Page 57 of The Fall

“Eight years of being the magic behind the curtain. His success as a captain is entirely— entirely —thanks to me?—”

Blair squeezes the remnants of his water bottle across the table, soaking Hayes.

“Man.” Hayes, dramatically, shakes his head. “I’m nice to you once a year and this is the thanks I get.”

Blair’s smile is wicked.

I drag my palms over the top of my thighs, and a shiver traces over my skin, an echo of lips trailing kisses. The not-memory hits without warning—his mouth on mine, the way his hands framed my face like I was something precious. I blink, forcing myself back to the present.

Blair’s eyes haven’t left me. There’s something knowing in them, like he can read every thought scrolling through my head. “Kicks, you play cards?”

“Oh here we go,” Hayes groans.

I nod. Everybody in hockey plays something. Maybe not great, but it’s a rite of plane rides and layovers. Somewhere, there’s always a game going. Whether the rules are followed… that’s a different story.

“The problem with Blair,” Hayes says, already grabbing a deck of cards and a set of chips out of a patio cabinet, “is that he remembers what cards you played two hands ago. And two weeks ago. And two months ago.”

“I never cheat,” Blair says. “Not once.”

Hayes tosses a deck onto the table. “You don’t have to.”

Blair quirks an eyebrow at him as he reaches for the cards and starts to shuffle.

“Ten bucks says you can’t keep the reds ordered high-to-low.”

Blair draws the top card: ace of diamonds. “How much are you down to me?”

“Like, eleventy-million buckaroos and a sandwich.”

“A sandwich?” I laugh.

“He made me buy him a chicken salad wrap at Logan Airport. Airport prices, man.”

Blair deals. “Try not to make it too obvious what cards you have this time, eh?” He tosses me a wink.

Hayes has tells you can see from space, while Blair, in another life, could have been a professional poker player. Hayes couldn’t hide a pair if his life depended on it.

“Raise,” he says, pushing forward more chips than necessary.

Blair’s eyes flick to Hayes, then to me. “Call.”

We reveal our hands. Hayes groans dramatically when Blair shows three queens.

“Every time,” Hayes mutters, flicking his losing cards toward the center of the table. “Every single time.”

I collect the scattered cards, squaring the deck with a few taps against the table.

“Ante up,” I say, placing the deck in front of me.

We go around, raising and calling, and when it’s time to lay them out, I set my cards face up on the table: full-house, jacks over sevens.

“Are you kidding me?” Hayes throws his cards down.

Blair gives me a nod. “Not bad, Kicks.”

I gather the chips toward me, adding them to my growing pile. “Another round?” I ask.

Hayes groans. “With what chips? You two vultures picked me clean.”

“I’ll spot you,” Blair offers, pushing some toward Hayes.

“Oh, charity. Great.” But Hayes takes them anyway, rearranging them into messy stacks. “Pretty sure your liney plays poker better than you, Calle.”

“He plays quieter than you.”

“That’s a hard skill. Not my department.” Hayes sighs, but his expression is bright as Blair shuffles the deck again. “God, I missed this.”

“Boys!” Erin’s voice rings out from the patio doors. “Cake’s ready!”

“Birthday boy gets first slice,” Blair says.

“In your dreams.” Hayes is already on his feet. “I may suck at poker, but I excel at cake.”

The dining table—coated in pink glitter—gathers the glow spilling from the birthday candles on top of Blair’s cake. It’s double-layered and chocolate-frosted, with a serious helping of pink sprinkles, and perched on the center is a stegosaurus.

We sing, deeply off-key, with Lily leading us.

Hayes tries to out-sing her until they’re shouting the end of the song.

After the candles and cake, Lily kicks off the present-giving because she cannot wait one minute longer.

She pulls out a stack of drawings from the chair beside her and hands them to Blair.

“Look! I made you stronger arms this time,” she says, pointing to where she’s drawn thick lines in purple coming out of his shoulders. “Because Daddy says you needed to carry the whole team.”

Blair huffs a breath through his nose. “Thank you, Lily-bean. But, I only need to carry your dad. I need to carry him all the time.”

“Daddy!” Lily cries.

Hayes yuks it up as Erin and I laugh. “Yeah, yeah.” He disappears into the living room, then returns with a suspiciously golf-bag-sized shape covered in a black trash bag with a giant bow stuck to the front. “I know, I’m breathtakingly original, but have you ever had to wrap one of these things?”

I’m no golf player, and I couldn’t tell you whether a club or a bag is good or crap, but judging by the low whistle Blair gives and the way he caresses the head of the driver, I’m thinking Hayes did very well.

Which only makes me a million times more nervous about what I’m about to give him.

I reach into my backpack, abandoned inside after I walked in with Lily earlier. The DVD case I pull out has no label. There’s nothing written on the outside, and I don’t say anything as I pass it to Blair.

I should have thought of a bow.

Blair flips the lid open, and inside, a DVD gleams, marked by my handwriting: Calgary Wranglers: Full Season

It took me days to track down the right person who could help me.

After my first eleven phone calls, I’d nearly given up.

No one knew how I could get copies of every single game played almost a decade ago.

Who wanted to rewatch old juniors’ games?

Once the scouts saw the players for that year’s draft, that was it, wasn’t it?

But I’d done it. I’d found every game the Wranglers played the year that Blair and Cody were together on the team.

“I, uh—” I have no idea how to tell him what’s on that disc. “These are the games from the year you stayed down, with Cody. I found them all.”

Blair’s whole body goes still. A breath punches through him like he’s been shot.

His Adam’s apple rises and holds, quivering, caught between speech and silence.

His fingers brush across the surface of the disc, and his other hand rises, covers his mouth.

His shoulders don’t flex. His eyes don’t move.

“They said they only keep the scout cuts.” His voice folds up and disintegrates. A muscle in his cheek jumps. The case creaks between his trembling hands.

Erin guides Lily into the kitchen, where they start to clean up.

He finally raises his eyes. I’ve never seen him this stripped of every defense. Across from him, Hayes hasn’t moved, hasn’t breathed.

I’m suddenly aware that I have crossed a line into his grief that he has never, not once, invited me to approach.

Jesus, maybe he doesn’t want to see these games. I want to reach across the table and take it back. I didn’t think?—

Blair moves to the living room without a word. Hayes rises next, and I follow them both, hanging back a few steps and watching as Blair drops to his knees in front of the entertainment center. He opens the case, removes the disc, and presses a button on the PlayStation.

Hayes takes a seat on the couch, perched on the edge like he might need to leap up and catch Blair.

I hover near the doorway, uncertain if I should stay.

Then it loads. The broadcast title card—WRNG-TV Calgary—flickers on screen.

There’s no intro music, no highlight reel, only a local camera trained on warm-up skate in a small barn.

It’s blurry, with that specific junior-league roughness: cameras long past the budget they were bought with, rink sounds too close to the mic, a loop of early 2010s pop-rock bleeding off the playback.

The team skates their first lap in red and black.

Most of the names on the backs of the jerseys are from players who never made it higher than major juniors.

A teenage Blair enters the frame, his shoulders narrower, his hair longer than it is now. His stride then already carried the power and fluidity that defines him today.

And then—center-right, number nineteen—there he is: Cody.

I know it’s him, even before the Callahan on the back of his sweater comes into view. He’s an echo of Blair, clearly his brother. Slighter, shorter, with that same dark hair and a hint of those same stormy eyes.

Blair sits back so slowly. No air leaves his body, and he doesn’t blink when the camera zooms in on his brother’s face beneath his helmet. He is impossibly young and vibrant, and I want to believe all of that goodness stayed vibrant in him past this game.

Every minute that passes makes the room smaller. The screen shifts to the opening proceedings. Cody and Blair are side by side, identical in their confidence. The announcers call their names into the arena air.

Cody misses glove-side on his first shift.

He makes up for it two possessions later with a feed so smooth I feel it in my own hands.

A minute later, the video jumps forward and resets at the bench.

Cody wipes his mouth with one gloved hand and then punches his brother’s thigh.

Blair-on-screen leans into his brother’s shoulder, and the Blair in front of me, on his knees on Hayes’s carpet, shudders.

His eyes remain fixed on the screen where his brother skates, alive and young and whole.

He was so much more than what took him out of this world.

Cody scores in the first period with a lateral snap from the dots. The camera shakes with the crowd’s movement, but it captures the board-side celly between Blair and Cody.

Blair unravels. The glow of the screen catches the first tremor in his shoulders, but he doesn’t make a sound as the tears run down his cheek. His spine tilts forward. His elbows land on his knees. He hides his face in his palms, and?—

Crying isn’t the word for it.