Page 56 of The Fall

Twenty-Nine

Hayes says it offhand, between forkfuls of cafeteria pasta and a half-choked laugh about Hollow’s new warm-up playlist: “You’re coming to dinner next week. It’s Blair’s birthday.”

My fork freezes halfway toward my mouth; my noodles slouch back into my bowl. “What?”

“Blair’s birthday,” he says. “We always do something low-key. Erin cooks, Lily makes cards with dinosaurs and glitter. You’re coming.”

“Does… he want me there?”

Hayes doesn’t look up from hunting down the chicken at the bottom of his Alfredo bowl. He snorts. “Jesus, Kicks. If I waited for that guy to want things out loud, I’d be dead several times over.”

“But it’s his birthday.”

“Exactly.” Hayes leans back and stretches out his long legs like he’s got the world sorted out. “Blair doesn’t throw flowers; he writes you into his battle plan. You’re on his line, right? From him, that’s saying a lot.”

Hayes clatters his dishes back onto his tray, then pats my shoulder on his way out. “Wear a shirt that doesn’t make you look haunted.”

What do you give the man who steadied you through storms and then hands you back the sky? I need something that says “thank you” without screaming “I’m in love with you.”

Blair doesn’t acquire objects; he assumes responsibilities.

His gift to me—that he doesn’t even know he gave—was a space on his line, a seat next to him on the plane, wanting my opinion.

He gave me his trust. I want to give him…

everything. How do you wrap love in paper and a bow?

What do you give the man whose heartbeat I can still feel against my cheek, even though he’s never held me that way?

His life doesn’t need things. He wouldn’t wear a bracelet or hang up a painting. I could offer him nothing and he’d say thank you.

And suddenly I know.

Lily bursts through the front door before it’s all the way open. She’s in a hot-pink dress covered in dinosaur stickers and a crown slips sideways on her head like it’s been through battle. She charges me, and I catch her as I cross the threshold.

“You came!” she yells into my shoulder.

“Of course I came. I had to see if the dinosaur princess was real.”

She leans back, beaming. “Did you bring your Nerf?”

I’m empty-handed. “I didn’t know there’d be a battle.”

“There’s always a battle.”

I lay my hand over my heart. “I shall never make this mistake again.”

She leads me inside, where everything smells like orange blossom and cake. Plastic dinosaurs stand guard along the baseboards in the living room and Erin’s laugh drifts from the kitchen.

And there’s Blair, smiling at Erin, tucked behind a kitchen-table chair like it’s a shield between him and the world.

He’s in swim trunks and flip-flops, a bottle of water clutched in his hands.

He wears a casual linen button-up, the sleeves rolled to his elbows.

His eyes meet mine, and he nods a hello.

He’s a stranger I know better than anyone.

Erin wraps me up in a warm hug. “Glad you made it.” Behind her, the kitchen is dressed in paper streamers and handmade Happy Birthday signs with lots of stickers and pink.

A blur of pink and a shriek of delight shatter the stillness. Lily rockets past us through the open patio doors and disappears into a pillow fort of patio cushions and beach towels. “Torey!” she shouts from outside. “Come play!”

She calls me out to her fortress of pillows, where she has two more plastic crowns, and she holds them out to both Blair and me. Blair gamely takes his and perches on one of the patio chairs.

“Torey, you can sit near the Queen.” There’s a bright-yellow stuffed dinosaur sporting a kids’ hockey jersey in a place of honor.

I ease down beside her beneath a beach towel roof.

Lily grabs a plastic egg, cracks it open dramatically, and reveals a gummy worm inside the shell.

“This is her baby. You’re in charge of guarding it. ”

Blair watches me take charge of the gummy egg solemnly. “How about me, Lils? What’s my job?”

“You’re the knight that steals the princess.”

Hayes appears, wielding tongs and wearing swim trunks, an apron, and no shirt, and brings with him the smell of charcoal and flame-grilled meat. He thumps Blair’s chest. “You game to man the grill, Sir Callahan?”

Blair pretend-threatens to push him into the pool. Hayes ignores him, speaking to me over Blair’s shoulder. “You like ‘em seared or cremated, Your Majesty?”

“Still breathing.”

Blair snorts. Hayes rolls his eyes. “You both are hopeless.”

Erin calls Lily in to help her with the cake, and I’m released from my egg-guarding duties to join Hayes and Blair.

Hayes pops the grill latch; char and heat wrap us in a sweet haze.

We move like a line: Blair flips patties while I hold out plates for the good burgers—cooked rare—and the gross ones—charcoal.

Lily swans out of the house bearing a tray of fixings, and it all comes together.

In no time, we’re seated around the patio table—sans cushions—building up our burgers.

Lily ends up with more ketchup on her face than on her burger, exactly like her father. Blair and I catch each other’s eye across the table. He smothers a grin, and I do the same.

When Lily finishes, she wiggles out of her seat and starts setting up every one of her dinosaurs in a circle around my chair, until Erin says she needs her help to finish decorating the cake.

They head inside, and Hayes, Blair, and I settle into the evening, low-level trash talk and bravado flying back and forth between Hayes and Blair.

“Don’t tell me you think that goal in Edmonton was clean,” Hayes says, elbow crooked on the back of his chair.

“It was clean. Learn to defend with your legs.”

Hayes groans. “Christ, I forgot how insufferable you are when you’re right.”

I stifle a laugh. Blair’s eyes cut to mine. He knows he’s won this round. “I’m stating facts.”

“Facts.” Hayes snorts. “Tell that to my bruised ribs from that so-called clean check.” Hayes tosses a wadded-up napkin at Blair’s head. “Your memory’s selective.”

“My memory’s perfect,” Blair counters, catching the napkin mid-air without looking. He tosses it onto his empty plate.

“Perfect,” Hayes scoffs. “Like when you forgot we had morning skate and showed up to the rink at noon?”

“That was once.”

The evening air has cooled enough that goosebumps rise on my arms. Blair notices—of course he notices—and his gaze flicks from my arms to the sliding door. “You cold?” Blair asks, already half-standing. “I can grab?—”

“I’m good.” My words come out too quickly. Blair’s shoulders drop a fraction.

Hayes is oblivious to the undercurrent. Or maybe not; maybe he’s choosing to ignore it. With Hayes, it’s hard to tell. “Anyway,” Hayes continues, “speaking of terrible memories... Remember that time in Boston? When we snuck into the arena after hours?”

“You two broke into the Boston arena?” My eyebrows shoot up.

“Not broke in,” Blair clarifies. “The security guard—what was his name?”

“Donovan,” Hayes supplies. “Old guy with the ballcap.”

Blair nods. “We told him we needed to get a feel for the ice before the playoff game.”

“At midnight?” I ask.

Hayes shrugs. “We sold it as pre-game visualization. Very professional, very sports psychology.”

“Hayes did his serious face.” Blair demonstrates, furrowing his brow and squaring his jaw.

“And he believed that?”

Blair’s mouth quirks up at one corner. “I think he wanted to believe us. Made it easy.”

“Made it easy,” Hayes mimics. “You could sell ice to penguins with that face.”

I shake my head. “So what did you even do once you got in?”

“We skated,” Blair says simply.

“In the dark,” Hayes adds. “No lights except the emergency exits. No music. No crowd. We’d been getting our asses handed to us. Coach was riding us hard. And we were kids. Young and dumb.”

“Did it work?” I ask.

Hayes flashes a smile. “Won the next four straight.”

The pool filter hums in the background, mixing with distant laughter from inside where Lily and Erin are probably turning the kitchen into a frosting battlefield.

“We were different then,” Blair says. “Everything felt... bigger.” His face catches the last of the light, and for a second he looks younger, maybe like that kid who snuck onto Boston ice at midnight, searching for something in the dark.

“You ever miss it?” The question slips out before I can stop it. “Being young and dumb?”

Blair’s eyes find mine. There’s a flicker there, quick as the wind across water.

Hayes clears his throat, loud and deliberate, and speaks first. “How can I miss it when I get to watch it play out in front of me every day?”

I think he’s talking about me, but when I look at him, he’s got his shit-eating smile pasted on and he’s staring at Blair. Blair kicks him beneath the patio table. I laugh.

“Okay, okay,” Hayes says. “You wanna hear a real one? Like peak superstition bullshit?”

Of course I nod.

“Calle, you remember Benny?” He gives me the details while Blair groans. “Big guy, skated like he was being chased by bees, total ass on ice. Anyway, Benny believed—fully, no irony—that if he didn’t eat an egg salad sandwich before every game, we’d lose.”

I laugh, and Hayes doubles down, lowering his voice. “So we hid his sandwich. Dude, he was so fucking stressed. He was certain we’d lose the game.”

“Did you?”

“We won so hard. It was an eight-to-one blowout. Benny didn’t speak to any of us for two days.” Hayes sits back, regal as Lily in her dinosaur throne room. “Kid couldn’t live in ritual forever.”

“That’s rich coming from you,” Blair snorts.

Hayes angles his bottle toward Blair. “Hey. That door, man?—”

“It’s warped.”

“It’s cursed.”

“It sticks, it’s bad construction.” Blair rolls his eyes and then turns to me, popping his eyebrows.

“How long have you guys played together?” I ask.

Hayes doesn’t answer right away. Blair taps his water bottle with a finger, soft as a thought. “Eight years, almost nine,” Blair says first.