Page 4 of The Fall

No concussion hallucination has ever felt this precise.

Heavy hits don’t conjure moonlit pools and rooms with duffels full of my own gear. This is structured, and the supporting details don’t wobble when I blink.

I still have that phone. I dropped it by the toilet when I was heaving, and it’s easy to fish it out from between the wall and the porcelain stand. The screen is over-bright and harsh in the dim bathroom. The time says it’s 2:37 a.m., and the date is wrong—it has to be—because it’s?—

March 22, one year ahead.

I throw up again, lurching violently toward the toilet. The phone clatters to the tile. Blair grunts and shifts. I freeze.

The phone is inches from my face, screen up, still on. I can still read the date, the time, the year, but they’re wrong, it’s all wrong. This has to be a prank, or this phone fucked up. Yeah, it’s fucked—the settings, they’re wrong. It’s not even my phone?—

“‘Face Unlock’” flashes on the screen with a chime. The bland screensaver, a boring geometric background, shifts into the home screen, and?—

That’s me and Blair.

That picture, the background. It’s me and it’s Blair, and we have our arms around each other. We’re both smiling—no, beaming—and we obviously know each other very well.

I’m fucking trembling as I scroll through the phone, madly swiping through apps and screens. The date and time keep yanking my gaze, dragging me back to those cramped little words again and again and again.

I’m in the future. I’m in the fucking future.

Last night, I thought about ending everything on that beach. I thought I could walk into the ocean and vanish from this earth. I didn’t, I fucking didn’t, and then there was the game, and the hit, that hit, and now?—

I’m here, in the future , with Blair.

Blair.

Photos of us fill my camera roll. In one, we pose for a selfie, heads close together, someone’s pool in the background.

My eyes crinkle at the corners, and Blair looks at me like I’m everything that matters in his world.

I flick to the start of the camera roll, scroll through sand-covered afternoons, goofy pool selfies, Blair’s squint under a South Florida sun.

I look so fucking happy.

According to the timestamp, this photo is from a month ago.

The next shows me, Blair, and another man, a guy about Blair’s age, late twenties, obviously a hockey player.

We sit at a kitchen table, casually dressed, caught mid-laugh.

It’s like someone told the funniest joke and none of us can contain ourselves.

That photo leads to another, and another, all featuring this mystery third man, until I open Instagram and see “’Hayes Emerson tagged you in a photo. ’”

That’s him. Hayes Emerson. I was right, he’s a hockey player, a Mutineer. And the photo he tagged me in is the same one I found, him, Blair and me laughing so hard we can’t stay in our chairs. The best friends a guy can ever wish for , the caption reads. #BFF

My mind turns to static. Nothing adds up. Nothing makes sense.

Photos can lie. What does Google say?

Google says I’m a fucking Tampa Bay Mutineer.

Not a Vancouver Orca. A Mutineer. Traded, given a second chance, put in the hard work… the details buzz past me. Articles from a dozen sports sites all report the same thing: Torey Kendrick traded to the Mutineers.

It’s the last paragraph of the seventh article, only a sentence or two, but it leaps off the page and grabs me by the throat.

Kendrick’s trade is also interesting due to his history with the Tampa Bay Mutineers.

Last season, former Mutineer player Zolotarev delivered a punishing blow to Kendrick, one that gave Kendrick a major concussion and nearly ended his career.

Hit. Last season.

My brain skids to a halt.

The hit, the hit, that’s the hit, from last night. I remember it, the force, the impact, the burn of the ice, the arena’s roar. I remember the game, the locker room, dressing in my Vancouver jersey, still feeling sand on my skin. That was last night .

Or was it last year?

Google wants to shower me with photos, thousands more than before, when the most newsworthy item about me was how I hadn’t been benched yet.

Now there are action shots, pregame warm-ups, postgame interviews.

Goal celebrations on ice, me at the center of team huddles, arms around Tampa Bay teammates—I look like the hot-shit player our record claims I am.

We’re in a playoff push, thanks to the team’s leading goal scorers: Blair Callahan and Torey Kendrick.

It cuts me deep, seeing these photos. There I am, playing as if I love the game, feeling the way I used to, back when I believed dreams could come true, when I thought my hands and will were strong enough to build a future.

But I don’t remember any of it.

Texts. Those have to reveal something. The phone—my phone, I suppose—must be new, because the text threads only go back to February. Still, there are a lot. DoorDash confirmations, Uber receipts—from Tampa Bay mostly, but I recognize other hockey cities in the mix—confirmation codes…

And hundreds of texts between me and Blair. Snippets fly past as I scroll?—

Morning, babe.

How’s your day going?

Miss you.

I’ll be home soon. I’m bringing dinner.

Have you seen my iPad charger?

Coach is on a tear today, Jesus.

Love you.

The thread runs thick with inside jokes, casual I-love-yous, the mundane bliss of being known.

I look at the date and time on the phone one more time.

These texts. The photos. Those articles. This Mutineers blanket Blair has wrapped around me. The feel of his hands, gentle and warm across my shoulders. The way he’d looked at me when he walked into the bathroom. Worried. Checking up on me. Checking up on someone he loves .

A major concussion. Major, the article said. What are the symptoms of a major concussion? Nausea, vertigo, splitting headaches, sensitivity to light, and, in some cases, episodes of amnesia.

Amnesia.

I type: “Amnesia after major concussion.”

Articles surface: Episodes of memory loss, confusional states lasting hours to days after significant trauma… Transient amnesia has been reported following incidents of major concussions ? —

The phone hits the tile floor again, and I bury my face in both of my palms.

Not time travel. Not an abduction. Not aliens, or delirium, or dreams. It’s one too many concussions, a broken brain, and one missing year of my life.

What happened to me?

Who have I become?

I peek over the tips of my fingers. Blair is still asleep, boneless and propped up against the wall.

One knee has tipped sideways, his neck rolled right.

He’ll curse when he wakes up, but he’s folded himself down beside me without a peep, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be here with me until dawn while I clung to the toilet. Of course.

What the fuck happened to me during this past year?

I sink back against the wall, my knees drawn up to my chest. I stare at Blair, his breath steady and deep, the way his chest rises and falls. He’s so beautiful. Strong jawline, full lips.

I’ve had my suspicions, but I’ve excelled at pushing them down. They became one more thing I wasn’t thinking about, one more part of myself left unexplored. Hockey was all that mattered, and hockey never left room for the rest of me.

I wasn’t allowed to want guys. I’d carried that thought all the way from bus rides on the junior circuit, shoving it deeper every time curiosity perked its head. No time, no need, channel every want into hockey.

That’s what I told myself. I left whole regions of myself behind, thinking I’d fetch them if I ever felt brave.

Look where that got me. 2:37 a.m., a year into a future I can’t remember, huddled in front of a toilet, staring at a man who loves me. And who, if my own texts are to be believed, I love back.

So I am, apparently, gay, or at least, that’s what it looks like. All the evidence points in that direction. Waking up in bed with a man is a pretty big clue.

I’m in a relationship with Blair, and apparently I’m happy in it. That smile on my face in those photos isn’t fake.

How did this happen? Until twenty minutes ago my time, I knew Blair’s name and that he was a son of a bitch to play against, but nothing else about him.

Apparently some version of me knows much more.

I try to force the memory of how we started, our first joke or the first long stare in the locker room. My brain gives me sand and spray, a handful of sun and a flickering laugh, but nothing more.

What does it mean that I’m with Blair? That we’ve been together?

What’s more shocking is how not freaked I am.

Years of pushing away my thoughts should have led to an existential crisis.

There was definitely some part of me that didn’t want to deal with my wonderings because I didn’t have the mental strength to handle another complete psychological meltdown on top of the unraveling of my core hockey identity.

Realizing I’m not the player I thought I could become and acknowledging my sexuality? No thanks.

So I thought there would be some level of panic, or a grinding, churning anxiety eating me alive when I finally confronted this question.

But… no, not really. There’s nothing inside me but a calm, quiet peace.

I’ve been carrying around this question mark for so long that answering it feels like relief.

Or maybe I already had my freakout.

God, Blair’s beauty nearly scrapes the sanity off my bones. Each time I look at him, sleep-creased and imperfect in the half-light, snoring softly from exhaustion, legs spilling out in all directions, I’m hit with a wave that has no name. Happiness, maybe, cresting right at the lip of fear.

I’ve never kissed a man before. Or I have, but I don’t remember it. And while loving a man feels right, like a puzzle piece clicking into place, I still have those never-been-kissed butterflies.

What is it like?

I’m suddenly jealous of the me who already knows, who holds those memories and has answered all our questions. He has his shit figured out. Look at this life. Look at what he built.

I’m jealous of the Torey whose life this is, whose skin fits, whose hands know what to do in the dark. All I’ve ever had is the ache of wanting, but this man, somewhere, earned it all.

It hurts. It hurts in a way that can’t be explained by headache or lost time.

I want to remember the first kiss all over again.

I want to know if my heart leapt or if it was something quieter, more inevitable, the sun warming me up from the marrow out.

I want the memory of us , of Blair’s hands mapping my skin, of what meals we ate, when we first touched, who started what.

I can’t remember falling in love with him, or how he fell for me.

I do not have the keys to any of these doors.

I can’t remember an entire year. I can’t remember Hayes, my apparent best friend. I can’t remember my comeback, what led to my trade, or my recovery.

How much of my life have I forgotten? How did I get from there to here, to Tampa Bay, playing for the Mutineers? How did I turn it all around?

Across from me, Blair stirs, and my heart stops. I watch him shift, my eyes lingering over his chest’s rise and fall. I scramble for what to say to him when he slides back into sleep, a soft snore escaping him. Crisis averted; I have a few more hours to figure out what the fuck to do.

I drag my foot across the tiled floor until my toes are right up against Blair’s thigh. I wish I didn’t have to do anything. Didn’t have to move or breathe or think. Let me stay here, in this quiet, peaceful moment, with Blair asleep across from me.

I have four hours until dawn. Four hours to figure out what the fuck I’m going to do with the biggest mess of my life.

God, I’m not ready to be broken again.

That beach is too close, only hours away according to my bruised and battered heart.

That mirror showed me a Torey, but the Torey, the me on the inside, still tastes salt from the sea spray and feels the ocean bringing me to my knees.

I still hear the roar, the bellow, echoing in the depths of me.

And if I look closely, I might find grains of sand lodged beneath my fingernails. That’s how close the beach is.

I don’t know what to do, and I’m so scared of fucking this up. If this is a hallucination, it’s immersive. If it’s consequence, it’s cruel. I can’t decide which hurts deeper: the loss of the past year, or the envy for the me who earned all this.

I’m not ready to lose everything.

Ironic, huh? Everything I was before this moment—before black ice and blackout—unravels at my feet.

What’s the worst choice—admit I’ve lost it, that the Torey everyone knows and loves is gone, for who knows how long.

Maybe forever. That I’m lost, that this Torey is a mask, break every heart in this room, on this team.

Throw my life away, shred my career. Permanent exile to long-term injured reserve.

Brain injury. Knock off this championship-caliber team and send them into the doldrums.

My phone screen still shows those photos of Blair and me, smiling, laughing, holding each other close. Some other Torey won this man. Some other Torey pulled this team through a hard-fought season. I have his jaw, his hands, his eyes. Someone learned to love me.

I do not have his courage. Not yet.

But I want to.

I want to remember how I fell in love.

Let me try, at least. If I built this life once, maybe I can build it again.

I am not good enough for Blair, or this team, or this life, but this life is what I have. Some-fucking-how.

How the fuck did I pull that off? How did I get here ?

I already know who I am without him—alone on a midnight beach, skinned raw by regret—and I’m not going back there. I cannot go backward.

I can figure this out. I’ve been through worse, right?

I’ve faced worse than this. I built this life for myself, didn’t I?

That was—is?—me in the mirror. And even though I don’t remember, that guy apparently had his shit so together that one of the best players in the entire NHL now calls him “babe.” And sleeps on the bathroom floor when he’s puking.

Can I learn enough in four hours to fake my own life?

Don’t fuck it up, Torey. You already built this once.

Can I do it again?