Page 154 of The Fall
“Nice execution this morning, accomplice,” he says.
“Not bad yourself, mastermind.” I hold out my bottle of water for a toast. “Same time next year?”
Blair smiles. “I’d like that.”
Thirty-Three
In Dallason New Year’s Day, the ice is fast and the game is faster. It’s end-to-end action, bodies colliding, sticks clacking against the puck.
I take a high stick in the second period and taste blood in my mouth. Blair’s there immediately, helping me up, checking me over. I spit red onto the ice; warm blood drips down my cheek.
In the room, I tell Dr. Lin I’m fine. She gives me an ice pack and three stitches in my temple and says I’m in the clear, but my head’s still echoey and thick behind the eyes. There’s a headache chasing the curve of my skull.
Worth it, though. We crush Dallas 4-1, chase them up and down their rink until they cough up every inch of clean ice.
Now, Dallas is behind us, 30,000 feet below and dissolving. We’re flying into night as we head east, and there’s nothing but the hum of the plane and the occasional thump of turbulence with us. Most of the guys are working toward sleep. A few scroll lazily through their phones, decompressing in that limbo between cities, where the adrenaline has dropped but the body hasn’t caught up.
In the back row, unbothered, I ice my head and draw.
My head has a drumbeat of its own behind my left eye. I’ve taken a few more high-hits than I would prefer over the past month, and the headaches last a little longer each time.
I don’t need to think when I draw. I slip the pencil between my fingers and let the graphite lead me. I don’t tell myself to draw him bent over the dot; I’m trying to catch what’s real, to pin it to paper, to force it to hold still. The chase of it calms me, and my sketchbook is full of him. It’s become my meditation to linger on the curve of Blair’s jaw and the length of his thigh, or etch his secret smile into another weathered page.
The sketch I’m working is nearly done, this one of Blair during warm-ups. I got the tension right this time in his neck, in the grip he has on his stick. Motion in stillness.
Deeper in my notebook, my sketches aren’t harmless, or confined to the ice. In those, Blair is in my bed, his arm half-flung over a pillow. He’s shirtless, sleep-warm, and realer than any photograph. Those drawings are hidden behind dozens of hockey poses, tucked away where no one would ever find them unless they went looking. They’re my secret, my weakness captured in graphite.
I’ve got my headphones in and jazz dripping straight into my blood when the air shifts beside me.
It’s Blair. I know it before I look up.
I tear an earbud free, blinking as my eyes adjust to the cabin’s dim light. “Hey.”
“Hey,” he says, voice pitched low enough that only I can hear it. He stands in the aisle, one hand gripping a water bottle, the other braced against the overhead bin, and his gaze drops to my sketchbook.
I’m caught; I go perfectly still. There’s no way to close the notebook without making it worse. The lines are already there. He can see himself on the page.
“Mind if I sit?” he asks.
My mouth goes dry. I stare at the page where his form is frozen mid-motion, captured in graphite strokes that betray too much attention to detail. Every muscle, every shadow.
“Yeah, of course.” I try to sound casual as I shift my sketchbook, not enough to hide it completely—that would be too obvious—but enough to make it less obvious, less prominent.
Blair drops into the seat beside me.
“Head still hurting?” His eyes track to the ice pack I’m balancing between my temple and the bulkhead.
“It’s all right.”
“You drawing?”
I close the sketchbook, too late.
“What were you working on?”
“Nothing important.” My voice sounds thin.
“That’s me, right?” He nods toward the page.
