Rolling my eyes, I step past him into a blast of air-conditioning with a distinctly sugary scent. Mae is waiting for us with her usual brand of over-the-top friendliness. She’s got to be in her sixties now, gray hair streaked with pink, and giant plastic tornado earrings dangling from her ears. A small mountain of her signature neon pink boxes sits stacked on the counter waiting for a stampede of hungry storm chasers.
“Well now, aren’t you two a sight for sore eyes!” She comes around the counter to embrace each of us in a cloud of vanilla, her expression alight with excitement. “I saw the forecast this morning and hoped I’d be seeing y’all on your way west. You just tell those storms to stay away from my shop.”
“We’ll do our best.” Wes grins, kissing her cheek before straightening from the hug. He reaches up, grabs the pink hat, and gently places it on her head. “Saw this and couldn’t resist.”
Heat crawls into my cheeks. The hat that I called hideous only a few minutes ago was a gift all along, one that Mae obviously appreciates by the way her expression softens.
She’s one of the kindest souls I’ve met in all the years I’ve come to the plains to chase each spring. She started selling her donuts out of a food truck, and once she realized that storm chasers are a bunch of sugar fiends, made a habit out of turning up year after year where we were likely to be.
It was a great marketing tactic until it wasn’t. A couple of years ago, a night tornado tore through the town that Mae wasstaying in. She was safe in a storm shelter, but her truck wasn’t so lucky.
It was a gut punch when I heard what happened. In the weeks that followed, it quickly became clear just how many lives she had touched with her endless optimism and steady supply of baked goods. The community rallied around her and organized a fundraiser that, together with the insurance payout, enabled her to buy the shop we’re now standing in. Most of us stop in every chance we get.
“I sure do miss being out on the road sometimes,” Mae says now, slipping behind the counter and reaching for a paper coffee cup. “But it’s awful nice to only have a ten-minute drive at five o’clock in the morning.” She slides the first cup of coffee in front of me and then starts to pour another. “Weddings still treating you right, Sloane? I just can’t thank you enough for sending that bride my way last summer. Never would have thought of that myself!”
I shrug off the compliment. “She mentioned she and her husband got donuts and coffee on their first date. It was an easy suggestion.”
“Well, I still appreciate it!”
“Business is good?” Wes leans his elbows on the counter, his sunglasses dangling from his fingers while he waits for Mae to fix his coffee.
She laughs and wags her finger before setting down the paper cup. “As if you don’t know! I still have no earthly idea how you did it, but I guess my granddaughter was right.”
Wes shrugs. “Least I could do,” he says with uncharacteristic bashfulness, the tips of his ears turning pink.
Mae must see the confusion on my face. She pulls herphone out of her apron, taps the screen a few times with her long nails, and then turns it toward me. “Isn’t he just the sweetest?”
On the screen, Wes’s social media page is open to a video of him in one of Mae’s signature bright pink aprons. The sound is off, not that I need to hear what he’s saying to see that the clip went viral. Wes being topless beneath the apron probably violates some kind of health code, sure, but it’s effective.
It was also awfully generous of him to put his thirst-trap tendencies to good use.
“I’m still getting people driving from all over creation just to try one of the pink-velvet donuts.” Mae gestures to the pastry case with a happy sigh. Behind the sparkling glass, an assortment of treats sits tidily lined up, though most of the space is reserved for the donuts from the video. Like the rest of the shop, they’re over-the-top, the dough itself a deep pink, with lighter-colored frosting and tiny high-heeled pink sprinkles. “Might even start shipping during the summer when my granddaughter and her friends are off school!”
“That’s dangerous information.” I grin over the rim of my coffee cup before taking a sip. “You taking preorders?”
Mae laughs while grabbing one of the boxes and a square of parchment paper. “You want the usual?”
“Yeah, that’s great.”
“Or you could live a little, Sloane,” Wes taunts from my side. “All these concoctions to choose from and you’re going with boring plain glazed?”
“Ilikeplain glazed,” I retort. “It’s a classic for a reason.”
“Lucky Charms are a classic. C’mon, taste the rainbow!”
“That’s Skittles.”
“I’ve got those this year too!” Mae sets the box with a halfdozen plain glazed donuts on the counter and winks. “If you’re feeling adventurous.”
I pluck one of the donuts out of the box and take a giant bite, letting out a quiet groan at the perfection of sugar and light, airy dough. “Nah,” I say with my eyes on Wes while he takes a big gulp of his coffee. “I know what I like. And what I don’t.” I turn my attention back to Mae and offer her a genuine smile. “These are fantastic. Even ifsome peoplethink they’re boring.”
By the timeMatt and Tracy show up and everyone heads back to their cars loaded up with donuts and coffee, the Storm Prediction Center has a wide swath of western Kansas marked with a high probability of strong storms. With the phrasenumerous tornadoes with very large/destructive hailincluded in the discussion notes, just about every chaser in the area will be out. There’s a trough coming in this afternoon, the atmospheric equivalent of dropping a mass of cold air into a seething cauldron of heat and humidity.
All the ingredients for a nice simmering pot of tornado soup.
When Tracy, Matt, and Wes opt for the core of the storm on the hunt for aqua skies and menacing clouds, I hang back, more in the mood for structure and scale today. If a tornado pops out, I can throw on my telephoto lens and still pick up detail at a distance.
While I miss the tornado—it’s hidden behind rain and I’m too far away—I do get some of the shots I’m after, including apanorama of the whole storm looming high above freshly plowed fields. The distinct rows of tilled earth provide perfect leading lines, the warm brown of the dirt a great contrast to the whites and grays of the sky.
