Chapter 15 Pickle
Chapter fifteen
Pickle
Nothing caught. Nothing dragged. My skates and the ice had apparently signed a peace treaty without telling me.
When I carved a crossover at center ice, my body did what it was supposed to do—weight transfer smooth and knee bend automatic. No hesitation. No second-guessing. Motion—clean and inevitable.
When the puck came off Desrosiers' stick tape-to-tape, I caught it without looking. Fed it to Jake. Jake one-touched it to Evan. Evan sent it back to me—and I was there, exactly where I needed to be, stick flat and ready.
I launched the shot. Bar down. The crossbar sang.
"PICKLE!" Jake's voice echoed around the rink. "What the fuck was that?"
"Greatness, Jacob. You're witnessing history."
He slammed into me, shoulder-checking me into a spin. I laughed and shoved him back, and somewhere in my peripheral vision, I caught Heath watching from near the blue line. His posture was different from what it had been two weeks ago. Shoulders down. Weight balanced.
I'd done that. Not all of it—Heath had done the physical work—but I'd been there. Said the things he needed to hear.
Getting up when you're down. That's the whole job.
Coach's whistle cut through the noise. "Reset! Donnelly, you're with Piatkowski's line."
Heath skated over, and I watched him settle into position without a death-grip on his stick. He wasn't clenching his jaw anymore.
The drill started. Three-on-two rush.
I fed Heath the puck on the breakout. He caught it—clean, no fumble—and accelerated into the neutral zone. When he drew the defender wide, he found me with a pass that threaded the needle between two sticks.
My shot was instinct. Top corner. In.
Heath's face split into a massive grin. It was something I'd never seen on him before: joy without qualification.
"That's the thing," I said, skating past him. "That's the whole thing, rookie."
Then, it happened.
The tilt. The moment my brain decided that feeling good was a trap.
It started in my chest—a faint hum. My body kept moving and running the drill, but somewhere behind my eyes, a different process began.
This is too good.
I caught another pass. Fed it to Jake. He scored. The team cheered.
This is the part of the movie right before everything goes wrong.
I nearly laughed. I could picture it: the protagonist standing on the ice, finally happy—and then the camera pulls back, and the music shifts, and the audience sees what he doesn't.
The shark.
There was always a shark.
"Pickle." Coach's voice, sharp. "You're drifting."
I snapped back. Looked down. My feet had carried me to the wrong side of the formation, and I was standing alone near the boards like a lost tourist.
"Sorry, Coach. Had a spiritual experience. I'm back."
"Save the meditation for after practice."
I skated back into position. Jake shot me a look—you okay?—and I waved it off with a grin.
Fine. I was fine. Better than fine. Seven points in four games. Plus-eight. Heath looking like a real hockey player. Adrian waiting for me with his camera-less smile. Everything was clicking. Everything was good.
The drill resumed. I caught the puck and moved it and pretended the hum in my chest wasn't getting louder.
After practice, Adrian waited by his rental car.
No equipment. He leaned against the driver's side door with his hands in his jacket pockets, watching me cross the parking lot.
"You're lurking," I said, stopping two feet away. I was close enough to catch his soap smell—clean, adult, slightly woodsy. "Possibly stalking."
"I'm waiting. There's a difference."
His mouth curved into that small, private smile I'd started thinking of as mine.
"How was practice?"
"Transcendent. Legendary. I scored four goals and invented a new kind of crossover. They're naming it after me. The Piatkowski Pivot."
"That's not a thing."
"It could be a thing. I'm a visionary."
Adrian reached out, and his fingers brushed the sleeve of my jacket. It was a point of contact that said I'm here, I'm real, this is happening.
"Come on," he said. "I'll drive you home."
I got in the car.
The heat was already running. Adrian had turned it on before I got there, which meant he'd been waiting long enough to think about my comfort, which meant—
Stop. Stop turning everything into evidence. Just be here.
We pulled out of the lot. The streets of Thunder Bay scrolled past the window—familiar storefronts and familiar ice patches. Adrian reached out to touch my knee. His hand settled there, warm through my jeans.
It was good, so good—but why was he checking his phone at every red light?
The first time, I barely noticed. The second time, it was obvious—looking down and to the right for a quick glance at the screen.
By the third light, it had my full attention.
"Everything okay?" I asked.
"Hmm?" He looked at me. "Yeah. Work stuff. Naomi wants some files."
"The files can't wait until you're not driving?"
"She's East Coast. Time zone thing."
It was a reasonable answer. Completely reasonable, but I was not, historically, a reasonable person.
"You've got your serious face on," I said.
Adrian squeezed my knee. "I'm thinking about what to make you for dinner."
"Lies. Team dinner anyway."
The phone buzzed. He didn't look.
I reached for the dashboard and adjusted the angle of the phone in its holder. Moved it three millimeters to the left so it sat parallel to the edge of the console.
Better.
Adrian glanced at me. "What was that?"
"Nothing. It was crooked."
"The phone?"
"It was bothering me." I shrugged like it was nothing, but it wasn't. When my brain got loud, my hands got busy—finding order in small things, making the world line up even when I couldn't. "Anyway.
You mentioned dinner. I hope the team has enough money.
I'm already starving. I could eat an entire moose. "
"That seems excessive."
"I'm an excessive person. It's part of my charm."
He smiled, but when we stopped at the next light, he checked his phone again.
I couldn't look away.
***
The Drop was doing its thing.
Bodies crowded the back tables. Pitchers sweated on every surface.
Someone had fed the jukebox enough quarters to ensure we'd be listening to classic rock until the death of the universe.
The Storm had claimed our usual corner—two booths pushed together, chairs stolen from neighboring tables, enough bodies crammed into the space that personal boundaries had become a collective fiction.
I was wedged between Jake and Heath, across from Evan and Hog.
Rhett had shown up halfway through appetizers and slotted himself against Hog's side like a puzzle piece finding its place.
Desrosiers was telling a story about a bar fight in Kalamazoo that probably hadn't happened the way he was describing it.
Adrian didn't come. He wasn't ready to be seen as part of the team yet. He'd dropped me off and kissed me in the car—brief, warm, and slightly distracted.
I'd watched him drive away and told myself it was fine.
"—and then the guy's like, 'You think you're tough?' and I'm like, 'Buddy, I'm from Quebec, we're born tough—'"
"You grew up in a Montreal suburb with a lawn," Jake interrupted.
"A tough suburb."
"Your mom drove you to practice in a minivan."
"A tough minivan."
I laughed with everyone else.
The salt shaker was wrong.
Not dramatically wrong. Just... off. Maybe half an inch from where it should be. Too close to the pepper.
I moved the salt shaker. Centered it between the pepper and the sugar caddy.
Better.
Except now the pepper looked wrong. I adjusted it. Then the sugar caddy, which had been slightly askew.
"Pickle."
I looked up. Jake was watching me with his head tilted.
"Yeah?"
"What are you doing?"
"Nothing."
"You've moved the salt shaker four times."
"Three times. And it was crooked."
"It's a salt shaker. At a Thunder Bay bar." Jake's voice was gentle in a way that made my skin prickle. "Nobody cares if it's crooked."
"I care."
"Why?"
It was a tough question.
Across the table, Hog looked at me, and our gazes met. Steady. Knowing. He'd seen me do this before and understood exactly what it meant.
I grabbed my beer instead of answering Jake. Took a long drink.
"The salt shakers are conspiring," I said, forcing lightness into my voice. "I'm onto them. They're up to something."
"Salt shakers don't conspire," Evan said.
"That's what they want you to think."
Jake snorted. "You're insane," he said.
"Clinically unverified." I grinned at him and held the smile until my face ached.
The conversation moved on. Desrosiers resumed his fictional bar fight story. Jake started arguing with Evan about something on the jukebox.
I sat with my hands wrapped around my beer, not drinking or talking.
The salt shaker was perfectly centered now. The pepper was aligned, and the sugar caddy was straight.
It didn't help like usual.
Under the table, my knee started bouncing.
Hog caught my eye again. This time, he didn't look away.
Later, he found me in the parking lot.
I'd slipped out during Desrosiers' third retelling of the bar fight—the version where he'd apparently fought off six guys instead of two—claiming I needed air.
The cold hit my face like pushing a reset button.
I leaned against the brick wall near the dumpsters and tried to convince my nervous system that everything was fine.
The door opened and closed.
Footsteps. Heavy. Deliberate.
"You're hiding."
Hog appeared beside me, wrapped in flannel.
"I'm not hiding. I'm communing with nature."
"You're standing next to a dumpster."
"Nature takes many forms."
We stood in silence for a moment. The cold crept through my jacket, numbing my ears and turning my breath into small clouds that dissolved before they reached the streetlight.
"How's the documentary thing going?" Hog asked.
It was a casual question in a serious tone.
"Good." I kept my voice light. "Great, actually. Adrian's been—I mean, it's going well. The filming. All of it."
"Mmm."