12. Annie
Chapter 12
Annie
2 Years Ago
April 17 th
L ast year was insanity. The season was long, and Chris and I spent most of it on the road, driving all over Tornado Alley. We captured massive mothership supercells with striated blue hues and glowing green cores. Sunsets turning the tops gold and blush. Anvil-crawler lightning and ominous shelf clouds.
Then there were the tornadoes. Striking cones, mighty stovepipes, graceful elephant trunks—so many visually stunning storms that tracked for hours across empty rural areas with excellent road networks. And we were there for all of them.
Well, except for the one we missed on our first day after hail took us out of the chase. Naturally, that one was the tornado of the year.
I took so many videos. Time lapses of the storms and videos of breeze-ruffled wildflowers, soaring birds, rusted old farm relics, and scurrying lizards. And myself, narrating. I kept Chris out of my shots, but I didn’t edit out the odd glimpse of him when he wandered into the frame. I couldn’t bring myself to erase him.
After the season finished, I spent hours combing through all the footage, cutting it together until I had a somewhat cohesive narrative of our storm-chasing season. I set a particularly stunning time-lapse to music composed by a friend.
One of the films I made won a little award, and I sold some of my footage to a movie studio. The video I put online of the season—while not a masterpiece since it’s mostly me entertaining myself—has gotten hundreds of thousands of views on social media. My career is on a huge upswing, and for the first time since I sold my footage of the Meadow Springs tornado to news outlets, I’ve made some money from chasing.
It was a good year for storms.
And things got better with Chris. He was still a little quieter than usual, but the season dragged on, and trying to make his research budget stretch enough for separate hotel rooms and still put gas in the tank would make me grumpy, too. And it probably wasn’t easy being away from Jenna so much. She warmed up to me, but I could tell she was glad when the season finished and I returned to Texas.
Until a month ago, Chris and I hadn’t exchanged a single email or text.
That space allowed me to meet someone, and it’s going well. Marc is a counselor at a high school. He’s kind and intelligent, attentive and interesting, and when he dropped me off at the airport this morning, he kissed me and told me to be safe and have fun. He knows I’m chasing with Chris, and he trusts me. He might be perfect. No shade on any of my exes, but it’s the first time I’m in a mature, stable relationship. Marc doesn’t get mad at me when I fail to read his mind. He’s not clingy and jealous of other men. It feels amazing.
I grab my luggage—my cameras are in my carry-on, so I only have a smallish suitcase of clothes—and turn around, finding myself face-to-face with Chris.
He grins at me and wraps me into a hug. I'm not ready for this after the distance between us last year. I’m holding two suitcases, so I can only stand awkwardly. But he’s warm and solid, and his woodsy scent is so familiar. I’ve missed him.
The hug goes a beat too long before he releases me, but it has nothing on the last year’s embarrassment. It still leaves me flustered, though.
“How was the flight?” he asks, reaching for my bags. I give him the suitcase full of clothes because no one touches my babies except me.
“Good, but I’m ready to hit the road.” We’re chasing a couple of hours west of Oklahoma City today. Up in Kansas tomorrow. So we’re basing ourselves here. Chris offered me his spare room, but I booked a hotel. I’ve had a good year financially. I can afford it now. And I don’t want to step on Jenna’s toes.
We talk about the weather—or rather, Chris does. He’s downright chatty as we walk to the parking lot and his SUV. I’m about to ask him what’s up when an excited bark draws my attention.
“Charlie!” I call out in surprise. She’s so excited to see me that she’s shaking. “What are you doing here?” I reach through the open window to let her lick my hands as I try to pet her.
“She’s coming with us today,” Chris says.
“Jenna out of town?”
He hesitates for half a beat, and I know before he says it. “We broke up.”
“Oh, Chris.” My heart squeezes in sympathy and foolishly beats faster. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”
He reaches past me to pat his dog. “I’m good.”
“When?” I ask.
“Six weeks ago.”
So recent. He looks good, though. Not sad. Maybe he ended it? A part of me wants to know everything. A bigger part of me doesn’t want to touch on the topic of his ex.
“How was Canada?” he asks.
I didn’t go to Canada. Something about the tone in his voice—oh. My fake boyfriend, Kian. I groan. “There was no Kian. I lied to put Jenna at ease.”
Chris blinks at me, stunned.
“Yeah, it was dumb, I know,” I say with a wince, “but I didn’t want to cause any problems between you, and I thought if I had a boyfriend…” I shrug and pat Charlie, who’s whipping her head between us, trying to lick us both. “I panicked.”
He finally laughs and shakes his head. Our hands, patting Charlie, brush. I pull mine back, much to Charlie’s irritation. She nuzzles at me and whines. Sorry, Charlie. It’s the butterflies in my stomach, I tell her with my eyes.
“Well,” he says, ducking his head, the ends of his ears going red. “You don’t need a fake boyfriend this year. I’m not seeing anyone.”
“Oh. Um. That’s too bad.” I pat Charlie and stare into her dark eyes and wish…I don’t know. That this stubborn crush would go away. “I’m seeing someone. For real.”
Chris laughs again, but it’s short and sharp. He stops petting Charlie to grab my suitcase again. “You ready?”
“Yeah,” I say, breathing a sigh of relief as he walks to the back of the SUV with my suitcase. He shouldn’t make my heart feel the way it does—so full one minute, aching so hard the next. I am supposed to be over this crush. I really thought I was.
“Charlie,” I whisper with a soft sigh, giving the pup a final pat before bringing my camera bag to Chris. I only micromanage him a little about safely storing thousands of dollars of camera equipment, but he takes it in stride, and soon enough, we’re on the road.
“Snacks in the glove box,” he says, tugging his hat lower over his eyes. Does his voice sound a little tight? Or is it always like that and I forgot?
I open the glove box to have something to do. There’s a small box with a single chocolate glazed donut inside. Deeper in the glove box, there’s a bag of Twizzlers.
“I figured there was a fifty-fifty chance you forgot breakfast,” Chris explains.
Marc cooked me breakfast, but I don’t say that. “Stop for a coffee before we leave the city, and I’ll split it with you.”
His caffeine addiction rivals mine, so we stop for coffee. He refuses half the donut. I eat it all despite my churning stomach.
We talk a little—mainly about the chase—and Chris falls into silence. It’s heavy. His expression is neutral, but there’s a sadness that’s rubbing onto me. Or maybe it’s mine affecting him.
I take some videos as we drive to distract myself and get my head in the game. I get shots of the scenery out the window and turn to capture Charlie lying in the backseat, her eyes inquisitive as she rests her head on her paws.
“Can I include you in the footage this year?” I ask Chris. I start to explain what I did with last year’s material, but he cuts me off.
“I watched all the videos you posted,” he says. “You can film me if you want.”
I need to lay off the espresso because my heart flutters double time at the thought of Chris watching my videos. “What did you think?” I ask.
“They’re good.”
“ They’re good? That’s all I get?” I tease. “Do I have to beg for compliments?”
He glances at me but doesn’t smile. “They’re fun and educational, and your footage is phenomenal as always. Better?”
“Better,” I lie. It would be if he’d smiled.
We stop for lunch and find a park with short grass where Chris can let Charlie run for a while. I watch them from the shade of a tree. The repetitive nature is soothing, but that’s not why I can’t look away. It’s the way he stands. The way his arm pulls back and whips forward to throw the tennis ball. The follow through. Perfect form because he played baseball back in college.
Everything about him is familiar from so much time spent together yet unfamiliar from the long fallow periods. Watching him play with his dog is new, and the emotion it’s dredging up is choking me. I want to learn the things about him I don’t know, like what he looks like on Christmas morning, how he unwinds on his days off, and what it would feel like to kiss him. To feel his body against mine.
I lean against the tree for a moment and let my heart soak in the longing. This crush is dramatic, so I give it space. Then I pull it back and pack it away because I’m with Marc. Happiness will be waiting for me at the end of the season, a reward for a miserable three months of trying to starve this crush of oxygen in a gale-force wind.
Chris waves me over. I double-check that the locks on my feelings are secure before I join him. He drops the ball into my hand. “I need a break,” he says. “Try not to hit Charlie.” Charlie waits, focused on the ball, her whole body a spring ready to unleash.
“Very funny,” I say, and there’s something in our shared laugh at the drunken game of darts in a hole-in-the-wall bar. Something in the depths of his blue eyes verging on sadness, like it did that night.
I turn toward Charlie and throw the ball—it sails over her head, and she races off, a flash of tan fur. When I glance over my shoulder at Chris, he’s mostly turned away, looking at something on his phone.
We get a beautiful stovepipe ninety minutes later, making all the pain worth it.
At dusk, we head back to Oklahoma City. Chris drops me off at my hotel and picks me up again in the morning, and we drop Charlie off at his sister’s on the way to our next target. Charlie races around the large backyard, followed by Chris’s laughing nieces.
We’re on the road too soon, reaching our chase area in time to catch up to a massive wedge, only for it to rain-wrap for a while, but the rain blows out, revealing a white cone with a cotton candy wall cloud. It slowly ropes out, but the storm puts down another tornado to the north—two beautiful tornadoes on the ground. We’re in the perfect position to capture both. The photos and video are easily as good as last year's better chase days. I’m so excited I’m buzzing.
When the show’s over, we head to a hotel.
“One room,” I say when Chris asks about two. Last year was a drain on our finances, so I explained the situation to Marc, who agreed it made sense and told me he wouldn’t be upset if Chris and I shared a room because he trusts me. Unlike Jenna, a tiny, peevish part of me wants to add, but that’s unfair. She didn’t have time to process that her boyfriend would spend so much time with me. I told Marc straight up what the situation was. If he had a problem with it, I would have walked. This is my life from April to June. I’m not going to be with someone who’ll resent that.
Chris looks doubtful, but he books us one room anyway. We unload our gear and head out to the bar across the street.
The place is packed, and we join a group of chasers. I order a beer and a plate of nachos and talk to a couple about the day’s chase and tomorrow’s plans. It feels good to be with a big group of people I’ve slowly come to know from small chance encounters over the years.
Chris sits next to Tessa, and I try not to notice the flirty smiles and little touches. Their intimate familiarity gets under my skin.
I try to eat my nachos and join in the conversation, ignoring what’s happening at the other end of the table, but my stomach is sour. Reminding myself that it’s none of my business and I have Marc isn’t helping.
Eventually, Chris and Tessa get up. He comes around to stand behind me, bending to say quietly into my ear, “I’ll see you in the morning.”
I nod and swallow the lump in my throat. “Have fun,” I say weakly, watching his hand on the small of her back as Chris and Tessa walk out the door.