Chapter Two
It doesn’t take long to finish up the last couple of photos and send the final images off to my remaining couples. My bags are mostly packed, with just about everything stacked next to the door for the morning. All that’s left is one last thing I’d really rather just…not.
Reluctantly, I open the text thread with my two younger brothers and take a deep breath.
Reminder that I leave tomorrow. Mom is your responsibility for the next six weeks. That means check on her. Repeatedly. The lawn NEEDS to get mowed so the HOA doesn’t fine her again. No repeats of her losing her shit on Mrs. Campbell in the driveway like last year.
Sam sends back the saluting emoji within thirty seconds. Eric types for so long I’m expecting a novel, but in the end, he just says, You give us this lecture every year. Mom is almost fifty. House hasn’t burned down yet.
Of course it hasn’t. I’ve spent my whole life running around with fire extinguishers—the metaphorical and literal kind.
I scowl at the screen. Eric is the older of my brothers at twenty-five, with a very selective ability to adult.
When it comes to his business—an auto body shop he’s worked hard to turn into reliable income—he’s nothing but responsible.
On the other hand, there’s not much difference between him and Sam, who’s two years younger and finishing law school, when it comes to managing our mother.
And she definitely needs managing.
Mom had us young. I never knew my dad, who took off when I was still a baby, and though my brothers sometimes see their father, he wasn’t much interested in having a stepdaughter for the short time he stuck around.
Eric and Sam only know the after version of our mom. The one with a bad case of learned helplessness and a firm belief that a man is the solution to all of life’s problems, even if that man is ten red flags in a trench coat. Especially if he’s ten red flags in a trench coat.
And my brothers only know the version of me who became responsible for picking up the pieces far too young—and never figured out how to stop twenty-something years later.
Consequently, our relationship teeters between periods of closeness and times where I wonder if we’re just trauma bonded from the same never-ending chaos surrounding our mother.
Not wanting to go to bed with lingering resentment toward my man-child brothers so fresh, I open my chaser group text thread to check in.
I’ve been chasing long enough that there are dozens of names and numbers in my contacts I can always reach out to for intel or advice, but I spend the majority of my time with a smaller core group.
Years ago, it was just me and Tracy. Once she started dating Matt, unfortunately for me, his best friend, Wes, got added to our merry band of misfits.
Now that Tracy and Matt are engaged, there’s no escaping Wes for the foreseeable future.
I must have pissed in the universe’s Cheerios this morning, because Wes is the first thing I see when I open our text thread.
Matt’s Enjoy that paint job while it lasts is followed by a barrage of baseball, tennis ball, and tornado emojis, along with a series of screenshots taken off Wes’s social media.
In his usual snug T-shirt and a pair of dark jeans, he’s leaned back with his elbows on the hood of a brand-new SUV, gazing off into the distance like he’s posing for a fashion shoot.
The fact that the custom Chase vanity plate is visible confirms that the shiny new ride definitely belongs to him.
It’s the sort of thing he’s known for. One part adventure photographer, one part thirst trap.
As talented as Wes is behind the camera, he doesn’t have a million-plus followers who are just really into landscapes.
Every time I glance at his page, there are plenty of women—and men—in his comments with everything from cheesy pickup lines—I’ll be a tornado if you’ll chase me might be the most eye-rolling yet—to explicit invitations.
Wes’s reply in the group text is twenty minutes old.
You can admit you’re jealous. This is a safe space.
He added a few more shots of himself in the same general pose, except this time he’s drenched, and he’s found a cowboy hat who knows where.
His clothes cling like a second skin, jeans painted to his thighs and thumbs hooked into his belt while he smolders directly into the camera.
He should be staring at the storm looming like the end of the world behind him—but that’s Wes. Too busy feeding his ego to pay attention to anything else.
Annoyed, I swipe out of the group text and tap on Tracy’s name instead. I see Wes is on his usual bullshit already.
Her reply comes back a few minutes later as I’m brushing my teeth. I was just about to text you! Matt and I had lunch with him today. He said he saw you last week. Are you out here early and didn’t tell me?!
I’m surprised that he mentioned it, but then again, he’s close with Matt, so maybe it’s not that strange.
Shaking my head, I quickly explain about the wedding.
Thankfully the conversation turns to the forecast and our hopes that the models for the next couple of days showing higher dew points—the moisture-rich air needed to fuel storms—prove accurate.
With promises to bring Tracy some snacks from “civilization” when I see her tomorrow, I set my phone down, determined to focus on myself for the next six weeks. Not my mother, not my brothers, and definitely not Wes Talbot.
I can’t help that I’ll run into him at gas stations, hotels, coffee shops, and restaurants countless times over the next six weeks—likely as an involuntary witness to the finding out part of his fucking around.
We’ll do our usual snarky jokes-that-aren’t-always-entirely-funny thing, probably piss each other off a few times, share a beer at an Applebee’s at one in the morning in the middle of nowhere when I’m too exhausted to remember he’s bad news, and do it all again next year.
Wes will be insufferable if he wins the contest, but if I win, I can’t deny that rubbing it in his face is absolutely on the agenda.
Maybe I’ll have my cover printed on a coffee mug.
Or postcards that I can leave under his windshield in hotel parking lots for the next couple of years.
Not to mention that the next time he starts lecturing me about switching out my gear to his oh-so-superior pick, I can remind him that my choice landed me on the cover of Nature Shots.
The thought puts a smile on my face as I sink into a deep sleep.
Thankful to be hitting the road and inaccessible to my mother—not being able to find her favorite handbag is not the emergency she thinks it is—I point myself east early the next morning.
In my rearview, pink paints the still snowcapped Front Range, while ahead of me, oranges and reds burn across the eastern sky.
Buoyed by the high of witnessing some sky magic, I stop long enough to grab a cup of coffee and top off my gas tank.
I’ve got about eight hours to get into West Texas ahead of today’s storms. Which means it’s me, my favorite road trip playlist—a chaotic combination of genres featuring my favorite songs to sing along to with an audience of none—and a couple hundred miles of highway for the rest of the morning.
Once I’m clear of Colorado Springs, I savor the open fields and fresh air—at least until I drive past one of the massive cattle operations hours later. I can’t recommend taking a deep breath of that particular odor.
Trading voice notes with Tracy, we eventually agree to meet in a small town just over the New Mexico border. There’s a gas station right off the highway where we can relax before things fire up in the next hour or two.
It’s plainly one of those places that stays in business due to truckers coming through on cross-country routes.
Today, there are easily thirty-something storm chasers milling about.
I instantly spot several familiar faces standing around in a loose circle, though Tracy’s last message puts her and Matt another ten minutes out.
For now, it appears I’m the only woman. Not unusual, but depending on who else is lurking, could be unpleasant.
After a quick fill up, I head inside. The cashiers have a shell-shocked looked about them, not exactly surprising when this place probably sees twenty customers a day, not fifty in an hour. Half the shelves are empty, and at least one of the trash cans is overflowing.
Welcome to storm season.
There are a couple of other unfamiliar chasers roaming the store, easily identifiable by the embroidered tour company tornado logo on their hats.
I’d recognize them as chasers even without the hats.
These two stick out like a sore thumb in their expensive tech fabrics and high-end watches in this part of the country.
I flash a tight smile, not in the mood to socialize with strangers, and gesture to the drink case they’re blocking. “Mind if I get by you?”
“Sure, darling.” The two men shuffle to the side but don’t move entirely, leaving only a narrow gap to reach into the cooler.
I bite my cheek so I don’t react to the darling.
Wes calls me that sometimes, but when he does it, he’s always wearing a shit-eating grin.
It’s obnoxious, but childishly trying to push my buttons isn’t what this guy is up to.
His leering isn’t a joke, his tone patronizing.
“You out here with your boyfriend, sweetheart?” the other one adds while dragging his stare over my legs.
My temper flares. It doesn’t matter that I switched out my colorful leggings years ago for plain black, or that I’m not the only one wearing flip-flops for the long drives and swapping into sturdier shoes before the chase gets serious.
The baseline assumption that I’m only here because I’m some guy’s arm candy persists.