15. Annie
Chapter 15
Annie
3 Months Ago
April 28 th
I don’t know when chasing with Chris turned into constantly poking at a bruise. We’re three weeks into a season of murky, disappointing, non-photogenic tornadoes just like last year’s bullshit, and the excitement I felt at being back on the road has evaporated like a puddle.
Chris is distant despite being perfectly amiable when he had breakfast with me and Marc this morning. He refused the spare bedroom in our new house but accepted staying in my tiny house.
It’s still my house. When I explained to Marc how important it was to me, he dropped the issue, and since then, it’s become my office. I’m operating my own small photography business under the umbrella of my uncle’s wedding photography business, so it’s a convenient space.
I’m driving. Chris is in the passenger seat with his faded OU cap pulled low over his face. The bill is curved so much I can’t see his eyes—they might even be closed, but he’s not asleep. Now and again, he sighs so softly that I’m sure he’s unaware he’s doing it.
He’s changed since we met eight years ago. He keeps his hair shorter than when we first met, has crinkles at the corners of his eyes, and has lost that boyishness. I like these changes, even if they remind me of the clock ticking slowly but constantly forward.
Other changes I don’t like. He seldom meets my eyes, even when I’m deliberately trying to grab his attention. There’s a distance between us. I noticed it last year, and this year, it’s worse. I can’t help feeling like I’m losing my chase partner, my friend. The man who has more of my heart than he’ll ever know. I don’t want to lose him.
My stomach is tied in knots, and I try to focus on the road, but how many years do we have in us? It felt like forever once, but he’s going to settle down. Have kids. I don’t think he’s seeing anyone, but it’s inevitable.
And me?
I don’t know. Marc wants to get married one day, and while he’s trying not to pressure me, I can tell he sees this happening soon—the next year or two.
Logically, I know it doesn’t mean my life has to change. Marc is happy for me to hop on a plane to Japan, Sumatra, or Finland if an opportunity arises. He’s fine with me storm chasing all spring. He’s not insecure about us, and my happiness matters to him.
Nothing has to change, but I don’t trust that it won’t. I’m afraid storm chasing will be the first casualty.
One time, while we were chasing a few years ago, we rolled up on a really ugly storm. The parameters for violent tornadoes were off the chart that day. It was moving fast, the entire mesocyclone spinning low and dark, the vault glowing an eerie green. Everything about it felt wrong.
Chris had pulled over and studied the storm for twenty, maybe thirty seconds before shaking his head. “Nope.”
We’d turned around and found a different storm to chase. That first storm had put down a massive mile-wide wedge. It had taken a sudden left turn, causing chasers to scramble out of the way.
This tension with Chris feels like facing that kind of unpredictable storm on the horizon. Knowing it’s coming and it’s too late to avoid it. One day, our partnership will end. I probably won’t know my last chase is my final chase until it’s over.
Thinking about all this gives me a headache, but focusing on my playlist or the storms firing in a couple of hours is impossible. I want…too many things.
It’s my turn to give a little sigh.
I can see for miles down the road, and there’s no oncoming traffic. No one behind me either. So I drift, the slightest bit, over the centerline.
Chris stiffens, turning to look at me. I pull back into my lane and shoot him a smile, but the look in his eyes is an arrow through the heart. Behind the mild alarm is a haunted look. Maybe that storm on the horizon is coming faster than I thought. Maybe it’s almost here.
He sits up straighter, pulling out his phone and checking the latest radar images. Or messaging other chasers to see what they’re up to. I can only assume because he doesn’t tell me.
We reach our target area and find a place to park while we wait. I spot a horned lizard and spend fifteen minutes photographing it while Chris sits in the shade of the SUV’s hatch, drinking from a water bottle.
Maybe the heat’s getting to me—I’m feeding off the energy in the atmosphere like the cumulus towers bubbling up around us. I’m uncomfortable, anxious, even. I want to get the hell out of here before it’s too late and the truth comes screaming out of me. I can’t do that to us. Not to Marc, either.
The lizard distracts me for a while, but eventually, it goes where I can’t follow—under a barbed wire fence. I put my camera away, grab my water bottle, and join Chris at the back of the SUV. But when I sit next to him, he stands.
“I think we should go north,” I say, desperate to stop him from walking away.
It works. Chris stops, turning toward me, his deep blue eyes narrowed. “Why?”
I’m talking out of my ass. We’re exactly where we should be, and we both know it, but if this is the only way we can communicate anymore, then so be it.
Phone in hand, he steps back into the shade of the hatch, ready to back up his opinion with data. Maybe he knows what I’m doing, and he’s as sick of this distance as I am because we argue for a solid ten minutes, but when I finally concede he’s right about our location, he stays by my side.
It’s companionable, even if Chris stares at his dusty boots and I stare out at the horizon, and we’re both paying more attention to each other than we are to anything else.
The storms fire up. We wait, watching the radar and the darkening sky to the southwest. It’s coming, whether I’m ready for it or not.
We adjust our position to let the storm come to us, and I set up a time-lapse. The rumble of thunder overtakes the chirping of birds and grasshoppers. My hands are sweaty, and I rub them on my shorts.
The storm is a messy blob on radar, a high precipitation monster with strong rotation that quickly picks up a radar-indicated tornado warning. The storm seems to be deviating a little. It's a good sign, except it puts us in the path of the hail core.
“Let’s head east, then take the next road south,” Chris suggests. “Try to stay ahead of it.”
The hail core on the radar looks beastly, and I don’t want to lose the windshield any more than he does, so I pack up my stuff. We head east and drop south.
Chris grumbles a curse under his breath as the storm overtakes us ten minutes later. It’s picked up speed and is taking a more easterly track now. We’re still in the path of the hail core.
Rain lashes at the car, and we’re pelted by the wind as Chris white-knuckles the steering wheel, trying to find a balance between hydroplaning and escaping. I fidget with my camera strap. Hail—thankfully on the smaller end—pings off of the SUV, punctuated occasionally by a louder thunk from a bigger hailstone.
I don’t like this. The rain slows us down enough that we won’t be able to get ahead of the mesocyclone.
“We’ll have to play the notch,” Chris says, loud above the slap of rain and the swish of the wipers. His voice is tight, and he doesn’t like this, either.
We don’t ordinarily core punch to chase from the notch. Driving through the heaviest rain and hail of the forward flank downdraft—the part of the storm that’s not rotating—to attempt to get a view of a tornado from the inflow notch is dangerous. We could lose our windows to hail, but we could also drive directly into the path of a situation we can’t see, like a mile-wide rain-wrapped wedge.
“Maybe we should bail west,” Chris says after a few minutes. “Any options?”
He can’t take his eyes off the tiny bit of road visible in front of us, so I glance at the navigation software. “No. Should we turn around?”
“Radar?”
I glance at the reflectivity radar. “Broad rotation above us,” I say. “Maybe behind us now. Strong couplet to our south still.”
The radar is updated every few minutes, so it’s not perfectly accurate. We can’t see any rotation with the rain, but the bright red next to the bright green is evident on the screen. The storm might be getting ready to spin up a new tornado right on top of us. There’s a smaller, tighter velocity couplet further south—where a tornado is confirmed on the ground. We might be sandwiched between two tornadoes, unable to see either in the rain.
Chris glances at the screen but can’t take his eyes off the road for more than a second. His face has gone pale, a sheen of sweat reflecting the lights off the dashboard. Strong easterly winds are shaking the SUV. It’s dark and loud and tears well up in my eyes as I clutch my camera in my trembling hands, silently praying to the universe that we make it out of this alive.
We don’t chase like this. This isn’t who we are, and I don’t know how we got here or how we get out. The storm is all around us, flashing and roaring and angry.
“I’ll pull a U-turn,” Chris says, slowing down, but there’s uncertainty in his voice. We might have cleared the broad rotation, so turning around could put us in a place we don’t want to be. He knows that. But the tornado south of us is confirmed.
“Can you see enough of the road for that?” The odds of getting T-boned by oncoming traffic or driving into a ditch are greater than getting hit by a tornado. Probably. “Maybe we should pull over and wait it out?”
A muscle in his jaw twitches. This storm has already displayed some deviant motion. If it turns left, as some of these high-precipitation supercells tend to do, we’ll be sitting ducks.
“Wait, look.” The sky is brightening ahead of us, and for a stupid moment, I think maybe we’ve cleared it. We’ll sit this out in the inflow notch, and everything will be fine.
Wind slams against the front of the SUV, and I gasp. We’re in the bear’s cage.
Chris swears and brakes as ghostly vortices tear at the ground a hundred feet away, vanishing as new ones appear. Clumps of dirt and crops whip by, splattering against our vehicle. The vortices are growing taller, reaching higher, across my entire field of vision, close enough to touch, and getting closer. The bear is here.
It’s loud, so loud. My ears pop. Larger debris slams into us, and I scream.
“Hold on!” Chris yells, grabbing for me and shoving me down between our seats. He throws himself on me, locking his arms around me as I grasp for him.
Glass shatters.
My ears pop again, and I can barely breathe as debris pelts my arms, my legs, and my lower back.
The SUV lurches, and I have the sickening sensation of weightlessness before the world slams into us. We’re knocked about, rolling over and over as metal crunches.
It lasts a lifetime, and I think this is it. We’re going to die.
Chris is taking the brunt of the debris that batters my arms, caging me under his upper body. I can’t protect him, but I can hold onto him. I won’t let go.
We slam to a stop right side up, but I still feel like I’m spinning, and it’s not over yet. The wind continues to shriek. Cold rain and sharp bits of debris slap against my arms and legs. Another lifetime passes before everything quiets.
Reality comes back in painfully loud heartbeats.
Dark. Everything.
Chris, no longer on top of me.
Me, reaching blindly for him.
Chris’s hand, finding mine and squeezing tight.
The breath I’m holding forced out in a choked sob.
My name. Over and over.
Chris releases my hand to cup my face, his thumbs brushing over my cheeks, and I realize he’s begging me to open my eyes, to be okay, to please be alive.
I open my eyes to find his face inches away, his tan skin smeared in dirt, the blue eyes I love so much filled with tears and so much relief.
“Are you hurt?” he asks.
I shake my head. I can move. I’m not trapped. Nothing hurts, although that’s adrenaline. I’ll be sore as hell when it wears off. “You?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “No, I’m—fuck, Annie, I’m sorry.”
His hands keep stroking the sides of my face and into my hair, holding me tight like he’s afraid to let go. Somehow, I’ve grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt near his collar. We stare at each other for a long moment, smiling because we’re alive.
An anguished look crosses his face, but his fingers tighten in my hair. He pulls me close, and his lips crash into mine. It’s sweet and raw, everything we’ve never said crushed into one desperate kiss. Years of thirst finally sated as my heart screams him and yes and more .
Chris pulls back abruptly, my name a whisper on his lips, but my hands are still wrapped in his shirt, and when I pull, he comes. Our lips meet again, and now I’m devouring, clawing for the seat belt release and climbing shakily onto his lap. The fucking airbag is in the way as I try to squeeze between his body and the steering wheel.
His stubble is rough under my palms, his hair damp between my fingers. His hands move down my body and back up under my shirt, and then I’m pulling the shirt off and tossing it aside. Our lips find each other’s again, rough now. There’s desperation in his touch, and I feel his warm hands everywhere. He slides them under my ass and pulls me up his body, his mouth hot on my chest as his grip lowers to where my ass meets my thighs, his fingers so close to where I need his touch.
I clutch him, tightening my grip on his hair, and all I can think of is mine . I love him. We’re alive and together, and I’m so fucking relieved. “Chris,” I murmur. “I—”
His hands immediately go to my hips, and he gently pushes me against the deflated airbag. There’s something grave in his expression that I don’t like, so I lean forward and kiss him again.
He gently turns my face, breaking the kiss. “Enough,” he says, his voice quiet and pained.
Enough doesn’t exist, not in this, not when I want so much more. I want to kiss him for hours. I want him inside me. I want to see everything I’m feeling mixed with pleasure reflected at me in his blue eyes. I’ve waited so long. This is barely the start.
Chris brushes his thumb over my cheek. There’s no pleasure in the way he’s looking at me. Only pain. It’s thick in his voice as he whispers my name.
And I remember.
Marc.
Guilt slaps me hard, and I fumble for the door handle. Thankfully, when I push it hard enough, it opens, and I slip out.
My legs wobble like they’re brand new, and I make it two steps before I fall to my knees. We’re in a green, sweet-smelling field, wet with rain. A series of chaotic paths rip across the field fifty feet away, scoured by the tornado. The storm is already in the distance, the tornado a menacing wedge pulling curtains of rain around it.
I glance at the SUV as Chris climbs out of it. The roof is dented and compacted, worse in the back than in the front. The whole thing is beat to hell. We must have rolled a few times. For a moment, I wonder if we really survived. Maybe this is some kind of afterlife or lingering post-mortem consciousness.
Nausea hits out of nowhere, and I lean forward, emptying my stomach onto the ground in front of me. Over and over until everything hurts from retching, which at least reassures me I’m still alive.
When it stops, Chris hands me a water bottle, lets me drink, then pulls one of his shirts over my head. He wraps a shiny emergency blanket around my shoulders and helps me to my feet.
Chris.
Kissing him was wrong, however right it felt. I wouldn’t have stopped if he hadn’t said enough .
He wraps one arm around me, and we start across the field.
There are so many things I want to say to him. I love him—have loved him for years. As soon as we’re back in Texas, I’ll tell Marc it’s over. But is telling Chris how I feel crossing a line? I already crossed it in the SUV. Maybe I crossed it long ago by trying to love Marc when I already loved Chris. I don’t know. I don’t know what to say, what to do. The guilt I’m carrying grows heavier with every step we take.
We make it to the road as a car pulls up. Another group of chasers spills out. Everyone is talking simultaneously, and I can’t focus. Chris hands me off, and I startle when Tessa wraps her arm around me and tries to guide me to the car. I don’t budge.
I watch Chris as he tells them what happened, but I’m not listening. I can’t stop thinking about the warmth of his lips and how badly I want to feel them pressed to mine again.
Another car pulls up. More chasers. Chris ignores me while he talks to them, and I can feel my heart sinking because maybe…maybe it didn’t mean anything to him. Maybe he kissed me because the adrenaline scrambled his brain.
My knees go out, and I stumble forward. Someone puts me in a car, but I keep staring at Chris, willing him to look at me.
When he finally does, he gives me a tight smile and hands me my bag with my cameras. I hadn’t noticed he’d taken them out of the SUV.
“I hope nothing’s broken,” he says quietly, his expression grave. “I’ll try to find the other one.” The one I’d been filming with. It would have been in my lap when the tornado struck. My favorite camera. The one I’d pestered Chris about over a series of emails, asking for his thoughts until he told me to buy it or he’d buy it for me to shut me up.
“I’ll call you soon,” he promises.
The car door closes. He’s not coming with me. He’s staying behind.
I turn to look out the back window, watching Chris as he makes his way back across the field with a handful of other chasers. I watch him until we’re too far down the road, and he disappears.