She'd listened without interrupting. That was worse than yelling. Naomi yelling meant she thought you were salvageable. Naomi's silence meant she was calculating how much of the wreckage she'd have to step over.
I'll see what I can do.
She'd hung up without saying goodbye. That was fine. Goodbye would have felt like a funeral.
Now it was early afternoon. Thunder Bay light slanted through the gap in the curtains—pale, unconvincing, the kind of sun that showed up to work but didn't put in effort. The mini-fridge hummed its irritating frequency.
I hadn't slept. Not really. A few minutes here and there, my body shutting down involuntarily before my brain jerked it back awake with another catastrophic scenario.
Pickle's face when he sees the footage.
The network releasing it anyway.
Naomi calling back to say she couldn't hold them.
Pickle never speaking to me again.
That last one wasn't a scenario. That was already happening.
I'd texted him twice since the storage alcove. The latest at 7:17 a.m:
Adrian:I understand if you need space. I'll be here when you're ready.
No response. The message showed delivered, not read.
That hurt more than anger would have. Anger meant he still cared enough to feel something. Silence meant I'd become someone not worth the energy of a reaction.
I sat up slowly, every muscle protesting. My back ached from the hotel mattress—two weeks of sleeping on it, and my spine had started filing complaints. My eyes felt like someone had sandpapered them while I wasn't looking. I was still wearing yesterday's clothes—jeans and the sweater Pickle had once said made my eyes look like "sad lake water, but in a hot way."
I'd laughed at that. Called him ridiculous. Kissed him until he forgot whatever point he'd been trying to make.
That was four days ago. It felt like a different lifetime.
My phone sat on the nightstand, screen dark. No new disasters. That almost felt suspicious—like the universe was holding its breath, waiting to see what I'd do next.
I knew what I had to do. I'd known since 5 a.m., since Naomi's silence gave me permission to blow up my own life.
The question was whether I could get to Pickle before the wreckage landed.
My phone rang at 2:47 p.m.
Not Naomi. Not Pickle.
Lenny. The name sat on my screen for two full rings before I remembered how to answer a call.
"Adrian." His voice was warm, unhurried—the same tone he'd used more than a decade ago when I was a film student who didn't know the difference between a story and a subject. "You sound like hell."
"I've had better weeks."
"I imagine." A pause. I heard the creak of his office chair, pictured him leaning back in that cramped editing suite in Brooklyn where he'd built a career out of stories nobody else wanted to tell. "I've been making calls since we talked. Calling in favors I didn't know I still had."
I sat on the edge of the bed. My free hand pressed flat against my thigh, steadying.
"And?"
"And I think there's a path."
I exhaled.
