of modern equipment. I can’t plug my phone into the audio system, and I don’t have any cassettes on hand to feed into the player. So it’s just us and the spotty radio, an utterly demoralizing NPR broadcast and bursts of static.
I curl my arms around my middle, shivering again. This van is also not equipped with proper heating. I’m about to dig out one of the silver thermal emergency blankets in the back and wrap myself like a burrito. “How much longer do we have?”
“If only we had some sort of timetable,” Jackson says.
I snicker. “Like you don’t have it memorized.”
He rolls his eyes and I turn my body toward the window, trying to imagine myself someplace warmer.
But everything is cast in heavy grays today, the sun’s weak rays barely managing to peek out from behind the cloud cover.
It’s only going to get colder as we head into the mountains, the storm’s icy fingers starting to reach toward the foothills.
Something heavy and warm lands on my lap. I glance down at Jackson’s coat spread across my thighs.
“Your lips are turning blue,” he says in explanation.
While I’ve been shivering in the passenger seat, Jackson has been pushing up the sleeves of his slate gray crewneck.
There’s a tear at the collar I can’t stop looking at.
A nick in his shiny armor. He balances one watch-clad wrist over the steering wheel and glances at me again from over the top of his thick-framed glasses.
Sitting over there like that, he looks like some sort of hot calculator ad.
“What’s that about?” he asks.
“What?”
“You’re giving me a look.”
“What sort of look?”
He swallows and my eyes drop to the strong line of his throat. He’s all dips and lines and curves. Shadowed skin in the thin light that streams in through the windshield.
It is my professional opinion that no one should look so good while driving a news van.
“Like you’re thinking of new and creative ways to assault me with peach rings,” he says, his voice a low rumble.
“Breaking news, Jackson.” I drop my chin to my chest and do my best broadcast voice. “Woman considers new and creative ways to assault weather partner with peach rings.”
Another shiver twists my shoulders.
“Delilah,” he says, concern quickly overshadowing his amusement. “Put the jacket on.”
“Or what?” I ask.
The barest hint of a smile deepens the lines by his eyes. “Or I’ll put it on for you,” he says.
The traffic in front of us finally starts to break and he turns his attention back to the road.
I unfold the jacket and carefully spread it across my lap, tucking the collar to my chin and slipping my arms through the sleeves.
They fold over my hands and I curl my fingers in the buttery soft material, a happy sigh pressing out of me when I’m instantly wrapped in coffee-scented warmth.
“Better?” he asks.
I nod, nosing down further in the material and tucking my legs beneath me on the seat. Only my eyes are visible, like some sort of North Face gremlin. “Much,” I say, my voice muffled. “Thank you.”
He hums. “Look at us. The picture of teamwork.”
I snort and wiggle in my coat blanket. “Does that mean you’re ready to talk about it?”
His face instantly shutters. “No,” he snaps. “I’m not.”
I let my forehead fall against the window and give in to the laughter that’s been burning a hole through the center of my chest since 6:03 a.m. We decided to introduce Jackson with the morning weather report at YBAL before we got on the road.
Unfortunately, that didn’t proceed much better than the radio broadcast.
“What possessed you to wear green?” I say with another peal of laughter, my voice high and breathy.
I try to wrangle control of myself but I can’t.
I will be holding on to the mental image of Jackson’s floating head in front of the weather map until my dying day.
“You wore a green shirt in front of a green screen, Jackson.”
Jackson drags one hand through his hair and anchors it against the back of his neck, his arm straining beneath the material of his sweater. His face is a delightful combination of bemused and bewildered and it only makes me laugh harder.
“My Friday shirt is green,” he says faintly.
“You didn’t think to change it?”
“I haven’t done a television broadcast before, Delilah. I forgot about the green screen. Radio doesn’t have a green screen.” He drops his arm with a heavy exhale. “Why didn’t you say anything to me before we started?”
“I tried to. I would have, if you didn’t wait in your car until the last possible second.”
“I was meditating,” he says, eyes squinting with the lie.
“You were stress-eating a hash brown.”
I could see him from the front window of the studio while I waited for him to come inside. He sat in the driver’s seat of his car staring at the building like he’d rather toss himself off the top of it, shoveling a greasy hash brown into his mouth.
“Listen,” I say, taking a deep breath, trying to push down on the laughter that keeps bubbling up. “If I’m forcing you to do this—”
“You’re not forcing me to do anything,” he cuts me off quickly. His features relax, that little line between his brows disappearing. “I’m fine, I’m just processing. I’m trying to figure out how to do this.”
“This?”
“The broadcasts. The . . . partnership. I want to be good at it.” He pauses for a second, then, quieter, “I don’t want to let anyone down.”
My laughter finally settles, a silly smile still stretched across my face. It’s the most honest Jackson has ever been with me, and I know it cost him. I can tell by the way he’s holding himself. How he’s firmed his shoulders, waiting for me to rib him some more.
“Well, you don’t need to figure it out alone,” I tell him gently. “We’re a team now, remember?”
Jackson glances over at me, a smile quirking his lips. Behind his head, rich, full evergreens blur past. Frost-tipped fence posts and open fields. A kaleidoscope of winter colors.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “A team.”
“Yeah.” My lips twitch. “And while your news debut didn’t go the way you wanted, you certainly made an impression.”
He winces. “Great.”
“Very Wizard of Oz.”
He palms his hand along his jaw. “I was too afraid to look at the screen. Was it just my head? Floating around?”
Another laugh rockets out of me. I clap my hand over my mouth, then spread my fingers to whisper, “You could see some of your shoulders too.”
“Oh, good. Glad my shoulders could make it.” His hands flex on the steering wheel, the lines of his body tensing and then relaxing.
“All of Baltimore now understands why you’ve stuck to radio.”
His eyebrows pop up. “Are you saying I’m too ugly for television?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“It sounds like what you’re saying.”
I eyeball him, holding himself still on the other side of the van. Glancing over at me every so often out of the corner of his eye.
“Jackson,” I hedge. “Are you fishing for compliments?”
“Maybe.” He pauses and clears his throat. “What would you say if I was?”
My attention drifts along the contours of his face and snags on his mouth.
He has a faint scar, right below his bottom lip.
I’ve never noticed it because I’m not sure he’s ever given me these smiles before.
Scowls? Sure. Vague grunts in my general direction?
Obviously. But this easy, playful grin? Never.
“Is this another team-building exercise?”
“It could be.” He shrugs. “I could even pull over, if you wanted. One of us could climb up to the top of the van and we could do trust falls.”
I snicker. “You would never.”