They could call me whatever they wanted. They could add their sound effects, their laugh tracks, and their slide whistles. They could cut out every moment where I was good and leave only the mess.
But they couldn't make me less than I was. Not unless I let them.
Footsteps in the hallway.
My spine straightened.
The footsteps were slow. Heavy. They stopped outside the door.
A pause. Long enough for a breath. Long enough for a key card to be found and waved.
The soft beep of the lock.
The door swung open. Adrian stood in the threshold.
He looked worse than I'd ever seen him—pale, unshaven, dark circles like bruises under his eyes. His clothes were wrinkled. His hair looked like he'd been running his fingers through it for hours.
He looked up and saw me.
I watched his face.
First: confusion. His brain trying to make sense of the picture—Pickle, here, on the bed, in the room that should have been empty.
Then: realization. His gaze slid to the desk and the laptop. Closed, but not where he'd left it.
His mouth opened. I watched him reach for a word—my name, maybe, or an explanation, or the beginning of something that would have been easier to hear if he'd said it weeks ago.
He didn't find it.
Good.
I wasn't ready to hear it anyway.
I didn't move or speak. I sat there with my hands on my thighs and my spine straight and my eyes locked on his.
No chaos. No noise. No relatable disaster who filled every silence with jokes.
Me. Still. Waiting. And I knew everything.
Adrian's keys slipped from his fingers and hit the carpet with a sound like a period at the end of a sentence.
Chapter twenty-two
Adrian
Isaw him before I understood what I was seeing.
Pickle. On my bed. Quiet.
Not sprawled. Not mid-bounce. Not explaining why sea otters held hands while they slept. He sat with his spine straight and his hands flat on his thighs, feet parallel on the carpet, taking up the space his body required and nothing more.
I'd never seen Pickle still.
My laptop sat on the desk. Closed. Not quite centered on the blotter anymore.
Our eyes met.
I watched him watch me understand.
