No confusion on his face. No tears. No trembling jaw or white-knuckled fists. His expression was something I'd never seen—utter calm. Like bedrock.
He knew.
He knew everything.
How didn't matter. What mattered was that he'd sat here alone and waited.
My keys slipped from my fingers.
They hit the carpet with a muffled thud.
An instinct surged:Frame this. Contextualize. Manage the narrative.
I knew how to do it. I could start with Lenny's call. The seventy-two-hour window. The counter-doc that might bury the network's version before it ever aired. I could make him understand that I'd been fighting for him, that every choice came from—
No.
I stopped the thought mid-formation.
That impulse—to shape, soften, and decide what he was ready to hear—was the problem.
I didn't move toward him.
I didn't apologize.
I stood in the doorway and let the silence stretch.
Pickle spoke first.
"I watched it."
His voice was level. No crack, no waver.
"The network cut."
I could respond. The options scrolled through my mind—I know,orlet me explain,orit's not the final version. I could reach for context that might soften the moment.
I didn't.
Any attempt to guide him through this would be doing exactly what I'd done for weeks. Managing him. Treating him like a subject who needed my editorial hand to make sense of his own experience.
I stood there.
Pickle watched me not speak.
His chin lifted slightly, and his eyes narrowed. He read me the way he read the ice. Seeing what I wasn't doing.
I wasn't explaining.
I wasn't contextualizing.
I wasn't reaching for his arm or stepping closer.
For the first time since I'd picked up a camera, I refused to frame reality.
When Pickle spoke again, his voice had changed.
Not louder. Not angrier.
