CHAPTER 15 DELILAH #2
“Pretend I’m the camera. What are you going to say?”
I watch as his confidence flags. “I don’t know, Delilah. Can’t we just go out there and get this over with?”
“Definitely not. No offense, but I don’t think you’re up to winging it right now.” I try to shake him back and forth, but he’s an immovable object, pressed up against me in this tiny, hidden corner. “C’mon. This will help.”
His jaw clenches. Then, very reluctantly he says, “Hello, Baltimore.”
I nod, waiting for more. He remains stubbornly silent.
“Great. What’s next?”
A short huff of frustration. “It’s about to snow,” he grinds out.
My god. This is about to be the longest broadcast of my life. “How much snow?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
“Jackson, you took like forty-seven pages of notes this morning. Tell me about the shifting winds. What is it about this storm that’s different? What can the people in Baltimore expect? How do you feel about it and why are you—”
“Snowstorms happen when cold air, moisture, and lift combine,” he interrupts in a rush. “We know that. We’ve talked about it before. But this storm is different because the two air masses set to collide are wildly contrasting in temperature.”
His eyes are bright, his words slightly too fast. I don’t think he took a single breath during that entire bit.
I nod. We’ve managed to go from one end of the spectrum to the other. “Okay, and—”
“It’s weird that the front coming in from the north is as cold as it is.
We don’t usually see such drastic temperatures so late in the year.
With global warming forcing overall warmer temperatures, our climate has slowly been shifting away from snow to more rain.
So it’s weird to see this level of snowfall at this time of year and—did you hear about the corn sweat? ”
I can feel my face pinch in confusion. “Corn sweat?”
He nods. “It’s called evapotranspiration.”
Oh, boy.
“In the Midwest,” he continues, words somehow coming even faster, “millions of acres of corn have started simultaneously releasing water vapor into the atmosphere. Because of the high temperatures, you know?”
“Okay, yeah. But, Jackson—”
“This phenomenon can increase already elevated humidity levels, especially during peak growing season.”
“Jackson.”
“A single acre of corn can release approximately three thousand to four thousand gallons of water per day through evapotranspiration. That’s about the size of two concrete trucks. And that’s just in one day. Think about hundreds of acres, every day during the warm season.”
“Jackson,” I say again.
He doesn’t hear me. “Thousands of concrete trucks every day of additional humidity leaking into the atmosphere. Global warming is slowly killing the planet. Sea levels are rising and temperatures are more volatile and corn is sweating somewhere in the middle of nowhere, Iowa, and—”
I can’t take it anymore. He has completely lost the thread of his practice broadcast, in over his head in one of his weather rambles.
It’s cute, but we’re set to be at our marks in approximately thirty seconds.
We don’t have time for corn sweat, or whatever the hell else is bouncing around in that brain of his.
It’s not so much a conscious decision as it is a bone-deep urgency. I grip the front of his jacket as he rambles on and on, then I press up on my toes and drag his mouth to mine.
It’s quick—less than a handful of seconds—and chaste—my lips pressed firmly to his—but Jackson grows quiet and still against me. I linger for another heartbeat and then drop back to the flats of my feet. I stare up at him, my hands still fisted in the material of his jacket.
Pink cheeks. Crooked glasses.
Silence.
“Uh.” He clears his throat. Reaches up and touches his fingertips to his bottom lip. He looks dazed and confused. “What was—what?”
I try to look more confident than I feel. I just kissed my coworker. To get him to shut up. I have long jumped over any and all professional boundaries.
“You were spiraling,” I defend. “I was trying to distract you.”
I am painfully aware of every single place our bodies touch in this tiny alcove.
“Well,” he says. He drops his hand from his mouth. “Mission accomplished.”
I flinch. “I shouldn’t have done that,” I whisper.
It was impulsive. Stupid. Jackson and I finally figured out how to work together and I threw a land mine in the middle of it.
“It’s fine,” he says, but he won’t meet my eye and he’s shifted backward, shoulders pressed to the wall at his back. He lifts his hand again but drops it abruptly, the long line of his throat working in a swallow. “It’s . . . fine.”
I have no idea what we’re doing. Sometimes it feels like we could almost be friends, and other times it feels like we’re still two people standing on opposite sides of the parking lot, scribbling passive-aggressive notes on the back of old receipts.
And then there’s times like right now, when it feels like all the oxygen has been sucked out of the space between us.
“Twenty seconds!” Mark barks from somewhere behind us and I flinch again. I could not have had worse timing if I tried.
“You ready?” I ask Jackson, but he’s staring somewhere above my head, forehead creased in thought. I sigh and slip out of our hiding space, hoping Jackson follows. Hoping I didn’t just make everything worse.
I grab my mic. I put in my earpiece. I distill myself down to a series of actions so I don’t have to think beyond this moment. I find my spot and Jackson reluctantly fills the space next to me. I force a smile on my face and feel it wobble.
Mark counts us down. Jackson shifts and for one aching heartbeat, I think he’s going to pull away. Leave me here alone in front of the camera.
But he doesn’t. The hand hanging at his side lifts, his knuckles brushing up against mine. My fingers twitch, wondering if it’s an accident, but then his pinky loops around mine.
Careful. Gentle. Out of sight of the camera. The only parts of us touching.
He squeezes once and I squeeze back, my heart tumbling in my chest. The tiny red light flicks on, and Jackson—
Jackson gives the best damned weather broadcast Baltimore has ever seen.