DO YOU... WANNA TALK ABOUT IT?

"TODAY WAS KILLER!" Dani exclaimed as the Tornado Wrangler crew walked up the stairs of the motel, everyone heading to their respective rooms.

Kennedy was bringing up the back of the group, her head down as she followed behind Tyler half a step. He had one room key in his hand and another secret one in his pocket that he'd slip her when the others were gone, no longer wanting to share a room with her.

If she knew there'd be a last time sharing a bed with him, she'd have savored the feeling more — not that he'd been holding her as of late.

"Yeah, this outbreak is gonna be a good one," Dexter nodded with a smile. "I can't wait to explain the science behind why an outbreak happens next time we have a no weather day."

On days when there weren't storms, Dexter and Lily took time to make videos dedicated to their scientific fields. And other times, Dani would makes videos promoting the donation links to different towns suffering from tornado damage.

"Dexter's science time is my favorite segment," Kennedy told him with a smile. No, she often didn't understand the meteorology terms that Dexter and Tyler rattled off, but she liked that they were passionate about it — same with Lily and her engineering stuff.

"What, I'm not your favorite?" Tyler asked jokingly.

She smiled, it not reaching her eyes. "You know you're my favorite," she said, hating how much she still meant it.

"Well, I'm beat," Lily said as they reached her and Dani's shared room first. "See y'all in the morning."

"Night, guys," Dani added before following her in the room.

"I'm out too," Dexter said, grabbing the key from Boone and walking down to their room.

Boone stayed behind for a moment, smiling at Kennedy and Tyler. He thought the world of their relationship, Kennedy like another best friend at this point. He'd caught their entire love affair on camera and had been planning for months now to show it all off in a montage at their wedding when it inevitably came.

Boy, would he look like a fool in a few weeks.

Would he be as surprised by the breakup as Kennedy was? Or would he just move on from it and support Tyler through his 'finding himself' phase — whatever that meant.

"Kenny, tomorrow, we're gone get footage of Ty teaching you about outbreaks. The fan's will love it."

"Well, Dex could also teach me," she said gently, trying to get out of it.

But Tyler threw his arm around her shoulder, pulling her into his side. "Yeah, but Dexter won't appreciate how damn cute you are when you get that confused look on your face when you inevitably don't understand."

Rather than argue that she might understand — argue that she wasn't stupid or anything just because she used to be a model and never went to college — Kennedy just laughed it off before leaning up to kiss the underside of his jaw.

"All right, night, love birds," Boone chuckled before turning away and heading toward the room.

And as soon as he was gone, Tyler's arm was off her as he dropped the duffle bag he'd been carrying for her, and Kennedy hated herself for missing his touch so much. Sure, this arrangement hurt, but at least she could somewhat trick her mind into thinking he still wanted her in some ways.

Tyler awkwardly dug her key out of his pocket, dropping it into her hand. "You're up on the third floor," he muttered, rubbing his head tiredly. "Just, uh, pretend like you're going to my room every night, yeah?"

"Yeah," she mumbled, her head down. "Night, Ty."

Tyler didn't even bother to tell her goodnight as he entered his own room, leaving her alone in the cool night air as she climbed one more set of stairs. And when she opened up the door to the darkened room, she took in a deep, shaky breath while heading to the shower.

It didn't help her feel any better, nor did putting on one of Tyler's shirts and a pair of warm sweatpants help. And laying down in the bed made her feel worse.

The longer she stared at his empty side, the more she began to overthink about the last time they'd shared a bed.

It was only two days ago.

How was that only two days ago?

Had he known then? That he was going to break up with her? If so, it was cruel of him to sleep with her, solely focusing on his pleasure instead of hers — she didn't recall even finishing, but she hadn't cared so long as Tyler had a good time. And when he pulled out, he didn't even kiss her as he laid back, staring up at the ceiling. He didn't pull her into his chest as he usually did, and she felt too self conscious to cuddle into his side.

So, she'd fallen asleep naked and cold and not in the arms of the boy she loved so much.

Tears pricked at Kennedy's eyes, as it was so clear he had already fallen out of love with her at that point. He knew. He had to know he was going to leave her while also asking such a cruel favor of her. He'd used her for her body and then fallen asleep without probably so much as a second thought about her.

God, the bed felt wrong without Tyler with his arms around her.

Suddenly, she couldn't stand to lie down in it on her own. So, she threw the covers off as tears still fell from her eyes and grabbed her boots, heading from the room quickly, which was the last place she wanted to be.

☁︎

Scott didn't want to be up at such a late hour. But his uncle met him in the parking lot for an impromptu shouting session that no one in the empty parking lot caught. But finally, it was over, and Scott was free to head back to his room and fall asleep all alone.

He was quiet in his contemplation of what the hell he was doing with his life — why he was doing all this work for his uncle even though he didn't necessarily agree with what he was doing. But then again, a job was a job, and Scott got to work with things he was passionate about with Javi, so at the end of the day, that made it more bearable.

As Scott made his way to his room on the corner on the first floor, he froze, almost missing the sniffling sound. And usually, he'd have ignored it, but something in him told him to follow the sound.

So, he stepped to the right and looked around the corner of the building.

There was a small, unkept pool just beside the motel, lights lighting up the blue water that was sloshing just a minuscule amount because of the light wind that was blowing.

And sitting on the edge one of the plastic white lounge chairs was Kennedy Spencer. And she was crying.

Scott didn't know how to deal with crying girls, and because of that, alarm bells in his head were telling him to run fast and far.

And yet his feet took him toward her anyhow.

Kennedy didn't hear him approach, too busy crying. Which was probably a bad sign — what if he'd been a murderer instead of some storm nerd who was still in his uniform shirt despite it being one in the morning?

"Kennedy?" Scott finally asked hesitantly as he stood above her.

Her head shot up and her cheeks flushed with humiliation as she saw Scott, Mr. Chatty himself standing in front of her. She quickly wiped her tears, which did nothing as more fell.

"Hi, Scott," she said weakly, hating how her voice trembled.

"Are, um, are you okay?" He watched how her bottom lip quivered, and then she just shook her head. "Do you... wanna talk about it?"

Much to his relief, she shook her head again.

And much to his internal confusion, he took a seat on the edge of the lounge chair right next to her. And they sat in silence for a long while, Scott just watching how the water in the pool flowed while she cried.

And finally, Kennedy got control of her tears as she eyed Scott out of the corner of her eye. Deep down, she really appreciated him not leaving her outside, alone in the cold even though crying in front of a stranger was embarrassing.

"Did, um," she hesitated, staring at her knees as she drew them up to her chest. "Did you get good data today?"

"It wasn't what we needed," he said simply. "Wasn't good enough."

"I'm sorry then," she said, meaning it. She was sure their data collection was vital to some branches of research. "How, uh, how does that work? Getting a 3-D model? I've only seen flat ones."

Scott raised an impressed eyebrow, not expecting her to have cared enough to remember what StormPAR did. "Well, have you ever heard of a PAR? It's a precision approach radar." It earned a simple shake of her head. "Do you want me to tell you about them?"

The corners of Kennedy's lips turned up, liking that Scott clearly didn't really think she wouldn't understand his work as he'd insinuated in the gas station store. And maybe PAR systems wouldn't be the most riveting thing in the world, but it'd give her brain something other than Tyler Owens to think about.

"I'd like that," she said softly.

They sat there for a long while, Scott slowly explaining how the PARs worked in the military and then how Javi had the idea to use them on tornados, which she thought was a brilliant idea. He was patient with her when it got to the things she didn't necessarily grasp onto right away. Scott would answer her questions as if he was tutoring a first year engineering student, all without getting frustrated at her.

And in that one hour they spent together, Scott made Kennedy laugh three times — not that he was counting.

But it was rare he made someone laugh with his sardonic and sarcastic sense of humor. He wasn't exactly a fun and warm and fuzzy guy, after all. But he'd made Kennedy giggle three times, the sound making his own lips turn up in a barely-there smile each time.

And when their talk was done and both were yawning tiredly every few minutes, they decided to call it a night.

Much to both their surprise, Scott walked Kennedy up to her third floor room despite his being down on the first.

"Thank you, Scott," Kennedy said, speaking softly so that her voice wouldn't carry to those that were sleeping behind closed doors. "I know it probably didn't seem like much to you, but it - you helped a lot."

"It was no trouble," he said.

Except it was. It screwed with his already horrible sleep schedule. But Scott found he didn't mind wasting over an hour of his time so late at night as he'd enjoyed his time with the girl.

"Maybe tomorrow night, if you're still curious, I could show you one of the PARs?" Scott found himself offering as they reached her door. He didn't know why, but he didn't want the night to end. So, he'd settle for a continuation. "Unless you'd rather—"

"No," she cut him off. "I'd like that a lot. I think a lot of what you said will make more sense if I'm actually looking at one."

"Well, good then," he nodded. Then he eyed the door of her room, figuring that Tyler Owens was already deep asleep behind it with no clue that his girlfriend had been crying her eyes out not one hour again.

Some boyfriend, he thought sarcastically.

"Goodnight, Scott," Kennedy said softly.

He nodded simply to her, watching her until she disappeared behind the door and locked it before heading to his own room.

And as Kennedy sat her room key down on a table, she only had thoughts of Scott and the complexities of what he was doing with the PAR systems. She fell into bed tiredly, her eyes falling shut instantly, not having a single coherent thought about the empty side of her bed as she drifted off.