Chapter 19 Pickle
Chapter nineteen
Pickle
The shampoo got me first.
I made it three steps into my apartment before the smell invaded my lungs—clean and adult in a way that had no business existing in a space where I'd once eaten cereal out of a frisbee because all my bowls were in the sink.
It was Adrian's hotel shampoo. Still clinging to the bathroom doorframe, the couch cushion where he'd sat while I rambled about octopus hearts, and the hoodie I'd thrown over the back of the haunted chair.
The haunted chair that had witnessed things.
I stood in my living room and breathed in evidence of someone who wasn't here anymore. Not gone-gone. Absent. Probably temporarily.
My apartment had feelings in it.
The walls were saturated with the last forty-eight hours—kissing and laughing —and his comment I like you exactly as you are. The air was thick with the ghost of his hands and his mouth and all the things I'd let myself believe while his body was wrapped around mine.
I couldn't think there. Every surface was a crime scene.
My legs ached from hockey—post-adrenaline exhaustion that settled into my muscles like wet sand—but my nervous system hadn't gotten the memo. I paced to the kitchen and back. My body wanted to move, do something physical with all the energy that had nowhere else to go.
I grabbed my jacket and locked up without drama, taking the stairs two at a time.
I walked fast, not because I was in a hurry but because my legs needed the work. The ache in my thighs felt good. It was something real to focus on instead of the mess inside my chest.
I passed the laundromat where Jake had once lost a sock and filed a formal complaint with the owner. The parking lot where Hog taught me to parallel park after I'd failed my road test twice. The alley where Desrosiers had puked after his birthday last year.
Thunder Bay landmarks. Evidence of a life I'd built here, piece by piece, before Adrian Richter showed up with a camera and rearranged everything.
By the time I reached Jake and Evan's building, my face was numb, and my thoughts had stopped shouting. Not fixed, but less loud.
I climbed the stairs and knocked.
Jake opened the door mid-sentence.
"—and I'm saying, if the producers actually cared about the integrity of the competition, they wouldn't let someone with that obvious of a spray tan make it to the final round—"
"I don't agree with you," Evan called from inside.
Jake looked at me. "He agrees with me spiritually." He stepped back to let me inside. "The spray tan industrial complex has infiltrated reality television, and nobody is talking about it."
I walked past him into the living room.
Evan was on the couch, folding laundry. The TV was frozen on what looked like a dating show—two people in formal wear on a beach, one of them crying and both deeply tan.
"Beer's in the fridge," Evan said without looking up. "Jake bought cheese puffs."
"Cheese puffs are real food," Jake said. "They're made of cheese. And puffs."
"They're made of corn and orange dust."
"Orange dust is a flavor, Evan."
I grabbed a beer. The bottle was cold and familiar—the same brand Jake always bought. It had a label that peeled off in satisfying strips when you needed something to do with your hands.
Jake deposited himself on the couch. He was already elbow-deep in a bag of cheese puffs the size of a small child. He gestured to the armchair. "Sit. You look like a person who needs to sit."
I sat. Or tried to. The armchair was hideous—brown corduroy that rubbed rough against my forearms, a suspicious stain on one cushion—but usually it swallowed me like a hug.
Tonight, my body wouldn't settle. My knee bounced. I pressed my hand against it. It bounced anyway.
Jake noticed. Didn't comment.
He shoved the cheese puff bag in my direction. "Okay. What's your story?"
No buildup. No careful circling.
I took a handful of cheese puffs. Shoved three into my mouth at once.
This was why I'd come. Not because they had answers—nobody did—but because they had the noise, snacks, and the complete absence of expectation.
The person on the TV threw a rose into the ocean.
I swallowed. "Something's wrong with Adrian."
Jake stopped mid-chew. Evan's hands paused on a green towel.
"Wrong how?"
I stared at the cheese puff in my hand. "He's been tense. Checking his phone constantly, disappearing for calls, and looking at me like—" I crushed the puff between my fingers, watching it crumble. "Like he's apologizing for something that hasn't happened yet."
"That's ominous," Jake said.
"He said there are complications. With the documentary. The network has expectations he doesn't agree with." I grabbed another cheese puff. "He said he's handling it. That he needs me to trust him."
Evan set the towel down. "And do you? Trust him?"
"I want to." My voice cracked, and I covered it with a cough. "But he keeps saying something's wrong and then doesn't tell me what. That's not how trust works, right?"
Jake leaned forward. "Did he say what the network wants?"
"A certain angle. Chaos. Comedy." The words tasted sour. "A relatable disaster approach."
Jake's expression darkened. "They want to make you look stupid."
"He said he's fighting them."
"Did he tell you what they already have?" Evan's voice was quiet. "What footage exists. What they're planning to do with it."
"Maybe. Sort of. Not a lot of specifics."
I thought about Adrian's hands and how they shook when I stepped back from his reach. It was a tremor in his fingers like he was holding something too tightly and couldn't figure out how to let go.
"I asked him," I said. "Directly. Multiple times. Is there something you're not telling me? And every time, he looked me in the eyes and said he was handling it."
Jake set down the cheese puff bag. "He's definitely hiding something."
"People hide things for different reasons." Evan picked up the towel again. "Fear. Shame. Misguided protection. It doesn't automatically mean he's trying to hurt you."
Jake grunted. "It doesn't automatically mean he's not."
"I implied that hiding and harming aren't the same thing. Sometimes people keep secrets because they're scared. Because they think they can fix something before anyone has to know it was broken." Evan stopped folding for a moment. "That doesn't make it okay. But it's different from malice."
"Evan's right," I said slowly. "Maybe he's scared. Maybe he thinks he's protecting me."
Jake crossed his arms. "And I'm right too. He's hiding something, and you deserve to know what."
"Both things can be true."
"Both things being true doesn't help you, though." Jake rubbed his chin and smeared some orange on his cheek. "What do you want, Pickle?"
What did I want? For Adrian to rewind time? For the network not to exist? For this to be a misunderstanding fixable with a conversation and maybe some athletic reconciliation sex?
All of that was fine, but I wanted to be trusted.
"I don't know," I said finally.
Jake nodded like that was acceptable.
Evan went back to folding.
My knee kept bouncing.
Jake grabbed another fistful of cheese puffs. "Okay, but consider—I once hid a parking ticket from Evan for three weeks because I was scared he'd make me create a vehicle violation tracking spreadsheet."
I blinked. "What?"
"A parking ticket. From the meter on Fifth Street. The one outside the bakery with the broken timer that everyone knows is broken, but the city refuses to fix."
"Jake—"
"I shoved it in my hockey bag. Under my shin guards. Figured if I didn't acknowledge its existence, it would simply cease to be real."
Evan didn't look up. "That's not how tickets work."
"I found that out when the city sent a follow-up notice threatening to boot my car, and I had to confess like a parking-adjacent war criminal."
"You cried," Evan said.
"I did not cry."
"You cried, then asked if I still loved you, then cried more when I said the spreadsheet was non-negotiable."
"The spreadsheet was excessive, Evan. It had color-coded categories and a column for emotional state at the time of violation."
Evan dug in. "It had accountability structures."
"It had a PIE CHART."
I laughed. Jake grinned triumphantly. Even Evan's mouth twitched.
"See?" Jake pointed at me with an orange finger. "Fear makes people do dumb things. Doesn't mean they don't love you. Sometimes it means they love you so much they'd rather suffocate under their own shin guards than admit they fucked up."
"That's weirdly poetic."
"I'm a poet. I contain multitudes." He settled back into the cushions. "Hiding something doesn't automatically make someone a villain. Sometimes it makes them a dumbass who's scared of pie charts."
The warmth in my chest cooled.
"It's not the same thing," I said quietly.
They both stopped.
"The parking ticket," I clarified. "That's different. You were scared of the spreadsheet. You weren't asked directly and then lied to."
The room was silent.
"I looked at him. Multiple times. I said Is there something you're not telling me in actual words. And he said he was handling it. He looked me in the eyes and chose not to answer."
Jake's hand hovered over the bag, frozen.
"That's what hurts. Not that he has a secret.
Everyone has secrets." I paused. "It hurts because he left me out. The play was already in motion, and I was still on the bench, wondering why the puck never came my way. That’s what everyone does.
They decide who I am—and how much of me they can take—and then they set my position for me. "
Evan blinked.
"I'm too much. I've always been too much." My voice came out rough. "And people decide that means I can't be real. Not serious enough to hear the truth. Not steady enough to handle it."
"That's a lot more than a parking ticket," Jake said.
"Yeah." I brushed cheese dust off my fingers onto my jeans. "It really is."
My phone buzzed against my thigh.
I knew it was Juno before I checked. In the same way I knew when a pass was coming before the puck left the stick.