Chapter 17 Pickle #3
Adrian stepped toward me, one hand half-raised, reaching for something—my arm or my face, some part of me he could still touch. I watched him catch himself mid-gesture. His hand hovered in the air between us like he'd forgotten how it worked. Then it dropped to his side, empty, useless.
"I was trying to fix it," he said. "I have a counter-plan. Another production company. I've been threatening to go public with evidence of their manipulation, and I thought if I could just—"
"You've been fighting them," I said slowly. "For days."
"Yes."
"By yourself."
"Yes."
"Making choices about my life. My footage. My image." I swallowed. "All without telling me any of it."
He had no answer.
"You held on so tight." The words came out in a hissing whisper. "You were so scared of losing me that you crushed the only thing that could have saved us."
He flinched like I'd hit him.
"That's not—I was trying to protect—"
"Protection without honesty isn't protection, Adrian." I heard the words leave my mouth and watched them land, watched his whole body absorb the impact. "It's control. It's you deciding you know what's best for me. It's exactly what you did before. What you promised yourself you'd never do again."
Silence.
Somewhere in the building, a door slammed.
"You're right." His voice wavered, wracked with emotion.
"About all of it. I've been doing exactly what I did before, and I told myself it was different because—" He shoved his hands back in his pockets.
"Because I love you, and I thought if I could fix it first, you'd never have to know how bad it got.
You'd never have to know I was the one who—"
"Who what?"
His eyes were bloodshot, wet at the edges.
"Who put the camera on you in the first place. Who saw all those things you do to hold yourself together and thought it would make beautiful footage." His voice cracked completely. "Who fell in love with you while documenting your pain for strangers to consume."
Because I love you.
It should have mattered more. It should have landed with warmth and weight.
Instead, it felt like a confession extracted under pressure. True, maybe, but buried under so much wreckage I couldn't hear it.
"That's not how this works," I said. "You don't get to love someone and lie to them about their life at the same time. Those aren't the same muscle."
"I know." He stepped toward me again, hands raised, and I stepped back. He stopped. "I know that. I just—I didn't know how to tell you. I kept thinking if I had more time—"
"More time to decide what I could handle. More time to edit me out of my own story." My jaw ached from clenching. "You asked me to trust you. Over and over. And the whole time, you didn't trust me at all."
He had no answer.
I was so tired. The game had taken everything I had, and now this—standing in a storage alcove with a man who said he loved me but couldn't stop managing me long enough to let me be me.
"What do you want me to do?" he asked.
The light flickered, causing shadows to jump. His hands hung at his sides, empty.
"Figure out what you're actually willing to tell me," I said. "Not what you think I can handle. Not the version you've edited to protect my feelings. The real thing. All of it."
"And then?"
"Then come find me."
I turned toward the corridor.
"Pickle—"
I stopped. Didn't turn around.
"I'm not running," I said. "I'm giving you a chance to choose. You can keep managing this alone, or you can trust me the way you kept asking me to trust you."
Behind me, I heard him take a breath. He didn't say anything.
The silence said everything.
"That's what I thought," I said.
I walked away.
The corridor stretched ahead like a gauntlet I had to survive.
My feet kept moving. Left, right, left. The concrete echoed my footsteps back at me.
I'd spent my entire life moving toward people. Chasing them. Talking too loud and caring too much, hoping it would be enough, knowing it never was.
This was different.
Figure out what you're actually willing to tell me.
I'd said that. Out loud. To a man who'd just confessed he loved me while explaining how he'd turned my anxiety into meme content.
The corridor curved. I followed it without thinking while my brain played highlight reels I didn't want to see.
My hands on the Zamboni bolts. The cartoon sound effects they'd add.
Adrian's face when he said, "Trust me."
Thunder Bay's Favorite Disaster.
I'd been right all along. Adrian confirmed every fear I'd ever had about myself.
His footage would live on the internet forever.
Strangers would share it without knowing that the person in the video couldn't sleep without checking locks three times, that he straightened napkin holders because his brain wouldn't shut up, and that he'd spent his whole life trying to be less exhausting but never figured out how.
I rounded a corner.
A janitor's cart came out of nowhere.
One second, I was walking with my head up, dignity intact. The next, my hip connected with metal, and I stumbled sideways, arms pinwheeling, mops and bottles clattering around me like the universe's idea of a punchline.
I caught myself on the wall. The cart crashed into a recycling bin.
The hallway was empty. No janitor. Just an abandoned cart waiting for someone to walk into it while falling apart.
Thunder Bay's Favorite Disaster. Even the universe was getting in on the joke.
I stood there with my hand braced against cinderblock, breathing hard, and realized my face was wet.
I was crying.
I hadn't known I was crying.
The sobs came out of nowhere—ugly, gasping things that shook my whole body. I pressed my hand over my mouth to muffle them, but they kept coming.
A joke. They want to make you into a joke.
My legs gave out. I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the cold concrete, knees drawn up, hand clamped over my mouth, trying to make myself smaller. Trying to disappear.
I listened for footsteps.
Nothing.
Adrian wasn't coming.
That's what you wanted, I told myself. You gave him a choice, and he made it.
Except it wasn't what I wanted.
I wanted the romcom moment. Adrian running around that corner, hands out, saying, "Wait, stop, let me explain everything."
I wanted to be worth running after. I wanted, just once, to be enough for someone to fight for.
I wasn't. I never had been. And now there was documentary footage to prove it.
I don't know how long I sat there. Long enough for the sobs to slow. Long enough for the cold to seep through my jeans and settle into my bones. Eventually, I made myself stand.
The janitor's cart lay on its side, mops splayed across the floor like drunk friends who'd given up on getting home.
I could have fixed it. Righted it. Put everything back where it belonged.
I left it where it fell.
The exit was twenty feet away. Red glow. Metal bar.
Keep walking. Whatever happens next, you did the right thing. You asked for honesty. You set a boundary.
I pressed the cold metal, pushing the door open. My phone buzzed in my pocket.
I didn't check it. If I did, and it was Adrian with ten more words that explained nothing, I'd break all the way. If it wasn't Adrian, I'd break differently.
The cold hit me hard. Late October in Thunder Bay—the air coming off Lake Superior had that particular northern sharpness that hurt your lungs and cleared your head whether you wanted it cleared or not. I stood on the loading dock and let the wind find all the places where I was still raw.
The parking lot was half-empty. Streetlights cast orange pools on wet asphalt.
The talent is yours, Hog had said on the bus. Nobody can take that from you.
He was wrong. People could take everything. They could take your worst moments and score them with cartoon music and let strangers decide you were pathetic. They could take your love and your trust and file them under research.
They could make you into a joke, and there was nothing you could do about it.
My phone buzzed again.
I pulled it out. Two notifications.
Jake: epic game dude. where'd you disappear to
Under it:
Adrian: I'll come to find you. Please don't walk too far.
I stared at the words.
Please don't walk too far.
It wasn't an apology or explanation. It wasn't any of the things I needed to hear, but it was something.
I shoved the phone back in my pocket and started walking.
Not far. Not fast. Far enough that he'd have to work for it. Slow enough that I'd hear him coming.
The cold burned my lungs. My game-day shirt was damp with old sweat, starting to freeze against my skin. Behind me, the arena grew smaller.
I reached the edge of the parking lot.
Stopped.
Turned around.
There was a pickup truck at the far end—someone's beater. It probably wouldn't start. I leaned against the tailgate and watched the loading dock door.
The night pressed down, and the wind cut through my jacket. Somewhere in that building, Adrian was deciding.
He was either coming after me with the truth, or he wasn't. Either going to trust me the way he'd been asking me to trust him, or stay behind his walls where he never had to risk being seen.
I didn't know which one I was hoping for.
I didn't know if I'd survive either one.
I pulled my jacket tighter.
Please don't walk too far.
I'd stopped walking. That was the best I could do.
The door stayed closed. The parking lot stayed half-empty, and my phone stayed silent.
I waited.