Page 10 of The Fall
And I guess I am. This isn’t my team. This isn’t my arena. I don’t know anything about this place, and I don’t know anything about what I’m supposed to be doing here.
Inside, it’s like a lot of other arenas. I’ve played a handful of games here for the past four years—and a lot more home games, I guess, this year—and every rink is about the same. Enough to get the gist. Home side, away side, facilities, operations.
It’s the details that are going to fuck me up.
I keep behind Blair, letting him lead. Clearly, leading is natural to him. Still, he checks over his shoulder, shooting me tiny smiles and affection-filled looks.
Down in the home side, deep in the Mutineers’ Den, we amble through hallways with open doors where early risers are already hard at work. No other players—let’s be real. It’s the trainers, the equipment managers, the video team, the coaching staff. I search for faces I might know, but there’s no one here I recognize.
Blair calls out “hey”s and “what’s up”s, and I start mimicking him after the third time someone says, “Hey, Torey,” and looks pleased to see me.
People here seem to like me.
It’s a completely alien sensation. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m going to fuck this up so badly?—
Blair gives me another little smile, a casual glance and a lightning bolt of perfect blue all in one.
Blair—big, beefy, intimidating Captain Callahan—was undeniably adorable earlier this morning. He’d been, as predicted, crampy and uncomfortable about the night he’d spent wedged between the toilet and the wall on the bathroom floor, but he never complained. In fact, he didn’t say much of anything, because before his first cup of coffee, Blair is apparently preverbal. Partway through his first cup, Blair had caged me against the kitchen island, where I was picking at a banana. He’d wrapped one arm around my waist and rested his forehead on my shoulder. We stood like that, breathing together, him holding me, nothing but the single sink lamp on in the kitchen, and it was…
Indescribable.
Finally, we reach the medical wing of the Mutineers’ facilities. Blair taps his access card against a scanner, and the door unlocks with a click.
As soon as we’re inside, I’m hit by a wave of familiar-but-not. I know exactly where I am, but I don’t know this place at all. This is the medical suite of every NHL team. I’ve been in one of thesein every city, but they’re all eerily similar: a row of exam tables, medical supplies tacked to the walls, a smell of antiseptic and the lingering scent of old sweat.
I’ve been in these rooms before, but nothere.
Blair and I are perched together on the edge of an examination table when Dr. Hana Lin strides in, holding a bottle of water and a tablet. Her cheeks are flushed, and she looks like she’s been running.
“How are you feeling, Torey?” she asks as she pulls up a stool.
“Headache’s hanging on,” I admit. It’s the only true symptom I can give her.
“No dizziness?” She doesn’t look up from the screen.
“Not this morning.”
“Fatigue?”
“A little,” I admit.
“Disorientation? Confusion?”
“No, nothing like that.” It’s a lie, and I don’t know if I’m lying to her or to myself. I am disoriented. I am confused. I can’t remember the past year of my life. That’s pretty fucking confusing.
She nods. “That hit you took was solid. Shoulder to jawline, lifted your skates clean off the ice.”
“I’m still shook up, I guess.”
“He woke up sick in the middle of the night,” Blair adds.
Which… There’s a lot to unpack in that addition of his. Are we out? Public? Google didn’t seem to know we were in a relationship—or that either of us were gay—but does the team? Dr. Lin?
I have a whole new set of land mines to fret over now. Who knows and who doesn’t? How do I navigate this?
“Blair.” Dr. Lin’s voice is soft but commanding. “Can you give us a moment?”
Blair hesitates. His gaze—piercing and blue—searches me. I can’t look back. I’m fiddling with the tie of my shorts, staring down at my fingers as I worry over the knot. I am not afraid of being here, on this exam table. I am not afraid of the year I can’t remember. I am not afraid.
