Chapter 6 #2
Heath was the last to go. He hovered by the door, looking back at Pickle with the expression of a kid being sent to bed while the adults kept talking.
"Go," Pickle said, waving him off. "Beauty sleep. You need it more than me."
"I don't think that's—"
"Go. I'll see you tomorrow—game day."
Heath went. The door swung shut behind him, letting in a gust of cold air and a swirl of snow.
The bartender started stacking chairs. Pickle dropped into the seat across from me.
"You're still here," he said.
"So are you."
"I live close." He stole a cold fry from the basket I'd abandoned an hour ago. "What's your excuse?"
I closed my laptop. "Reviewing footage."
"For three hours?"
"There's a lot of footage."
"Uh-huh." He ate another fry, watching me with those sharp brown eyes. "Find anything good?"
You, I thought. Every frame, somehow, you.
"Still looking," I said.
The bartender dropped her rag on the counter. Pickle glanced over, then back at me.
"She wants us gone."
"Yep, I think so."
Neither of us moved.
"It's game day tomorrow. I should go home," Pickle said. He didn't stand up.
"Where's your car?"
"Don't have one. I always walk."
"It's snowing."
"Yep." He grinned. "Cold builds character. My mom says so."
I looked at the window. The snow was coming down hard, thick flakes that blurred the streetlights into soft orange smears. It was snow that meant business.
"I'll drive you," I said.
Pickle's grin flickered.
"You don't have to—"
"I know."
The bartender cleared her throat.
"Okay," Pickle said. "Yeah. Okay."
Outside, the cold hit slapped us in the face.
Pickle was wearing Crocs again. The same orange ones from the parking lot the night we'd met. No socks. His ankles were bare and already turning red.
"You're insane going without socks," I said.
"I'm making a statement."
"About what? Frostbite?"
"About commitment. About principles." He shoved his hands in his hoodie pocket, shoulders hunched against the wind. "About the human right to wear whatever shoes you want, regardless of weather conditions."
"That's not a human right."
"It should be. I'm drafting a petition."
I unlocked my rental car. The locks chirped, absurdly loud in the muffled quiet of falling snow.
Pickle slid into the passenger seat with an exaggerated groan of relief. "Oh my God. Heat. You have heat."
"Most cars do."
"Don't ruin this for me." He held his hands up to the vent, fingers splayed, face slack. "I'm having a moment."
I put the car in drive. "Which way?" I asked.
He gave me directions. I drove slowly. The roads were slick, visibility dropping by the minute. Pickle's knee was close to the center console—close enough to be aware of it.
"Thanks," he said after a minute. "For the ride. You didn't have to."
"You said that already."
"I'm being polite. It's a thing people do."
We passed a block in silence. Not awkward—full. The wipers beat a rhythm against the windshield. Snow piled on the hood, sliding off in small avalanches when I braked.
Pickle spoke. "Can I ask you something?"
"Depends on what it is."
"Why'd you stay?"
I glanced at him. His face was lit by the dashboard glow, half in shadow. He wasn't smiling.
"Stay where?"
"Tonight. At The Drop." He picked at a thread on his sleeve. "You had your footage. You could've left hours ago."
I gave him a vague answer.
"I wasn't ready to go back to the hotel."
"Why not?"
"It's quiet there."
Pickle nodded slowly. "Yeah. Quiet's hard sometimes."
"Is it?"
"For me it is." He was still picking at that thread, not looking at me. "Quiet means my brain gets loud. Starts listing all the ways I'm probably screwing up. All the people I'm probably disappointing." A pause. "It's easier to be around noise. Drowns the rest out."
I thought about my hotel room and the hum of the mini-fridge.
"I get that," I said.
As I neared his apartment building, Pickle looked at me with searching intensity.
"I don't always know how to be around people who really see me," he said. "I think you saw me."
The words landed in the car like a held breath finally released. No jokes. Pickle, raw and honest.
"What do you mean?" I asked. I didn't need to ask. I already knew. He was right about me seeing him.
"It's easier being the funny one," he said. "The disaster. The guy who's always on, you know? Because if I'm the entertainment, at least I'm... something." He shrugged.
"I watch Jake and Evan. Hog and Rhett. They found their people. They got picked." His voice cracked slightly. "And I'm happy for them—I am—but sometimes I'm in a room full of my favorite people, and I still feel like the extra. The one everyone loves having around but nobody actually..."
He stopped. Swallowed. "I'm a lot. I know I'm a lot. And I keep thinking maybe that's why. Maybe I'm just too much for anyone to stay past the joke."
The wipers beat. The snow fell.
I pulled the car over.
We were outside of his building, parked under a streetlight that turned the snow orange as it fell. I put the car in park, but didn't kill the engine. The heat kept running. The windows fogged.
"Pickle," I said.
"I know. I'm being weird. Sorry. I don't know why I said—"
"Maybe you don't have to work so hard."
He looked at me. "What?"
"You said you're too much, but I've been watching you for four days, and that's not what I see." I held his gaze. "I see someone who pulled Heath into the group before anyone else noticed he was drowning. Someone whose teammates look for him the second they walk into a room. Someone who—"
I stopped and recalibrated. "You're not too much, Pickle. You're not the extra. And whoever made you believe you have to shrink yourself to be picked wasn't paying attention."
Pickle stared at me. His lips parted slightly. Then he laughed, short and disbelieving.
"Easy for you to say."
"Why?"
"Because you're—" He gestured at me, a sweep that seemed to encompass my entire existence. "You're calm. You're controlled. You probably have a morning routine with, like, meditation and French press coffee and furniture that matches."
"I do have a French press."
"See?" He threw his hands up. "Unattainable. You're a person who probably folds his underwear and knows how to use a semicolon in the right way."
I thought about my apartment in Chicago. I'd left behind three days of dishes in the sink. I had a half-dead succulent I kept forgetting to water. There was a stack of unopened mail on my entry table.
"I don't fold my underwear," I said. "I also killed a cactus last month. Those are supposed to be indestructible."
He blinked. "What?"
"And my furniture doesn't match. I have a couch from IKEA, and a chair that I'm pretty sure has a haunted energy, but I kept it anyway because it was free."
"You have a haunted chair?"
"It creaks at 3 a.m. for no reason. I've made peace with it."
Pickle stared at me like I'd just revealed I was secretly three raccoons in a trenchcoat.
"You're—" He floundered, reaching for the right words. "You seem like you have it together. Like you know what you want and you just... go after it. Without making a mess of everything."
Our eyes met again.
"You have no idea," I said, "how much of a mess I am."
The admission surprised me. It surprised him, too; I saw it in how his expression shifted.
"Pickle," I said. "Noah. I spent four hours last night watching footage of you instead of sleeping.
I called my producer this morning and asked for two extra days on an assignment that was supposed to be over, and I couldn't explain why except that something about this place—something about you—" I stopped.
Started again. "I haven't felt this off-balance in years.
So don't tell me I have it together. I'm barely holding on. "
The car was very warm. The windows were completely fogged now, erasing the outside world.
"You stayed," Pickle said slowly. "For two more days."
"Yes."
"Because of the documentary."
"That's what I told myself."
"Adrian," he said. Just my name. I listened to the tone—soft, wondering, like he was testing how it felt in his mouth.
"Yeah?"
He didn't answer. His eyes were wide, the chaos stripped away.
The car's engine idled. Outside, the snow kept falling.
Pickle's hand rested on his knee. I watched his fingers tap once, twice, then go still.
"I need to go," he said.
He didn't reach for the door handle.
The fogged windows made the car feel smaller than it was. Pickle's face was all shadow and warm glow from the streetlights beyond the foggy glass.
"Adrian." His voice was quieter this time. "What are we doing?"
I didn't have an answer. Or I had precisely the right one—I don't know, something stupid, exactly what I told myself I wouldn't do—but it wasn't the right thing to say.
"I don't know," I said.
"Okay." He nodded, like that was acceptable. "That's... okay. I don't know either."
"Does that bother you?"
"Usually? Yeah. I like knowing things. I like—" He laughed softly. "I like when there's a plan. Even a bad plan. Especially a bad plan, honestly, because then at least I know what I'm supposed to be screwing up."
"And this?"
"This doesn't feel like a plan." He turned toward me. "This feels like—"
He stopped.
"Like what?"
"Like falling." His eyes met mine. "The part when you aren't sure anyone's going to catch you."
The heat clicked off. Some automatic setting, the car deciding we'd been idle too long. The sudden silence was enormous.
"I'm not good at this," I said.
"At what?"
"Letting things happen. Letting people in. I have a pattern. I did it before, and it—" I stopped. Theo's face flickered at the edge of my vision. "It ended badly. I ended it badly."
"What happened?"
"I held on so tight to the idea that it would fall apart that I made it fall apart." I'd never said the truth out loud in so few words.
Pickle was quiet for a moment. Processing.
"Is that what you're doing now? Expecting this to fall apart?"
I looked at him. The dashboard light caught the edge of his cheekbone and the curve of his mouth. He simply sat there, asking a question that deserved an honest answer.
"I'm trying not to," I said.
"How's that going?"
"Badly." I almost smiled. "You make it hard to keep my distance."
"Is that a complaint?"
"No. It's not a complaint."
"Okay," he said. "Okay."
And then he leaned in.
He moved so slowly, I could have stopped him. I could have turned my head and said, "Wait," or any of the sensible things that were supposed to be my specialty. I had time to think about potential consequences and all the reasons this was a terrible idea.
I didn't stop him.
His lips found mine.
The kiss was tentative at first—careful, questioning. He tasted like cheap beer and autumn chill. His lips were slightly chapped. I felt him hesitate, giving me room to pull away.
I didn't take the offer.
I reached up for the back of his neck. His skin was cold from the walk to the car, the fine hairs at his nape soft under my fingers. I pulled him closer, and he made a sound against my mouth. Not quite a gasp. More like relief.
The kiss deepened. His fingers curled into the fabric near my collar, and he shifted in his seat, trying to get closer despite the center console between us. The gear shift pressed into my thigh. I didn't care.
Pickle kissed like he did everything else—with his whole self, no filter and no holding back. His free hand landed on my chest, palm flat, and I wondered whether he could feel my heart slamming against my ribs.
I tugged him closer. He came willingly, half-climbing across the console, one knee bracing against my seat. The angle was awkward. His mouth opened under mine, and I tasted him properly. My hand slid from his neck into his hair, fingers tightening and tugging his head back.
He gasped, a sharp intake of breath that I felt more than heard.
"Sorry," I managed against his lips. "Too much?"
"No." His voice was wrecked. "No, do that again."
I did. Tightened my grip, tilted his head back, kissed him deeper, and then pressed my lips against his throat. He shuddered and pushed closer, gripping my jacket hard.
His knee slipped, and he fell forward, half into my lap, and we both laughed—breathless, surprised—without breaking apart. I caught him with my free hand and steadied him with a grip on his hip.
"Gear shift," he mumbled against my mouth. "Gear shift is in a stupid place."
"Rental car."
"Complain to them."
"I'll write a strongly worded letter."
He laughed again, and I swallowed the sound, kissing him through it. His hand moved from my chest to my jaw, fingers tracing the line of stubble I hadn't bothered to shave.
When we finally pulled apart, we were both breathing hard. Pickle's lips were swollen, his hair a disaster where my fingers had been, and his eyes dark and dazed.
"Was that okay?" he asked.
I answered by kissing him again.
Firmer this time. More deliberate. I cupped his face with both hands, felt the sharp line of his jaw and the soft skin just below his ear.
He melted into my touch—actually melted, like his bones had given up on the concept of structure—and when I pulled back enough to breathe, he chased my mouth with a soft whine.
"Okay," he said shakily. "Okay. That answered my question."
"Good."
He swallowed hard. "I should go inside."
"Yeah, I guess so."
Neither of us moved.
"I have a game tomorrow," he said.
"I know."
"And you have documentary things. Camera things."
"Yes."
"So this is probably really stupid."
"Probably."
He looked at me for a long moment. "Goodnight, Adrian," he said.
"Goodnight, Pickle."
He extracted himself from my lap—graceless, all elbows and knees, bumping his head on the roof—and opened the door. The cold rushed in, sharp and sobering. He stepped out into the snow, Crocs immediately disappearing. He turned back toward me.
"Hey," he said.
"Yeah?"
"I'm glad you stayed. The two extra days." He shoved his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunching against the wind. Snow was already catching in his hair. "Even if it's stupid."
"Me too," I said. "Even if it's stupid."
He grinned one more time—bright and real—and then he was gone, trudging toward the building with the green awning, leaving footprints in the fresh snow.
I sat, parked at the curb, until he disappeared inside.
When I put the car in drive and pulled away slowly, I watched the building shrink in my rearview mirror.
The snow kept falling.