Page 38 of The Fall

Twenty-One

I push the eggs around my plate, creating little yellow mountains that collapse under my fork.

Hayes hasn’t drawn me into the little bubble of friendliness he’s building with the rest of the prospects, and I know it’s because of my fumble with him in the room that first day.

The first time I met him for real, I sounded like a stage-five creeper.

Blair’s sometimes at breakfast and sometimes not, and when he’s here, it’s because Hayes dragged him. He and Hayes are trading the role of shadow and shadow maker.

I stab at my eggs again, harder than necessary. A few heads turn, but look away when they catch my eye. I’m the walking embodiment of failure right now, and I’m contagious. Nobody wants what I have. I force the eggs down, fuel for a body that’s betraying me one shift at a time.

Second period, first game of preseason. I set up for the pass from Simmer: receive, cradle, then push.

Except when I try to tuck the puck, my stick wobbles, and the puck skips over my blade in a cosmic fuck-you. I turn, too late, and the other team threads the puck between Axel’s pads.

Coach’s jaw works like he’s chewing glass.

The scoreboard glares down at me: 0-3. We’re getting buried, and every shift I take makes it worse.

Third period. Another pass comes my way, and this time I catch it clean. My stick flicks it straight to Hollow, and I lean into the structure of this play he and I have run a thousand times.

No, we haven’t, that wasn’t me ? —

We’re rushing a clear on a breakout, crashing up the ice in a three-on-two. With Hayes calling angles and Hollow scraping the boards, Blair should fill in the center.

But he’s late. He blows his assignment, and the play collapses like wet cardboard. The puck bounces harmlessly to their defenseman, who clears it with zero effort. Blair doesn’t look at me, and he doesn’t look at Hayes.

Seeing Blair fail is like watching a mountain crumble.

We glide to the bench, a defeated trio. Blair sits two spots down, yanking his own helmet off with a sharp, angry motion. He stares out at the ice, his jaw a hard line, the muscles in his neck corded tight. His stillness is a storm held in check.

Hayes sits between us and claps a hand on Blair’s shoulder, but he doesn’t even acknowledge the touch. He’s a thousand miles away, lost in a failure that, for once, isn’t mine.

I want to say something, but what could I offer him?

Nothing.

Planes. Roads. Rinks. Hotel lobbies, half-empty rooms, stick bags and duffels hauled and dropped, hauled and dropped.

They melt together in shades of concrete and neon, a conveyor belt of places that are only different versions of the same failure.

The hum of the bus wheels gives way to the whine of jet engines, but the quiet remains the same.

It is a cold that leeches from the ice into our gear.

Now, it saturates the recycled air of the plane’s cabin, a low-grade fever of a loss that won’t break.

Defeat follows us, a passenger in its own right.

It weighs on the quiet conversations, the heads tilted against windows.

My eyes drift and land, as they always do, on him.

Blair won’t sit next to anyone, not even Hayes, not even Hollow, who tried for five straight minutes before we boarded to get him talking about fantasy football and surfing.

Instead, he’s taken a two-seater row for himself near the back, creating an exclusion zone.

The message is clear enough that no one even pretends to misunderstand it. We all give the space a wide berth.

His shoulders curve forward, head tilted against the window.

The angle makes him look smaller, like all that muscle and bone has forgotten how to hold itself together.

Blair’s eyes stay closed but I know he’s not sleeping.

Nobody sleeps with their hands clenched that tight.

Every breath of his is saying everything is broken .

Hayes shifts in his seat three rows up, turning like he wants to check on Blair again, but he stops himself. His shoulders drop, and he faces forward again.

Blair’s reflection wavers in the dark window beside him.

I should be reviewing game tape on my tablet, but my screen stays dark and in the seat pocket while I watch the tension in Blair’s shoulders instead.

The plane banks, and Blair’s head rolls with the motion but doesn’t lift. A strand of dark hair falls across his forehead.

I can’t look away. It’s the morbid fascination of a storm rolling in over the water, a dark line on the horizon drawing closer and closer.

I’m at the bottom of the lineup, playing the worst hockey of my career, and Blair is swinging fists at shadows no one else can see.

A team slips through a crack when the captain draws back, and he’s so far gone that none of us can follow.

Without him as our center, we’re satellites spinning into colder, darker space.

My own mistakes on the ice feel selfish and small next to his void. He doesn’t deserve this.

Why isn’t he talking, why won’t he look at me, why is everything fraying?

Three rows, an aisle, and a universe separate us.

I want to go to him and reach across the chasm of forgotten time and memory and get him to see me, to remember me, to remember me loving him so he isn’t so devastatingly alone.

But I’m nobody to him. What could I do? Sit down next to him and tell him about memories that only exist in my head?

No. I stay put, cemented in my failure as he stays cemented in his darkness.

I close my eyes, and he’s there again—not this Blair, broken and distant, but the one who exists in my mind.

Why don’t you remember me like I remember you?

I don’t ask, though. How could I? He’s not the crazy one here.

And I don’t actually know him, do I?

I only imagined him.

Carolina’s arena buzzes. It’s a rink like any other: boards, blades, sweat in the air. My blade scrapes ice, and the puck, for once, glides cleanly. I roll my tongue against my mouthguard’s sour rubber and taste last period’s blood on my molar. Sweat drips under my helmet.

The ice opens in a thin seam, and a shadow knifes across it: Blair. He cuts through the neutral zone, a dark star carving his own path.

His pass snaps to my tape. I shoot it back, a kiss of touch to keep him moving, and cut hard across the blue.

He slings the puck between the defense’s sticks to the gap he’s drawn open for me.

It’s no-look, dirty, and perfect, and I lean into it, edge to edge, hips and heat.

I sling the one-timer high. I have been waiting, God, I have been starving for this, for him turning a dead stretch of ice into a river we could run.

The puck soars and lands top shelf, tucked under the bar, the twine whipping and settling.

I whip around, searching for him. I want his reaction. I want that look in his eyes to burn me up— there you are —the one that used to light up my life. I want his grin that says we did this together, that he wanted me there, that this is a thread singing between us on this ice.

I want him to see me seeing him.

But Blair curls away, mouthguard tucked in his cheek. He skates a slow loop through the corner and keeps going to the bench. He is already pivoting for the line change.

Hawks collides with me. “That’s it, Kicks!” He’s laughing, and I nod at him, but all I want is one glance from the man who sent me the world on a string. What did I miss? What more am I supposed to be to earn the turn of his head?

I track Blair as he drops onto the bench. His head tips back, and his chest rises and falls. The overhead lights catch the sweat on his throat. Hayes slides down next to him and says something into his ear. Blair’s response is a single shake of his head.

My skates carry me back on autopilot. The assistant coach is already calling the next line, and I slide into my place four bodies down from Blair. A ref fishes the puck out of the net and flips it to the linesman. Our second line hops the boards, and the game churns on.

The space between Blair and me might as well be an ocean. Four bodies. Four teammates. A year of love that never happened, a thousand conversations we never had, every kiss that existed only in whatever dream my broken brain conjured.

On the ice, Mikko rings one off the post, and the crowd groans. Blair stands, ready for his next shift, and his shoulders set.

This is what kills me: I know him. I know he favors his left ankle after bag skates.

I know he drinks his coffee black but sneaks sugar when no one’s looking.

I know the exact sound of him coming apart, low and broken and beautiful.

Except I don’t . Every detail, every moment, nothing but synapses misfiring in my skull after getting my bell rung.

Blair vaults the boards and hits the ice, and Novak feeds him the puck in the corner. Blair spins off the check, protects the puck with his body.

Every game is like this, a reminder of all the ways we don’t fit together anymore. We’re strangers who wear the same logo, nothing more. We used to read each other in the dark, in between heartbeats, in how our lives curved toward each other.

No. I dreamed that in my broken head.

There are twenty more minutes in this game. And after this? If I make the team—unlikely—what comes next? A season with him across unbridgeable space, carrying memories of our love that never existed?

How do you mourn someone who’s standing right in front of you? How do you let go of a love that was only ever yours?

The game rolls on. Bodies crash against boards. The crowd noise rises and falls in waves. I take another shift. My legs burn as I push harder, faster. I throw myself into a check, feel the satisfying crunch as I pin a Carolina forward against the boards. The crowd boos. Good.