Page 34 of The Fall

It’s dark enough on the road that all I see is a smear of black asphalt between my headlights.

Whatever’s riding shotgun inside me tonight is louder than the voice inside my head.

I’ve been teetering and tottering, waiting and waiting and waiting, and I can’t fucking go on like this much longer. So, that’s it?—

The waves will decide for me tonight. I’ve been meant for that water, I know I have.

Lights bob ahead, pinpricks in the black.

Night’s a problem; there are too many lights that confuse me, and I can’t tell what’s land or sky or wave or reflection.

I tell myself—shut your eyes, shut them, Torey, shut them tight—and maybe I’ll wake up somewhere else, where whatever sense of who you are and what you’ve become isn’t shredded and where maybe the world doesn’t feel so fucking broken.

The road bends ahead, but I don’t follow the curve.

Turn.

I don’t. The lights grow brighter, and headlights explode across my windshield, riding the rip of a horn blasting over this ribbon of road.

My hands finally yank on the wheel as my foot slams down on the brake.

Tires shriek. I’m thrown forward, pinned by my seat belt, and my breath is snatched from me as my truck rattles and quakes.

The screech of tires, shattering glass, metal shredding metal ? —

My fingers weld to the wheel, knuckles white as bone. I gag, choke on nothing, then yank my truck off the road, instinct seizing control. Gravel spits up as I jolt to a stop on the shoulder. I stare at my hands, certain they don’t belong to me.

There’s a horrible twitch deep in me. I taste salt and blood, wipe my lips, and expect to see red.

Out. I need out . I fumble for the door like I’m fighting a stranger. I’m gasping now, every breath pulling me down where the dark breaks open. It takes everything; I’m lurching, wrestling, but finally the door bursts open, and night swallows me.

I don’t remember hitting the ground, but I do, falling on my hands and knees with my forehead in the gravel.

Blair.

My hands scrabble in the dirt, and I scream, dust and grit clinging to my lips. I scream, and I scream, and I scream. Darkness flows in like the tide coming too fast, and water rises, all the way up my throat.

There is nowhere left to go but down.

I slap the ground, grab a fistful of gravel, and fling it, roaring. My vision blurs.

Once, I woke up and saw Blair asleep on his pillow, his face half-hidden, a smile on his lips for me. Our hands met halfway on the bed between us, our fingers threading together. A curtain behind him shifted, gauzy white, and he breathed my name?—

Torey.

The world flatlines.

“Sir—sir, wake up.”

Someone is shaking me.

“Sir. Wake up. Are you?—”

All at once, blinding light hits my eyelids. I jerk upright and try to scramble away, blinking against the glare—white light, can’t see, too much light.

“Sir.” The voice is clearer now. Sterner. I see heavy boots, a uniform. A badge glinting.

The light drops from my eyes, and a state trooper stands in front of me, backlit by swirling red-and-blues and a floodlight centered on me from the dash of his SUV. “You all right?”

“I—I…” I shake my head. “I—was…”

“Have you been drinking tonight, sir? Using anything?”

I almost want to laugh. Tonight, no. Every single other night, yes, but tonight, no. I may be slipping and sliding toward oblivion, but I’m going down alone. I won’t drink and drive. “No, I haven’t.”

“You collapse on the side of the road often?”

I sniff.

He puts me through the full field sobriety test: walk the line, touch your nose, recite the alphabet. Blow. I pass, but he’s not happy. I’m still shuddering, and I can’t string more than three words together.

“What the hell did you take tonight?” he asks again.

I shake my head. “Nothing,” I whisper. “Nothing, I?—”

I was going to the beach.

Would he have been on duty when they found my truck parked on the sand? Would he have been the one to call it in, reading off the license plate? Would he have been the one to hear my name spat back in static?

He has no idea what to do with me. “You’re a professional hockey player?”

He’s run my ID, and he knows I’m Torey Kendrick of the Vancouver Orcas. If I were someone else, maybe that would mean something, but because it’s me, it probably means less. I nod.

“Well, you’re not driving out of here. Who can you call to come pick you up?”

Who can I call? “No one,” I manage. “I don’t have—there’s no one?—”

“A teammate? A coach?” He looks at me like I’m an embarrassment to the city, to the proud place he serves and protects.

“I don’t?—”

“Look, you call someone, or you’re under arrest.”

It’s final; his decision. My choice.

I stare at my phone like it’s a loaded gun. Finally, I press “Call.” It rings once. Twice. Three times.

“ Yeah ?”

There’s no more room to hide. “Coach…” The silence stretches between us. I picture him, jaw tight, eyes narrowed, way beyond done with me.

“Kendrick? What’s going on?”

“I—” My throat locks. “I need—” My words drop dead before they can crawl out.

“Let me talk to him.” The trooper holds out his hand.

I pass my phone to the state trooper and hand him the ashes of my life.

The trooper and I wait in silence. He asks to search my truck, and I let him. He seems disappointed when he comes up empty—no booze, no pills, no drugs. What can I say? Other than going crazy, I’ve always been a boring kid.

Finally, Wilhelm’s truck pulls onto the shoulder. I climb into his passenger seat without a word.

He doesn’t say anything on the drive back to the city. He doesn’t even look at me. The silence between us is a wall. Wilhelm’s eyes are glued to the road. He’s predictable. Controlled. A man not shaken by other people’s wreckage.

I like my captain vibrant and alive. Shut the fuck up, Torey.

“You know there’ll be consequences for this.”

I nod. My tears keep rising no matter how hard I bite them back. “I know,” I whisper.

Silence again; silence all the way home.

Inside my apartment is barren silence.

I shut the door with the gentlest click I can manage and let my keys slide across the counter. The fridge hums. Streetlights stripe the floor through the blinds. I turn the tap and hold my hands under the cold water. Red swirls, thin as thread, then clears.

Even when I wanted to become a ripple, I couldn’t manage it. What a joke. I went to the edge and flinched, and the horizon stays a line I can’t cross.

I had a plan that wasn’t a plan. Point the truck toward the shore. Step into the surf and keep walking until the cold turns to nothing, until the line between air and water finally lets me through.

But the beach wouldn’t take me. The road spit me back out. The ocean won’t open, not for me.

I stare at the dark and let the feelings flow: the shame, the relief, the hunger, the anguish. All of it drifts and returns, drifts and returns, like a tide I can’t swim through and a shoreline that refuses to forget me.

Blair is a man I cannot reach.