Fourteen
The newsroom felt different the moment she stepped inside.
Not noisy. Not messy.
Electrified.
Scanners chirped nonstop. Pages rustled. Someone was swearing at AP NewsTrack near the assignment desk. The weather center glowed with maps in shades of blue, purple, and an angry red she had learned meant trouble.
A meteorologist muttered something under his breath as he updated the graphic. “This is going to slam us.”
Savannah tightened her grip on her laptop bag. The cold from outside hadn’t left her fingers yet, but the heat of the newsroom made her pulse jump anyway.
She still wasn’t used to the pacing here. WDTV moved faster than her old station. Stronger. Like stepping onto a treadmill someone else had already set to sprint.
“Savannah!” Henry called, waving a sheet of paper. He didn’t stop walking as he spoke. “Storm’s shifting east. Everyone’s assignments are up in the air, so don’t get too attached to whatever you think you’re doing.”
She nodded, even though he was already halfway across the room.
At her desk, she tried to check her email, but her eyes pulled across the bullpen before she could stop them. Tilly was by the gear closet, their jacket half unzipped, one hand braced on a pelican case while they talked to another photog. The way they moved looked like they were trying not to pace.
It was stupid, but Savannah felt the tension from twenty feet away.
She clicked her trackpad too loudly and forced herself to look anywhere else.
Before she could pretend to do something productive, a producer barreled toward her. “Okay, if this system holds, we might pair you with—”
Another producer yelled her name from across the room.
“Wait!” she called back, pivoting. “We’re rearranging again!”
Savannah blinked at the half-sentence floating in the air like smoke.
‘We might pair you with…’
Her stomach clenched before she could even think it through.
Not dread.
Something worse.
Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t—
Her eyes flicked to the gear closet anyway.
Tilly was no longer talking. They were rolling a tripod out, jaw set, eyes narrowed as they scanned the assignment board. Their gaze caught the producer who had just shouted across the room.
For a split second, it felt like the entire newsroom paused.
But then Tilly looked away.
And Savannah did too.
Too fast. Too obvious.
Henry returned with a marker and started crossing names off the whiteboard.
“Savannah, you’re on the business corridor preview with Andrew,” he said without looking up. “Tilly, I want you pre-positioned for evening standups if the storm shifts. Stay loose.”
Savannah swore she saw Tilly’s head turn slightly at their name. Not toward her. Just toward the sound. But their shoulders tensed, like their body betrayed something their face wouldn’t show.
Fine. Good. They were both pretending.
Andrew showed up with printed notes and a coffee that smelled like caramel and regret. “Let’s roll.”
“Yep,” she said, grabbing her bag, though her eyes darted to Tilly one more time.
They caught each other in a glance neither meant to make.
Savannah stiffened.
Tilly looked away first, but only by half a second.
Just enough to sting.
Just enough to matter.
More than it should have.
Outside, the wind knifed across the parking lot, sharp enough to make Savannah’s eyes water. Snow hadn’t started yet, but something about the air felt heavy. Expectant.
Andrew rattled off details, but Savannah barely absorbed them.
Every time she blinked, she saw Tilly in the gear closet again, jaw tight, eyes flicking her way before snapping forward — like her brain refused to move on.
This was ridiculous.
And completely out of her control.
They barely talked.
They barely knew each other.
That should have made this easier.
They had exactly one moment that almost felt warm outside City Hall and a cheek kiss that barely counted.
So why did her chest feel tight?
They shot the business corridor preview quickly. Business owners were already stacking sandbags by their doors, something she’d only ever seen in hurricane coverage back home.
As she rewrote standup lines in the car, her phone buzzed nonstop.
Storm intensifying.
Be prepared for overnight coverage.
Assignments are changing again.
Back in the newsroom, everything had turned frantic.
Meteorologists were debating models.
Editors were cutting filler packages to make space.
Producers were yelling across desks, trying to lock down live shots.
Henry’s voice boomed over it all. “Savannah, stand by. You might get moved to Worcester if they call a travel advisory.”
She swallowed hard. “Got it.”
Tilly passed behind her with a tripod, but their footsteps slowed for just one second as they walked by her desk.
Savannah felt it.
The pause.
The awareness.
The shift in their breath.
They didn’t look at her.
She didn’t look at them.
Not directly.
But the air between them tightened like a wire.
Someone shouted, “We might pair—”
Then cut themselves off mid-sentence again as another alert came in.
Paired. Not paired. Together. Split. Rearranged. Reassigned.
Like the universe was trying to drag them into the same orbit and then yanking them apart at the last second, before either of them could decide what to do about it.
Savannah stared at her blank laptop screen. Her reflection looked anxious.
She hated that she could name the reason.
Avoidance wasn’t distance.
It was fear with good posture.
And she was very good at both.
The first snowflakes hit the windows, clinging to the glass like tiny warnings.
Savannah felt her pulse jump.
Storm outside.
Storm inside.
A storm between them that neither of them would acknowledge.
But she could feel it.
And she knew Tilly could too.
Savannah stood and crossed the newsroom to refill her water bottle, trying to shake the nerves building in her chest. As she passed the edit bays, she heard Tilly’s voice inside one of them, low and steady as they reviewed audio levels.
She didn’t stop. She didn’t look. But the sound of their voice hit her in a way she wasn’t prepared for, a soft crack under the noise of the storm coverage.
She moved faster than necessary back toward her desk.
By the time she sat down again, the windows were dusted white.
The city outside was disappearing behind sheets of fast-falling snow.
The newsroom lights flickered slightly under the pressure of the building’s generators kicking in.
Savannah rubbed her hands together and told herself she was cold.
That was all. Just cold. Not jumpy. Not distracted.
Not waiting for her phone to buzz with a new assignment that might shove her and Tilly into the same live truck or the same street corner or the same story in the middle of a blizzard.
The storm was coming.
And for reasons she couldn’t explain, she felt like she and Tilly were standing right at the edge of it already.
And neither of them was stepping back.