Page 70 of The Fall
I know these plays; I know how to help.
Or do I only think I do?
Blair glides across the ice while I drown in static silence. Iknowhis body. I have felt the heat of his post-game muscles bleeding into me as we sat close together on our charter plane.
Haven’t I?
Here I am in the dark, clutching him through the static of my phone screen. Blair in pixels, me in fragments.
This apartment is a half-baked reflection of my mind. For a week, I’ve watched every game Tampa Bay has played and studied every post-game video posted to the Mutineers’ website. I’ve analyzed each slant of Blair’s lips and every tilt of his chin. I don’t know what I was expecting to find: definitive proof of another world? Confirmation from my own reality? There are ninety-nine logical explanations for what I’ve been through since the moment Zolotarev knocked me into oblivion.
Maybe my memorieswerean elaborate dream concocted by my traumatized brain as it battered around my skull. Maybe I blacked out and Blair was the last thing I saw before I lost hold of reality, and I built up a new one out of the blue of his eyes.
Or maybe the explanation is much simpler: I’m crazy.
I’ve tried over and over to verify what I can remember, but it’s all so thin. The names of our trainers and coaches—gone. Our team doctor—what was her name? My notebook lies beside me, the pages bruised with ink, all my failed attempts at fact-finding.My memories taunt me, fingertips brushing the edges before whispering away.
A dream. All of it a dream.
Sleep, I need sleep, but every time I close my eyes he’s there. I dig my palms against my eyelids, willing something to surface.
I flip through the pages of my delirium. I’m clutching at nothing, aren’t I?
But at least, in these messy pages, Blair is here, close to me again. I’ve sketched him somanytimes.
His eyes stare back at me dozens and dozens of times. Some are quick sketches: the curve of his arms, the set of his shoulders. Others are painstakingly detailed: the exact pattern of freckles across his nose, the way his eyes crinkle when he smiles.
God, the details. The way his hair lies after it’s dried. A ghost of a tan at the line of his sunglasses. It’s these details that make this whole thing so fucked. The curve of his jaw, the angle of his cheekbones, the intensity of his eyes: I know these more than I know myself. The scent of Blair’s skin after a game. The feel of his hand in mine. His laughter, low and warm, all for me.
I study my work. It’s good, too good. How can I draw someone if I don’t know him? When I try to grasp at my memories and pull them out, they dribble away, but every detail of him stays sharp. Still, it’s not enough.
My phone chimes: a text from the Orcas’ trainer. I swipe it away without reading. My real world feels paper-thin. I’m supposed to return to practice tomorrow. I’m supposed to have been using this week to recover. Screen-free. Taking care of my brain. Working out. Getting myself back in gear.
I turn back to my notebook. Blair’s eyes stare back at me.
This sketching is becoming an obsession. It’s evidence, I tell myself, and turn to a fresh page to begin again. Is this what insanity looks like? This single-minded fixation?
Tampa’s game plays on. Blair is there, the camera lingering on his face during an icing call. I watch him, drinking in every detail.
His eyes. I begin and end there every time.
Blair’s on the ice, doing everything right, and it’s all coming out all wrong. I should be out there with him. I could help him, be there where he needs me to for that pass. Now he’s heading to the corner, pressuring Nashville’s defenseman and coming up with nothing. Tension runs through his turn, the sea drawing back before a hard swell.
If I pick up this fucking pencil and nail down the angles where his cheekbones slide into his jawline, maybe I can catch a piece of him to hold on to. Maybe I can preserve the whole ocean that stays trapped behind his eyes.
Whoishe that I’m drawing? Is he the Blair on the screen or the one in my head? Are they two different men?
Christ. I’m cracking.
I need him here with me, but the more detailed the lines I draw, the more agonizing his absence is. He’s here, but he’s not.
Nashville scores again; Blair’s stick cracks against the ice. He skates to the bench, head-down, jaw set and grim. The shot lands on his face and my heart stalls; it’s as if he’s staring through the lens at me, asking why the hell I’m here while he’s out there.
I want to scream, to tell him that I’m trying, that none of this makes sense, that it doesn’t add up. Tell him that I’m sorry, that I’m so fucking sorry, but I don’t even know what for. He’s a million miles away, and I can’t get to him. I can’t remember what I’m supposed to. Everything’s falling apart, and all I have left are these sketches of a man who doesn’t know me, who I love more than the sun loves the sky.
Tampa’s losing to Nashville and I’m losing my mind.
If I can remember one thing, one goddamn detail that lines up with reality, then maybe the rest of it…
