Page 119 of The Fall
By the time I’m dressed—jeans, team hoodie, backwards cap—I’ve nearly convinced myself I’m fine.
Blair’s waiting against the wall near my stall, checking his phone. His hair is damp and pushed back from his face, and he’s dressed in dark jeans and a plain gray t-shirt that fits him perfectly.
“Where’s Hayes?” I ask.
“Probably fixing his hair for the fourth time.”
A half-choked laugh escapes me. Blair looks up from his phone and that casual crack about Hayes evaporates between us. His gaze holds mine, and the air grows heavy. His undivided attention is hotter than the water from the showers.
Get it together. I try to act normal, like my heart isn’t rabbiting, like this is any other post-practice lunch.
“I’m here!” Hayes bustles between us with his gym bag slung over his shoulder, and the tension snaps. I breathe again.
“We were about to leave without you,” Blair says, pocketing his phone.
“You’d miss my sparkling conversation.” Hayes grins, slapping me on the shoulder as he passes. “Ready to roll?”
Lunch is cheap tacos and folding chairs outside a food truck Hayes swears has the best fried avocado in the city. That holds up. We’re camped under a windblown umbrella, one table between us and three Cokes sweating in plastic cups. Hayes does most of the talking. A story about Lily’s school play. A rant about his fantasy football loss being a conspiracy.
Blair’s elbow rests on the table, and he avoids eye contact almost the entire meal, but not in that shutdown way he had from training camp. This is the intense quiet he gets right before a face-off when he’s reading the other center, predicting the drop. Right now, I feel like the puck he’s about to obliterate.
He picks up a stray tortilla chip from his basket, examines its jagged edge.
I should say something. Anything.Great tacos. Man, Hayes can talk. Think it’ll rain?
When Hayes steps five feet away to answer a call but talks like no one in North America is out of earshot, Blair and I areleft alone. I dab grease off my palm with a napkin. He breaks the tortilla chip in half. His sunglasses mask his eyes, and the dark lenses reflect my own image back at me, two tiny versions of myself.
“You’re tracking better in neutral zone reads.”
He lifts his sunglasses to the top of his head, and his eyes—startling blue even in this washed-out afternoon light—search my face.
I swallow. “I’m trying.” My half-eaten taco sits abandoned on wax paper. I grip my paper napkin tighter as it disintegrates against my damp palm. Hayes keeps talking in the background, his voice rising and falling.
“Your anticipation’s improving,” Blair continues. “You’re seeing second layers faster.”
“I’m still late on backdoor looks, though.”
He dips his chin and gives me a half nod. “Fixable.”
My knuckles whiten around the napkin. His eyes stay on me as if he’s watching game tape, breaking down every micro-movement.
Before I unstick the words caught in my throat, Hayes drops back into his chair with a clatter. “Sorry about that.” He reaches for his drink.
Blair’s focus shifts back to Hayes, and I breathe in sharp, oxygen flooding back into me.
“All good?” Blair asks.
Hayes launches into another story about Lily, deftly avoiding answering Blair’s question. I force myself to take a bite of my taco, chew, swallow. I nod at the right moments, laugh when Hayes expects it, but my brain keeps circling back:fixable.
That word stays in me, a grain of sand under the skin, burring deeper with each beat of blood through my veins. My body temperature spikes and drops in waves. The way Blair saidit, like he’s been watching. Like he’s been paying attention to details I didn’t think anyone noticed.
Fixable.
Blair plants himself in front of me on the ice in Detroit. “You want a spot on the power play?”
“Yeah.”
“Then let’s work.”
