Page 10 of The Fall

Five

Hayes’s house is on a quiet cul-de-sac in a posh part of Punta Gorda.

My flip-flops slap against the sidewalk as we walk up to the front door.

There’s a moment before the door swings open when I catch my reflection in the window.

Not my face, only the outline of me, distorted and stretched by the soft light.

Warm light spills onto the porch as Hayes opens the door, and a wave of scent and sound hits me. Barbecue and the sea, charcoal and brown sugar and hickory. My stomach growls.

“Hungry?” Blair asks. His smile is so close I feel the warmth of it against my cheek.

I grin back, sheepish. “Starving.”

“Kicks and his bottomless pit,” Hayes calls from the front door. “Never change, man.”

There’s something easy in Hayes’s casual way of moving through his life. He’s barefoot, and his hair is damp. He’s wearing a threadbare T-shirt and shorts, and he looks the very opposite of burdened. His smile is wide and welcoming as he steps back to let us in.

We follow Hayes into the kitchen. A woman is there in the middle of slicing tomatoes. She looks about Hayes’s age, with brunette hair pulled back in a braid, wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals. Erin. Her name is Erin. Hayes’s wife.

She beams when she sees us. “Make yourselves at home. Dinner’s almost ready to go.”

“Where’s the munchkin?” Blair asks.

“In her natural habitat.” Hayes tilts his head toward the backyard. “Terrorizing the pool toys. She’s been dying all afternoon. Wouldn’t stop asking when you’d get here.”

Blair chuckles. “Sounds like Lily.”

A child’s squeal rings out, high and clear. “ Torey! ”

A blur of pink and blonde races in through the patio doors and launches herself at me and Blair. The sight of her and her gap-toothed grin hits me as if she’d checked me full speed into the boards. Before I can think, I open my arms, and she’s coming at me.

Lily. Her name moves through me like a whispered secret.

She rushes me, giggles and sticky fingers. She holds a well-loved pink teddy bear dressed in a baby Mutineers jersey in one hand, and she wraps her arms around my knees, her face tipped up and beaming.

“Easy there, Tiger,” Hayes says. “Last time you tackled him, Torey ended up in the pool.”

It’s instinct that makes me swoop her up into my arms, and she latches on, her tiny arms tight around my neck.

“Looks like somebody missed you,” Blair says, nudging me with his elbow.

Hayes groans. “She’ll do anything if I say Torey says it’s super cool. Like eating green beans. Super cool, right, Torey?”

How did this happen? “Right. Green beans are the best.”

Lily wriggles. I get her on her feet, and then Lily does what any little girl would do: she pulls out a Nerf gun hidden on a kitchen chair and fires a dart at my chest. “Gotcha!”

She’s on the move fast, barreling away, holding her Nerf gun high over her head in both hands and belting out a scream. She’s a toddler war party of one.

Hayes lets out the long-suffering exhale of a man who’s been here many times before and reaches across the kitchen counter for another Nerf gun that he hands to me. This one is identical to the one Lily’s brandishing, bright blue and orange with a menacing-looking orange tip. “You know the drill.”

I do?

Three successive stings on my shoulder jolt me out of my daze. I whip around, spy Lily peeking around the end of the living room sofa. She squeals, fires another dart at me, and then scampers deeper into the house.

“Go get her.” Blair gives me a gentle push.

The house is a blur as I chase after Lily.

Everything is familiar and not. I duck around a potted palm.

Hayes’s house is stored somewhere deep in my muscle memory, even though I can’t remember rushing through these rooms with a Nerf gun in my hand.

I have, though. That much is clear. I can practically map the thunder of her tiny feet.

I know immediately where she is, where she’s going to run next.

It’s disconcerting, this sense of familiarity without any actual memory. I round a corner, knowing I’m about to face a hallway, spare bedrooms, Hayes’s home gym.

A flash of movement to my left. I pivot, fire off a dart that narrowly misses Lily streaking across the front hall.

Her laughter peals through the downstairs. I chase her through a sun-drenched dining room. The furniture blurs, déjà vu in three dimensions. Nerf darts fly.

There’s a shortcut here, a way I can cut her off. I crawl around the table, waiting, listening for the pitter-patter of her bare feet. Closer… closer…

There. “Gotcha!” I crow, rolling out from under the table and firing off a volley of foam darts. They pepper her back as she shrieks before she spins and runs the other way.

We trade shots and near misses in and out of the downstairs rooms. Family photos on the walls catch my eye—Hayes and his wife, Lily as a baby, the Mutineers on the ice and off, and there, unexpectedly, Blair and me.

Our arms are around each other and we’re grinning at the camera.

We look like we’re alone. I haven’t seen any photos of us looking couple-y around anyone else. I still wonder—are we or aren’t we out?

Lily’s battle shriek sounds from behind me. I whirl and end up face-to-face with my pint-sized adversary.

“Truce?” she offers, lowering her weapon.

“Truce,” I agree.

Of course, there’s no truce. As soon as I lower my Nerf, she blasts me.

Lily’s fast, but I’m faster. I catch her in the living room, swoop her up into my arms, and tickle her until she’s breathless.

After that, she seems to decide that her victory is complete and the Nerf war has ended. She drops her gun and takes my hand. “Come on, Mom said we could swim before dinner.”

I let myself be led. The glass sliders to the patio are already open, and she marches me out into the warm Florida evening.

The backyard is beautiful, with a pool, a dock over the canal, and a grill set up near the water.

Soft waves lap against the pilings. Music plays, and laughter skirts on the fading twilight.

Everything glitters, lit up with strings of twinkling lights and the last of the setting sun.

The pool reflects shades of orange and peach and tangled lilac.

Hayes and Erin are at the grill, and Blair is lounging close by in a deck chair, deep in conversation with Hayes. Blair’s gaze meets mine, and he breaks into a huge smile. Hayes looks over his shoulder, spots me, and smothers a grin.

“All right, munchkin,” Hayes calls to Lily. “One quick dip before we eat. And no splashing the adults this time!”

Lily stops to slide her swim floaties onto her arms, then jumps into the shallow end of the pool. I slip off my flip-flops and stand at the pool’s edge, kicking my feet in the water. Lily breaks the surface and searches immediately for her audience. Found, she splashes over to me.

“Torey, watch this!” She kicks her tiny feet furiously, dog-paddling across the shallow end, splashing the backs of Hayes’s legs. Blair, wisely, scoots clear of the blast radius.

“Lily!” Hayes brandishes his grill spatula at her.

She laughs and laughs.

“Time to eat!” Erin sets out a platter of buns and burger toppings on the patio table, and Hayes is on the way with a tray of burgers.

Blair helps Erin lay out the plates while Lily clambers out of the pool, drenched. There’s a stack of towels folded in a basket near me, and I snag one and unfurl it for her. She walks right into my arms, lets me wrap her tight in the cotton-candy-colored towel.

Dinner is a boisterous affair, full of laughs and chatter and the clink of glasses. There’s no alcohol. It’s iced tea, water, soda, and Gatorade. Blair’s hand finds mine under the table. I lean into him, soaking up his warmth, his steadiness.

After dinner, it’s back to the pool. Lily endures the mandatory thirty-minute wait to digest, bouncing on her toes for the final five minutes like she’s taken five for fighting in the bin.

Finally, when it’s time, Hayes sweeps her into his arms and pretends to gobble at her stomach. “I think it’s time for the dunking!”

She screams, her legs pumping, her arms reaching over Hayes’s shoulder toward me.

Hayes gives her a second to pinch her nose closed and then leaps with her into the water. They come up in a wall of waves and sound, splashing and laughing and calling out to Erin and Blair and me to join them.

The pool is a shock against my sun-warmed skin.

I slip under the surface, let the water close over my head.

The muffled sounds of splashing seem distant, dreamlike.

Here I’m alone, cocooned, separated from the world.

For a moment, I’m suspended in time—it’s too much, suddenly, and I rise to the surface.

Blair’s there, waiting for me. He wraps his arms around my waist as I stand. He gives me a whistle, cocks his eyebrows up and down. “Hey, handsome. What’s a hunk like you doing in a place like this?”

I snort. He buries a laugh in my throat as I wrap my arms around his waist.

We stand there, holding on to each other, Lily’s laughter and the splash of water fading away. It’s like falling in love again, all at once. I don’t know how I got here and I don’t know what I’ve forgotten, but I know I want this.

“Penny for your thoughts,” he says. His words tickle my skin behind my ear. I lean into him, feel his heart beating against my back.

“I was thinking about how lucky I am,” I whisper. I turn and face him, loop my arms around his neck. We are forehead-to-forehead, sharing the same breath.

The setting sun has softened him, cast shadows across the strong line of his jaw and the curve of his lips.

He’s more than handsome or attractive; he’s breathtakingly beautiful.

He’s exactly the type of man I was too scared to let myself want for more than a single second.

I was so certain I could never, ever have this kind of life or brush against a future this dazzling.