Chapter 16 Adrian
Chapter sixteen
Adrian
He'd stopped talking twenty minutes ago.
Mid-sentence, mid-thought, mid-explanation of why emperor penguins were emotionally unavailable compared to their Adélie cousins.
The words had simply trailed off. His body went slack against mine, all that kinetic energy draining out of him like water from a tub.
In sleep, Pickle was a different species. The constant motion quieted. The nervous energy that made him bounce on his toes and straighten salt shakers—all of it switched off. What remained was a body. Young. Warm. Breathing slowly against my ribs.
His palm pressed flat against my chest. Not gripping. There, like his hand had found me in the dark and decided to stay.
He didn't know what I'd done. Didn't know about Naomi's emails or the network's demands or the footage I'd already sent. He'd fallen asleep believing I was worth trusting. I'd let him, because telling the truth might mean torching something I wasn't ready to lose.
Wake him up. Say the words.
He looked too peaceful. He'd come home glowing from that road trip—seven points, plus-eight, the best stretch of his career. He'd talked for an hour about Heath's face, the breakaway in Toledo, and the moment his internal broadcast stopped and left only instinct.
I couldn't take that from him. Not tonight.
That's not protection, a voice whispered in the back of my head. That's control.
My left arm had gone numb. That was what finally made me move. Pickle had been lying on my bicep for three hours.
I started the extraction slowly, easing his head onto the pillow with the precision I usually reserved for adjusting a lens mid-shot. One wrong move and he'd wake up—and then I'd have to look him in the eye and choose between truth and another lie.
Pickle stirred when his cheek hit fabric. His face scrunched—confused, offended, like the universe had personally inconvenienced him.
"Mmnh."
He reached out blindly, patting the warm spot where my body had been. When he found only a mattress, his brow furrowed.
"You're leaving." Not a question.
"Just for a bit. Work stuff."
"S'early." He turned into the pillow. "Come back."
"I will."
"Promise?"
The word was barely audible. Sleep was already pulling him under.
"Promise."
I waited until his breathing deepened. Then I eased out of bed and padded to the kitchen, looking for something to write on.
The first piece of paper I found was a grocery list stuck to the fridge with a magnet shaped like a cartoon pickle—a gift from Jake, probably.
Pickle's handwriting sprawled across it.
I'd recognize his writing anywhere: pickles (lol), cheese?
, call mom, tape for stick, peanut butter the good kind NOT the healthy kind, ask Hog about yarn.
I turned it over. The back was blank.
I added my note: Had to check on some work stuff. Call you later. —A
Ten words. I placed it on the nightstand.
Outside, Thunder Bay was beginning to stir. As I stepped outside, the cold found every gap immediately—collar, cuffs, the space where my jacket didn't quite meet my jeans. The autumn sky was a gray that made you forget blue existed.
I drove past The Drop. Closed, but memories flooded my mind anyway: Pickle bursting through the door like a human confetti cannon. The parking lot where I'd found him in orange Crocs, trying to teach a dog to harmonize.
It's not what it looks like, he'd said.
I think it's exactly what it looks like.
I wasn't wrong. It was exactly what it looked like: chaos, noise, and a guy who felt everything at full volume, letting it spill out wherever it landed. Pickle wasn't performing. He just was.
Still, back then, I'd missed the most important part. There was a foundation beneath what looked like a mess—the hockey brain that read plays two beats early, the heart that noticed when a rookie was drowning, and the fear that all anyone would ever see was the surface.
The network wanted the surface. They'd throw out everything underneath.
The hotel appeared at the end of the block. Two weeks of the humming mini-fridge and industrial carpet. Two weeks that had changed everything.
Two missed calls from Naomi. She left a voicemail with each.
The first voicemail was professional: "The network assembled a reference cut. I'm forwarding it now."
The second was a warning: "What they've done—it's not what you intended. Just watch it. Then call me."
I sat at the desk. Clicked play.
The cut opened at The Drop—the celebration after Rhett's episode. Jump cuts between faces, then Pickle careening into the frame, arms wide, beer sloshing. The footage slowed. Someone had added a slide whistle as he nearly hit a chair.
I gripped the edge of the desk.
The chair scene came next—Pickle crawling under the table to fix the wobbly leg. I'd filmed that moment as a window into his anxiety, the compulsion to find order when everything else felt out of control.
They'd scored it to circus music.
The water bottle incident followed. Pickle's voice—I want to be the kind of player people remember for the right reasons—then water hitting his face. They'd looped it three times: The right reasons, the right reasons, the right reasons.
My jaw ached. I'd clenched it through all three loops.
On that day, I steadied him before he fell. In the raw footage, you could see his grateful glance.
They'd cut it. In their version, he just flailed.
The Zamboni sequence. His ritual of checking bolts now scored with cartoon sound effects and a blaring title: PICKLE VS. MACHINERY: AN ONGOING SAGA.
I stood up. Sat back down. The chair complained.
The sideline footage came next. Pickle alone by the glass, hands pressed to his chest. Without context, it looked like a breakdown.
THUNDER BAY'S FAVORITE DISASTER.
His voice again: That I might actually be good enough.
Cut to the team skating away, leaving him behind. It was a drill reset, but with the editing, it looked like abandonment.
Freeze frame: Pickle mid-fall, face caught in comic alarm.
COMING SOON: THE STORM'S SECRET WEAPON: CHAOS.
I watched it three more times. Made myself see precisely what they'd done—stripped away every frame that showed Pickle's hockey IQ, his instincts with Heath, and anything proving he was more than comic relief.
The third time I watched it, I focused on his face. The water bottle moment was marked by real embarrassment but also resilience. They'd cut the recovery and kept only the humiliation.
I closed the laptop. I'd given them everything they needed.
Naomi picked up before the first ring finished.
"I'm out," I said. "That cut is character assassination."
She let me finish. Then: "You signed a work-for-hire contract. The footage belongs to them."
"The players trusted me—"
"And you shot honest footage. What happens in the edit bay isn't your call. It never was." A pause. "Every clip is real, Adrian. They're not fabricating—they're selecting. That's editorial discretion. Fully legal."
"There has to be something. Some way to stop this."
"The footage is on their servers. Duplicated, backed up, distributed." Her voice softened slightly. "You can refuse further shooting. Pull your name. Some version airs regardless. The only question is whether it gets better or worse."
"How could it get worse?"
"They send someone else and build a longer piece. Interview teammates with leading questions." She paused. "Right now it's a three-minute proof of concept. Without you pushing back, they'll make it comprehensive."
"What do you want from me?"
"A decision as we discussed. You're down to twenty-four hours.
Deliver something they can use, or walk away and let someone else shape it.
" I heard a sharp intake of breath. "For what it's worth—I watched your mentorship footage and the hockey sequences.
There's a real documentary in there. Something that could complicate their narrative, but that means you'd have to stay at the table. "
"You're asking me to feed them more."
"I'm asking you to stay in the game. The alternative is flipping the table and watching them play without you."
The line went dead.
7:14 a.m.
Pickle would be awake by now. He'd find my note—my ten vague words scrawled on the back of his grocery list. He would assume I was doing something mundane.
I could drive to his apartment. Show him the cut. Let him decide how to respond.
That was the right thing to do. I knew it in my bones.
Then I thought about his face—the grin fading, brightness draining as he understood what they'd made of him. What my footage helped make. He'd look at me and realize I'd known. That I'd held him last night and said nothing.
You should have told me.
The imagined pain was unbearable. Not his—mine. My inability to watch his face crumble knowing I was the reason.
I wasn't protecting Pickle. I was protecting myself.
I set the phone down and picked it up again.
There might still be a way.
Naomi had said I could shape the final product. I also had other options—Lenny Roth and the counter-documentary angle. If I had twenty-four hours to build something better, maybe I could present Pickle with a solution instead of a catastrophe.
I opened my contacts. Scrolled to Lenny's number.
The call connected on the third ring.
"Adrian. I was wondering when you'd call back."
"It's worse than I thought." The words scraped out. "The network sent a reference cut. They've turned him into a meme compilation. Circus music, sound effects, and his worst moments on loop."
Silence. Then: "How bad?"
"Bad enough that I can't sleep. Bad enough that I'm calling you at seven in the morning asking if there's any way to move faster."
Lenny exhaled slowly. "I've been thinking about what you told me. Kid finding himself, team dynamics, and small-town hockey—that's in our wheelhouse. There's a real documentary in that footage."
"Can you do anything with it?"
"Maybe. I'd need to see everything. Talk to legal about the releases and figure out if there's any angle." A pause. "But Adrian—even if we could mount a counter-project, it takes time. Months, not days."
"I know."
"And the network cut still exists. Still airs, probably, whatever we do."
"I know that too."
"So what's the play?"
I stared out the window at the Sleeping Giant—stone and silence.
"The play is I stay at the table with the network. Push back on the worst impulses. Buy time." I swallowed. "And meanwhile, you start building something true. Something that exists alongside whatever they make. So when people see the meme version, there's another version waiting."
"That's a long game."
"It's the only game I've got."
Lenny was quiet for a moment. "Send me what you have. I'll see what's possible."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. This might not work."
"I know." I closed my eyes. "But it's something."
We hung up. I sat there holding the phone, feeling the gears start to turn on something I couldn't take back.
It wasn't enough. The right thing was still to tell Pickle—now, today, before another hour passed. The right thing was to trust him with the truth rather than manage it for him.
I did have a thread now. A direction. Something other than pure catastrophe to offer when the moment came.
That's still not honesty. That's still control with better justification.
Maybe, but it was hope, too. Thin, probably wrong—but real.
My phone buzzed.
Pickle: slept great. dreamed about hockey-playing penguins. you were the goalie. you were GOOD. very sexy. dinner = yes, pick me up at 7. wear the gray sweater, it makes your eyes do the thing
I stared at the words and read the easy trust in them. He'd already imagined our evening, picking out what he wanted me to wear, and building a small future for us.
Adrian: Sounds perfect.
Then I opened my laptop and pulled up the raw footage—the hours of material the network had ignored. This was the version that mattered.
I started organizing files, tagging clips, and building the skeleton of the documentary that should have existed all along.
Twenty-four hours. A counter-documentary. A secret I was still keeping.
Not enough. But more than nothing.