Page 71 of The Fall
“I love you,” I whisper. “God, I love you.”
My words hang. For the space of a breath, I let myself believe that maybe, maybe?—
But reality slams back: I’m alone in the dark, whispering to a drawing of a man I’ve never met.
You can draw him, but you can’t reach him.
He’s not yours.
He never was.
No. Heexistsin the graphite beneath my nails, in the hammering beat of my heart.
Hehasto.
Remember.
Remember.
This is home,I remind myself.This is your home.
Bullshit.
The light in Vancouver sucks the life out of everything, brittle and ready to snap. Tampa’s sun and sky, with everything drenched in sultry joy and booming, brilliant colors, is a universe away. Even inside Tampa’s arena, there was something extra, something that felt like?—
Home.
No, I tell myself. Light’s just light.
The door to the Orcas’ locker room is too close, too huge. I hesitate, one sneaker scuffing against the polished concrete, my breath faltering. For a moment—one ridiculous, treacherous moment—I hope that when I push through those doors, I’ll find Blair inside, the eye of the hurricane that was our team. He’ll seeme, and he’ll shoot me that half-smile that unravels me everysingletime?—
When I walk into the room, my Orcas teammates turn toward me like a jury facing the damned. Conversations die mid-sentence. Tooks and Pugh stop laughing. Becky moves past me like I’m not worth the effort to sidestep. Wilhelm’s leaning over, tying up his skates. He doesn’t look up; he jabs his chin toward my stall, a lonely cubicle where my equipment sits, untouched and dusty.
Eyes slide off me like water on glass. I catch a flicker in Pugh’s gaze, a crawl ofsomethingacross his expression. He turns back to his own laces.
Chandy, at least, breaks his silence enough to speak at me. “I don’t know if you’re up for this, Kicks. I mean, are youreallyup for coming back?”
“Dude, don’t.”
“You’re wasting your time, man.”
I don’t look to see who’s saying what.
Well, it’s the welcome wagon I expected, isn’t it? Big and boisterous, full of love and cheer for their favorite teammate—not. I should be thrilled they didn’t change the locks on me.
I don’t belong here. They know it, and so do I, and now we’re done pretending, I guess. It’s not that they hate me; they’ve just moved on. I’m a has-been, a yesterday who’s forgotten to go away.
I shudder into my gear. It’s rote, muscle memory, ingrained in a place I used to trust. But muscle memory’s a joke. What good is memory when all it digs up for you is a (complete, total, all-absorbing, fascinating, perfect, alluring, wondrous, belonging) nightmare of your deepest desire brought to life, only to be yanked away?
Blair, laughing. His eyes dancing as he passes me a puck in practice. You’ve got this, Kicks.
Over the past eighteen months, three episodes in the arsenal of podcasts I listen to have featured Tampa Bay Mutineers’ players—Hawks, Mikko, and Hayes. ESPN feeds me a steady diet of news from around the league right to my phone, twenty-four seven. How many articles on the Mutineers did I read without realizing? Did Corsi stats and play breakdowns lead to wild dreams? Did my memory take those scraps from inside me, seize Blair’s shadow on their blue line that night, and spit out a life I’d never have admitted I craved?
If we’d been playing Edmonton that night, would I be dreaming of oilfields and Albertan plains and endless snow? Would I be staring north instead of south?
Fuck memory.
It was real tome, more real than anything, but now I have to keep living inthisworld, the one without him.
