“But I’m not—” I closed my eyes but kept talking. “There are things about this project I can’t control. Things I’m trying to fix. And I don’t know if I can.”
Silence on the other end.
“Pickle—”
“It’s okay.” His voice was quiet but steady. “I knew this would be complicated. You’ve got a job. I’ve got—whatever this is. It was always going to be messy.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
“Maybe not, but it makes it real.” A pause. “Are you trying? To fix the things you can’t control?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a good thing. For now.”
I wanted to tell him everything—the network’s demands, Hog’s warning, and the impossible choice that was coming. I couldn’t. Not yet. Not until I’d figured out how to protect him from what I’d already done.
“I should let you sleep,” I said.
“Yeah. Game day tomorrow. Coach’s creepy sixth sense, et cetera.” A beat. “Adrian?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad you called.”
“Me too.”
“Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Pickle.”
The line went dead. I sat in the empty coffee shop, phone still pressed to my ear, listening to nothing.
Give us proof.
I opened my laptop. Stared at the folder of footage—hours of it, days of it, and I opened a new email.
Naomi, we need to talk about the edit. I have concerns about the direction, and I’m not sending more footage until we address them. Call me tomorrow.
My finger hovered over the send button.
It was a line I couldn’t uncross. Once I officially pushed back—in writing, on the record—everything would change.
I thought about Pickle’s voice on the phone.Are you trying?
I hit send.
Then I closed my laptop, left money on the table, and walked out into the Thunder Bay cold.
Chapter eleven
Pickle
The bus smelled like stale coffee and an old breakfast sandwich that slid under the seats a week ago.
Seat 7. Window. The one with the crack in the armrest that I’d picked at since I arrived until the foam started leaking out. Five days. Four games. Kalamazoo, Toledo, Fort Wayne, Indy.
I’d done this route before. I’d even once survived a twelve-day swing through the Midwest that included a bus breakdown in Gary, Indiana, and a motel room with a ghost in the shower drain.
