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If there’s one thing Javi has gotten good at in the past five years, it’s compartmentalizing. He divides his life up into neat, distinct pieces and puts each splintered section into its own box: his military days in one, his childhood in another, the day his best friends died sealed tight and tucked away as far back as he can. The research of StormPAR displayed proudly while their deal with Riggs burns a hole in his back pocket. The way he feels about Kate Carter stored like an old gem in a battered jewelry box, closed to the world but never too far from him.
Except then Kate comes home from New York City—he asks and she comes, by some grace of God, she comes—and it becomes a lot harder to keep it all so organized. He catches himself taking glimpses at her out of the corner of his eye, on the drive back from the airport, far more often than should be acceptable, but she’s never looking back at him, for better or for worse. Her head is tilted towards the window for most of the way, only a sliver of the side of her face visible behind the bleached-blonde curtain of her hair, her lips pursed in thought. Oklahoma races past outside in a green-brown blur.
He knows, at this point, that he’s never had and will never have a chance, but seeing her with Tyler Owens of all people still twists something awful in him anyways—it can’t not, especially because it’s Tyler fucking Owens. God hates him after all.
By the time Javi finds himself in the streets of El Reno, soaked to the bone through his button-up and straining to lift debris off Tyler’s leg while the winds tear at every part of him, his opinion has changed, a little but enough. Kate loves him, that much is clear, and Javi loves her, and that’s enough.
He’s happy for them. He’s glad, seeing the way they look at each other with their hands holding tight to one another in the wake of the storm. Maybe, he thinks, it’s for the best. They all made it out this time. That’s gotta mean something.
He expects to see the two of them kissing through the airport window when Tyler goes in after her, chasing the feeling down, but to his surprise, they don’t even touch, and before he knows it they’re turning around and coming back out, walking up to his van.
Tyler taps on his window with one knuckle, his million dollar grin a little sheepish. “Hey, Storm Par,” he says when Javi rolls the window down. “Think you could give Kate a ride back to Mrs. Carter’s? I gotta deal with the consequences of my actions.” He jerks his head in the direction of his truck, thoroughly screwed into the pavement, and the fuming parking guy standing next to it. “But we got storm business to discuss.”
“Oh,” Javi says, “okay?” He figures his mouth might be hanging open dumbly as Kate throws her luggage into the back and slides into the passenger seat. She flashes him an apologetic smile.
“Delayed flights mean canceled flights, the way those clouds are looking,” she explains. “Figure it wouldn’t hurt to take another day or two. Could start fixing up the barn, even.”
Tyler gives them a thumbs-up and shuts the door for Kate like the southern gentleman Javi’s beginning to realize he might just secretly be. “Meet y’all there!”
“C’mon,” Kate says. She smiles again, gentle, and touches the tips of her fingers to Javi’s leg. “Let’s go.”
The time when he’d do anything for her is now just as much as it was then. He goes.
Mrs. Carter welcomes them back with open arms and a knowing smile. “I’m surprised you didn’t go straight back to chasing the storm that grounded you. Bust it up and show it what for. Or, sorry,” she corrects herself, “tame it. Not killing it.”
Tucking hair behind her ears only for the breeze to blow it right back into her eyes, Kate laughs and shrugs. “I’m still taking my break, Ma. No more chasing until I get back from New York. We’re just gonna figure out some stuff before I leave.”
Javi smooths his palm down the cold surface of the StormPAR van behind him, trying to disperse the anxious buzz in his chest into the static of the metal door. “I can get outta your hair for the night,” he starts to say, but Mrs. Carter shushes him in a tone he knows better than to try to argue with.
“Don’t even,” she scolds. “There’s plenty of room for you and Tyler both.” Which, oh, okay. That’s just a foregone conclusion, then. Javi’s fingers find a scratch in the metal at his back and dig in.
“Mama,” Kate mumbles, the color in her cheeks deepening. It hurts more for her to acknowledge it but Javi is glad nevertheless, to see the way her face flushes in the light melting gold with the turn of the day. He glances to the wide-open gate at the end of the road leading up to the house, as if Tyler’s obnoxious red truck is going to come barrelling down the path any moment now. The trees sway idly in the wind.
Mrs. Carter waves her daughter off with a sun-wrinkled hand. “Alright, well, if y’all are staying another night, I should get dinner started. Javi, will you give me a hand?”
Javi startles and straightens up, adjusting the tuck of his shirt instinctively. “Yeah, yes, of course, Mrs. Carter.”
“How many times do I have to remind you Cathy is fine? Y’all make me feel old with this Mrs. Carter nonsense.” It’s the same complaint she’s been lodging since all those years ago, relayed from the phone by Kate to the rest of the crew, please just call me Cathy, Kate, tell them, while they’re camped out eating sandwiches and watching the radar.
Sorry, Mrs. Carter, it just doesn’t feel right, Addy would yell from the open van, mouth full, while Praveen shielded his Coke from her crumbs. Jeb was always so exceptionally polite, leaning over Kate’s shoulder to speak directly into the phone, no disrespect intended, Cathy, our apologies, like they weren’t going to go right back to calling her Mrs. Carter the next time they spoke.
Javi shakes the memory off by the time he’s in the kitchen, peeling potatoes over the sink while Mrs. Carter pulls pork out of the fridge. The sound of the TV in the other room fills in the empty space with muffled, melodramatic dialogue from some soap opera or another. He takes a deep breath and fixes his attention on the task at hand, shoulders tense with the anticipation of Mrs. Carter’s voice. She’s sure to start talking soon, to make friendly conversation, to ask him how he is, how he’s feeling after all that’s happened this past week. The conversation they’d had when he had come by a couple weeks ago looking for Kate was bad enough—the way she’d done her very best to force him to open all those boxes in his mind up with her how have you been’s and what’ve you been up to’s.
He brushes a stray curl of hair off his forehead with the back of his hand, suddenly acutely aware of its length. She’d commented on it, a casual I almost didn’t recognize you with the haircut, but it was like she was a little disappointed with him, the way she furrowed her brow when he admitted he’d shaved it off when he joined the military and it was still growing back. Maybe it’d be better long again, even though it always got in the way unless he had it tied back. Maybe Kate liked him better back then, at least, though he knows better than to attribute that to the length of his hair.
The silence lasts longer than he expected but not long enough. “So, Javi,” Mrs. Carter says, “I heard it’s been a hell of a week for you.”
Javi shrugs without turning around to look at her. “Ah, you know. It’s the name of the game, with this kinda thing,” he says. He tosses another peeled potato into the bowl. “We’re doing our best. Kate’s the one who really saved the day.” He hopes the way his voice wraps Kate’s name with unbidden warmth isn’t as apparent to her mother as it is to him. He figures Mrs. Carter’s always known anyways.
“She told me you were a great help,” Mrs. Carter says. “Couldn’t have done it without him are the words she used, I think.”
The voices from the TV fizzle in Javi’s ears. “I dunno,” he mumbles. “You know Kate. Always humble. All I did was run around yelling at people.”
“She mentioned you helped her get Tyler out of a pretty major situation, actually. Somethin’ about the water tower falling?”
“Oh, well, that was—” Javi gestures vaguely with the vegetable peeler. “Anyone would have.”
Mrs. Carter responds with a skeptical hum. “Well, she appreciated it. She’s glad you came back around, y’know. She missed you, even if she never seemed to remember to call.” Javi can tell that bit’s as much about herself as him. Kate really had disappeared into thin air after the incident—though he supposes he did, too, in a sense.
He doesn’t have anything to say in reply, so he falls back into his work, rinsing dirt off the next potato, eyeing how many are left before he has to ask what to do next. Mrs. Carter mercifully lets the discussion trail off. The TV drones on.
It’s not that he hates Tyler. Maybe he did, at some point, for a pan-flash moment, but he never hated Jeb, and even if Tyler Owens is a lot more abrasive than Jeb ever was, the principle’s the same—he could never hate the people Kate loves.
It’s just that Tyler’s so stupidly charming, all charisma and chiseled jaw and white-teethed smiles, that Javi doesn’t know how he’s not supposed to feel a little frustrated about it all. Tyler motions wildly with his fork while he tells a rodeo story that has Kate and Mrs. Carter both laughing uproariously, stabbing the air for emphasis and wiping his grinning mouth with a napkin. Javi chuckles perfunctorily so as not to be conspicuous and picks at his greens. He watches Tyler’s tongue dart out to wet his lips before he continues on, watches his crow’s feet deepen in mirth, reminds himself he never had a chance regardless.
“You know, Javi rode a bull once,” Kate says, turning her smile towards him without warning. He feels blinded in the face of it.
“Oh, no, don’t tell them,” he groans. The memory is deeply mortifying, yes, especially in the presence of an actual experienced bull rider, but he doesn’t move to hide his face or wave the story away; he sits there and takes it, Kate’s attention on him for a moment. Her brown eyes are wide and filled with light.
“No, please, I wanna know,” Tyler says. He puts both elbows on the table and leans across it towards him, his gaze somehow just as bright, piercing whereas Kate’s just sparkle. His smirk is inscrutable. Javi does his best not to squirm.
“So, we were at my uncle’s ranch in Kansas, and he raises rodeo bulls, right,” Kate starts, already giggling, “and we’d been drinkin’ a little too much out by the pasture in the evening, and there’s this one bull, practically a baby—”
Javi cuts in, “Ah ah ah, it was basically full-grown, alright, give me some credit, man.” Tyler flashes a high-beam grin at him, one eyebrow raised. “I’m just saying.”
Kate rolls her eyes, her smile unwavering. “Okay, this almost full-grown baby bull, and Javi was like—” she tucks her chin down and puffs out her chest and continues in a surly voice that sounds nothing like him, “I bet I could ride him, watch this, guys, and before we can even stop him he’s hopping over the fence and, like, climbing onto this poor bull.” She demonstrates with a ridiculous clawing motion, elbows splayed out. “We were yelling at him that it was a bad idea, but, well.”
“Alright, c’mon,” Javi mutters into the collar of his jacket, the tips of his ears burning in embarrassment. “I did okay, all things considered.”
“He stayed on for three whole seconds,” Kate tells Tyler emphatically, a touch of irony evident in her tone, but it doesn’t sting too bad. Her eagerness to recount the incident more than makes up for it. It’s nice to know she still thinks about the better memories. “And then my uncle came out and started shoutin’ at us and we all had to pack up. He was so pissed!”
Tyler flicks a pea off his fork at Javi playfully, whistling, “Well goddamn, Storm Par, if I knew you had such big rodeo dreams, I woulda brought you along the other day, too.” A darkness flits across his expression for a second as he seems to remember how that night ended, and he demures the slightest bit, adding, “Or maybe we could go to another one, the three of us.”
Javi doesn’t know how to respond to that. He plucks the pea from his mash and pops it into his mouth, raising his shoulders jerkily. “I mean, yeah, for sure.”
Mrs. Carter coughs politely into the ensuing silence from her seat at the head of the table and motions towards the water pitcher. “Kate, could you fill my glass back up, please?”
“Yeah, Ma,” Kate says as she reaches down the length of the table for her cup. She catches Javi’s eye, something in her face just shy of pleading, then looks away before he can get a hold of what she’s asking him for, what he can and will do for her.
That night, Javi’s sleep is fitful; he turns this way and that in an endless loop, unable to keep his eyes closed for long enough to get any real rest. He keeps startling himself awake with the imagined sounds of tornado sirens, of his friends’ voices on the radio crying out in panic, of the twister howling and howling and howling away. When he does manage to fall asleep for any substantial period of time, he’s only wracked with new nightmares, ones where he watches Kate in Tyler’s Ram vanish into the tornado and she doesn’t come back out, where he’s trapped in the overturned StormPAR van and she dissolves in the flames of the refinery as it’s ripped apart, where he sees her kiss Tyler through the airport window and they walk away together, disappearing into the crowd, and he can feel in the pit of his stomach that he won’t see them again.
It’s too much. He lays awake on his back in the dark, strains to listen for Kate’s breathing in the other room on the other side of the wall and hears nothing but the crickets and the wheat rustling in the breeze outside, until he gives up and hauls himself out of bed.
Tyler finds him behind the barn, listening to the cows mooing themselves awake as the first pale blue shades of day start to peek over the horizon. It’s still cold, the overnight damp and the chill not yet chased away by the reemerging sun, but Javi relishes it. He picks straw from his jeans and doesn’t look up as Tyler approaches, mud squelching underneath his boots.
“Storm Par,” he says in greeting as he takes a seat next to him on the hay bale. He claps a strong hand on Javi’s shoulder and squeezes. Javi feels the pressure all the way to the bone. “Seems like an early morning for you.”
Javi still doesn’t meet his eyes—is scared to, maybe, in the fragile light—when he replies, “Would’ve been a few years ago, but I dunno. Got used to it when I was in the military.”
“Oh, I bet.” Tyler chuckles and lets go of his shoulder, hand coming to rest on his own knee instead. Javi stares at his knuckles; they look permanently bruised, worn from a life of hard work. “They drag your ass out of bed at 4 A.M. every day?”
“Just about.” Javi risks a glance at Tyler’s face only to find him watching him closely, intently, an unreadable expression furrowing his brow and pressing his mouth into a thin line. Javi swallows hard and looks away again.
“Listen, Javi,” Tyler says. His name sounds strange coming out of his mouth. “About Kate.”
Every hair on Javi’s body stands on end. This would be the thing they talk about the first time they’re alone together. Fuck, he thinks, fuck it all.
“About Kate,” Tyler says again, “I think she’s really great and I like her a lot.” Javi stares at the reddish dirt between his feet as he nods. “And look, I figured—I picked up enough, y’know, about the two of you, to where I figured I should talk to you before I did anything else, ‘cause I want to be your friend, and...” He trails off, clearly searching for an indication that he’s on the right track. “It just seems like it’d be bad form not to talk to you first.”
Javi takes a long pause before he speaks, trying to find the words and trying to unstick his voice from where it’s lodged somewhere deep in his chest. “I’m not in charge of her,” he manages to say past the lump in his throat. “You like her, she likes you, I mean. That’s all there is to it, isn’t it?”
Tyler lets out a heavy sigh and slumps against the barn wall behind them. “I don’t know, man. I don’t want to lumber in like a big oaf and get between what you guys have—”
“We don’t have anything,” Javi snaps, and regrets it instantly when he sees the way Tyler pulls back ever so slightly. “Sorry, man, I just. We never, you know. She’s not into me like that, believe me.”
“Maybe,” Tyler says, “maybe not.” He crosses his arms over his chest, the fabric of his plaid shirt straining against his solid form. “But whatever it is, you two have a special bond. You’ve known her a whole lot longer than I have.” Javi’s not sure if the five years where they never once spoke counts, but even without it, he is technically right—strictly by the numbers, the insane week that Tyler’s known her doesn’t measure up to Javi’s years of college storm-chasing by her side. Still, he wants to argue, but Tyler continues, “You two went through something terrible together that I didn’t.”
Oh, god. “Don’t,” Javi growls. He wasn’t even there, really. Too far away, stupid and helpless, just watching in horror as the sky tore itself apart, the radio going dead in his hands. They hadn’t even let him ride in the ambulance with her, in the aftermath.
Tyler holds his hands up, placating. “Sorry. I’m not trying to stir up bad memories, just getting my point across. I like you, Storm Par, ‘cause Kate likes you, and she’s got a real smart head on her shoulders—”
“The smartest,” Javi says. Tyler nods in agreement, a glimpse of perfect white teeth in the little smile he cracks.
“So I want to get to know you, and I want to do that knowing I’m not stepping all over your toes, that’s all. You’re a good guy. I wanna do right by you.”
He doesn’t feel like a good guy. He feels useless and bitter, with all those carefully compartmentalized boxes spilling their contents all over his brain. He feels like a raw nerve sparking in the gray air. The imprint of lightning on a green sky.
“Do whatever you want, man. Seriously.” He stands abruptly; Tyler’s sharp gaze follows him up. “Don’t worry about me.”
Part of him wants Tyler to stop him as he starts to leave, wants him to call out after him, even if he doesn’t know what he could possibly want him to say. But Tyler sits wordlessly where he left him, lets him go, his eyes heavy on Javi’s back the whole way. Unthinking, Javi goes wherever his feet lead him.
He’d glanced into the barn when he dropped Kate off at home the other day, but it feels entirely different in the dawn: less like a building full of ghosts and more like a place of beginnings. The resin and sun-warmed sawdust smell is exactly the same as it’s always been. One of the model houses of Kate’s middle school science project is lying on its side, left turned over after a spin of the tornado simulation. Kate’s notebook sits open on the worktable.
Cloud microphysics aren’t exactly Javi’s area of expertise, but he can’t resist taking a peek anyways. He traces the careful lines of Kate’s diagrams with his fingertips, reading the equations out loud to himself under his breath and imagining how Kate would have written them, bent low over the desk, hair pulled into a loose bun at the base of her neck. She used to scrunch up her nose when she concentrated, snuffling like a rabbit at the perpetual dust drifting through the barn. Javi could watch her for hours. Oftentimes it felt like he did, perched in the loft with his laptop balanced on his knee and arguing distractedly with Praveen about whatever data they’d collected last from Dorothy.
He flips through the notebook until he gets to the last page that’s been written in; the graphite here is bold and fresh, the strokes looser, like Kate had scribbled her calculations down in a rush. There’s an unfamiliar scrawl, too, on the right side of the page, from a heavier hand, making notes about silver iodide with an excessive number of exclamation points. Javi runs a finger across these scribbles too, winces when they smear.
The barn door groans and rattles open and it’s Kate in the doorway, backlit like something out of a painting, chiaroscuro and wispy strokes of stray sunlight.
“Javi?” she says, sleep-hoarse. “What’re you doing?”
Javi shuts the notebook, hoping he doesn’t look as guilty as he feels, and waves. “Hey, morning. Why are you up so early?”
Kate eases inside, sliding the door shut behind her. She squints at Javi, then around the barn, like she’s recontextualizing the whole place with him in it. There’s a cowlick on the side of her head, an old coffee stain on the wrinkled, oversized shirt she’d slept in. She looks sort of unbelievably beautiful, and Javi’s had that thought a million times by now. “Couldn’t stay asleep,” she says. “Saw you weren’t in your room and wondered where you’d gone. Tyler was up in the kitchen, said you were in here.”
“I couldn’t sleep either,” Javi admits. He has to make a conscious effort not to lean into Kate when she comes around to stand at the worktable beside him, like she’s got some kind of gravitational field that he’s hopeless to resist. “I thought I could come in and look around, see what we’re working with if we want to fix this place up, you know.”
Kate’s stubborn chin tips up as she casts a wide look around the space again; Javi can’t stop himself from staring at the long, graceful line of her neck. “Yeah, we have our work cut out for us.” When her gaze returns to Javi, it’s colored with chocolate-sweet concern. “Are you alright, Javi?”
Suddenly nervous, the physical urge to withdraw from her seizes Javi’s entire body, but he grits his teeth and holds his ground. Whether he lies or tells her the truth—that he can’t stop thinking about her, dying or leaving or kissing other boys too handsome for anyone’s good—is a coin flip. He goes with the truth he can afford: “It was just nightmares. I’m fine.”
One of Kate’s eyebrows twitches upwards, but she doesn’t press him. She exhales heavily and cocks her hip against the side of the table, nodding, “You and me both. Every time I close my eyes it feels like the whole house is comin’ up off the ground. I keep thinking about all those people in El Reno, what would’ve happened if the sodium polyacrylate hadn’t worked—”
“But it did, Kate,” Javi says. “You did it. Me, Tyler, we wouldn’t have gone out there like you did. You stopped that tornado.”
“Tamed,” Kate mumbles, pedantic. The corner of her lip curls.
Javi blinks incredulously. “Are you being cheeky?” She shrugs, but there’s a laugh in the back of her mouth. Admonishing, Javi says, “Kate. C’mon, I’m trying to be serious here.”
Kate’s shoulders shake with her poorly-contained giggles. “Sorry, sorry, Javi, I know, I appreciate it, I needed to hear it.” Her brows are still furrowed but her eyes are that small bit brighter now, less haunted. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“I’m glad to be here,” Javi replies, gut twisting. Here so much later than he should’ve been, so much further back than he thought he’d be at this point, without StormPAR, without Rigg’s ill-gotten gains. Just following this girl he’s in love with and hoping she’ll let him help her save the world.
“Seriously, Javi. I couldn’t do this without you and Tyler.” The inclusion of Tyler smarts a little, even if it’s perfectly reasonable. Kate reaches out, sets a hand on Javi’s forearm, squeezes tight. “Please don’t think I’m trying to replace you. I wouldn’t—I couldn’t, even. I need you.”
It’s all he’s ever wanted to hear, but now it just makes his chest ache. Why didn’t she need him before, he wonders, irrational and childishly sullen, before she vanished for five years? When all their best friends died in one fell swoop? What if he needed her?
It’s too late for that now though. All he can do is look forward, even if it kills him.
“Okay,” he says, like he’s promising her his soul, and maybe he is. “I’m here. I’ll be here no matter what from now on.”
The tension leaves Kate’s body in a palpable rush. Her face breaks into pure light as she smiles. “Okay, good. I really appreciate you, man.” She steps in to hug him, and he almost staggers over before he regains his balance and raises his arms to return the embrace. Her hair smells like fresh rain. She tucks her face into his neck for just a moment, mumbles something he doesn’t catch and is afraid to ask her to repeat, so he doesn’t. He lets himself hold her while he can, watches the morning light over her shoulder shift between the slats.
“I’m sorry, Kate,” he says, “for everything.”
“It’s okay.” She tightens her hold on him, her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck. “We’re going to be okay.”
They spend the next two days cleaning up the barn just like they said they would. It’s a herculean task, but between the three of them, progress is swift and relatively frictionless. Tyler’s novel presence is, despite what Javi would like to think, something of a godsend—he keeps them from sinking into despair amidst all the relics of the past they uncover during the process, keeps the momentum going with his jokes and his stories and his charm.
Javi can see it in Kate’s eyes, when she almost gets swept up in a memory flipping through one of her old binders and Tyler pulls her back down to the ground with a whoop and holler as he fishes a length of nylon rope out of a pile and announces his intent to fashion a lasso out of it. Laughing, she sets the folder down and crosses her arms expectantly, motioning for him to go ahead.
“He’s gonna be a terror with that thing,” Javi calls out in warning. Tyler winks at him, pure rom-com in a way that throws him for a second.
“Oh, yes I am,” Tyler agrees in an exaggerated southern drawl. “Watch your back, Storm Par.”
Javi chucks the rags he’s holding in Tyler’s direction; Tyler yelps and ducks to avoid them. “Yeah, whatever, YouTube boy.”
Kate guffaws, the sound such utter bliss that Javi can do nothing but stop and bask in it, awed at her delight. He sees Tyler do the same out of the corner of his eye. He figures it’s not too hard to feel like kindred spirits, in moments like these.
Kate leaves for New York once the weekend’s over, but this time she has a promised return date just a week and a half away. Javi and Tyler both see her off at the airport, side by side as she hugs them both—Javi first, then Tyler—and waving until she’s out of view.
Then she’s gone and it’s just the two of them standing next to each other in the bustling airport lobby. Javi’s skin prickles as Tyler turns towards him.
“So, you got any plans this week?” Tyler asks—not at all what Javi imagined he’d say next.
“Uh,” Javi says dumbly. He’d figured he’d go back home to his barren studio apartment and mill around for a week and a half, nothing more, nothing less. He’d been picturing it on the way here, thinking about lying face-down in his bed and pressing his thumbs into his bruises while his ceiling fan whirred. It’s sort of pathetic, yeah, but he thinks maybe he needs it, after the week he’s had. At least, he wants it, more than he wants to do whatever it is Tyler is going to ask him to do if he’s honest. “Yeah, uh. I’ve got, like, business stuff. Making sure Riggs doesn’t come back around to bite us in the ass, you know.”
Tyler’s face falls almost imperceptibly. “Yeah, that’s fair. Well, then,” he raises a fist, knocks their knuckles together when Javi does the same, “I’ll see you next week?”
“See you,” Javi confirms. Tyler fires a salute off the brim of his hat, and turns and heads off. Javi watches until he’s gone, then a little longer still, then finally makes his own exit.
The drive home feels longer than it’s ever felt despite the fact that he’s definitely had to go farther distances than this before. Outside, the blue sky wilts gray as a drizzle rolls in. The arc of the windshield wipers across his vision drops his heart into his stomach for a second before he reminds himself it’s just rain, and hardly any wind to match; all four van wheels remain connected to the earth.
The air in the apartment is stale, so Javi opens every window. The potted plant he’d bought a month ago sits drooping sadly over the kitchen sink, so he waters it and crosses his fingers. He refills the cup from the faucet and drinks it in one long swig.
He’d neglected to make the bed before he left what feels like a lifetime ago, the sheets bunched up at the foot of the mattress, but it’s fine, it’s all fine. He throws himself onto the heap, buries his face in the slightly musty blanket, and lets out a breath it feels like he’s been holding since he landed in New York. Like he’d promised himself, he reaches a hand down to thumb at a bruise on his hip, grunts at the pressure-pain. I’m real, the ache tells him, I’m real and I’m alive.
He doesn’t mean to fall asleep like this, but the exhaustion catches up to him like a hail wave he’s hopeless to outrun anymore. It’s a mercifully dreamless sleep.
Several days go by in an amorphous blur like this. Javi spends most of his time in bed, or at his desk staring at storm data while ignoring his emails. At first, his phone buzzes again and again with calls and texts from Scott that he swipes away even as they get increasingly irate; by Wednesday, they’ve started to peter off. Then Scott leaves him a scathing voicemail berating him for walking out after everything I’ve done for you, asshole, and you can’t even return a call, and Javi can’t help himself—
“Here’s your fucking return call,” he says as soon as Scott picks up. “Tell me what exactly you’ve done that I owe you so much for.”
It takes a beat, but Scott doesn’t back down. He sounds pissed: “Hi to you too, asshole,” venomous, “We’re supposed to be business partners, for one, so whatever the fuck you’re doing is astronomically screwing me over, so thanks for that. Riggs has been on my ass all week and I am just about out of excuses to keep him from walking. Second of all, don’t act like I never did anything for you.” He’s seething, which is already out of character for someone Javi’s known to be perpetually stoney and unmoved by even the worst of disasters, but there’s an undercurrent of real hurt in his voice that surprises him.
“Okay, look, dude,” Javi starts, but Scott cuts him off.
“Look, dude,” he says, mocking, “you needed me. Quite frankly, Javi, you were a fucking wreck when you came to me. You were fresh out of the military and freaking out, you had no focus, just these insane ideas—you couldn’t even begin to imagine what sort of financing you’d need to actually do anything you wanted to do—” Scott’s right, of course, doesn’t mean it’s any less cutting— “until I stepped in and found you the investors you needed, which you’re welcome for, by the way—”
“Scott,” Javi says helplessly. He can’t deny how he’d leaned on Scott in those early days, when the sight of a hail-heavy sky staggered him on the way to the van, an old dread rising in his stomach. Come on, Javi. It’s nothing, Scott would say, firm, a little severe, but Javi read a sort of lightheartedness into it, like it was a harmless dare and Scott was just nudging him along. Maybe he’d made that up. “Scott. I’m sorry, okay, yes, I screwed you over.”
There’s a burst of breath against the speaker that must be Scott scoffing. “Correct.”
“But I’m not going to apologize for what I did last week. Those people needed us and you wanted to abandon them.” Javi takes a deep breath, in, in, out. “I’m not sorry for that, and I’m not sorry that I’m going to quit. I want to do things right from now on.”
There’s another silence that stretches on just a moment too long before Scott speaks again. “With your old college girlfriend and her cowboy, you mean,” he says, quiet and dangerous, the tone of it coiling like a snake about to strike.
“Kate’s not—Tyler isn’t—come on, man.” Javi puts his forehead to his desk with a groan, his phone pinched between his ear and his shoulder. “We don’t have to make this a whole thing, you know.”
“Tyler fucking Owens, Javi, seriously?” Scott doesn’t even sound angry about this particular indiscretion, just baffled, disappointed. “Him and his circus show? What are they going to do for you that our team can’t?”
Javi waves a hand over his head like Scott can see him, fishing for the words in the air. “I don’t know, Scott, show compassion? Have some heart? I didn’t exactly see you and the team helping out in El Reno.”
Scott’s incredulity overflows as he repeats, “Heart? Are you hearing yourself?” There’s the thunk of his mug against his desk, Javi knows it well at this point, then, “Jesus, man, whatever. Have your lawyer contact my lawyer, make them work it out. I don’t care.”
It certainly does sound like he cares, but Javi’s more than happy to let it go for now. “Yeah, sure. Take care.”
“Right,” Scott says, sounding completely checked out, “sure. I’ll see you. Bye.” The line goes dead before Javi can say it back.
On Thursday, Tyler texts him: doin a little chasing with Boone tomorrow if u want to come with, nothing crazy, probably just gonna end up looking at clouds, followed by a string of incomprehensible emojis half of which Javi didn’t even know existed, the other half mostly tornadoes. A minute later, a third message comes through. that was boone sorry. Then, you free? Javi leaves them on seen.
He can’t help checking, though—the next day, he opens the Tornado Wranglers YouTube channel and, sure enough, they’re live. It’s just Boone and Tyler in the Ram, in the middle of an animated conversation while Tyler drives. They’re streaming from the camera mounted up to the left of the driver’s seat, the perspective a little fish-eyed.
“I’m tellin’ you, T,” Boone is saying, “I’d be a great actor! Put me on the stage on that Broadway, they’d make a billion bucks easy.” He turns to his phone, where he must be reading the stream chat. “Chat, you got my back, guys, c’mon.”
Chuckling, Tyler shakes his head. “Booney, I love you, but you are not made to lead Broadway musicals, we both know this.”
“Nuh uh,” Boone shoots back, kiddish. “What’s the one in New York about the Dominicans? I could do that one.”
“Why would I know this?” Tyler laughs. “Also, you’re not Dominican. Boone, do you even know Spanish?”
Javi knows exactly what they’re talking about. The knowledge itches in his fingers until he gives in and types It’s In the heights into the text box. He winces at his username as the message pops up in the chat; he’d forgotten he was on his stupid old account he’d made his freshman year of college.
On the stream, Boone mutters, “Course I know Spanish, what’re you talkin’ about,” as he scrolls, absentmindedly chewing on the thumb of his unoccupied hand. “Bet you don’t even—oh! Oh, it’s In The Heights, see, thank you kindly, javmaster2014…?” He blinks bemusedly and looks over at Tyler, who’s got this smirk on his face that just keeps growing.
“Yeah, thank you, Jav,” he says, Spanish J, glancing up directly at the camera and taking a hand off the wheel to tip his hat. “Wish you were here.”
Javi feels his face flush, mortified. No fucking way. He slams his laptop shut, storm-chasing livestream be damned, and goes straight back to bed.
On Sunday, Javi wakes with a start at 9 A.M., bolting upright as panic rises in his chest, before his mind catches up with his instincts and he collapses back onto the pillow. He throws an arm over his eyes to shield them from the light filtering in through the blinds and groans. He should be at church, his gut keeps screaming at him, or he has a meeting out of town in an hour and he forgot to iron his StormPAR shirt last night, or—
Someone’s knocking on his door.
Javi freezes for several seconds, thinking he’d imagined it, then the knocking returns in full force, the sharp rap of a strong hand against the old wood and a muffled voice.
“Yo, Javi!” Maybe he’s still asleep and dreaming, because that’s definitely Boone yelling on the other side of his front door. “Javi, you in there? You awake?”
There’s scuffling, a lower, scolding voice and Boone mumbling something like aight, my bad, my bad, then: “Javi? It’s Tyler and Boone.”
Not a dream. Shit. Javi hauls himself out of bed, fumbles for the first pair of pants in reach and nearly trips over himself pulling them up on his way to the door. He opens it to, as promised, Tyler and Boone, looking so bright-eyed and alert it makes Javi a little embarrassed about how obvious in comparison it must be that he just woke up; he suddenly wishes he’d thought to put a shirt on first too. Boone’s hand hovers in the air mid-knock. He’s grinning ear-to-ear.
“Heyyyy, Javi!” he says, drawing the syllables way out. “Pack a bag, you’re comin’ chasin’ with us.” He peeks around Javi into the apartment, eyes open comically wide, as if the bigger his eyes are the more information he can take in at once. “Nice place you got, man, I like how much you didn’t decorate it.” It’d sound like a thinly-veiled insult from anyone else, but Boone sounds bizarrely earnest. Tyler flicks his ear anyways, scolding.
“Sorry, don’t listen to him, he got his twelfth concussion yesterday,” Tyler says with an award-winning smile. “We were in the area and figured we’d drop by to see if you wanted to join us for a spin. Some stuff up north, or we got some pretty promising cells in the west we could check out. Lots of options.”
Javi flails for a reason to turn them down: “Flattered, really, but I’m not—I don’t really feel like getting in front of a camera today, man, maybe some other time—”
Tyler waves the excuse right off. “Nah, don’t worry, no streams today. Just us and the tornadoes, if we’re lucky, or it’ll just be us.” His gaze flicks down the length of Javi’s body for the briefest of moments, so quick he’s not sure he didn’t imagine it. Javi fights the urge to wrap his arms around himself like that would shield him from view, heat in his cheeks, heat behind his sternum.
Boone, bouncing on his heels, pipes up, “We can wait, if ya need to get ready first.” He pointedly does not give Javi’s bare torso the once-over that Tyler did.
He’s not getting out of this unless he just straight-up tells them he’s not interested, but he doesn’t want to do that—he doesn’t want to lie. So he says, “Alright, sure, just give me a minute,” and shuts the door in their thrilled faces to gather his things. His backpack, sitting by his bed, is barely unpacked from when he’d gotten back nearly a week ago. He throws his laptop and charger into it, stuffs a change of clothes in after them. He puts on whatever shirt is sitting on top of the pile on his dresser—an old Muskogee State shirt, worn with age—and grabs his jacket off the floor. When he opens the door again, Boone and Tyler are just about exactly where he’d left him, like they’d barely moved a muscle in the last two minutes. Weird for Tyler but especially weird for Boone.
All the reserved energy releases itself pretty quick, though, as Boone sprints like a startled squirrel down the hall to lead the way to the truck parked on the curb outside. Tyler lingers as Javi locks up his apartment, wordless but warm. He’s only got a few inches on Javi, but something about him always makes it feel like it might as well be a foot. They follow Boone out in a silence that Javi hopes feels more comfortable to Tyler than it does to him.
By the Ram, Boone’s reaching for the shotgun seat when Tyler stops him. “Hold on, Boone, you’re in the back. I want Javi to be my co-pilot today,” he says. Boone pouts like a scorned puppy but concedes, hopping back a few steps to climb into the back seat. Tyler gestures to the passenger side door with a flourish and a half-bow. “C’mon, Storm Par, show me what you got.”
“Oh, no, I’m not like you or Kate, man, I just watch the radars,” Javi protests, but Tyler just wordlessly motions again. He’s smiling widely, but he’s not gonna let him back down anymore, Javi can tell. “I feel like this could legally be classified as kidnapping,” he sighs, and hoists himself up into the vehicle.
It’s the first time he’s been inside the Wranglers’ truck, and it’s honestly a little overwhelming. There’s camera mounts on both sides of the windshield, harnesses on the seats, levers and triggers all over the center console, no doubt for the rockets they’re so fond of. Jesus christ, Javi notes, the button says BOOM and everything.
How did I get here, he wonders, a touch despairingly, as Tyler slams the gas just a little too hard for the residential street they’re on and they take off down the road. Boone, notably not buckled in, leans forward between the front seats to fiddle with the stereo, muttering under his breath until he gets whatever he was messing with sorted and Luke Combs starts blasting. Javi cringes away from the speakers; he sees Tyler notice, a little flicker of his eyes, and then Tyler reaches out and turns the volume down, fingers delicate on the knob.
“Let’s ease into it, Boone,” he says. “We got some driving to do, yeah?”
Boone falls back into his seat with an oomph. “Alright, T, sure thing.” He salutes at Javi in the rear view mirror.
“Thanks,” Javi says quietly, not quite looking at Tyler. Tyler just smiles. It’s something of a mindfuck, sitting here next to him while the town melts away underneath the wheels of the pickup, giving way to the green-brown Oklahoman expanse. Boone and Tyler are surprisingly quiet as they drive, letting the music and the rumble of the truck fill the space. Javi turns his attention to the radar mounted over the center console, watches the colors move across the land.
After a while, Tyler finally speaks again: “So what looks promising, Storm Par? East or west?” He scans the sky, nose scrunched, squinting against the sunlight. He’s sans sunglasses and cowboy hat today, and it’s weird, it’s always weird, when he looks like a real guy instead of whatever god of weather the fans who flock to him at gas stations and parking lots treat him like. Javi keeps thinking back to him in El Reno, drenched in rain and mud, his thigh cut and bleeding, and tries to reconcile it with the idolic Wrangler. It just doesn’t make sense.
This Tyler, human stormchaser, still makes Javi’s skin itch with nerves though, as he studies the radar. He’s no Kate—he’s not even a Scott, always watching his tablet and pointing Javi in the right direction. He just looks at the numbers after the fact. He’s not a storm hound.
“Javi?” Tyler prompts, his voice gentle.
“Uh, I think,” Javi stutters, leaning in to get a better look at the screen, “I mean, moisture level in the west looks good, wind shear’s kinda weird, but—”
From the backseat, Boone chirps, “Jav, my man, it’s not just ’bout the numbers. You gotta look up, too.” Javi tries not to bristle. There’s no condescension in his tone, just earnest advice. “Lookin’ up at the sky’s the best part of the job.”
“Exactly right, my friend,” Tyler agrees sagely. “Trust your instincts, Javi. Tell me what the clouds’re telling you.”
Javi’s chest tightens. They may have narrowly escaped death together recently, but even then, this trust Tyler’s putting in him feels unearned. He tries not to feel like he’s being pitied, being entertained. It just doesn’t make sense.
“Alright, I guess, um.” He looks up at the sky as instructed. The cell to the west is dark and promising, but the mass of clouds slopes outwards instead of inwards. Shelf clouds, not the wall clouds they want for a tornado, duh. To the east—he glances at the radar again—the clouds are moving away, and the trees are bowing in the direction of the late morning sun—
Tyler’s already beaming at him when he turns to him, glowing with pride and anticipation. “What do you see?”
Javi holds his gaze, this time. “We got better chances with the eastern cell. Better inflow, and we’re on the right side of it. The one in the west is gonna rain itself out.”
The green of Tyler’s eyes is so bright and intense Javi thinks it could just about melt his face off, Indiana Jones style. “Yessir, east it is.” He takes the first available turn with gusto; Javi scrambles for something to hold onto while Boone whoops excitedly. Oh god, even though it’s way too late now, what have I gotten myself into?
The thing about storm chasing, though, is there’s always more waiting than they expect or hope for. They stop in a dirt lot already occupied by a few vehicles, each with its own handful of people orbiting it, who watch the distinctive red Ram pull in with recognition. No one jumps to swarm the truck, though, as they exit. One guy sitting in the bed of his pickup waves to Tyler and Tyler waves back, but they’re otherwise left alone. It’s nothing like the circus outside the Lone Ranger on Kate’s first day back.
“You know, I’d almost believe you weren’t YouTube famous, if this was my only impression of you,” Javi says, making Tyler laugh as Boone flits off to check their equipment. Tyler shrugs and leans back against the truck hood, folding his arms across his chest.
“It’s only really like that when we’re streaming, and we’ve got the whole menagerie,” he says. “The people you usually see at every site, the folks who are real about this, they respect you. We’re all here for the same thing, and it sure ain’t the rockets.”
Popping up from where he’d been inspecting the wheels, Boone says, “I mean, it’s kinda about the rockets. For some of us.”
Tyler chuckles, and Javi finds himself laughing with him. “It can be about the rockets too, B. Anytime, all the time, for you.” Boone bares his teeth in a weird, kiddish grin and ducks back under the truck body to continue his task. “So, tornadoes,” Tyler says, angling his body towards Javi, hip cocked, brow raised. “What’re they to you?”
“You’re trying to pry,” Javi tells him, like he doesn’t know.
“Nooo,” Tyler faux-protests, holding his hands up defensively, “I would never.” He smirks, elbows Javi good-naturedly. “C’mon, Storm Par. I meant what I said before. I wanna get to know you.”
All those compartments Javi had spent so much time carefully packing his thoughts and histories into are hopelessly overturned and shuffled together at this point. He’s never going to be able to put them back, he thinks. Oh well.
God damn charming Owens. Javi sighs, and settles back on the hood with him, and shrugs, and tells him all of it. Tyler nods along attentively as Javi recounts every fundamental story and storm he can think of, the Muskogee State days, the PAR research, the first tornado he ever saw, when he was 6 years old visiting relatives in Kansas and a vortex touched down just down the street from the house and Javi thought, with a certainty he’d never had before, that he was going to die. He doesn’t talk about the day they lost everything. Tyler doesn’t ask.
He’s said all too much and not nearly enough when Boone interrupts, bounding over from where he’d been socializing with one of the other groups and squawking, “Go time, it’s go time!”
Javi and Tyler turn around simultaneously, and sure enough, the clouds they’d been betting on are looking ready to burst. Dew point is steady, Javi imagines Kate mumbling under her breath with her camera in her hands, updraft is cycling, wind shear looks good. He says it out loud in her stead. Tyler, grinning, nods enthusiastically.
“I hear you, Jav. C’mon, let’s go get ’er.” He hauls himself up into the driver’s seat, flicks the stereo back on as Javi and Boone buckle in. Javi really doesn’t care for the music they’re always playing, but he can’t bring himself to tell them that. It gets in his blood and shakes him up with adrenaline regardless, and he figures that’s the point of it, so it’s fine enough.
Driving against Tyler in the race to a forming twister is one thing, but being in the car with him chasing down tornado genesis is a whole other beast. Boone keeps letting out yelps like a worked-up dog as the truck bucks over the uneven dirt road, and Tyler’s yelling too, wordless shouts of excitement as he presses down further on the gas. It had always seemed batshit insane from the outside, but inside the vehicle with it all, it’s undeniably contagious. Javi’s heart is pumping fast, and it’s not just out of fear. There’s a thrill sneaking its way into the whole thing.
A half-hysterical laugh bubbles out of him involuntarily. Tyler responds with an ecstatic cry of his own. The funnel touches down in front of them, and they’re all hollering, scrambling for their harnesses. The straps dig into Javi’s shoulders. Alright, alright, alright, he thinks, the image of every other tornado he’s ever survived superimposed over the one he’s about to willingly let himself be driven into, I can do this. Tyler reaches over and folds his hand over Javi’s, squeezes hard. I can do this.
He closes his eyes as the tornado hits.
It’s dark by the time they drop Javi off, dusty and tired but smiling in a way he can’t quite control.
“Review out of five?” Tyler asks, elbow hanging out the window as he follows Javi’s path around the truck up onto the sidewalk. Boone blinks at him owlishly through the backseat window.
“Let’s say three point five,” Javi replies. Tyler puts a hand over his heart, playing offense. “Giving you room for improvement, so you can really wow me next time.”
Tyler’s eyes flash at the words. “Next time,” he echoes, smiling broadly. “We’ll see you soon, then. Say bye, Boone.”
Mid-climb into shotgun, Boone croons, “Bye-byeee,” and tumbles headfirst into the passenger seat.
Javi waves as they peel off down the street, dented red metal flashing in the fluorescent street lights. There’s a new mystery bruise by his elbow that he gladly presses his fingertips into, swallowing down the hiss of pain. A reminder that today wasn’t the most bizarre dream he’s ever had, after all.
On the day before she’s due to come back to Oklahoma, Kate calls while Javi’s staring at his stovetop, waiting for his water to boil.
“Hey,” her voice sighs through the phone like the first full breath Javi’s had in a week and a half. She sounds tired but happy. Lighter, maybe, and still reeling from the lifted weight.
“Hi,” Javi murmurs back. “How’s the big apple?”
“Ah, same old, same old. The rats are out in full force, you should see them.”
“You know, I think I’ll pass.” Javi feels like he could live off the sound of Kate’s laugh crackling against the speaker. “How’d the fancy-schmancy folks take the pitch?”
Something metallic screeches in the background on Kate’s end, cars or construction, or the subway coming to a halt in front of her, the wind tousling her hair, radiant in the city grime. “Yeah, they liked it—they’re skeptical, I think, which, y’know, fair enough, but if we give them some numbers they’ll give us funding.”
“So what I hear you saying is we should get out there and get some numbers to give them,” Javi says. The end of the season should be approaching, but the storms still aren’t letting up; they shouldn’t have too much trouble finding more tornadoes to try Kate’s polymers on. Endless chasing, then. Javi supposes if they’re doing this, he’s really gonna have to get used to it again.
“Exactly that,” Kate says, her grin evident. “You up for it?”
“Of course,” Javi says, faster and more earnest than he meant to.
Kate doesn’t seem to notice, or if she does, she lets it be. “I’m glad I can count on you. Can’t wait to get back, I’m missing you guys already, can you believe that?”
Javi closes his eyes and exhales slowly into the now-bubbling pot of water, lets the rising steam wash over him. I missed you every day for five years, he wants to tell her, at some point it felt like I’d never stop missing you. Instead, he says, “Yeah, we’re missing you, too. Come back quick.”
“I will, Javi,” Kate says, “see you soon,” she says, “love you,” she says, and hangs up.
Love you, love you, love you. Javi rolls the words into a bright golden pearl and tucks it into his breast pocket, the warmth seeping into his skin, an inch to the left of his heart. It glows, and glows, and glows.