Page 126 of The Fall

His resurrection happens in real time, solidifying during morning skate in Chicago. Blair’s moving sharper, cleaner, like someone turned up the contrast on every edge and angle.

I watch him instead of running my own drills. Coach barks something about focus, but his words slide past me. Blair executes a tight turn at the blue line, snow spraying from his edges, and my chest goes tight.

“Kendrick, you planning to join us today?” Coach’s voice cuts through.

I snap back into motion, but Blair’s still there, always there, in my peripheral vision, a fixed point in the chaos of sticks and skates. A flush of heat crawls up my neck at Coach’s reprimand, but I swallow it down and skate to my mark for the drill.

Blair meets my gaze. The entire drill, the entire world, condenses to this patch of ice between us. He’s the other half of my thought.

I shift and Blair nods, enough to sayI’ve got you.

The puck drops and I sweep it back in one motion. Blair’s already moving; we’re synced, two bodies operating on the same frequency. When he cuts across the neutral zone, I’m already tracking the lane that’ll open up three seconds from now. When I push toward the boards, he reads the play and covers high. We cycle through puck-possession. The puck dances across the ice between us, hardly touching either of our blades. We’ve built a whole language between our blades; I don’t have to translate him anymore. He speaks in action, and I answer in kind.

He blows through two defenders, then flings the puck across the crease. I tap it once, and it’s in the back of the net.

We glide along the boards for recovery and I bump Blair’s hip as we coast. “You’re closing faster out of the hash.”

“Yeah, I’m trying something,” he says.

“It’s working.”

He grins. “Good.” He watches me stretch, and his eyes flick down to my knee. “That one still giving you hell?”

An enthusiastic forecheck in Detroit twanged my knee, and it’s given me a lingering ache for a few weeks. “It likes to sulk around the third rep.”

“You’re getting old, Kicks.”

I shoot a loose puck at his skates. “You’re four years older than I am.”

“But who’s the one that needs the walker, eh?” His eyes are dancing.

“Fuck you,” I say. “I’ll race you to the blue line tomorrow. Loser buys coffee for a week.”

“Deal.” He taps his stick against my shin guard. “But I’m not taking it easy on you because you’re decrepit.”

It’s all a dream, a beautiful dream. I remember skating beside him last night, last week, a year ago, a year from now. I remember his lips on mine, both never and forever. Past and future collapse into this single point where Blair exists, where we exist together, where every version of us that ever was or could be converges into now. I breathe through it, through this ache that tastes like hope and fear.

To him, we traded jabs about my knee. To me, the universe smiled and showed me its center.

He is the center.

On Thursday, I’m back in the gym, flat on my back on the bench with the bar racked above me.

Blair grips the squat bar next to me, his shoulders huge and steady. He’s focused completely on his form, and his face gives nothing away except concentration. I drag my eyes back to the ceiling.

Hayes is at the leg press, but judging by his chatter and lack of sweat, this is not his first priority today. “That bar insult your game, Calle?” He’s been throwing shit-talk around the room for half an hour, and now Blair is his target.

Blair shoots Hayes a glare on his way down, then exhales slowly on the way up. The bar knuckles over his chest. “You actually talking to me from under that baby stack?”

“Bet you ask your dumbbells if they love you back.”

“You planning on working out today, Ems?” I ask, gripping my bar tighter.

“This is my workout,” Hayes says, gesturing around the room. “And I’m wounded. I bring life and light to this room, but it seems like everyone only wants me for my quads.”

I snort.

“It’s the ankles,” Blair says, and the corner of his mouth lifts. His deadpan delivery breaks through my concentration. I huff out a laugh mid-rep.