Page 129 of The Fall

“You could have anyone centering you.”

In the half-dark, Blair’s face is all shadows and certainty. “I don’t want anyone. I want you.”

I sketch him later, huddled in his jersey in my bed as I replay the game. My pencil moves across the page, and I pause it on a frame where Blair’s reaching for the puck, extending his stick. My turnover. His recovery.

“Stupid,” I mutter, watching myself chase the play instead of reading it. The mistake is so obvious now.

We cleaned it up; that’s the point of a line.

I sketch his hands next, strong hands that know exactly what they’re doing. My drawing doesn’t do him justice, but it helps me think.

My page fills with fragments of him. His profile when he turned to me on the plane. The set of his shoulders during sled pushes. The exact angle of his lips when he saidI want you.

On my line, he meant. On his line.

I close the sketchbook and dig my palms into my eyes.You belong here.

He meant on the ice. It’s only about the ice. But the pressure behind my eyes does nothing to block out the memory of his knee against mine or the low vibrations of his voice.

I pull the collar of his jersey up to my nose and breathe in. It’s not really his; he’s never worn it. But I still pretend. The fabric is worn from too many nights like this one; his name sits heavy between my shoulder blades.

I shouldn’t be curled up in his jersey like some lovesick teenager, replaying every word he said on the plane until they blur together into more than what they were. But here I am anyway, pathetic and wanting and unable to stop myself.

The sketchbook lies open beside me, Blair’s hands frozen mid-motion on the page. I wanted to capture them wrapped around the sled handles and ghosting under my arms during my bench press. Two fingertips, barely there, but enough to rewire my nervous system.

I close my eyes and sink deeper into the jersey.

The numbers stack up in my head like tallies on a scoreboard, but they’re mine, scratched into the walls of my chest where no one else can read them. Thirteen goals together, him to me, me to him, the puck finding its mark. Twenty-five assists, our chemistry bleeding out to lift the whole team.

Five times his shoulder found mine—in the tunnel, on the bench, in the gym, and tonight when he slid into the seat beside me.

Four smiles that weren’t for the room or the cameras or the game. Four times his face broke open for me.

Fifty-one days sober.

Fifty-one days of choosing this over that, of proving to myself that I can be the person Blair sees when he looks at me.

My fingers find the captain’sCstitched on the chest of his fake jersey, and I trace the letter in the dark, following each curve and angle.

Tomorrow we play again. Tomorrow I’ll lace up and step onto the ice and try not to let him down. Tomorrow I’ll swallow every word that wants to spill out when he looks at me across the face-off circle.

But tonight, wrapped in his jersey, I imagine, only for these hours.

Twenty-Nine

Hayes says it offhand,between forkfuls of cafeteria pasta and a half-choked laugh about Hollow’s new warm-up playlist: “You’re coming to dinner next week. It’s Blair’s birthday.”

My fork freezes halfway toward my mouth; my noodles slouch back into my bowl. “What?”

“Blair’s birthday,” he says. “We always do something low-key. Erin cooks, Lily makes cards with dinosaurs and glitter. You’re coming.”

“Does… he want me there?”

Hayes doesn’t look up from hunting down the chicken at the bottom of his Alfredo bowl. He snorts. “Jesus, Kicks. If I waited for that guy to want things out loud, I’d be dead several times over.”

“But it’s his birthday.”

“Exactly.” Hayes leans back and stretches out his long legs like he’s got the world sorted out. “Blair doesn’t throw flowers; he writes you into his battle plan. You’re on his line, right? From him, that’s saying a lot.”