Page 247 of The Fall
Fifty-One
The hotel ballroomyawns before me, empty except for the breakfast buffet steaming under heat lamps. Sausage links pop and hiss beside strips of bacon, and maple mingles with butter and salt. I load my plate: scrambled eggs, bacon, a muffin, a croissant.
Last night shimmers, the glow of a night spent tangled in Blair’s sheets. My muscles hold sweet afteraches, memories rising up in waves of fingertips on bare skin, his breath warm against my neck, all the soft words we whispered in darkness.
I take a table by the window. The city of Boston is waking up, and sunlight catches on the rim of my water glass. My phone vibrates, and when I swipe, Blair’s photo fills my screen: rumpled and golden in morning light, sheets twisted around his hips, and that lazy grin, the one meant for me. His hair sticks up where my fingers ran through it hours ago, and light catches the sheen of sweat I left him with. My fork hovers halfway to my mouth.
Miss you already.
God, I miss him even when he’s nearby. My thumb moves, about to type a response, but my eyes snag on the text sitting below his. It’s my father’s, unanswered from days ago.
Saw the hit. You okay?
His text came through during the Washington game, right after Zolotarev’s hit, but I never answered. In the chaos of my concussion check and the fugue in my own head, I forgot. I left him hanging. Shame licks through me.
This is the new shape of our relationship, questions separated by days of silence. It’s space I asked for, but now the quiet is a scar. He learned to stand back, and I still haven’t learned how to ask him to step closer again.
I draft responses in my head:I’m good, DadorYeah, I got checked outorSorry for not answering sooner,but my fingers stay frozen.
The ballroom door swings open. Hayes shambles in, his hair pointing in four directions at once, and makes a direct line for the coffee.
“Morning, Kicks,” he mumbles around a yawn as he collapses into the chair beside me. “Save some for the rest of us, yeah?” He spears a sausage link from my plate and shoves it into his mouth.
I laugh. “Dude.”
He shrugs and smiles, chewing away.
Dominik, Mikko, and Simmer follow, then Reid, Hollow, and Hawks. They fill the seats around us, conversation flowing as coffee and carbs hit their systems. Hayes steals food from everyone before he gets heckled into getting his own plate. Hollow demands a replacement bear claw.
“So,” Hayes says, returning with a mountain of food and talking at the table. “What would you rather do: eat nothing but tacos or only drink kale smoothies for two weeks?”
Nolan grimaces. “Ugh. Tacos.”
“But—” Hayes bites into a muffin and talks with his mouth full. “What if you were guaranteed at least a goal and an assist every game if you drank the kale smoothies?”
The groans are universal and deeply felt, but the guys lean in like it’s a real philosophical crisis.
“Where’s Calle?” Hayes turns to me, hiding his words behind his coffee cup.
“Still upstairs, I guess.”
“You guess.” A smirk plays on his lips. “Did you leave him with any energy for the game, or did you?—”
He cuts off with a squawk as he wriggles, trying to fish something out of his shirt, until scrambled eggs emerge from the small of his back. The table erupts. Blair strolls past toward the buffet as if he is entirely uninvolved, and Axel holds up a fist for a bump.
When he returns, Blair sets his plate down in the empty seat across from me.
The clatter of forks, the hum of conversation, my father’s text—it all recedes, leaving only the calm geography of his face and the soft light in his eyes.
“Okay, okay! I got one.” Hayes breaks through the chatter. “What would you rather do? Fight one grizzly bear-sized hamster or fifty hamster-sized grizzly bears?”
Everything inside me goes cold, then colder.
Hayes’ laugh ringing across the table, Blair’s easy smile, Mikko shaking his head, Hawks rolling his eyes, Nolan snorting into his coffee, Viktor pretending he’s forgotten English while Dominik cracks up beside him?—
Ihavebeen here before.
This is not déjà vu. This is a film reel clicking through the same sprockets, frame by agonizing frame, and Iaminsidea moment I have already lived. I have been here, lived this, experienced this,before.
