I opened the laptop again at eleven.
Told myself it was because I couldn't sleep. The pillows were wrong. I'd forgotten to pack melatonin.
Excuses. All of them.
The truth was simpler and more dangerous: I wanted to look at the footage again.
I pulled up the practice files and scrubbed past the drills, past the intros, and past Pickle's water-bottle disaster. I wasn't sure what I was looking for until I found it.
Sideline footage. I'd been adjusting my position near the boards, camera half-lowered, not really shooting—letting the sensor catch whatever drifted through the frame.
Pickle stood alone by the glass.
The rest of the team clustered near center ice, running a drill that didn't include him. He pressed both hands flat against his chest, fingers spread wide, and rubbed. Hard. Like he was trying to ease out a knot.
I'd barely noticed it while filming. It was background movement.
Now I couldn't look away.
His shoulders curved inward. His eyes were unfocused. No grin.
Just a young man who looked tired.
I watched it once. Then again. Then a third time.
The footage was grainy at this zoom level, pixelated around the edges. A breath shuddered out of him, visible in the cold rink air. His jaw loosened for half a second before he caught himself and tightened it again.
Twenty-three, I remembered from his player bio. I stared at the curve of his mouth.
The mini-fridge hummed.
I pulled up the Zamboni sequence next.
I'd filmed it as ambient coverage while the team reset between drills. Pickle drifted toward the equipment bay. He stopped in front of the Zamboni and crouched beside the front blade assembly.
His fingers traced the bolt heads with precision that didn't match his usual flailing. Methodical. Deliberate. He pressed his thumb against one bolt, then the next, like the count mattered.
I zoomed the frame.
His hands were shaking.
Not dramatically, but the camera didn't lie. His fingers vibrated against the metal with a fine, constant tremor.
His jaw clenched. "The blade energy is wrong," he'd said. I remembered how it had sounded like a joke. How Jake had asked if he was hexing the Zamboni.
It wasn't a joke.
It was anxiety with nowhere else to go.
The napkin holders at the bar. The Zamboni blade. Two data points that fit together.
I sat back. This wasn't quirky. It was a twenty-three-year-old whose nervous system was screaming, finding the only outlet it could.
I thought about causes. Pressure—he was young, talented, but inconsistent, probably fighting every day to prove he belonged on a roster that could cut him without warning. Or was it the documentary filming itself? Cameras changed people.
I caught myself and closed the video window.
My line of thinking would lead nowhere good. It would generate empathy and caring about someone I was supposed to be documenting from a professional distance.
