Page 46 of The Fall

Twenty-Five

The gym is where the grinders earn their keep.

Sweat hangs thick in the air. Hollow’s ripping through jump ropes in the corner, and Reid looks like he’s one deadlift away from an aneurysm.

Hawks is mid-set in a ridiculous number of box jumps.

My legs would be concrete, yet he’s still springing up, getting higher each time.

Hayes is on my right, pushing out three more reps.

I’m flat on the bench, dumbbells in hand. The cold metal warms against my palms as I steady my breathing. Fifties today. Not my max, but enough that I need to focus. I plant my feet wider; the rubber mat grips beneath my sneakers. I push up, feel the strain and the tremor in my forearms. One.

Down. Slow. Control it. The dumbbells kiss the outer edges of my chest before I drive them back up.

Two. My mind drifts to last night’s game.

I should’ve gone top shelf instead of trying to thread the puck through the five-hole.

“Focus,” I say under my breath. I’ve lost count.

Five? Six? The burn is building, spreading across my pecs and into my shoulders.

Blair is here. He’s sweaty, silent, and locked in on the kettlebells in front of him like they are the weight of the world. His intensity is contagious; am I pushing hard enough? Am I doing enough? No, not yet. Not yet.

“Elbows in, Kicks.”

Hayes isn’t even looking but he knows. I catch his eye and roll my wrists to stabilize. When I finish my set and sit up, I roll my shoulders until a joint pops.

Blair grunts and completes another flawless rep. His breathing is perfect—four counts in, four counts out.

When I stand, Hawks grabs a medicine ball, and he tosses it back and forth like someone added a motor to his arms. “Race you through curls, Kicks?”

I laugh. “Sure, but don’t scream for mercy three sets in.”

“Bite me.”

We’re piled into the corner booth of a hole-in-the-wall burger joint half a mile from the rink. Hayes orders a double melt, double bacon, extra everything, “and a beer.” The others follow along, ordering burgers and melts and chicken parmesan… and everyone orders a beer, too.

When it’s my turn to order, I hesitate.

“Sprite,” I say, and you know what? It’s easier than I expected.

No one blinks. The waitress nods and scribbles it down, already turning to take Blair’s order.

I’ve been building this moment up in my head for weeks, expecting everyone to stop and stare when I didn’t order a beer, but the world keeps spinning.

It’s been nineteen days since the bar in Columbus. Not that I’m counting.

I’m definitely counting.

Hawks is telling some story about a girl he met at a bar last weekend, gesturing with a mozzarella stick. I half-listen, nodding at the right moments, but my mind keeps circling back to my Sprite order.

“Hey bud,” Hayes says, nudging my shoulder. “You with us?”

“Yeah, sorry.” I shake my head, forcing myself back to the conversation. “Thinking about practice.”

The waitress returns with our drinks, sliding my Sprite in front of me. The bubbles rise to the surface, popping one by one. Hayes toasts his beer against my soda, and I hold that Sprite like it’s a trophy.

The season’s barely cracked open and every game so far has been a battle. My thirty-day clock is tick-tocking.

The ice calls to me after everyone else has cleared out.

My skates cut fresh grooves through the Zamboni’s perfect sheet, and I push harder, crossovers tight around the face-off circle.

This is where I sort through the noise in my head: the missed opportunities, the turnovers, the split-second hesitations that cost us goals.

I bank a turn and settle into the blaze, sink deeper into my flow, into that perfect place where pain becomes progress.

One more lap. Then another. That’s the only secret: keep moving.

In-flight movies mean it’s blackout mode for most of the guys, especially after our four-game stretch across three time zones.

I don’t sleep as easily. My legs are too sore, too stiff, and even though we have room to spread out, and these aren’t coach seats, no plane is built for quads like ours.

I wish the same dead air and white noise could lull me, but my thoughts hum so fucking loudly.

We’ve been dropping games for every point we pick up.

One step forward, two steps back. The guys are trying—we’re all trying—but the chemistry isn’t settled yet.

Maybe tomorrow’s game will turn things around.

Maybe I’ll finally find my groove. But tonight, I am adrift, counting losses instead of days sober.

I curl into my hoodie and pretend I’m zoning out on my phone, but the truth is I’m watching Blair. He’s slumped in his own row, his head against the window, his earbuds in. His profile is sharp against the darkened glass, angles and shadows in the dim cabin. He’s not sleeping, either.

Looking at him is an escape. I can’t stare at him any other time than here, when no one can catch me, without advertising how much of a complete weirdo I am. I want to watch him all the time. I should look away; I know I should.

Twenty-six days sober, and Blair still leaves me feeling drunk.

Hollow’s coming down the aisle, back from a trip to the restroom. He punches me in the shoulder. “You’re gonna stay awake all night, Kicks? Man, shut your fucking eyes and let the sandman hit you.”

I nod, but I don’t shut my eyes. Not yet.

Blair shifts in his seat, his brow furrowing.

Maybe he feels my gaze. I look away, rub my eyes.

Hollow’s right; I should sleep. We have a game tomorrow, and I need to be sharp.

But sleep means dreaming, and my dreams are always filled with ocean-blue eyes and hands that know exactly where to touch.

Will this ever fade?

Do I want it to?

Another hotel room, another night before an away game.

The walls are beige, the carpet is beige, the curtains are beige with a hint of gold that’s supposed to make this place luxurious.

It doesn’t. I’m sprawled across a king-sized bed that’s too soft.

The TV drones, highlights from today’s games flickering light across the ceiling.

My gear bag sits unpacked in the corner, waiting for morning.

Twenty-eight days. The number repeats in my head like a mantra. Twenty-eight days of feeling everything—the aches, the losses, the craving—with nothing to dull me.

The walls in these places are always too thin. A shower runs in a nearby room, a conversation is muffled in the hallway, the ice machine grinds down the corridor. Blair is somewhere near, going through his own pre-game ritual and completely unaware of how much space he takes up in my thoughts.

I dig out my tablet, tapping through apps until I find what I’m looking for: game highlights.

I tell myself it’s for study, for improvement, but that’s only half-true.

The video loads, and there he is. Blair.

I prop the tablet against a pillow and pull my sketchbook from my bag.

It’s ragged and worn and filled with half-finished drawings I never show anyone.

My pencil hovers over the blank page, the screen showing Blair’s breakaway goal against Toronto.

He has a breathless edge on the ice, and his skates have the power to start or stop something beautiful.

I rewind the clip, obsessed with the details.

The shift of his hips. The block he makes for Hawks seems accidental, that’s how fast he reads the ice.

My pencil scratches as I trace the contours of his face.

I add shading to his cheekbones, try to capture the intensity in his eyes.

He’s bigger than any sketch I could ever put on paper.

I pause the video on a frame where he’s mid-celebration, arms raised high. It’s a moment of emotion I never see off the ice, and I want to capture it, to hold onto it. If I fill another page with him tonight, maybe sleep will come easier.

Twenty-eight days sober, and I’m intoxicated by a freeze-frame.

I tuck my knees up and draw until my hand cramps, until Blair’s face stares back at me from a hundred angles.

I can’t get it quite right. There’s always something missing, some spark of life my sketches can’t capture.

My pencil can mimic his jaw or the curve of his brow, but it can’t recreate the sheer force of his will.

I smudge the shadow under his eye with the pad of my thumb, trying to deepen it, to give it the history I know is there, but it just looks like a smudge.

I’m trying to find him on this page, but I can’t.

The tablet screen dims, going to sleep before I do. I set the sketchbook aside and flex my hand, working out the ache.

Twenty-eight days sober, and Blair Callahan is still the only drug I can’t quit.

Hayes taps the ketchup bottle on the rim of his plate. “I think they put glue in these things. Who’s guarding the ketchup like it’s gold?”

“We could turn ketchup pouring into a team-building challenge. Who can drag the longest strip of ketchup down the ice?”

He snorts. “You need help.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“I gotta show you this.” Hayes holds up his phone. “Lily nailed her balance beam routine yesterday. She did a one-handed cartwheel. My kid’s got guts.”

I haven’t met Lily; she exists for me only in Hayes’s stories and the photos and videos he douses everyone with.

He pulls up a video, but I only halfway watch.

A knot forms in the pit of me, and it’s there whenever he talks about his daughter.

He’s the definition of a proud father, though, and from his stories, she’s a great kid.

Erin’s name lights up his screen in the middle of the video. He cuts the playback right before Lily’s epic cartwheel and answers immediately. “Babe? What’s up?” Then, “She what ?” His voice shifts into worried father mode. “What happened?”