Page 33 of The Fall

Eighteen

It starts as a bargain: one drink to dull the edges.

The first pour is easy. Vodka’s cheap enough, easy enough, and the burn on the way down matches the way my insides twist when I think about him.

One more. I tip the bottle, emptying another inch into my glass.

Dull the world. Dull me.

The chaos quiets. I don’t have to think about the ice or the game or my team that hates me, and I don’t have to think about how I can’t find the me that knows how to handle a puck without it turning to vapor in my hands.

I don’t have to think about Blair. But there’s a sting in that last thought; I don’t want to not think about him.

One more.

In the morning, my head pounds like it’s caught between the glass and the ice. I groan, pull my sheets over my face. Blair’s jersey is crumpled into a ball against my chest.

Practice. Shit. Fucking hell.

I throw back some aspirin and try to choke down Gatorade, but by the time I roll into the rink with my hoodie yanked over my head and headphones stuffed in my ears, it’s clear I won’t be fooling anyone.

On the ice, nothing goes right. When I tighten my gloves, they pinch. When I edge my skates, they drag.

“Get your shit together, Kendrick!” Coach bellows.

I can’t.

It’s vodka again after practice. Last night’s bottle was for drowning whispers, but tonight, it’s for the silence after.

My glass empties faster with each pour.

I don’t even like vodka. No one likes vodka; it’s a means to an end. I like the nothing it gives me, though.

I see his face when I close my eyes, and when I open them—it’s the same. He’s everywhere. He’s nowhere.

It’s easier to close my eyes and let the bottle drain than to let the darkness chew on my thoughts. Waves crash, and his voice is there— Torey , Never forget , Remember .

And then, nothing.

My hangover is a fist hammering me behind my eyes.

I sit at the end of the bench and stare at my skates.

The rest of my team is out there, running drills and laughing about some bullshit I can’t catch.

Coach’s whistle slices straight through my skull and I bite down on a surge of nausea that rips through me.

I need to move, get up, do something, but I can’t.

“Kendrick— seriously ?” Coach shouts.

“…bench him for good, Wilhelm.” Someone says it, but it sounds so far away.

I strip in silence in the locker room. No one talks to me anymore. They laugh, they joke, but the only sound I hear is this constant ringing in my ears that never leaves.

My hoodie goes up on the way to the gym. Hood up, headphones in. Stay invisible. Stay small.

I’m there, on the bike, sweating, heart thudding, and I blink—and then I’m not. I’m not anywhere.

I blink again, and the weight rack is in front of me, and I have a dumbbell in each hand.

How long have I been here? I close my eyes, squeeze them shut until colors dance behind my lids.

I crack open the bottle and pour another shot. Rinse. Repeat.

I hold the glass to my forehead. It sweats, like me, and drips condensation as clear as the thoughts I wish I could bottle up and pour down the sink. It was real. No, it wasn’t.

The frayed margins of my mind fight back. I’m one foot in, one foot out of sanity, caught between shores that don’t exist.

Salt and sound, and blue like the soft waves beneath an open sky ? —

Stop. Blair’s gone . Gone, and never fucking here at all.

Who am I without him? I don’t know.

After the fourth shot, the world starts its slow fade around the edges. Good. Let it go, let it all go.

Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine.

Everything’s wrong.

They say practice makes perfect. I’m making practice, but it’s making a mess of me.

I’m not sure if I’ll stay upright on the ice today.

Vertigo punches, flipping my stomach inside out, and I have to swallow that old, sour vodka down again.

The puck dribbles off to nowhere and I’m supposed to chase it, but I can’t.

My throat burns. It feels like I’m swallowing glass. My head—God, my fucking head—throbs with the migraine that’s taken up permanent residence inside of me.

I can barely hold myself together.

When I open my eyes again, I’m in the showers, alone. The water is freezing and my teeth are chattering. I don’t remember getting here, but here I am, shivering. Where did the time go?

Blair’s jersey is in my bed. Every night, I start with the vodka in the kitchen, swearing I won’t crawl back into either that bottle or my bed and bury my tear-soaked face in Blair’s jersey.

But I do. I do every night, whispering to the stitching of his name how much I love him, how much I miss him, and how sorry—so fucking sorry—I am for leaving him.

If I’m here, is he somewhere? Without me?

Is he waiting for me, too?

I live in tiny gaps now, in blinks, seconds that melt to minutes.

How long have I been standing here in my kitchen? My finger tucks against the knife the way a kid learns to chop for the first time, but there’s nothing on my cutting board, only grooves scored where I’ve dragged the knife.

I’m fracturing. The walls hum, the fridge buzzes like it’s trying to tell me something. I blink?—

—and take another swig, let the liquor paint fire down my throat.

The only thing I can control is how many times I lift this bottle to my lips.

I wake up on the bathroom floor. Holy fuck, my head’s ready to explode. I stumble to my feet, hit the sink, suck down tap water. My reflection catches me in the mirror. Christ?—

I don’t recognize the guy staring back at me. Eyes bloodshot, cheeks sallow, dark rings beneath them like bruises. When’s the last time I took a shower? Shaved?

My first thought: What the hell am I doing?

The second: When did I stop caring?

The third: When did I start?

The fourth: Blair.

Always, always Blair.

I have melted down to nothing, and I put my fist through someone else’s reflection.

“Kendrick! What the fuck was that?”

The puck slips off my stick like water. I miss the pass. I miss the play. I miss the moment.

Blair is there, in the corner of my eye. I miss you. Blair’s voice, the timbre of it like honey and smoke. He said my name like it was a sunrise. I can still feel his lips on my skin. I can still feel him everywhere.

“Kendrick, if you can’t get your shit together...” Coach doesn’t bother to finish the threat.

We both know where this is heading.

I’m benched for the next game.

The game after, too.

Everything is slipping—my grip, my game, my fucking sanity.

I want to let go. I want to sink.

“It’s time, Kendrick.”

I’m mid-drill, another fucking disaster in a long line of them. Coach points at me, then to the glass-fronted office overlooking the practice rink. The GM’s office.

“You know this is it, right?” The Orcas’ general manager, a former player, a legend in the franchise, leans back, his large hands palms down on his desk. He doesn’t stretch it out. “You’re scratched for the rest of the season.”

I knew this was coming, but God, it’s here, it’s here, it’s here?—

“You need to start thinking about what’s next.”

“I’ve got, uh—” I swallow, pushing the words out like they might change anything. “One more year on my contract?—”

“There are ways,” he cuts in, “to end contracts early.”

I nod. I don’t remember the last time I could breathe.

“There’s no easy way to say this, Kendrick.” His voice is firm, but there’s something tucked behind his professional mask. Exasperation, maybe, or fatigue. “But we’ve reached our end.”

I deserve it. God, I fucking deserve it. Hockey—what I let define me, what I thought meant everything worth meaning in this world until I found the sun—is scraping me out and throwing what’s left back to the sea.

My general manager sighs. He looks tired, like a father who’s run out of any other way to reach a son who won’t listen.

“You’re a mess out there. Everyone can see it.

” There’s a bruise of red in the corners of his eyes.

“You need help.” He pulls out a small slip of paper for the Player Assistance Program and slides it across the desk.

“Call them. We can’t force you into this.

You have to choose to get help. But Torey, if you don’t? You won’t be here much longer.”

I stare at him.

“I can’t help you,” he says, a little softer. “No one on this team can. But if you don’t get yourself straightened out, we aren’t only talking about the end of your time on this team or the end of your career.”

He’s telling me straight. I’m going, going, gone, and not just from hockey.

“Whatever’s chasing you? You need to face it before it eats you alive.”

Chasing me? No, it’s worse than that; it’s already caught me.

“I hope to God you call,” he says.

I don’t call.

The sun rises, sets. Rises, sets.

I pour another shot and let the poison settle in my veins. The room tilts. My tongue tastes salt, and I think of?—

No. That’s only the vodka.

I am the aftermath of my own destruction.

It’s the falling, the drowning, that always comes back to me. Water pulling me under, waves filling my lungs. My vodka is both the wave and the water, and it pulls me under every night. The more I drink, the less I care whether I drown.

The water’s always there, always calling to me. Vancouver is close to the sea, and the salt air stings my lips like tears when the wind blows in from the west. I want to reach for that smudge of space between ocean and horizon where there is nothing.

Those black waters and dark waves are with me all the time; I see them when I close my eyes. They want everything, want to take and take from me, consume me, pull me down into their depths darker than these days.

I wonder if it would feel like coming home.

Blair.

I’m nothing without him. Tampa’s gone, and with it everything I became.

I want to meet him at the horizon.

Torey, turn around . Go back.