Chapter 4 #2
I looked at the phrase, and something twisted in my chest. It was accurate—I'd used similar language in my own notes. Chaos agent. Disaster.
Adrian: He's watchable.
Naomi: Watchable is good. Watchable, we can use.
Adrian: There might be more to him than the comedy angle.
The three dots pulsed for a long time.
Naomi: More how?
Adrian: Still figuring that out.
Naomi: Okay. But Adrian—he's our hook. See if there's depth, but don't lose the funny.
Don't lose the funny.
Naomi was practical. She told me what I already knew: the streamer had paid for a specific product, and that product was Pickle as a punchline.
They hadn't paid for a profile of a talented athlete. They hadn't paid for the story of a player whose brilliance kept getting underestimated.
Adrian: Understood.
Naomi: Get some sleep. You sound like you're overthinking.
Adrian: Working on it.
Naomi: Don't fall in love with your subject, Richter. We've talked about this.
She meant it as a joke. Mostly. The reference was to a conversation we'd had years ago, back when I was recovering from Theo, and she was pretending she didn't know the details.
The problem with documentary, she'd said, is that you have to care enough to see people clearly, but not so much that you lose the shot.
I'd told her I had it under control.
Adrian: Goodnight, Naomi.
I thought about Pickle's face in that three-second clip. The exhaustion. The unguarded softness. I thought about orange Crocs in dirty snow, a broken karaoke microphone, and "It's not what it looks like," delivered with a grin.
I thought about his hands and his mouth—how he'd looked at me across the ice after Hog walked away—that long, uncertain stare.
After turning off the lamp, I lay back on the bed, still dressed, staring at the dark ceiling.
Amid the silence in my room, I heard a sound from outside.
I'd been lying there for twenty minutes, maybe thirty, waiting for sleep that wasn't coming. At first, I thought it was nothing, but it didn't stop.
I was hearing footsteps. Pacing. The scuff of shoes on asphalt in an irregular rhythm, back and forth.
I got up and went to the window.
Two floors down, in the amber wash of the parking lot lights, a figure was walking in tight circles near my rental car. Lean frame. Messy hair. A hoodie pulled up.
He had a dog with him.
I watched for a full minute, maybe longer. It was Pickle. He paced. Stopped. Looked up at the hotel—not at my window specifically, but in its general direction. Started pacing again. The dog was Biscuit, Hog's ridiculous mutt.
Pickle checked his phone. Put it away. Pulled it out again. Put it away.
He was working himself up to something. Or talking himself out of something. I couldn't tell which.
I grabbed my jacket and headed for the stairs.
The cold hit the moment I pushed through the side door—sharp and dry. Pickle's back was to me. He was saying something to the dog, gesturing with both hands. I listened.
"—not weird. It's a normal route. We're just walking. This is a public parking lot, Biscuit, I'm allowed to be here, it's not like I specifically looked up which hotel he was staying at and then invented a reason to—"
"Pickle."
He spun around.
For a second, his expression went completely blank. Then he began explaining.
"Adrian! Hey! Wow, what a coincidence." He spread his arms wide, grinning.
"Biscuit needed a walk. I volunteered. Hog's busy being disgustingly in love, so I said, sure, I'll take the weird dog out at—" He checked his phone.
"—one in the morning, totally normal, dogs have schedules, you can't mess with their schedules—"
"This is nowhere near Hog's place."
"Biscuit likes variety."
Biscuit yawned.
"He's a very sophisticated dog," Pickle continued, the words coming faster now, tumbling over each other. "Cultured. He has preferences. He specifically requested this parking lot. I'm just honoring his wishes."
I could have called him on it, but I didn't.
I knew why he was there. It was the same reason I'd spent the last four hours watching footage of him instead of sleeping. The same reason I'd come downstairs instead of staying at the window.
We stood there in the cold, our breath fogging between us. The parking lot lights hummed. Biscuit's tags clinked as he scratched behind his ear.
Pickle's grin remained fixed, but his voice wavered as he spoke.
"I saw what Hog said to you after practice. I couldn't hear it, but I saw you guys talking, and then you looked at me, and I just—" He stopped. Tried again. "I wanted to know if he said something weird. About me. Because Hog gets protective, and sometimes he says stuff that's—"
"He said you're family."
Pickle blinked.
"That's it?"
"He said you're not merely content for the documentary. You're family." I paused. "And he wanted me to remember that."
"Oh." Pickle's voice turned softer. "That's... actually kind of nice."
"He cares about you."
"Yeah, well." Pickle shoved his hands into his hoodie pocket. "Hog cares about everybody. It's annoying. He's like a big knitted blanket that learned to fight."
I smiled briefly.
Pickle was different alone, in the dark, one-on-one. The energy was still there, buzzing beneath the surface, but his edges were softer. He wasn't filling every corner of the space. He was present.
I wanted to reach out and touch him. He was standing close enough for me to see the cold pinching color into his cheeks.
"Why are you really here?" I asked.
Pickle opened his mouth. Closed it.
"I don't know," he said finally. "I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about—" He gestured vaguely. "You had your camera on me all day. And I kept wondering what you saw. What it looked like. Whether I—"
He stopped.
"Whether you what?"
"Whether I looked like a joke."
The words were heavy, and it took me a moment to consider my answer.
"You didn't," I said.
Pickle's gaze met mine. Brown, I remembered from the first night. Brown and sharp and searching.
"How do I look?" The question came out in a whisper.
I thought about how he'd grabbed my sleeve at the bar like we'd known each other for years. The way he'd said It's not what it looks like with a grin that had no shame in it, only delight.
I thought about all the dangerous things I could say.
"Like someone worth watching,"
Pickle's breath caught. Biscuit whined softly, pulling at his leash, but Pickle didn't look away from me.
"I should go," he said.
"Yeah."
"It's late."
"It is."
"Biscuit has a schedule."
"You mentioned."
Pickle took a step back. Then another. The distance between us widened.
"I'll see you tomorrow," he said. "At practice. I'll try not to fall on my face this time."
"Don't make promises you can't keep."
He laughed—a real one.
"Night, Adrian."
"Night, Pickle."
He walked away, Biscuit trotting beside him, and I watched until they disappeared around the corner of the building. Then, I went back inside.
The stairwell was too warm after the cold. My room was too quiet. I lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling.
He'd come to the hotel for me.
At 1 a.m., in the cold, with a borrowed dog and a transparent excuse. He'd come because he couldn't sleep either. Whatever was going on—he felt it too.
Tomorrow I'd see him again. Tomorrow I'd have to point a camera at him and pretend I was still capable of professional distance. Tomorrow I'd have to act like this was still just a job.
Tonight, in the dark, I let myself admit the truth.
Three days wouldn't be enough, and it was already too much.