Page 67 of The Fall
Blair. The memories of his smile, his touch; they splinter and dissolve, scattering. His touch slips away. I cling to wispy fragments—Blair’s scent, coconut and lime, the rumble of his laughter, the taste of his lips, salt-sweet, the heat of his breathghosting over my neck as we moved together, one soul in two bodies—but the memories are slipping away, as if it was all a dream. Darkness bleeds into the edges of my vision.
Thiscan’tbe. Thiscan’t?—
The anguish is so deep, so unbearable, it shreds my veins, floods my heart, drowns my mind. I’m breaking, shattering into jagged edges. Whereishe?Where? Where did he go?
My lungs are collapsing, folding in on themselves. My scream tears free, surging up from somewhere deep inside me, somewhere that can never mend.
Blair’s eyes were so beautifully blue.
He can’t be gone.
Dr. Granholm is trying to reach me. “Torey. Torey, can you hear me? Torey…”
“Where ishe?”
“Torey, listen to me. Your heart rate is too high. We need to—” He’s still talking, but his words are static. I can’t focus, can’t think past the pain. My heart’s been torn out and I’m coming apart at the seams. I’m wailing. Shrieking. Out of control. Convulsing with the force of my sobs.
“Sedative. Now,” Dr. Granholm says.
“No,” I plead. “Please, I need him. I need?—”
No, no, no, no. Don’t take him from me, don’t take him, don’t?—
The walls bend inward. I’m losing him, the reality of him. It’s all slowly dissolving, until the last thing left is a memory: a candlelit lanai, his hand on mine, his thumb tracing a path over my ring finger as if he’s already laid down a vow. Stars above us, stars around us, stars inside the waves of his eyes.
I can’t?—
Our breath mingles until our lips brush. The canal whispers against the dock, but the sound is fading, a lullaby I can’t hear anymore. I’d pulled him close, kissed him until forevershimmered between us, bright and real enough to touch.Torey… do you want to be asked?
Please, please. Don’t take him away. Don’t make me live in a world where he doesn’t—where I can’t—where I?—
I love you. Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.
The last thing I feel is the phantom heat of Blair’s lips against my forehead.
Then, nothing.
There are no palm trees here.
A dull, gray sky drips against my hospital window. It’s a dreary Vancouver morning, the same as they all are, and I don’t want to call this place home. I hate it here. I hate this city.
Sedatives move sluggishly through my veins.
My phone rests in my lap, the screen finally dark and the battery dead. I’ve been at it for hours, scouring every inch of the internet, every post on social media. I scrolled and clicked and searched, mainlining reality one ESPN highlight, one Instagram post, one brutally factual article at a time.
It’s March 22, one year before I woke up in bed with Blair.
Tears dry on my cheeks. Blair. His name in my mind ruins something inside me all over again.
Last night, in Vancouver, Zolotarev—a Tampa Bay Mutineer—laid me out on the ice, and?—
Zolotarev. The name echoes in empty spaces within me. It’s there, somewhere: a trace of Hayes’s voice, the crunch of bone on bone, but the details are lost.
Hayes’s Instagram is a minefield of what isn’t. There he is, bright smiles and goofy dad poses, a year younger and a lifetime ago. Erin’s there, too, beautiful as always, a scarf carefullywrapped around her head. There are pink ribbons on Hayes’s profile. Lily’s younger, so much smaller.
There are no pictures of me and Hayes and Blair, no carefree laughter or #BFF hashtags immortalized in pixels and bytes.
Blair has no social media presence at all. He always guarded his privacy, but the articles I do find paint a picture of a man on edge. They talk about Blair’s inconsistent season, the personal leave he took, vanishing from the public eye for months and leaving nothing but speculation and unanswered questions in his wake. Now, he’s playing angry, the articles say. There’s strife throughout the Mutineers. The team is struggling, listless for reasons no one can trace. Their season has been a disappointment, their place in the standings dismal.
