Page 89 of The Fall
And I don’t actually know him, do I?
I only imagined him.
Carolina’s arena buzzes. It’s a rink like any other: boards, blades, sweat in the air. My blade scrapes ice, and the puck, for once, glides cleanly. I roll my tongue against my mouthguard’s sour rubber and taste last period’s blood on my molar. Sweat drips under my helmet.
The ice opens in a thin seam, and a shadow knifes across it: Blair. He cuts through the neutral zone, a dark star carving his own path.
His pass snaps to my tape. I shoot it back, a kiss of touch to keep him moving, and cut hard across the blue. He slings the puck between the defense’s sticks to the gap he’s drawn open for me. It’s no-look, dirty, and perfect, and I lean into it, edge to edge, hips and heat. I sling the one-timer high. I have been waiting, God, I have been starving for this, for him turning a dead stretch of ice into a river we could run.
The puck soars and lands top shelf, tucked under the bar, the twine whipping and settling.
I whip around, searching for him. I wanthisreaction. I want that look in his eyes to burn me up—there you are—the one that used to light up my life. I want his grin that says we did this together, that he wanted me there, that this is a thread singing between us on this ice.
I want him to see me seeing him.
But Blair curls away, mouthguard tucked in his cheek. He skates a slow loop through the corner and keeps going to the bench. He is already pivoting for the line change.
Hawks collides with me. “That’s it, Kicks!” He’s laughing, and I nod at him, but all I want is one glance from the man who sent me the world on a string. What did I miss? What more am I supposed to be to earn the turn of his head?
I track Blair as he drops onto the bench. His head tips back, and his chest rises and falls. The overhead lights catch the sweat on his throat. Hayes slides down next to him and says something into his ear. Blair’s response is a single shake of his head.
My skates carry me back on autopilot. The assistant coach is already calling the next line, and I slide into my place four bodies down from Blair. A ref fishes the puck out of the net and flips itto the linesman. Our second line hops the boards, and the game churns on.
The space between Blair and me might as well be an ocean. Four bodies. Four teammates. A year of love that never happened, a thousand conversations we never had, every kiss that existed only in whatever dream my broken brain conjured.
On the ice, Mikko rings one off the post, and the crowd groans. Blair stands, ready for his next shift, and his shoulders set.
This is what kills me: I know him. I know he favors his left ankle after bag skates. I know he drinks his coffee black but sneaks sugar when no one’s looking. I know the exact sound of him coming apart, low and broken and beautiful. Except Idon’t. Every detail, every moment, nothing but synapses misfiring in my skull after getting my bell rung.
Blair vaults the boards and hits the ice, and Novak feeds him the puck in the corner. Blair spins off the check, protects the puck with his body.
Every game is like this, a reminder of all the ways we don’t fit together anymore. We’re strangers who wear the same logo, nothing more. We used to read each other in the dark, in between heartbeats, in how our lives curved toward each other.
No.Idreamed that in my broken head.
There are twenty more minutes in this game. And after this? If I make the team—unlikely—what comes next? A season with him across unbridgeable space, carrying memories of our love that never existed?
How do you mourn someone who’s standing right in front of you? How do you let go of a love that was only ever yours?
The game rolls on. Bodies crash against boards. The crowd noise rises and falls in waves. I take another shift. My legs burn as I push harder, faster. I throw myself into a check, feel thesatisfying crunch as I pin a Carolina forward against the boards. The crowd boos. Good.
We’re still losing as the clock winds down. Ten minutes. Five. Three. We push and push, but Carolina holds. When the final horn sounds, Blair is first off the ice, disappearing down the tunnel before I can even reach the bench.
He’s an island in the locker room. Not even Hayes tries to talk to him. He moves like a man underwater, unreachable.
I sit at my stall, peeling off layers of gear and sweat, stealing glances at the ghost who haunts me. His head bows as he unlatches his pads. His back muscles ripple. I know that back too well—I shouldn’t know it at all. My heart beats too loud for this room. He pulls on his shirt, eyes locked on nothing, then stands and walks out without a glance in my direction.
I draw Blair in the margins of my notebook. Every time I think I’ve got the slope of his cheek or the hinge of his wrist, he shifts, and the image fractures into smaller panes that keep running away from me. His jaw, the slope of his shoulder, how his thumb rubs against his knuckle when he thinks no one’s watching—I get him wrong every time.
But I watch, and at our team dinner, this is Blair:
He sits at a table meant for four, one fork moving through pasta he won’t eat. Someone laughs at the next table over, and Blair doesn’t flinch. His fingers curl into his palm, then release. The tendons in his forearm shift, his skin stretched tight over muscles that used to hold me in the dark. Except they didn’t.
His jaw works like he’s grinding words to dust. A tremor catches the corner of his mouth—barely there, gone before anyone else would notice. The overhead lights throw shadowsover his skin that I want to trace. His chest rises shallow, catches, continues. He stares straight through his own hands where they rest on the table.
Whatever is killing him is buried so deep no one else can see it. He’s trying to bury it, but while he’s digging, he’s collapsing.
If I could reach across the gulf—table, team, everything unspoken—I would, but all I can do is watch.
