SIX Quincy #2
“Bonding over mortality doesn’t make us friends, and I’m going to be disappointed if you’re the last thing I see before I die.”
“I’ll make sure to give you my good side so you get a perfect view.”
I stare ahead, attention no longer on him. “Does that look like rotation to you?”
“Hang on.” He shifts his feet. The camera strapped to his chest beeps. He points to the left. “Over there?”
“No.” My fingers wrap around his wrist, guiding his hand to the right. His skin is hot, sticky with sweat, and his pulse jumps under my touch. “There.”
The exhale he lets out is a deep and rumbly noise, pulled from the trenches of his chest, and I release him from my hold the second I hear it.
“I see it now.” His arm hangs in the air, slow to lower to his side. Lingering, almost. “Thanks.”
“That patch of clouds looks green.” I look over my shoulder, talking to the camera behind us so the viewers watching my show are included too. “Tornadoes can be accompanied by hailstorms, and the hail can—”
“Refract light from the sun, which makes the sky look dark green,” Sebastian finishes for me. “Hard to tell from this angle. Could be a reflection.”
“Why hasn’t the NWS issued a tornado warning?”
Neither of our phones have gone off with an emergency alert in the time we’ve been out here. A tornado watch was issued a few hours ago, but this is more severe. Worthy of some sort of public notification, and my stomach churns in anticipation.
“Maybe their radar doesn’t suggest enough rotation to— Oh, shit. Funnel cloud.”
It’s his turn to guide my hand to his viewpoint, the press of his fingers on the inside of my wrist a flicker of adrenaline that wasn’t there before.
I blame it on the sight of the cloud, not the slow drag of his touch halfway up my arm.
Blinking to clear my head, I follow his line of sight, nodding at the start of a cone-shaped cloud forming at the base of the large thunderstorm.
“Good eye,” I say.
“Stop flirting with me,” he tosses back casually.
“You’d know if I was flirting with you. I gave you the bare minimum of a compliment. An observation, really. Nothing more.”
“Oh, Monroe has game.”
I grab my tripod, moving it in front of me so I don’t have to tell him about my lack of personal life. It’s easier than him finding out I don’t flirt with anyone—ever.
I spend my nights alone, afraid of what a man might say if he saw how excited I get over the little things in life: Puddles in front of my porch.
The rare evenings when I crack open my bedroom window and let in the cool air, glad to sleep with a sweatshirt on.
The delight I bottle up and keep close when the sun hits my face first thing in the morning.
I’m a simple girl. It doesn’t take much to make me happy, but I’m cautious who I let get close to me. I’ve been burned in the past, told my success is only because of my looks, not because of the hours and hours of work and research I’ve put into my career.
One guy spent thirty minutes complaining about women in the workforce on our first date, letting me know he prefers his partners to stick to making meals and folding laundry rather than finding ways to get smarter.
There was also the guy who asked if I was comfortable taking away jobs from men who deserve the position more than me, getting angry when I told him I wasn’t just comfortable— I was goddamn ecstatic.
Sebastian doesn’t need to know about any of that, and I ignore his smirk.
I flip the camera so the viewers can see what’s happening.
I smile, faint and easy and knowing we’re well out of harm’s way.
We’re a safe distance from the storm, able to jump in our cars if we need to escape, and I inhale.
I blow out a breath, steady and slow, savoring the changes in the atmosphere.
Ahead, the funnel cloud breaks free, stretching toward the ground. Sebastian lets out a whoop that could rival an excited kid. I’m close to squealing too.
“Fuck. It’s pretty, isn’t it?”
I can’t keep up with the comments coming in on the live stream. There’s a string of exclamation points. A question asking if we have somewhere to shelter in place if things turn dangerous. One asking Sebastian to take off his shirt, followed by another asking me to take off mine.
“It’s hard for me sometimes,” I say.
“What?”
“The duality of weather.” I lift my tripod and walk in the direction of the storm, wanting to get closer.
“The beauty is a contrast to its destruction. It can take away a life in the blink of an eye, but I also feel most alive when I hear a crack of thunder. When I stand out in the rain. It feels wrong to … to romanticize it, but I’ve always been this way. Long before I made it a career.”
“It’s the only thing humans can’t control.” Sebastian walks beside me. His long stride matches mine, boots kicking up dirt as we march on. One of his laces is undone. The tongue is hanging out, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Chaos, personified. “Makes it even more desirable, doesn’t it?”
“Are you the one who’s secretly attracted to tornadoes?”
“You got me, Pres.”
“Someone in the comment section is asking if we have a green screen behind us because it’s not raining. Wall clouds, like the one you see up ahead, don’t produce rain. It’s beneath the main storm updraft and—”
“Think we’re going to get a touchdown.” Sebastian stops abruptly and spears the dirt with the legs of his tripod. “The moisture feels good.”
“You can’t honestly tell that from being out here, can you?”
“I can’t?” He tosses me a grin. “Nah, you’re right. The monitoring station hooked up to my old truck at my mom’s place helped me out.”
“There’s no way you still have that thing. It’s almost fifteen years old.”
“That thing?” He sounds appalled. I’m glad. “Her name is Okie. She might be shitty, but she was with me during my first chase.”
“Okie? You named your monitoring station?” I shake my head. “You’re out of your mind.”
“Listen up, kids.” Sebastian changes his position, nearly pressing his face against my phone again.
“It’s Science Time with Seb. A mobile mesonet, which is the monitoring station Quincy is talking about, takes observations of temperature, humidity, wind …
all those important factors in and around a storm.
I named mine Okie, after the meteorological students at the University of Oklahoma who created a statewide monitoring network.
Mine is shit compared to the professional ones, but she gets the job done. ”
“We’re here for weather, not a history lesson, Dunn.”