Chapter 2
Chapter two
Adrian
I stared at it for a full thirty seconds before I clicked.
This message was not that.
Adrian—
We've got something that might be up your alley. Small-town hockey doc. Human interest angle on a Shark Tank success story out of Thunder Bay, Ontario. The segment aired last night and the internet's already losing its mind over the boyfriend.
Fly to Thunder Bay today. Shoot 3–5 days. We might have something bigger here. Naomi vouched for you.
Call me.
I read it three times. Then a fourth, because my brain kept snagging on Naomi vouched for you like a hangnail catching on fabric.
Naomi. We'd been out of touch for eight months. She'd watched me torch my last network deal over "creative differences"—industry code for Adrian Richter is a stubborn prick who won't let us turn his documentary subjects into clickbait—and said nothing except I hope you know what you're doing.
She'd vouched for me anyway. Called in a favor I hadn't asked for, couldn't repay, and would absolutely hate myself for needing.
My pulse kicked up. I refused to call it hope.
Hope was for people who hadn't learned better. Hope was for twenty-nine-year-old Adrian, the one who thought love and work could coexist without one of them bleeding out on the floor. That Adrian had been wrong about a lot of things.
I checked the sender again. Mid-tier prestige streamer—the kind with more ambition than budget, which usually meant creative freedom or spectacular failure, sometimes both. They'd done a series on rural veterinarians last year. Solid work. Not exploitative.
Three to five days, I thought. Survivable.
I scrolled through the rest of the email. Attachment: a clip from last night's Shark Tank episode. I clicked play.
Two men walked into the tank. The first was polished, confident, the kind of steady that reads well on camera. The second was enormous—bearded, broad, visibly uncomfortable in a way that made him immediately more interesting than his partner.
I watched them pitch. Watched the boyfriend's hands shake once, then steady. Watched the big one's face when his partner called him "my partner" on national television—that split-second crack in the armor, surprise, and pride.
There, I thought. That's the shot.
I paused the video. Studied the composition like I was already framing it.
Then I closed my laptop and pressed my palms flat against the desk.
It's just a job. Paycheck. Résumé filler. Three days in a town I've never heard of, filming people I'll never see again.
The radiator ticked.
I hit reply.
I'm in. Send me the details.
I packed the way I'd learned to pack after a decade of last-minute assignments: gear first, clothes second, dignity optional.
Camera body. Backup body. Three lenses in foam-lined cases. Lavalier mics. Enough memory cards to film a small war. The equipment bag was heavy and familiar.
I was halfway through rolling a third flannel when I saw the lens case I'd been avoiding.
The 85mm f/1.4. My prime portrait lens. The one that could blur a background into watercolor and make a subject look like the only solid thing in the universe.
It was the one I'd used to film Theo.
It sat on the shelf where I'd put it three years ago, after I'd finally stopped pretending I might use it again.
The case was dusty. I hadn't touched it since the last time I'd edited the footage of Theo at the piano, laughing at something I'd said, and looking into the lens like he could see straight through it to me.
Eventually, I deleted those files. Kept the lens.
Couldn't explain why I was reaching for it now, wiping the dust off with my sleeve and checking the glass.
Still perfect. Still sharp.
I told myself it was practical. The 85mm was the best portrait lens I owned, and Thunder Bay was a human-interest piece. I'd be shooting faces.
The lens went into the bag.
I checked my bank account. The number was three digits shorter than comfort and two digits longer than panic. The deposit from this job would buy me another month, maybe six weeks if I ate like a grad student.
"Three days," I muttered, zipping the gear bag. "Maybe five. I can survive five."
On my way out, I passed the stack of mail on the entry table. Three envelopes, slightly fanned, edges not quite aligned. I straightened them without thinking. Squared the corners. Adjusted until they sat in a perfect pile, flush with the edge of the table.
Old habit. Control the environment when you can't control the outcome.
I caught myself doing it and stopped, hand still on the envelopes.
It's a job. Just a job.
I picked up my bags and walked out before the apartment could stop me.
O'Hare was its usual self: fluorescent purgatory with a Cinnabon.
Behind a family of five, I shuffled through TSA, my gear bag heavy on my shoulder and my boarding pass pulled up on a phone at 14% battery. Gate B17. Forty minutes until boarding.
I found a seat near the windows—sight lines to the gate, the habit of someone who'd developed preferences about airports. A toddler three rows down was having a meltdown about something critical. Goldfish crackers, maybe.
I pulled out my headphones.
Music helped me survive the liminal spaces—airports and hotel rooms. I hit shuffle.
First song: something electronic and forgettable. Fine.
Second song: an old Radiohead track I'd overplayed in my twenties. I skipped halfway through.
Third song.
The guitar came in first. Soft, almost tentative. A fingerpicked pattern I knew the way I knew my own handwriting.
My thumb was on the skip button before the first vocal line.
Don't be sentimental. You're a grown man on a work trip. It's only sound.
I didn't press skip.
Maybe because I was tired or because the toddler had finally stopped screaming, and the silence was too loud. Maybe because some part of me—the part I'd spent five years trying to bury—wanted to know whether it still hurt.
The vocals came in. That voice, high and aching, singing about being blindsided.
It still hurt.
I closed my eyes.
The song was a trapdoor, and I fell through.
I saw Theo's kitchen. Two in the morning. The overhead light buzzed, too bright for the conversation we were about to have.
He'd just come in from the balcony. I could smell it on him—cigarette smoke and cold air, layered over the cedar cologne I'd bought him for his birthday. He leaned against the counter, arms crossed, looking exhausted.
"I can't do this anymore."
I wasn't ready for the words. I stood in the doorway, still holding my keys, and still thinking about the project I needed to finish editing.
"Do what?" I asked.
It wasn't a surprise. I'd known for weeks, maybe months—how you know a storm is coming from the pressure in your sinuses.
"This. Us. The way you're here but you're not." He pressed his palms against his eyes for a moment. When he dropped them, he appeared wrecked. "The way you love me like you're already losing me."
I didn't say anything. There was nothing to say. He was right, and we both knew it.
"You're the best man I've ever been with.
" His voice cracked on the word best. "You're kind, you're brilliant, and you see things other people don't see.
But you don't let yourself keep any of it.
" He started crying, quiet tears he didn't bother wiping away.
"You find beauty, and you film it, and then you hold it at arm's length, like if you let it get too close, it would destroy you.
I can't keep being something beautiful you're afraid to touch. "
The overhead light buzzed. The refrigerator hummed.
"I'm not afraid," I said.
It was a lie.
"You're scared. You are. You throw up this armor, and I'm tired of trying to break through it." He wiped his face with the back of his hand. "You don't know how to let yourself be happy. And I can't keep waiting for you to figure it out."
He walked past me toward the bedroom. At the doorway, he stopped.
"I'll stay at Marcus's tonight."
The bedroom door clicked shut. Silence.
I stood in the kitchen for an hour. Maybe longer. Didn't move. Didn't cry. Stood there under that buzzing light, proving him right.
I opened my eyes and jolted myself back to the present.
Gate B17. The vinyl seat beneath me. The toddler quiet now, slumped asleep against her father's shoulder.
My jaw ached. I'd been clenching it without realizing.
Five years, I thought. Five years and twelve notes of a song could still gut me.
I shoved the headphones into my bag. Pulled out my laptop. Reread the email—Thunder Bay, the hockey team, and the boyfriend who'd pitched his way into a shark's wallet and the internet's heart.
Work. That was what I needed. A target for my camera.
They called my boarding group. On the jetway, my phone buzzed. A text from a number I didn't recognize, 807 area code.
Rhett: Hey, it's Rhett Mason. Naomi passed along your info. Welcome to Thunder Bay! The Storm plays tonight if you want to catch a game—good way to meet the team. Afterward everyone usually ends up at a bar called The Drop.
A second text, immediately after:
Rhett: Fair warning: it gets loud.
Adrian: Thanks. I'll find it.
Next, I turned off my phone, found my seat, and spent the next three hours watching clouds and trying not to think about anything at all.
From the air, Thunder Bay looked like someone had cleared just enough forest to build a town, and the trees were waiting to take it back.
The plane banked over Lake Superior—a flat gray expanse that swallowed the horizon—and then we descended through clouds. There were trees. So many trees.
The airport was small. One baggage carousel. A Tim Hortons. A Welcome to Thunder Bay sign featuring a moose that looked mildly concerned about tourism.
I collected my gear, found the rental car desk, and signed paperwork for a Corolla that smelled aggressively of pine air freshener. The woman behind the counter asked if I was here for hunting.
"Documentary," I said.
"About what?"
"Hockey. I think."