Page 219 of The Fall

We live and breathe the standings. The playoff race has tightened to a razor’s edge, a gauntlet of must-win games.

“Three points out,” Hayes says during morning skate, skating backward beside me as we circle the ice. “Three fucking points away.”

Three points. Two wins. One bad night for Montreal. I track the red line in my mind, picturing how another win pulls us forward on the board. Lose, and someone else will feast on our dreams. Finish, finish, finish.

The gap narrows. The numbers on the standings board shift again.

Practices run hotter. We’re holding the last playoff slot, but half the conference breathes down our necks.

After one brutal skate, I stay behind, alone in the rink, staring at the empty seats. The Zamboni has already laid down a fresh sheet and the cold in the air carries the gritty smell of the skate sharpener from the equipment room.

The ghost of a memory brushes against me. Having this, holding it, and then… What? The thought frays; I can’t grasp it.

Morning skate, team meeting, recovery, go again. I wake in Blair’s bed tangled in his arms, and the soft hush of his breathing has me believing in a future close enough to gather in my hands.

The schedule keeps squeezing tighter. I sleep restlessly. The city’s pressure mounts, hungry for victory.

Our chance is right here.

In bed, Blair draws plays on my ribs with feather-soft fingertips. “We’re going to make it,” he whispers.

I close my eyes and see playoff ice and hear the roar of a crowd I haven’t stood before yet.

“We will,” I echo back to him.

The stupid thing stops me mid-step. It catches my eye the second I turn down the novelty aisle, tucked between a plastic Zamboni clock and an over-bright Stanley Cup mug. It’s got a stacked puck base, a retro-style Mutineers logo printed into the glass, and little plastic hockey players floating through a column of blue goo. The plastic packaging says “Official NHL Licensed Product” like that makes this lava lamp dignified. It doesn’t. It’s ugly, a discount-bin gift.

—the scrape of my skates, Blair’s laugh spooling out in a half-lit room, slow-curling blue painting his cheek. Blair laying in too-crumpled sheets, my hand stretched out. His arms wrapped around me from behind, his lips on my cheek, cheers around us?—

I’m freezing and sweating at the same time. Nothing I can think untangles how real these flashes feel, the shiver of not-memory pooling in my veins.

I buy the lava lamp without thinking. The teenager at the register says “cool,” and I mumble “thanks” like I didn’t just purchase a hallucination.

The lamp rides shotgun all the way to Blair’s. I feel completely ridiculous. Who gives the man he loves a lava lamp with action figures drifting through melted wax?

Me.

Dinner’s already cooking when I walk in. Blair’s hair is wet, and he’s dressed comfy in athletic shorts and that team t-shirt with the little fray in the collar. He’s barefoot and stirring a pan on the stove, and when I walk in, he looks up and smiles.

I slide the box onto the island. “I got this for you.”

He arches one dark brow and takes the box, eyebrows climbing with every inch of ugly plastic he uncovers. “No way,” he breathes. “This is…”

“Terrible?”

“Unbelievable,” he says, as if he’s holding the Stanley Cup and it’s full of cinnamon rolls. “Is this Mutineers blue?”

“It’s limited edition.”

His eyes are flickering with that delighted mischief he saves for me, the same that I remember on New Year’s and when he teases me when we’re alone. “It’s perfect.”

He brings the lava lamp to his bedroom, sets it on his dresser, and kills the overheads. The light is weak at first, but it warms up, slowly and surely, until the little hockey players float in lazy spirals between blobs of blue goo. The whole thing looks stupid and dreamlike and right.

The room is underwater: blue swells sliding slow-motion up the wall, shadows drifting and colliding, mirrored in the window and doubled in the dark. Blair flops beside me, his face full of lamplight.

Dream memory bleeds in: Blair asleep beside me, that exact light pooling across his bare shoulder. I invented that; I dreamed it up. It was part of my dream, but here I am, and here that shivering glow is.

Blue swells and shrinks. He takes my hand and twines our fingers together, bringing them to his chest. The lamp gurgles quietly as my breath syncs with his. I almost forget the borders between dreams and reality; I could almost believe I never lost anything.