Page 11 of And Now, Back to You

AIDEN VALENTINE: [clears throat] Here is Jackson Clark.

JACKSON CLARK: Oh, right.

JACKSON CLARK: [nervous laughter] Here I am.

AIDEN VALENTINE: With traffic and weather together.

JACKSON CLARK: Yes. I am here to report the weather. And the traffic. Both of them. Together.

CHAPTER 3

JACKSON

I lie face down in the middle of the hallway on top of Delilah Stewart, my pride somewhere on the floor with my coffee.

“Hello, Delilah.” I sigh, trying to figure out if anything is broken or just badly bruised. My glasses are nowhere to be found. Everything is blurry smudges of color.

“Hello, Jackson.”

She sounds defeated.

“Always a pleasure.”

Beneath me, Delilah snickers. “Something like that,” she says, her voice low and sweet. A laugh, caught somewhere behind her teeth.

Well, I’m glad one of us finds this funny.

Delilah squirms, somehow managing to knock me in the groin and the solar plexus at the same time.

“Please,” I groan, directly into her ear. She smells like my light roast coffee and something sweeter. Strawberry jam, maybe. “Please stop moving,” I beg.

She immediately stills and I drop my forehead to her shoulder. I can’t breathe, and I can’t stand up if I can’t breathe.

“What are you doing?” she whispers.

“Trying not to die,” I wheeze.

She huffs and wiggles again. One hand pats at my rib cage. “There, there,” she says awkwardly. “Easy does it.”

I snort a laugh and some of her hair flutters around my face. Delilah Stewart, Human Disaster, strikes again. Somehow we’ve found ourselves stuck in a loop with each other. Every time I see her, something inevitably goes wrong. We’re the opposite of magnets, blasting away as soon as we enter each other’s force field.

She gives me another pat, then drops her hands to her side.

“I would appreciate it,” she says, her voice muffled, “if you removed yourself from my person now.”

I press up on my knees with no small amount of effort, a heavy grunt at the base of my throat as I steady myself with my hands planted over her shoulders. Without my glasses, I can only see her vague outline. Smudges of color against a pale white floor.

Chestnut brown. Ruby red. Deep emerald green. She must still be wearing her turtle suit.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she whispers.

“Like what?”

A hand flutters in front of my face. “Squinting.”

“I can’t see without my glasses,” I grind out, grunting when her knee hits the inside of my thigh. I almost go down again. “You know. Those things that are always on my face.”

“Oh.” One arm presses above her head, her elbow glancing along my side. My shirt is wet and sticking to my chest but all I can focus on is the places we’re touching. My knees, pressed between hers. The inside of my left wrist, brushing against her hair. This is the closest I’ve been to a woman in six months and naturally, it’s Delilah Stewart. In the middle of the newsroom floor at the local television station. In the world’s most uncomfortable game of Twister.