Chapter 17 Pickle #2
Adrian kissed me slowly, one hand cupping the back of my neck, while the other pressed flat against my chest. "Good luck tonight," he said.
"Come find me after."
"I'll be there."
I made myself walk away. The carpet had left red marks on my knees. I could still taste him in my mouth.
***
The puck dropped, and my brain went quiet.
First shift, I won a board battle against a defenseman who had forty pounds on me. Didn't out-muscle him—out-thought him. Read where he wanted to go, got there first, and stripped the puck before he decided to protect it.
The shot went wide. Clanged off the post.
I didn't spiral. Old Pickle would've carried that post like a backpack for the rest of the period. New Pickle registered it—adjust next time—and skated back to the bench.
"Nice look," Hog said.
"Post said no."
"Post is stupid. You'll get the next one."
I believed him.
Second period, I fed Jake a cross-ice pass through traffic that had no business working. Too many bodies. Too small a window, but I'd seen the lane open before it existed—my brain ran the play two seconds ahead of real time.
Jake buried it. Top corner, bar down. The arena shook with cheers and stamping feet.
Jake found me in the celebration scrum, grabbing my helmet. "WHAT WAS THAT? How did you even see that?"
"I don't know. I just knew."
Third period. Up 3-1. Heath intercepted a bad bounce I hadn't even read yet, and he fed me a pass that hit my tape like he'd known exactly where I'd be. He shrugged when I looked at him. He just knew.
Maybe that's what I'd given him. Permission to trust his instincts.
The game-ending horn sounded. Storm 4, Wolves 2.
The bench emptied onto the ice. Someone grabbed me and spun me around. Someone else pounded my back hard enough to rattle fillings. The crowd stamped and roared, and the old boards of the arena groaned under the weight of Thunder Bay's joy.
I threw my head back and let the noise wash over me.
This was why I'd learned to skate before I could read. This feeling of being exactly where I was supposed to be, doing exactly what I was built for. This was proof that I wasn't a disaster.
I looked toward the tunnel.
Adrian was there. Camera raised with the lens pointed at the celebration.
Something was wrong.
His posture was all tension—shoulders too high, spine rigid. He looked like a man filming his own execution.
The high drained out of me.
I showered fast. Changed faster. The celebration roared around me, but I was already somewhere else in my head.
Complications. Choices. Trust me.
I grabbed my bag and headed for the door.
Adrian found me before I found him.
He stepped out of a doorway near the media room. He didn't have his camera. He had his hands shoved in his pockets.
"Can we talk?"
Three words that kicked off a thousand breakup scenes.
"Here?"
He glanced down the corridor. Equipment carts squeaked past. Someone laughed around the corner.
"Somewhere quieter."
I followed him.
We ended up in a storage alcove near the loading dock—spare boards and a broken Gatorade cooler that had been waiting for repair since before I joined the team. The overhead fluorescent was dying, flickering intermittently.
The air smelled like rubber, cold concrete, and Lake Superior—a particular mineral tang that crept into everything in Thunder Bay.
Adrian leaned against the wall. I stayed standing.
"You played incredibly tonight," he said.
"Thanks."
"That assist to Jake—I've watched hockey for fifteen years, and I've never seen anyone read a lane like that."
"Adrian."
He stopped.
"You didn't pull me into a storage closet to tell me I'm good at hockey."
I watched his hands in his pockets, fingers curling and uncurling against the fabric—the same hands that had been inside my jeans this morning. My knees still ached from the hotel carpet. I could still taste him when I thought about it.
My hands wanted something to fix. I counted the tiles on the floor instead. Twelve across. Nine deep. One cracked near Adrian's left foot.
"Something's happening with the documentary," he said. "The network has a direction they want to take—" He exhaled sharply. "I've been fighting them. There's a deadline. Less than twenty-four hours. I'm trying to find another path before—"
"You said that this morning."
"I know."
"You've been saying versions of that for weeks." I crossed my arms to stop them from shaking. "And every time I ask what it means, you give me the same thing. Complications. Choices. Trust me. You never tell me anything real."
"Because I don't have answers yet—"
"Still figuring it out? Still handling it?" My voice rose and turned sharp. "Still deciding what parts of your life I'm allowed to see?"
The fluorescent flickered out. The alcove was dark enough to stop me from reading his expression.
"That's not fair," he said quietly.
"Isn't it?" I stepped closer. "Here's what I know. Phone calls at four in the morning. Five coffee cups. You haven't slept right in days. You look at me sometimes like you're apologizing for something that hasn't happened yet."
"Pickle—"
"I'm not done." I straightened my jacket. "I've asked you directly. Many times. Is something wrong? And every time, you look me in the eyes and say you're handling it."
The fluorescent buzzed back to life.
Adrian's face—pale and drawn, with guilt written across it.
"I've been trying to protect you," he said.
"From what?"
His mouth opened and closed, but he said nothing. His hands came out of his pockets, shaking badly enough that he couldn't hide it anymore.
I started trembling too. I stared at the cracked tile and counted to four.
"That's the thing. You keep saying protection.
I'm standing right here, and I have no idea what I need protecting from.
I don't know what the network wants. I don't know what the deadline is for.
I don't know what choices you're making or how they involve me. "
"They involve you because—" He stopped. Pressed his palms against his eyes, then dropped them. "Because the footage. The footage I sent them. It's you."
"The footage of what?"
"Everything. The Zamboni. When you check the bolts—I filmed that.
I didn't realize at first what it was, but I kept filming and they—" He swallowed, and I watched his Adam's apple move up and down.
"The chair at The Drop. You are on your hands and knees, fixing the legs.
The water bottle thing, when you sprayed water in your face. "
My shoulders tensed.
"You filmed that," I said. My voice sounded far away. "My—the things I do when I'm—"
"I didn't understand at first. I thought it was just—you being you. And then I realized, but by then I'd already sent the footage, and now they—"
"What do they want to do with it?"
He didn't answer.
"Adrian. What do they want to do with it?"
His face crumpled. "They want to make you into a joke. The edit they sent me—they added sound effects. Cartoon noises. They're calling it—" His voice broke. "They're calling it Thunder Bay's Favorite Disaster. They want to turn you into a meme."
I should have seen it coming, but I didn't.
A joke—me.
Everything stopped.
The fluorescent light kept buzzing. Adrian kept talking—I watched his mouth moving, and I heard but didn't comprehend something about fighting back, counter-offers, and plans. My pulse was too loud in my ears.
I could imagine the film. My hands on the Zamboni, checking the bolts for the seventeenth time because my brain wouldn't stop screaming that something was loose—cartoon boing sounds layered over the footage.
Laugh track. People on the internet sharing it and commenting, "lmaooo this guy.
" They'd include the moment when I dropped to my knees at The Drop, slow it down, and loop it while strangers who'd never held a hockey stick decided I was pathetic.
The Zamboni. The chair legs. Every private ritual I used to hold myself together—all of it filmed. All of it sent. All of it edited for maximum laugh potential.
Thunder Bay's Favorite Disaster.
Less than an hour ago, I'd been on the ice. Reading plays before they happened. Setting up Jake for the goal of the period. Finally feeling like I belonged.
None of that would matter. People wouldn't see the cross-ice feed. They'd see me crawling under tables. My worst moments edited into entertainment, stripped of context, packaged for strangers to laugh at.
They'd see what they always saw when they looked at me.
Frantic. Exhausting. A punchline waiting to happen.
"Pickle."
Adrian's voice. Close. He reached for my arm.
I stepped back.
"You knew." My voice came out strange—flat and quiet. "When I came to your room this morning. When I got on my knees for you. When you told me to trust you." I looked at him, and I didn't recognize anything I saw. "You already knew what they were doing with my face. And you let me—"
"I was trying to fix it before you had to see—"
"You were deciding for me." The word tore out of me. "Deciding what I could know. What I was strong enough to handle. You were managing me, Adrian. Like I'm a bomb that needs defusing. Like I'm too fragile to hear the truth about my own goddamn life."
"That's not—"
"Isn't it?" My entire body shook, full-body tremors. I couldn't stop them.
"You watched me fall apart a hundred different ways. You filmed it. You sent it to people who want to hurt me. And then you held me in your bed and told me to trust you."
His face went pale. "I didn't know what they were going to do with it when I sent—"
"But you knew this morning. You knew when I was on your floor with your hands in my hair." My voice cracked. "You knew, and you said soon. You said trust me. You let me walk out of there feeling like—"
I couldn't finish the thought out loud.
Like I mattered. Like someone finally saw me and stayed anyway.