Chapter 2 #2
She handed me my keys, grinned, and said, "The Storm. My brother's wife's sister works in their office."
Outside, the cold hit hard. Not the damp chill of Chicago in October—drier, sharper, and with fewer buildings to break the wind.
The GPS guided me toward downtown, and the city began to assert itself. Brick buildings. Local businesses with hand-painted signs. A coffee shop called The Common Thread with a rainbow flag in the window.
It was smaller than I'd imagined. Not quaint—that was the wrong word. Handmade, maybe. Like someone had built each block based on intention rather than an algorithm.
I found The Drop on a corner, wedged between a Thai restaurant and a closed insurance office. The windows glowed. Even from the parking lot, I heard the noise—music and voices. It was the dull roar of people being happy together.
The Storm had won. I'd caught the last period on the radio, driving in—scrappy victory, overtime goal by someone named Hawkins.
I turned off the engine and sat.
The cold crept into the car immediately as my breath began to fog the windows.
Something prickled at the back of my neck. It was the moment before a shot—that held breath when you know something's about to happen, but you don't know what.
Get out of the car. Go inside. Do the job.
I grabbed my smaller camera bag and stepped out into the cold.
The air smelled like woodsmoke, fried food, and pine. The noise from the bar swelled as someone opened the door, spilling light and sound onto the sidewalk.
I started walking toward the entrance.
A distinctive sound stopped me.
Drifting from somewhere behind the building—muffled, off-key, but unmistakable—the opening notes of "Total Eclipse of the Heart."
And under it, stranger still: a dog, howling.
I followed the sound around the corner.
Later, I'd think about how different everything might have been if I'd just gone through the front door of The Drop. If I'd entered, ordered a drink, introduced myself to Rhett, and started the job the way a normal person would.
I didn't. I followed the music and the howling, hoping for a unique shot.
What I found:
A guy—mid-twenties, lean, the kind of person a camera finds, whether you point it at them or not. He knelt in a patch of dirty snow behind a dumpster, left over from Thunder Bay's first snowstorm of the season.
He wore orange Crocs. No socks, despite the temperature plunge. His cheeks were flushed pink, and his hair was a mess of brown that looked like it had lost a fight with a pillow.
He was holding a karaoke microphone. The cord dangled uselessly, with the plastic casing cracked along one side.
In front of him sat the ugliest dog I'd ever seen—a medium-sized mutt with one ear that flopped and one that stood up, a patchy coat that couldn't decide on a color, and the expression of a creature who had witnessed too much.
The guy lifted the broken microphone to his lips.
"And I need you now tonight," he sang, voice cracking on the word need. "And I need you more than ever—"
He stopped, gesturing at the dog.
"Okay, Biscuit, this is your part. We've rehearsed this."
The dog stared at him.
"Biscuit. Buddy. The heart wants what it wants."
The dog yawned.
"That's not even close to the right note."
I should have announced myself, cleared my throat, or said hello.
Instead, I raised my camera.
The viewfinder framed him perfectly—the orange Crocs bright against the gray slush, the broken mic held like a sacred object, and his face a blend of determination and delight. The composition was absurd, and the light was terrible.
I took the shot anyway.
The shutter sound was quiet, but he heard it. His head snapped up.
For a second, we stared at each other.
He had brown eyes. I noticed that immediately. Brown eyes, sharp cheekbones, and a mouth that looked like it was still smiling after hearing a joke. His nose was red from the cold.
Objectively, he was beautiful.
"It's not what it looks like," he said.
I lowered the camera.
"I think it's exactly what it looks like."
He blinked. Then his face split into a grin—wide and unguarded.
"Okay, fair." He stood, brushing snow off his knees. Shorter than I'd expected—five-ten, maybe. "I'm teaching Hog's dog to harmonize. It's going poorly."
"I can see that."
"He has the range. He lacks the emotional commitment." The man tucked the broken microphone into his back pocket. "You're not from here."
"Chicago," I said. "I'm—"
"The documentary guy." His grin widened. "Rhett said you might show up. Adrian, right? I'm Pickle."
He stuck out his hand. I took it. His grip was cold from the snow but firm.
"Pickle," I repeated.
"It's a whole thing. I'll tell you later if you buy me a drink.
" He moved toward the door, pulling me along in his wake as Biscuit trotted at his ankle.
"We won tonight. Overtime. Hog got the game-winner, so he's buying shots for everyone, which means he's going to be insufferable about it for a week. "
He grabbed my sleeve like we'd known each other for years and tugged me toward the back entrance.
"Wait," I said. "The dog—"
"Everybody knows Biscuit." He pushed open the door, and the sound hit us like a wave—cheering and music. "Come on, camera guy. You're gonna want footage of this."
And then he was gone, swallowed into the noise and the light, leaving me standing in the doorway with the cold at my back and something unsteady in my chest.
I'd felt it the moment our eyes met. That quick internal stutter, like a camera aperture snapping open too fast.
Not again, I thought.
The dog—Biscuit—trotted past me into the bar, tags jingling.
I followed.
I'm here for three days.
Bodies pressed together in the packed space. Storm jerseys were everywhere. Someone's chair lay overturned. A puddle of beer spread across the floor near the back, and someone lifted a guy in a goalie mask onto his shoulders.
Pickle had already disappeared into the throng, but I could track him by the disturbance he left in his wake.
People reached out to high-five him, grab his shoulder, and yell things I couldn't hear over the noise.
He moved through the room as if he belonged to it—like the crowd was an extension of his own body.
I found a spot near the wall. Back to the brick, sight lines to the room.
My camera was still in my hand. I raised it without thinking, framing the celebration through the viewfinder.
A tall bearded guy—Hog, I assumed, the overtime hero—had someone in a crushing embrace.
A woman with blue hair filmed everything on her phone while two men near the bar kissed with the enthusiasm of people who'd forgotten anyone else existed.
Moments I wouldn't have to manufacture.
I took a few shots. The camera felt steady in my hands, familiar, a barrier between me and the chaos that made it manageable.
Then Pickle reappeared.
He'd acquired a drink somewhere—something in a plastic cup sloshing around—and he headed straight for me.
"You're lurking," he announced, stopping close enough that I could smell the cold still clinging to his hoodie. "Documentary guys aren't supposed to lurk."
"I've been here for three minutes."
"Three minutes of lurking." He took a sip of his drink, watching me over the rim. "You missed the good stuff. Hog cried. Actual tears. It was historic."
"I'll catch him next time."
"Bold of you to assume Hog has emotions twice." He grinned. "Come on. I'll introduce you to people."
He grabbed my sleeve again and pulled me toward the crowd. "Fair warning: Jake's going to try to recruit you into karaoke. Say no. He does this thing with 'Don't Stop Believin' that's technically a war crime."
"Noted."
He introduced me to a blur of faces. Jake, who had mischief in his eyes and a possessive hand on the small of his boyfriend's back. Evan, who shook my hand with a grip that felt like an evaluation. Rhett, quieter than expected, thanked me for coming.
Hog was last. Up close, he was bigger than he'd appeared on the Shark Tank footage—and a lot sweatier. He looked at me for a beat too long before extending his hand.
"You're the camera guy."
Not quite a question. Not quite a welcome, either.
Through all of it, Pickle orbited. Never still. Never quiet. Bouncing between conversations, refilling drinks that weren't his, making jokes that landed half the time and didn't seem to bother him when they missed.
I kept watching him.
That was the problem.
I watched the way his hands moved when he talked—expressive, uncontrolled, nearly knocking over a beer at one point. I watched him light up when someone laughed at his jokes. I couldn't look away when he crouched down to greet Biscuit, ruffling the mutt's ridiculous ears with tenderness.
Stop, I told myself. He's not your subject. He's a hockey player at a bar, and you're here to do a specific job.
I raised my camera again. Took a few more shots of the crowd, jerseys, and joy. Professional. Detached.
Somehow, the camera kept finding its way back to Pickle.
A shot of him mid-laugh, head thrown back.
A shot of him listening to something Hog said, face uncharacteristically serious.
A shot of him alone for a moment in the crowd.
I stared at it in the viewfinder. The grin was gone, and something young and uncertain shone from underneath.
I deleted it.
Keeping it would have been an admission.
When I looked up, Hog was watching me.
Not Pickle. Me.
His expression wasn't hostile. Just aware. The look of a man who'd noticed precisely which direction my lens kept pointing.
He didn't say anything. Raised his beer an inch in something that wasn't quite a toast.
Message received.
I had the kind of problem I'd sworn I wouldn't have again—the blur between work and want, how a lens could become an excuse to look too long. I'd done it before, and I knew how it ended.
Pickle caught my eye from across the room. Raised his plastic cup in a toast. Mouthed something I couldn't make out and turned back to his conversation.
I made my way toward the door. The cold outside would clear my head.
At the threshold, I stopped. Looked back.
Pickle was in the middle of the room, gesturing wildly at something, and Jake doubled over laughing beside him. The bar's terrible lighting caught the snow still melting in his hair, and he looked ridiculous and radiant.
I'd been working on documentaries long enough to know how stories started. Not with events, but with feelings. The prickle at the back of your neck that said something's here.
This one felt like that.
It was dangerous.
I walked out into the cold and told myself I wouldn't think about Pickle until morning.
I was wrong.