Chapter 21 Pickle
Chapter twenty-one
Pickle
Ihad a plan.
This was notable because I wasn't historically a plan guy.
I was more of a "launch yourself at the situation like a human cannonball and hope the net appears" guy.
My decision-making process usually involved approximately zero seconds of forethought and a lot of apologizing to furniture I'd knocked over.
This time—this one time—I had an actual, structured, grown-up plan. I'd workshopped it on the walk from Jake's, muttering to myself like a true crime podcast host doing a dramatic reenactment.
Hear him out. Don't interrupt. Don't spiral. Don't do the thing where you fill silence with ridiculous observations about whatever object is closest to your hand. Let Adrian explain, and then decide.
It was cold enough that my Crocs—my beautiful, perfect, safety-orange Crocs—were definitely a choice that past-Pickle would answer for when present-Pickle's toes fell off from frostbite.
Worth it. I looked fantastic. Some things mattered even when your entire life might be imploding.
The hotel lobby smelled like burnt coffee. Beige floor. Beige vinyl chairs huddled around a droopy ficus. A TV in the corner played local news on mute—weather map, car dealership, and a woman's mouth forming words nobody would ever hear.
I thought about how many conversations happened like that. People talking at full volume while someone else watched with the sound off.
Focus. Plan. Remember the plan.
The front desk clerk was maybe twenty-five, with dark hair yanked into a ponytail. She scrolled through her phone without looking up.
I stood at the counter and waited. Not talking. Not bouncing on my toes. Not commenting on the ficus or the specific frequency of the fluorescent light that would give someone a migraine.
It felt like wearing a straitjacket made of silence.
Thirty seconds. Forty. I counted the beige tiles behind her head. Twelve across, eight down.
"Help you?"
"I'm looking for a guest. Adrian Richter. He's been here a couple of weeks. Tall guy, dark hair, carries a lot of camera equipment."
She tapped at her keyboard. "Not in his room. I saw him leave."
"Any idea when he'll be back?"
"I'm a desk clerk, not a psychic."
The exit was right there: glass doors and a gray sky. I could walk out. Go back to Jake's couch and his cheese puffs and Evan's quietly worried eyes.
Except—
Juno's voice, in my head: Ask the questions you've been afraid to ask.
My voice, too, the one that lived under all the noise: You're tired. You're so tired of being the last person to know what's happening in your own story.
"Is there somewhere I can wait?" I asked. "Besides the lobby?"
She glanced up. Took in the Storm hoodie, the jeans, and the Crocs. "You know the guy?"
"Yeah. He's expecting me."
She studied me for another beat—calculating whether I was a problem, creep, or just some guy in aggressively orange footwear who clearly knew the guest in question.
"Housekeeping's on his floor," she said finally. "Second floor, room 214. If you know the guy and he's expecting you, you can wait up there by the door. Just don't wander around being weird."
That was it. The entire vetting process. Thunder Bay still had a small-town perspective. If something looked normal, it probably was.
I understood what she offered. Not permission. Not authorization. Absence of obstruction.
"Thanks," I said.
She grunted without looking up.
I climbed the stairs slowly. I was usually a take them two at a time and occasionally trip on the last one kind of stair-climber. Today I placed each foot carefully. Watched my orange Crocs rise and fall against the gray concrete.
Through a window at the landing, I saw the parking lot below.
Adrian's rental car wasn't there.
He really was gone.
I pushed through to the second floor. The carpet muffled my footsteps. Somewhere down the hall, a vacuum cleaner droned.
Room 210. 212. The housekeeping cart sat parked outside 216.
Room 214.
Adrian's door was ajar.
Not open. Not closed. Just—ajar. A two-inch gap between the door and the frame, like someone had pushed it most of the way shut but hadn't committed to the click.
I stopped walking.
Through the gap, I saw a sliver of the room. The edge of a desk. A corner of curtain, beige on beige. No movement. No sound except the vacuum next door.
I stood in the hallway. If anyone walked by, they'd see what I was: a guy in a Storm hoodie standing outside a door, making no attempt to hide.
I knocked. Soft. Two knuckles against wood.
No answer.
The vacuum cut off. In the sudden silence, I heard my own breathing.
A woman emerged from 216—wearing a gray uniform, with tired eyes. She saw me and paused.
"Friend of his," I said. "I'm waiting."
She looked at me. Looked at the door. Shrugged and went back to loading towels onto her cart.
I pushed the door open another few inches.
"Adrian?"
Nothing.
I stepped across the threshold. One step. Two. Just far enough to be inside, close enough to the door to still feel the hallway air on my back.
Don't close the door. Don't go further. Don't do anything you can't explain.
Behind me, I heard the housekeeper's cart squeak as she pushed it down the hall. The vacuum started up again somewhere distant.
I stood in Adrian's doorway and looked at what he'd been living in for two weeks.
I’d been there before, and it still looked like nobody lived there.
For two weeks, Adrian had been sleeping in this space, and there was nothing. No coffee mug with a dried ring at the bottom. No book splayed open on the nightstand. No jacket thrown over a chair.
The bed was made with military precision. Hospital corners. Pillows aligned like soldiers awaiting inspection. I'd seen my bed in the mornings after Adrian slept in it—sheets twisted, blankets half on the floor. This wasn't that. This was a bed made by someone who expected to be evaluated.
His clothes hung in the open closet. Dark jeans. Soft sweaters in gray, navy, and black. So perfectly folded, it made my fingers itch.
He was always planning to leave.
The thought arrived out of thin air. I shoved it aside, but it left residue.
Five coffee cups clustered on the dresser. I counted them automatically—the thing my brain did when it needed something small to hold onto. Five cups, all empty, lined up in a neat row. The only crack in the stage dressing.
So much coffee. So much not sleeping. Whatever Adrian had been handling, it had been eating him alive.
For one stupid second, I wanted to—
No.
He didn't get my sympathy. Not when he'd had my trust and done this with it.
There, on the desk: the laptop.
Closed but not put away.
The vacuum stopped somewhere down the hall. Silence flooded in.
I heard the cart wheels squeak. Footsteps moving away. Another door closing.
I was alone.
I crossed to the door and closed it.
Not to hide. The half-open door felt like a question mark, and I was done with questions—asked but not answered.
The laptop on the desk seemed to take up more space now, its closed lid reflecting the gray window light.
Juno had said the industry was buzzing. Viral potential. Meme-ready content. A relatable disaster.
Adrian had said trust me.
Both of those things couldn't be true.
I didn't want to do it.
The thought was clear and sharp. I didn't want to open that laptop. I wanted to sit on the bed and wait for Adrian to walk through the door with an explanation that made sense, a version of events where I wasn't the idiot who'd missed every warning sign because I was too busy being kissed.
Trust me, he'd said.
I'm handling it.
I'd asked him directly. Multiple times. And he'd chosen to give me silence dressed up as protection.
That was a violation.
I had a right to know what existed.
I opened the laptop.
The screen woke with a soft glow.
Adrian's desktop was meticulous—folders arranged in a grid, each one labeled with dates and locations. Color-coded. Organized.
Labeled so well that I could understand the thumbnails.
They ran across the top in a long strip. Tiny rectangles, each one a frozen moment. And in almost every single one: my face.
Me laughing. Me mid-sentence, hands blurring with motion. Me on the ice. Me crouched by the Zamboni, fingers pressed against the bolt heads.
Me, me, me. Captured. Catalogued. Sorted like specimens in a collection, bugs pinned to a board.
The folder structure was visible in a sidebar:
The last thumbnail was a folder named "NETWORK CUT — REVIEW".
I clicked on it. Inside: a single video file. Twelve minutes, thirty-seven seconds.
I pressed play.
The first thing I heard was my own voice.
I want to be the kind of player people remember for the right reasons.
It showed interview footage. It was in my apartment with golden afternoon light. I remembered that moment—how nervous I'd been and how badly I'd wanted to say something that mattered.
On screen, my face was earnest. Hopeful.
Then the cut happened.
The image smashed into footage of me spraying water directly into my own face. A cartoon SPLAT layered over it. A laugh track swelled underneath—canned laughter, perfectly timed to land on my failure.
My eyes widened.
The montage kept going.
Me at The Drop, crawling under the table to fix the chair legs. Circus music—jaunty, bouncing—with a BONK when I bumped my head. The footage slowed down, stretching the moment, milking the impact.
Me checking the Zamboni bolts. BOING, BOING, BOING—every press of my fingers turned into a punchline. A text overlay appeared:
THUNDER BAY'S FAVORITE DISASTER
I laughed at something Jake said. Except the way they'd cut it, there was no Jake. No context. Just me, laughing at nothing, looking unhinged.
I want to be the kind of player people remember for the right reasons.
They played it again.
Then they cut to me slipping on the ice, arms pinwheeling. The laugh track peaked. Someone added a slide whistle.
Like I was a fucking cartoon.
The video ended.