5. Annie
Chapter 5
Annie
5 Years Ago
May 11 th
A fter two years of ‘Annie can come if she wants,’ I shouldn’t be surprised to find myself on the team. Not that they officially invite me. I simply start receiving emails from Chris. Forecasts with his notes so I can plan.
Last year, severe weather was sporadic, and I was busy picking up photography gigs for my uncle, who was down a photographer heading into the busy wedding season. I didn’t make it to all the chases. Justin told me I wasn’t missing much—a few nebulous little tornadoes that were nearly impossible to photograph due to poor contrast and many busts. Chris just said it was a quiet year.
This year is different. It started with a bang, and after four days on the road, driving from Texas to Colorado to Nebraska and seeing half a dozen tornadoes—a few of which are highly photogenic—we’re still going strong.
Which is more than I can say for my photography career. My apprenticeship two years ago was great, but I’ve struggled to find work. I’ve spent the last ten months working for a photographer in Oklahoma City and hustling to pay my share of the rent. Getting where I want to be will be a slow climb, but being back on the road has me wondering if I’ve wobbled off track. This is what I need to be doing, not weddings and family portraits.
We didn’t make it to our hotel until late last night but I’m up with the sun. There’s an email in my inbox—notes from Chris and today’s forecast sent fifteen minutes ago. He’ll be out getting a quick run in, and if I’d thought to bring along my running shoes and a sports bra, I’d be tempted to join him. Hours upon hours in a car take a toll on the body. I’m still stiff and need to stretch for a few minutes.
Justin’s not a morning person, so I leave him to whatever time he has left before his alarm goes off. There’s a restaurant on the ground floor of this hotel, and I’m dreaming of pancakes.
Chris is already there, his hair still damp from his shower, and no baseball cap in sight. I can smell his body wash when I slide into the booth across from him. It’s a subtle woodsy scent. Makes me think of misty mornings on a faraway mountain.
He looks up at me from his menu and doesn’t smile—I’m not sure I’ve seen him smile yet—but he says a quiet good morning .
I frown at the papers he’s left strewn over the table. “You want to target Iowa,” I reply instead, reaching for his maps and flipping through them. The maps are all blanks that he prints out at home to fill in with colored pens or markers as he interprets data and makes his forecasts. I have to decipher his sprawling handwriting and the shorthand he uses to find the one I want.
“I think we’ll have more luck here,” I circle my finger around Salina, Kansas, on the map. He sets his menu down and leans forward, frowning but not in a way that looks like he’s annoyed. More like he’s double-checking his work to see if he missed something. It’s weird how well I know him without knowing him at all. I guess spending so many days together on the road can do that.
I talk through my reasoning. I’m not fluent in any of these charts or models, and I use the word thingy more than a few times as a stand-in for words I can’t recall, but Chris gives me his full attention.
I don’t usually give my opinions on chase plans, even when they ask. I’ve seen how heated they can get, and after two years of dating Justin, I’m well aware he doesn’t like being told he’s wrong. Besides, all I want out of chasing with these two is something to photograph.
Chris looks through the latest models on his phone. Twice. Then leans back. “Okay.”
Wait—what? He’s not going to argue?
The waitress comes to take our order, and I stare at him when she leaves. He stares at me.
“So…we’ll target Salina?”
He shrugs. “Sure. We have a good shot at seeing severe storms in either location but looking at the data again, I think you’re right. Our chances for classic supercells are marginally better in Kansas. The drive time will be about the same to either target area, so let’s do it.”
“I thought you’d veto it,” I say as the waitress sets two steaming mugs of black coffee on the table.
Chris pushes the sugar to me. I quickly dump two packets into my coffee.
“If it was a bad idea, I would,” he says. “But it’s not. You’ve been studying?”
“I took that storm spotter course you recommended. Watched about a dozen forecasting videos online. You’re okay to change plans?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“But you and Justin argued for twenty-five minutes yesterday.”
He blows on his coffee and takes a drink. “Yesterday was a different chase day. Different parameters.” He sets his mug on the table and leans forward. “You’re a part of the team. You can make suggestions anytime. Argue with us. It’ll make us all better.”
“Have I proven myself worthy?” I’m half-joking, but I haven’t forgotten what he said on my first chase.
He gives me a look like he doesn’t have time for my shit and refuses to answer, and I know. I’ve proven myself.
“Admit it,” I say, feeling smug. “You couldn’t stand me at first.”
Chris taps his fingers on his mug, and if I’m not mistaken, he looks mildly alarmed. “That’s not it.”
“And I know the exact minute you decided I wouldn’t cost you a tornado intercept.”
He raises an eyebrow.
“April 28th last year. The day I ate all the gas station hot dogs.”
He lifts his mug and takes a drink. “It was the day you ate sushi from the gas station in North Platte. I don’t know how you’re still alive.” There’s a flat amusement in his voice. I suspect I’m about to be compared to Twinkies and cockroaches.
“Why did you drop out?” he asks instead.
I’ll allow the subject to change. I don’t think we’ve ever spoken this many words to each other about anything unrelated to the weather.
The waitress brings a stack of pancakes for me and an omelet for Chris. While we eat, I tell him how my uncle gave me a camera for my eleventh birthday and how, whenever I disappointed my parents, I’d take my camera and go looking for things around the neighborhood to take photos of. I tell him about the local photography contest I won when I was fourteen and how I’d spend summers in Texas with my uncle, following him around and asking him questions.
When Justin slides into the booth next to me, I barely notice. But he wraps an arm around me and pulls me close, murmuring something in my ear that I can’t quite hear, and the atmosphere shifts.
“Change of plans,” Chris tells Justin. “We’re targeting Salina.”
“I like Iowa,” Justin says immediately.
My shoulders sink at the thought that Chris was humoring me.
“Annie?” Chris prompts.
Dammit. I tap my fingers on my cup of coffee and debate agreeing with Justin so we don’t get into a fight, but after talking it over with Chris, I can’t bring myself to do that. I grab the map and point to the numbers Chris scribbled next to Iowa. “The upper-level SR winds are less than forty knots in Iowa. They’re higher in Kansas.” Any tornadoes in Iowa will likely be rain-wrapped beasts we can’t see, which isn’t great for the video footage Chris is still contributing to a larger research project. It’s also not great for my photography.
The difference is marginal, and there are no guarantees that targeting the area around Salina will get us better storms. Or any storms.
“Kansas it is.” Justin smiles and pulls me close again, ignoring Chris, who gets up and walks off, phone in hand. Now it feels like Justin is humoring me. It’s not worth another fight, so I let it go.
We eat breakfast, pack up, and hit the road.
Usually, when we’re chasing, Justin is good about putting our relationship aside and treating me like a colleague. It makes things less awkward for Chris and lets me focus on my photography while Justin focuses on the weather. But something is up today. We don’t have to wait long for storms to fire up, but even after they do, he’s still clingy. Always touching me, never moving far from my side. It’s annoying.
“Hey man,” he says to Chris as he sets up his time-lapse. “I think the anemometer is broken again.”
Chris grumbles something and goes to check on the instrument. He’s barely taken two steps when Justin’s arms snake around my waist.
“What is up with you?” I ask, batting his hands away as I set my tripod up.
“Nothing,” he says, nuzzling against my neck.
It’s day four of our chase, and while I showered last night, I’m already sweaty and dusty. So is Justin. Cuddles are the last thing I want.
“I’m trying to work.” I cover my irritation with a laugh and a teasing push because I want a fight with Justin even less than I want cuddles. “Go help Chris.”
He mutters something, but he goes. I go back to setting up my camera.
The storm is moving fast, so it won’t be long until it’s here. We’re parked to the east of where it should pass, so we should be safe to hold this position. I pull my phone out of my pocket and check the radar app to see what’s happening on the other storms. Namely, the area Chris initially wanted to target in Iowa. If something mind-blowing happens on one of those cells and nothing happens here…
Gravel crunches, and I sigh, expecting Justin to wrap his arms around me again, but when that doesn’t happen, I glance at him.
It’s Chris, standing with his hands in his pockets, looking uncomfortable as hell. Justin is a hundred yards down the road, kicking at rocks.
“Everything okay?” he asks. His eyes stay locked on the distant storm, and he won’t look at me, but it feels like he cares, even if he’s not happy to be in this position.
“Yeah, of course,” I say, tinkering with my camera.
He reaches back to rub his neck and reluctantly says, “Maybe you should go talk to him.”
“Right now?” I fling my hand toward the dark sky to the southwest.
“I’ll keep an eye on your time-lapse.”
I glance at Justin, who is either glaring at us or the storm behind us. “He’s fine.” He isn’t, and to be honest, things aren’t fine between us right now. But we’ve been through rough patches before. This will blow over when the stress of his job settles down. It’s not easy for him to get time off to chase. It was different when he was a student.
Chris takes a deep breath. I feel like the human version of the anemometer he was fixing. “Annie—”
I’m saved when a car full of chasers pulls up and calls out to Chris. He holds my eyes a few seconds longer and tips his head toward Justin before he goes to talk to his colleagues. Fix it.
The problem between Justin and me is still on the horizon, and I don’t want to acknowledge it, let alone chase it, so I ignore Chris’s interference and concentrate on the storm I want to chase.
It spins up a beautiful tornado, and Justin drifts back. We watch silently as the cone-shaped funnel kicks up a dusty debris cloud. I tend to my time-lapse, adjusting my camera when the tornado moves out of frame, and when I realize Chris isn’t coming back, I adjust his, too.
Justin crosses his arms over his chest, but he's relaxed by the time the tornado dissipates.
“Hey,” he says, reaching for me. I relent and let him pull me into an embrace because I get it. One year post-graduation, and things are shitty with his day job. Outside of chasing, we’ve hardly seen each other in months, and it feels like we’re roping out, too. “I’m sorry. It just…feels like we never spend time together anymore. It got under my skin when you didn’t wake me this morning.”
I don’t point out that he doesn’t like getting up early. My early mornings have never been a problem for us. “Do you want me to wake you up tomorrow?”
“I want us to get our own room tonight,” he says.
Maybe we should. I want things to return to being easy and uncomplicated because I don’t think they’ll stay that way long.
I glance over to Chris. He’s talking to a pretty woman in a red T-shirt.
“He won’t mind,” Justin says, following my gaze. “He and Tessa hook up sometimes, so he’ll probably stay with her anyway.”
“Oh.” I don’t know what to say. I didn’t think of Chris as the hook-up kind of guy, but I guess I don’t know anything about his personal life. The idea of him hooking up with Tessa shouldn’t bother me. I shake it off and smile at Justin. “Let’s get our own room.”