Page 66 of And Now, Back to You

“Jackson,” I say again.

He doesn’t hear me. “Thousands of concrete trucks every day of additional humidity leaking into the atmosphere. Global warming is slowly killing the planet. Sea levels are rising and temperatures are more volatile and corn is sweating somewhere in the middle of nowhere, Iowa, and—”

I can’t take it anymore. He has completely lost the thread of his practice broadcast, in over his head in one of his weather rambles. It’s cute, but we’re set to be at our marks in approximately thirty seconds. We don’t have time for corn sweat, or whatever the hell else is bouncing around in that brain of his.

It’s not so much a conscious decision as it is a bone-deep urgency. I grip the front of his jacket as he rambles on and on, then I press up on my toes and drag his mouth to mine.

It’s quick—less than a handful of seconds—and chaste—my lips pressed firmly to his—but Jackson grows quiet and still against me. I linger for another heartbeat and then drop back to the flats of my feet. I stare up at him, my hands still fisted in the material of his jacket.

Pink cheeks. Crooked glasses.

Silence.

“Uh.” He clears his throat. Reaches up and touches his fingertips to his bottom lip. He looks dazed and confused. “What was—what?”

I try to look more confident than I feel. I just kissed my coworker. To get him to shut up. I have long jumped over any and all professional boundaries.

“You were spiraling,” I defend. “I was trying to distract you.”

I am painfully aware of every single place our bodies touch in this tiny alcove.

“Well,” he says. He drops his hand from his mouth. “Mission accomplished.”

I flinch. “I shouldn’t have done that,” I whisper.

It was impulsive. Stupid. Jackson and I finally figured out how to work together and I threw a land mine in the middle of it.

“It’s fine,” he says, but he won’t meet my eye and he’s shifted backward, shoulders pressed to the wall at his back. He lifts his hand again but drops it abruptly, the long line of his throat working in a swallow. “It’s . . . fine.”

I have no idea what we’re doing. Sometimes it feels like we could almost be friends, and other times it feels like we’re still two people standing on opposite sides of the parking lot, scribbling passive-aggressive notes on the back of old receipts.

And then there’s times like right now, when it feels like all the oxygen has been sucked out of the space between us.

“Twenty seconds!” Mark barks from somewhere behind us and I flinch again. I could not have had worse timing if I tried.

“You ready?” I ask Jackson, but he’s staring somewhere above my head, forehead creased in thought. I sigh and slip out of our hiding space, hoping Jackson follows. Hoping I didn’t just make everything worse.

I grab my mic. I put in my earpiece. I distill myself down to a series of actions so I don’t have to think beyond this moment. I find my spot and Jackson reluctantly fills the space next to me. I force a smile on my face and feel it wobble.

Mark counts us down. Jackson shifts and for one aching heartbeat, I think he’s going to pull away. Leave me here alone in front of the camera.

But he doesn’t. The hand hanging at his side lifts, his knuckles brushing up against mine. My fingers twitch, wondering if it’s an accident, but then his pinky loops around mine.

Careful. Gentle. Out of sight of the camera. The only parts of us touching.

He squeezes once and I squeeze back, my heart tumbling in my chest. The tiny red light flicks on, and Jackson—

Jackson gives the best damned weather broadcast Baltimore has ever seen.

DELILAH STEWART: Hi, Baltimore. We’re out in Garrett County at Deep Creek Lake, getting ready to welcome our big winter storm. Light snowfall has started, but no accumulation quite yet. We expect that overnight.

DELILAH STEWART: What do you think, Jackson? Will we wake up to a winter wonderland?

JACKSON CLARK: If the current temperatures hold and that massive cold front pressing in from the north continues to hover, I think we’re going to see much more than a wonderland.

DELILAH STEWART: Oh?

JACKSON CLARK: A slower-moving storm means more snow, and plunging temperatures will keep everything in sort of a stasis. And this storm has a wicked back end, with icy precipitation and high winds as a cherry on top.