Chapter 26 Adrian
Chapter twenty-six
Adrian
The Drop wasn't built for film screenings.
The projector—borrowed from the high school—sat on a stack of milk crates behind the bar, angled toward a pull-down screen that had seen better decades.
Someone had duct-taped the bottom edge to keep it from curling.
The sound system was the same one they used for karaoke nights, which meant the audio had a metallic edge that no amount of adjustment could fix.
It was perfect.
Three weeks had passed since the counter-documentary went live—quietly, announced by Juno's podcast and available online, with a brief introduction about consent and collaboration. No festival premiere. No press tour. A link that existed in the world, getting watched by people who cared.
The original network cut was gone. Buried under NDAs and strategic silence, the way inconvenient truths always disappeared. I'd stopped checking to see if anyone noticed. My pulse didn't spike anymore when I thought about it.
Tonight, Thunder Bay as a community got to see what we'd built instead.
I stood near the back wall, my shoulder pressed against aged wood paneling. Pickle was beside me, close enough that I could feel the heat coming off him. He'd changed after practice—jeans and a Storm hoodie, hair still damp, smelling like his cheap shampoo.
He reached out for my hand in the dark before the lights went down.
The crowd was bigger than I'd expected. Jake and Evan claimed the center table. Hog and Rhett sat in their usual corner booth. Biscuit curled into a ball at their feet. Coach Rusk stood against the opposite wall, arms crossed. Juno had set up near the front, blue hair catching the projector light.
There were others, too. Bar regulars. Faces from the grocery store, the arena, and from walking home through downtown on nights when the cold made us huddle close.
The town had shown up.
Juno dimmed the lights. The screen flickered to life.
My heart kicked against my ribs.
The opening shot was Thunder Bay from above—lake and sky, the Sleeping Giant, and the city tucked against the shore. Then the cut: inside the arena. Skate blades on ice and the hollow thunk of pucks against boards.
The camera found Pickle moving through a drill, stick handling with precision that contradicted everything the network cut had tried to sell. His edges were clean. His head was up. When he passed the puck, it landed exactly where it needed to.
No flash. Competence.
I watched the screen while keeping an eye on the audience. They'd put their phones away and focused on the screen.
The documentary showed Pickle at a youth clinic, crouched beside a kid in an oversized jersey. He spoke patiently and broke down the drill without condescension.
"Watch the defender's hips, not his stick. Hips don't lie."
The kid's face brightened. Tried it. Got it.
Cut to: the same kid—Dylan, in his Gretzky jersey—executing the move in a game. Pickle watched from the boards, grinning like he'd scored himself.
Leadership without speeches.
I'd included the humor, too. Karaoke footage made it in—"Total Eclipse of the Heart" performed with the structural integrity of a collapsing building. The frame was wide. You could see Jake and Evan losing it in the background. The camera caught the joy.
Not "look at this ridiculous person."
What I'd eliminated was manipulation. No leading questions. No footage of Pickle isolated and cut to suggest incompetence. No narrator voice guiding the viewer toward a predetermined conclusion.
The final sequence was practice. Early morning, empty arena. Just the Storm, the ice, and the sound of their voices. They worked through drills—crossovers, tight turns, and the kind of edges that separated good skaters from great ones.
The screen went black.
Silence.
A roomful of applause—full and warm and unselfconscious. Someone whistled. Someone else shouted Pickle's name.
Pickle's hand tightened around mine.
I looked at him. His face was flushed, eyes bright and wet. He blinked hard and laughed a little. "Fuck."
"You okay?"
"Yeah. I'm—" He shook his head. "People aren't laughing at me."
"They never should have been."
"But they were. And I let them." He looked at me. "You didn't."
The lights came up slowly. Juno was wiping her eyes. Jake had his arm around Evan's shoulders.
People started moving. They came to Pickle, not me.
That felt right.
A woman I recognized from the grocery store gently touched his arm. "You helped my grandson. Last year. Youth clinic. He was afraid of the ice."
Pickle's face did something complicated. "Dylan, right? The kid in the documentary with the Gretzky jersey?"
"Yes, that's the one."
"He had good edges. Just needed to trust them."
"He's playing bantam now. Because of you."
Pickle grinned from ear to ear. "That's all him. I just showed up."
More people followed. Juno hugged him, no words needed.
He handled each interaction the same way: slight deflection, genuine gratitude, and no shrinking. He didn't hide. Didn't make it a joke. He stood there and let everyone see him.
Jake stepped up beside me, beer in hand. "You did good."
"You all did the hard part."
"Yeah, but you didn't fuck it up. That's worth something." He took a drink. "You staying?"
It was a question with multiple layers. "Yeah. I am."
"Good. Pickle would be unbearable if you left."
Hog approached next, Biscuit trotting at his heels. The dog immediately investigated my shoes, tail wagging. Hog didn't look at me directly, just watched the room while scratching Biscuit's ears.
"Film's good," Hog said. "Fair."
"That was the goal."
"Hard thing, being fair." He straightened and made eye contact. "You hurt him again, I don't care how good your intentions are."
"I understand."
"Good." He paused. "But you're not going to."
Statement of fact. "No. I'm not."
"Then we're good." He bent down and scooped up Biscuit. "Come on, disaster."
I looked back at Pickle. Someone had handed him a beer he wasn't drinking. He held it while he spoke, hands moving through the air to illustrate a play.
I'd spent my career trying to find interesting people and make them matter to strangers. Trying to prove I could see things other people missed.
With Pickle, all I had to do was pay attention.
He extracted himself from the conversation and made his way toward me. When he got close enough, he handed me the untouched beer.
"Didn't want it. You look thirsty."
"I'm fine," but I took it anyway.
He leaned against the wall beside me. Our shoulders touched. "Lot of feelings. Processing. You know how I am with feelings."
"Loud."
"Exactly." He was quiet for a moment, watching the room. "Thank you for making this. For doing it right."
"You're welcome."
He smiled. "Wanna get out of here?"
"Yeah. Let's go home."
Pickle smiled. "Home. Listen to you."
"Shut up."
"Make me."
I kissed him. Right there against the wall, in front of everyone.
He kissed back, laughing into my mouth.
When we pulled apart, Jake was making gagging noises from across the room. Evan elbowed him. Coach Rusk was very deliberately looking anywhere else.
Biscuit barked once, either offended by the public display or just wanting attention.
"Come on," Pickle said, grabbing my hand. "Before Jake makes it weird."
"Too late," Jake called.
We left The Drop together, stepping out into the January cold that bit at my face. Pickle's hand was warm in mine.
The next morning, my phone rang while I was at Rhett's workshop, setting up for product shots.
Lenny's name on the screen.
I answered. "Hey."
"You're turning down a lot of work," he said without preamble.
"I know."
"Good work. The kind you used to beg for."
"I know that too."
A pause. "You want to tell me what's going on?"
I looked around the workshop—sawdust and motor oil, tools hung on pegboards. Rhett's prototype storage units sat on a table waiting to be photographed. Honest work. Local work.
"I don't want that hunger anymore," I said. "I thought I did. Thought I needed it, but I don't."
"So what do you want?"
"I want to make things that don't hurt people. I want to work locally. I want to go home at night and not feel like I'm abandoning something more important."
"That's very wholesome. Also a little boring."
"Yeah. It is."
"You're okay with that?"
I thought about mornings in the kitchen. Pickle's terrible cooking. The haunted chair that creaked at inconvenient moments. Walking to the rink in the cold. The quiet satisfaction of work that mattered to the people right in front of me.
"I'm more than okay with it."
Lenny sighed. "Alright. I'll stop sending you opportunities."
"I appreciate it."
"For what it's worth? The Thunder Bay doc was the best thing you've ever made."
"They're the only people who needed to see it."
"Yeah. I figured." A pause. "Take care of yourself, Adrian."
"You too."
I hung up and got back to work.
The move from Chicago happened in pieces over the next few weeks. I flew back once to pack, looked at my apartment—the place I'd lived for eight years—and felt nothing. Not grief. Not nostalgia. Only distance.
The realtor asked if I was sure. I was.
I shipped everything essential. When I got back to Thunder Bay, Pickle helped me unpack. He held up the framed print from my first festival screening and examined it critically.
"This is boring."
"It's from my first—"
"Still boring. Where do you want it?"
"The closet?"
"Perfect." He shoved it in the back. "Now it has a friend."
We hung my few personal items around the apartment. They mixed with Pickle's chaos—Storm memorabilia, photos of the team, and his grandmother's handwritten pierogi recipe taped to the fridge.
The apartment looked like two people lived there now.
Not perfectly coordinated, but together.
That night, we lay in bed with the lights off, Thunder Bay sounds muffled by snow outside.
Pickle sprawled across three-quarters of the bed, one leg thrown over mine. He breathed against my shoulder, deep and steady.
"You awake?" he asked quietly.
"Yeah."
"I love you."
The words hung in the dark between us.
I turned to face him. His eyes caught the streetlight filtering through the curtains.
"I love you too."
He smiled—wide and ridiculous and perfect. Then he kissed me, soft at first, then deeper. His hand slid under my shirt, palm warm against my ribs.
"You sure you're not too tired?" I asked against his mouth.
"From what? Lying here thinking about how much I love you?" He pulled back just enough to look at me. "I've been waiting to say that for weeks. Now I want to show you."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." He pushed me onto my back and straddled my hips. "I'm in charge."
"Yes, you are."
His hands moved with a sense of purpose, delivering pleasure. When he pulled off my shirt and leaned down to kiss my chest, I felt it everywhere.
"Still good?" he asked, voice lower.
"So good."
He grinned against my skin. "It has to be better than good. I'm excellent at this now."
"Your confidence is—" I lost the thought when his hand slid lower.
"Distracting?" He laughed. "You love it."
"I do."
The heat built between us—familiar but far from routine. Every kiss was a choice we kept making.
When he finally moved against me, skin to skin, he looked down and said, "Stay."
"I'm not going anywhere."
"Promise."
"I promise."
He kissed me like he was claiming me and being claimed in return. Like love was something you built together through showing up and staying and choosing each other in both the ordinary moments and the electric ones.
Afterward, we lay tangled together, breathing hard.
"The chair approves," Pickle said into the silence.
I listened. Sure enough—one soft creak.
"Your grandmother has opinions about our sex life."
"She always did." He pressed his face against my shoulder. "She'd like you."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. You make me better. Not different. Just—more myself."
I kissed the top of his head. "You do the same for me."
We fell asleep like that, wrapped around each other.
I woke at 2 a.m. Distant traffic muffled by snow. Pickle's steady breathing.
My mind was still. Not empty—just present.
Pickle's arm rested across my chest, warmth radiating from his skin.
Tomorrow we'd wake up together. Make breakfast. Pickle would go to practice, and I'd go to work. Later, we would both come home.
The routine was ordinary. It was everything.
I'd spent a decade mistaking urgency for purpose. Building a career that required constant proof that I was worth the space I occupied.
Quiet had always felt like failure, until now
Lying in the silence in Thunder Bay—in an apartment that smelled like burnt toast and hockey gear—I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
Pickle shifted in his sleep, burrowing closer. He mumbled something unintelligible—probably a hockey term, possibly "love you" again, definitely nothing that required a response.
I kissed his forehead.
The Storm had a game in two days. I'd go. Sit in my usual seat. Watch Pickle play without filming.
Then we'd come home.
This life I was building—local work, domestic chaos, love without conditions—wasn't extraordinary.
It was better.
The haunted chair creaked once more. Approving.
I closed my eyes, matched my breathing to Pickle's, and stayed.