Chapter 8
Chapter eight
Adrian
Ihad a problem.
I could use some of it, but I needed balance.
There was too much noise. Too much crowd. The Storm played to their audience even when they didn't know they were being filmed—filling the silence before it could get uncomfortable.
I needed something quieter.
The thought had been rolling around in my head since the car. Since Pickle's mouth on mine and the fog on the windows.
I'd seen him. All of him. And now I couldn't unsee the fear under the jokes—not fear of being known, but fear of being dismissed. Of being only the chaos. Of never being taken seriously by someone who got to keep all of him.
I wanted to capture that.
Professional justification, I told myself. Emotional specificity. Controlled environments.
The language of documentary. Safe. Clinical.
I reached for my phone.
It was time to do interviews the right way.
First up was Jake at The Common Thread, before the coffee shop opened, due to the owners' grace, sprawled across a vinyl booth like he owned it. He talked about Vegas, the reality show, and finding someone who wanted him quiet sometimes.
His voice cracked once, on the word home. When it was over, he shook my hand and said, "You're good at this. Making people say things they didn't plan to." He paused. "Just—be careful with that."
I knew he meant Pickle.
I spoke with Evan in the arena's empty community room. He folded his hands like it was a job interview, giving me measured answers until I asked about Jake, and then his entire demeanor changed.
"He makes me brave," Evan said quietly. "He makes me want to be less scared of the mess."
Two interviews. Both successful.
I could do this with Pickle. Camera on, distance maintained, and feelings contained.
I believed that for the rest of the day.
Pickle's apartment was on the third floor of a building with a green awning. I stood outside his door at 7 p.m., camera bag on my shoulder, telling myself it was just another interview.
The door swung open as I hit the top step.
"I saw you from the window," Pickle said. "You were standing there for like thirty seconds. I thought maybe you were having a crisis."
"Thorough equipment check."
"For thirty seconds?"
"Very thorough."
He grinned and stepped back to let me in.
His apartment was a chaotic mess made habitable. He'd draped hockey gear on a drying rack. Snack wrappers colonized the coffee table, and he had a laundry pile by a door I presumed to be his bedroom.
"Sorry about the mess. I cleaned, but then I un-cleaned. Do you want something to drink? I have water. There might be a beer somewhere, but it's probably haunted."
"Water's fine."
"Cool. Great." He opened a cabinet, closed it, and then opened another. "The glasses are—somewhere. I moved them. For cleaning purposes."
"Pickle."
"Yeah?"
"Breathe."
He stopped and turned. "I'm breathing. I've been doing it for twenty-three years." Then, he exhaled hard. "Okay, I'm nervous. You're here. With a camera. In my disaster apartment. And the last time I saw you, I was climbing into your lap in a rental car, which was—"
"Also a disaster."
His mouth twitched. "Yeah. That."
I crossed to where he stood. "We can stop this interview anytime," I said. "We don't have to use anything."
"Right. No, it's just an interview. For the documentary."
"Right."
"Okay," he said. "Let's do it."
I set up the camera in his living room. Pickle sat on the couch—knees bouncing, fingers drumming against his thigh. The red recording light blinked on.
"Whenever you're ready," I said.
He took a breath and struggled to put on an interview face.
We started with the easy stuff. Hockey. The team. What it meant to be the "energy guy" on a roster full of personalities bigger than the arena.
Pickle answered with his usual intensity—charming and occasionally self-deprecating. He told stories about Jake's karaoke disasters and Hog knitting emotional support animals.
Five minutes in, I realized I'd stopped checking the frame.
His hands moved when he spoke—expressive, uncontrolled, nearly knocking over the water glass he'd finally found. He laughed at his own jokes before they landed. He looked at the camera like he was looking at me.
I asked about belonging. About what Thunder Bay meant to him.
Pickle's smile flickered.
"It's the first place that felt like mine," he said. His voice was softer. "Not borrowed. Not temporary." He paused. "I keep waiting for someone to figure out I don't actually belong here. That I'm just—"
He stopped.
"Just what?"
He looked at the camera. Then past it at me.
"What do you see?" he asked. "When you're filming me."
My finger hovered over the focus ring.
"Someone people underestimate," I said. "Someone they see one thing in and assume that's everything."
Pickle froze. His knee stopped bouncing.
"And what do you see?" he asked. "Everything, or one thing?"
"More every time I look."
Pickle's Adam's apple rose and fell as he swallowed.
"That's—" He laughed, but it came out shaky. "That's not what people usually say."
"What do people usually say?"
"That I'm a lot. That I'm exhausting. That I'm fun but—" He stopped. "There's always a but. Fun but chaotic. Talented but inconsistent. Good to have around but not—" He cut himself off. Shook his head. "Sorry. That got weird. I made it weird. Can we—"
"Let's turn it off." I pressed the button. The red light died, and the soft whir went silent.
Pickle exhaled like he'd been holding his breath since I walked in.
"Sorry. I don't know why I—"
"Don't apologize."
"I dumped a whole thing on you. That was a lot. I'm a lot. I know I'm a lot—"
"Pickle." I moved from behind the tripod. Sat on the couch beside him—not close, but closer than the camera would have allowed. "You're not too much."
He stared at me. "Everyone thinks I'm too much."
"I don't."
"You've known me four days."
"Long enough. Can I ask you something?"
"You're the interviewer," Pickle said.
"Camera's off."
"Then yeah."
I reached out to touch his thigh. "The napkin holders at The Drop. The chair. The Zamboni blade." I watched his face. "What's that about?"
He took another deep breath. "You noticed that."
"I'm aware of everything."
"Right. Documentary guy."
"Not just that."
Pickle's knee started bouncing—that restless motion I'd seen a dozen times. He didn't try to stop it.
"Sometimes my brain gets loud," he said. "Really loud. Everything feels like it's spinning, and I can't make it stop. So I find something small. Something I can fix." He shrugged. "If the napkin holders are straight, at least one thing in the universe makes sense."
"Does it help?"
"Sometimes. Mostly it just—" He waved a hand. "Gives me something to do with my hands. Keeps them busy so the rest of me doesn't fly apart."
"The night you came to my hotel," I said. "The parking lot. You were pacing."
"Biscuit needed—"
"Pickle."
He closed his eyes. "Yeah. Okay. I was spiraling. Couldn't sleep. Kept thinking about you. My apartment was too small, and I needed to move. Be somewhere."
"So you walked to my hotel at one in the morning."
"With a borrowed dog as a cover story. I still don't know why Hog let me take Biscuit." He opened his eyes. "Not the best."
"I thought it was pretty fine."
His breath caught.
I didn't remember moving, but the cushion space between us had disappeared. His knee pressed against mine.
"Adrian," he said quietly.
"Yeah?"
"What are we doing?"
It was the question from the car. I still didn't have an answer.
"I don't know."
"You keep saying that."
"It's still true."
Pickle turned toward me.
"I'm not good at not knowing," he said. "I'm not good at slow. I'm not good at—" He moved a hand to my knee. "I'm not good at any of the things you're probably good at."
"What things?"
"Being calm. Patient. Waiting to see how things play out." His fingers curled against the fabric of my jeans. "I just—I want things. And then I want them immediately. And then I'm too much about wanting them, and people get overwhelmed, and—"
"You're not overwhelming me."
"Yet."
"Not yet. Not ever."
He stared at me. "You don't know that."
"I know what I see."
"Which is what? Chaos or disaster?"
"Well, all of that. And someone with instincts I can't explain. Someone who sees plays before they happen. Someone who—" I stopped. "I watched your scrimmage footage. You intercepted a pass that shouldn't have been possible. You were moving before the other player decided where to send the puck."
Pickle blinked. "That's just—I don't know. I just knew where it was going."
"That's what I mean. You contain things that shouldn't fit together. Chaos and precision. Scattered and sharp." I held his gaze. "I keep finding more, and I haven't hit the bottom yet."
"I keep thinking about the car," he whispered. "About kissing you. I haven't stopped."
"Neither have I."
"Yeah?"
"I stayed two extra days, Pickle. I'm not here only for the documentary."
His hand slid up my thigh. Slow and deliberate.
"Can I—" He leaned closer. Close enough that I could see the gold flecks in his brown eyes. Close enough to feel his breath. "Adrian, can I—"
I kissed him before he finished.
It wasn't like the car. That kiss had been tentative, questioning—two people testing whether the ice would hold.
This was an answer.
Pickle whimpered against my mouth—surprised, relieved, hungry—and then his hands raked into my hair, and he pressed closer, climbing into my lap the way he'd done before. I caught his hip to steady him, fingers digging into the soft fabric of his sweatpants, and he gasped into the kiss.
"Sorry," I managed. "Too much?"
"No. God, no. Are you kidding? Do it again." He pulled back just enough to look at me, grinning even as his pupils dilated. "Seriously, I'm not fragile. I'm very sturdy. Hockey player. I have professional getting-hit-by-large-men experience."
"That's not—"