11. Annie
Chapter 11
Annie
3 Years Ago
April 12 th
I ’m early, but it’s the season's first chase, and I’m irrationally excited to get on the road. It’s not just the promising setup over Kansas, either. For the last few months, Chris and I have moved from the rare chase-related emails—which primarily consist of me getting information from Chris because he keeps detailed logs of every chase and I rely solely on the date and time stamp on my cameras—to something much more personal.
I’ve shared the videos I’m producing alongside the photos with him. He’s become a part of my process. He’s shared more about his life with me, too. What he’s working on at the National Weather Service. His dilemma over whether to pain or wallpaper the guest bedroom. The dog he’s adopted, an adorable Spitz cross, who will stay with his father for the storm season.
But it’s the one or two little moments where things have felt almost flirty. It’s hard to read the tone in emails and texts. I might be putting too much into it. The rational part of my brain warns me I am. The rest of my brain? Has replayed that moment sitting in the back of his SUV on a loop and wondered if he was thinking about kissing me. If maybe I catch him watching me more often than can be attributed to safety.
My little crush on him has blown out of proportion during our months apart. So, I drove up to Oklahoma last night instead of this morning. I didn’t arrive until two a.m., which was far too late to surprise him, but I couldn’t sleep, so here I am, at six thirty, parking behind a sedan and grabbing the box of donuts from the passenger’s seat. He doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth, but I’ve seen the man demolish a plain cinnamon sugar donut a time or two.
I’ve been inside Chris’s house several times, mostly when our plans changed at the last minute. It’s a cute three-bedroom with light blue siding and an Oklahoma redbud in the front yard. His furnishings were still Spartan the last time I was here, but he’s slowly accumulating things to make his place feel more like a home—or so he tells me—and I can’t wait to see.
Another little zing of excitement zips through me as I step up to the door. I want to see where this season takes us.
I ring the bell and bounce nervously on the balls of my feet. His dog barks once, and I can’t wait to meet her. Charlie is half Japanese Spitz—father unknown—and she’s gorgeous in the pictures he’s sent me, all fawn-colored fur and a foxlike face.
Chris opens the door, and I scream his name and launch myself into his arms. My eyes shut because he feels better than I remember, and his woodsy scent goes straight to my head, even if it’s a little…sweeter than I remember. Floral?
Chris stands frozen, but it takes about three seconds for me to realize he’s not hugging me back or wearing a shirt. When I open my eyes, it gets worse.
His missing shirt is on a pretty blonde woman. The only other thing she’s wearing is a scowl.
I shove away from him immediately and do the one thing I can think of to salvage this situation. “Oh my god!” I rush her before she can escape, wrapping her into a tight hug and shit—she’s short, and I’ve practically shoved my boobs in her face. I count to two and let go, beaming a completely unhinged smile at her. “Chris told me so much about you.” He hasn’t told me anything about her. Or about anyone, and if she’s a one-night stand, then wow am I making an ass of myself. “I’m so glad to finally meet you!”
Chris is rubbing the back of his neck, his face red. “Jenna, this is my chase partner Annie. Annie, this is Jenna. My girlfriend.”
It hits me—as I’m grinning at her like an absolute asshole—that she possibly hasn’t heard about me, either. Thank god I bought half a dozen donuts. I push the box at Chris. “Donuts! Thought I’d bring breakfast. Sorry, I’m early. Ooh, is this Charlie?”
I drop to my knees, and the dog, who’s been hanging back, cocks her head. Maybe she can smell my desperation because she comes to me tentatively, and I hold my hand out to her. She sniffs me.
Jenna shifts on her feet. “She’s not very—”
In a second, she’s on me, licking my face. I cuddle her, wanting to disappear into her soft fur.
“—friendly,” Jenna finishes. I don’t have to look up to see the glare. It’s in her voice.
Another mistake. The dog likes me. Given she wasn’t standing next to Jenna before, I’m going to guess they’re on rocky ground.
Chris sighs. “That’s Charlie,” he confirms. “Take these into the kitchen, Annie?” He holds out the donuts. “We’ll be down in a minute.”
“Yeah, okay. I’ll put on a pot of coffee.” I’m nodding, unable to stop myself, as I rise to my feet and take the donuts from Chris.
Jenna heads up the stairs first, and Chris follows, whistling for Charlie to come with them, but she follows me into the kitchen instead. I don’t flatter myself this time. I have the donuts. I’m the better option.
I set them on the counter to open the pantry and stare at boxes and boxes of herbal tea. Chris doesn’t drink tea. If Jenna’s not living with him, she stays here often enough to have real estate in his cupboards. She probably has a toothbrush in his bathroom and a drawer in his bedroom.
“I’m an idiot,” I whisper to Charlie. She stares back at me with her dark brown eyes like she’s commiserating with me.
I take a deep breath and set about making a pot of coffee. This thing I have for Chris? It’s just a little crush born out of loneliness and my lack of interest in meeting anyone new after Justin. Now that it’s popped, I can stop making excuses and start putting myself out there again.
But why does he have to look so good without a shirt on? And why does he have to smell so good? Apart from Jenna’s perfume on him. That makes me feel a little sick.
It takes me a minute to find the mugs. Chris has moved stuff around, probably so Jenna can reach them. He wouldn’t have to do that for me. I’m only a few inches shorter than him.
But it’s good that he’s considerate. I’m happy for them. Full of pity for myself, yes, but glad for them.
He comes into the kitchen fully dressed and looking irritable. All my self-pity, the embarrassment of my presumptions, all of it morphs into something a lot like anger. I’m mad at myself for misreading the situation with him and at him for not mentioning that he was seeing someone.
I cross my arms and lean against the counter, waiting for the coffee to percolate.
“You’re early,” he finally says. I hear the subtext beneath the words. Why didn’t you call first?
I knit my brows, tilting my head in feigned confusion. “Aren’t we chasing in Nebraska? We’ll want to be on the road soon.”
Jenna enters the kitchen, fully dressed. She steps close to Chris, hand brushing his arm, but he’s already moving to the pantry. He doesn’t see the hurt on her face, but I do. It cuts me, too. “Tea?” he asks her.
“Yeah.”
“Which one?”
There’s ice in her voice when she says, “The usual.”
“We’re targeting Kansas,” Chris finally says to me once he’s made Jenna’s tea and handed the mug to her. “We don’t have to leave for another two hours.”
“Oh.” That’s all I can say because I knew that. I just thought…
I guess I thought we’d drink coffee and eat donuts while we argue over the models, and maybe there’d be something there.
Charlie looks up at me, then at Chris, and whines.
“Can you take Charlie out?” he asks in a low voice. I think he’s talking to me for a second, but Jenna sighs, sets her mug down with an angry thump, and stomps out, calling after Charlie, who looks up at me.
Sorry , I want to say.
“Charlie. Out.”
She gets up and pads across the kitchen, following Jenna, who steps out onto the back deck, not moving too far from the door.
Chris comes over to me and grabs another mug. He lifts the carafe, sticking an empty mug beneath it to catch the still-percolating coffee. He pours us both a coffee and puts the carafe back.
“We started dating nine months ago,” he says in a whisper.
Shit. He might have already been dating her when Justin broke up with me last June. Everything about sitting in the back of the SUV, watching the lightning, his arm around me and mine around him, was platonic. I’ve completely misread him.
“She’s a kindergarten teacher,” he continues. “We met through mutual friends. She moved in last month and will look after Charlie while we’re on the road.”
“Thanks,” I say as he hands me a cup of coffee and takes his own around to the other side of the island, as far from me as he can get.
“So Annie,” Jenna says as she returns to the kitchen, Charlie trotting ahead. “Chris didn’t tell me a lot about you. What is it you do?”
“I’m a freelance photographer,” I say, infusing far too much cheer in my voice. “But I’ve started getting into filmography. Sometimes, I do weddings for the family business, but I travel most of the time. I just got back from Argentina. I was shooting for a travel book.”
“Exciting.” Her voice says it isn’t. “But isn’t it hard on your personal life? You must not get to see your family or boyfriend—or girlfriend—very often.”
“I have a boyfriend!” It’s out before I think it through, and I force myself to take a long sip of my coffee to get my mouth back under control. Don’t say he’s Canadian, don’t say he’s Canadian . “He’s in Canada.” Fuck. “He’s not Canadian, though. It’s only for the summer.” Inspiration hits in the form of a friend I made in Europe. “He’s a filmographer. He does independent adventure films. He’s with a group doing some whitewater stuff. I don’t know, not really my thing.”
Jenna nods, but she doesn’t look like she believes me. “Got any pics? If you’re both into photography, I bet you take the best selfies.”
I pull my phone out and open my gallery. “My social media is strictly professional, but I have a photo of us.” It doesn’t take me long to find the photo I’m looking for, and there’s some truth in my lie. Kian is a filmographer who does adventure sports. He’s Swiss, and we’ve never been more than friends, but his arms are around me in this picture, and he’s kissing my temple for some reason I can’t remember. We look like a couple.
Jenna looks at the photo of us on a white stone terrace of one of the Greek Isles, her eyes wide as she turns my phone so Chris can see. “Wow.”
Kian is handsome in a David Beckham kind of way, and the two of us look good together. Maybe I could have appreciated it more if I hadn’t spent the last ten months reliving a dozen little moments from last season and slowly falling into a crush on my chase partner. So I spin out a story about meeting Kian at a film festival and spending a couple of months traveling around Europe, about him meeting me in Argentina and my plans to join him in Canada after the chase season. I make it sound as serious as two people with lifestyles like mine and Kian’s can manage. Madly in love in a nomadic sort of way.
I pocket my phone before she can ask to see more photos because that’s the only one I have. “How did you decide to become a kindergarten teacher? That’s amazing, by the way. Such an important job, and I imagine it’s fulfilling. Tell me all about it.”
I need this woman to like me. I need her to be okay with Chris spending long hours on the road with me because she is not happy right now. I cannot lose my chase partner. What started as something to get me away from stuff I’d rather avoid has turned into something I love, and while my career is taking off and I could do something else, I don’t want to. Not much compares to watching a mothership of a supercell hover over the plains, a tornado glide across a field, or towering sun-lit cumulus clouds reaching impossible heights. I know Chris. I trust him not to put us in a dangerous position. Something I can’t say about other chasers I’ve met.
Jenna doesn’t have anything to worry about, anyway. If Chris had feelings for me, he would have kissed me in the back of the SUV last season. My crush on him is already fading away. Any minute now.
Jenna relaxes the more we talk, and I think I like her. Getting her to like me will take some work, but we’ve got all season. I will win her over.
“She seems nice,” I say to Chris when we finally get on the road, leaving Jenna waving to us from the driveway.
He glances at me but says nothing.
Fine, he’s mad. I should have called or shown up on time, but he did this to himself. He should have told her he was chasing with me. They should have talked about this before this morning.
It would have been nice to know there was a Jenna in the picture. But I’m just his chase partner. He doesn’t talk about his romantic life. Not that I’m entitled to any of it. Justin was the one who told me he had a girlfriend the first year we were chasing. And about his hook-ups with Tessa after that relationship ended. But that’s all I know. It was silly of me to assume he’d be single.
“Kian okay with this?” Chris finally asks.
Who knows? But if I’m going to live out a fake relationship, I might as well make it perfect. “Yeah, why wouldn’t he be?”
Chris says nothing. Silence hangs between us, and it’s uncomfortable.
Usually, I would avoid confrontation. Pretend I wasn’t feeling anything until it became my truth.
It’s hard to let go right now.
“Jenna’s not okay?” I ask, although the answer is pretty obvious.
His lips tighten, and he shifts his grip on the wheel.
“You didn’t tell her your chase partner was a woman?”
“I didn’t tell her my chase partner looks like a fucking model,” he snaps.
It sounds like an insult, so that’s how I take it. I cross my arms and realize I’m dressed nicely for a change. I’m wearing denim shorts instead of leggings and a cropped sweater over a tank top in place of a baggy T-shirt. My hair is down and styled. I’m even wearing makeup. It’s subtle, but Jenna will have noticed.
Dammit.
I don’t talk to Chris for the rest of the drive, even as my anger fizzles into hurt and sinks into disappointment.
Silence can’t last forever. Once we’re in place, we have things we need to discuss and settle into our usual roles. But I’m not smiling or trying to make him laugh, and he’s not relaxed. At all.
I need a distraction, so I put myself on camera. I have no plan for this footage yet, so I do everything. Talk about the forecasts, the models, the chase. I follow a grasshopper down the shoulder. Help a box turtle cross the road. Take videos of things I don’t typically video—a bird perched on a barbed wire fence, long grass swaying in the breeze.
Other chasers pull up, and I chat with them, and when a tornado forms, I don’t high-five Chris. He’s focused on his cameras and watching the sky. So, I focus on mine.
The tornado is a snaky rope that glides and wiggles across recently tilled pastures, kicking up an out-sized cloud of dust and dirt. It’s so pretty, and we’re in the perfect place to watch it glide by. When I glance over at Chris, I’m smiling.
His eyes immediately snap to mine, and he smiles back.
It makes my chest squeeze in a painful way, but that’s okay. This crush might be stubborn, but it won’t last.
The tornado ropes out as the storm falls apart.
Chris walks over, holding his phone out so I can see the screen. “If we hurry, we can drop south and east to hook slice this one.” He points at the supercell on his radar app. We don’t usually hook slice, but I trust him. We pack up, climb in, and nothing’s really changed between us.
And if my feelings are complicated, he’ll never know.