Page 58 of The Fall

There’s nothing clean about this pain. His body rebels against itself, muscles knotting and unknotting beneath his shirt.

A tearing sound in his throat stops and starts.

His hands are white-knuckled over his face as he tries to breathe.

The inhale sticks in his chest. His exhale breaks apart.

Another wave hits him and his spine curls tighter.

My soul turns inside out. My gift is grief; that’s what I’ve given him. This is a vivisection, and I’ve caused it.

Hayes moves toward Blair but freezes mid-step. Neither of us knows what to do. The room fills with static, with hurt, with the tinny echo of a hockey game from years ago where two brothers play on perfect ice, unaware of everything to come.

I desperately want to fix it. I want the air in the room back.

I want time to rewind and for me to never, ever have had this stupid fucking idea.

I thought maybe the footage would give Blair something to cherish, not something that would drown him.

Maybe it would let him remember Cody at his best, when they shared a perfect year. Jesus, why did I think?—

The footage rolls on for fourteen agonizing minutes until the first period ends. The screen fades to black before transitioning to the second period, but I reach for the remote and pause the game.

Blair’s breathing comes in ragged pulls. I take a half-step toward him, then stop. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

His cheeks are streaked with tears, and his eyes red and swollen. He stares at the frozen image on the screen—his brother, young and alive and perfect, caught in a moment of joy that will never come again.

Blair rises slowly. Each inch upward costs him. I wait for his anger. I deserve it, and I brace for when his grief turns; he has every right. He grabs me by my shoulders, and?—

There is nothing careful about how he pulls me in. My lungs empty as he crushes me to him. His need burns through cotton and skin, grief crashing into mine, waves meeting in the middle. I wrap my arms around him in return and hold on; I hold on.

No space exists between us.

The TV screen still paused on Cody, eternally sixteen, stick raised in celebration. I close my eyes, press my face into his shoulder, and let him break apart in my arms.

“Torey,” he whispers. “Fuck?—”

His fingers curl tighter into my shirt, bunching the fabric between my shoulder blades. Every unsteady breath he takes shudders through me.

He does not let me go for a long time.

That’s as far as the night can stretch and hold.

Blair finally steps out of my arms and folds back inside himself. He wipes his face against his forearm, clears his throat, rubs away the tears. He packs the DVD into its case like it’s a holy relic.

He speaks only once, after everything: “I’m good.”

He’s not.

But he fishes his keys out of his pocket, and, eyes down, heads for the door. On the way, he fist bumps Hayes, but he won’t look at me. I don’t blame him; I opened up an artery of memory.

The sound of the door latching is too loud in my ears. What I’ve done clings to every inch of me. Hayes finally exhales after the door shuts behind Blair. “Torey…” he breathes. “What the fuck?”

Sour adrenaline burns in my gut. “I didn’t mean—” My voice cracks. My hands won’t stop trembling.

We clean up together in silence. I collect the Gatorade bottles from the back patio and trash paper plates smudged with birthday cake.

Hayes finishes the dishwashing that Erin and Lily started, then abandoned when the night turned.

He clinks the dishes louder than necessary and lets the water run as he braces against the sink.

“Dude…” He says, ignoring the overflowing mixing bowl tipping sudsy water into the drain.

“You gave him his fucking brother. There’s nothing more important to Blair than family, and you…

” He trails off. “He could’ve turned pro that year he stayed down, but he didn’t, and it cost him his first-round position, but he stayed. ”

The hollow space in me grows wider.

“You—” Hayes finally shuts off the tap. “I’ve known him for years, but he has never talked to me about Cody.”

I ache for Blair with every cell inside me. My feet want to carry me out the door, down the street, to wherever he’s gone. But I don’t; I can’t. I sink onto a barstool, head in my hands.

Hayes’s voice softens. “You gave him something no one else could. You let him remember Cody alive, not just… gone.”

I lift my head and meet Hayes’s eyes.

“Go home,” Hayes says. “Get some sleep. Tomorrow’s practice.”

But sleep doesn’t come. I lie in bed staring at the ceiling fan’s lazy rotation, replaying every second. Blair’s face when he saw the disc. The way his fingers traced its surface. How young Blair looked in that footage, how young Cody looked, how neither of them knew what was coming.

Nothing quiets the memory of Blair’s grief or the knowledge that I caused it.

Judging by the sweat soaking Blair’s face and jersey, he’s beaten everyone to morning skate by many hours.

The ice looks like a war zone, scuffed up end-to-end, and hammering pucks from the red line into the far boards.

Grab puck, position, wind up, fire. Grab puck, position, wind up, fire.

The scrape of his skates, the hammer of his stick, the cannon boom of his shot; he’s a hurricane unleashed.

I throw my gear on faster than I ever have before. My hands are shaking. My tape job is shit. Tie my laces, grab my gloves; I’m out and down the tunnel in record time.

I step onto the bench, making enough noise that he’ll know I’m here. His rhythm breaks for a second—a hesitation in his next shot—but he doesn’t turn.

“How long have you been here?” I call out, my voice bouncing off the empty seats.

He fires another puck before answering. “Couple hours.”

My skates hit the ice with a soft crunch.

His eyes meet mine across the distance, red-rimmed but clear. “You’re here early.”

“Always am.” These hours are usually mine.

His gaze maps my face, then drops to the ice. “I didn’t sleep at all. I watched the whole thing. Twice.”

“Blair…” I breathe. I imagine him alone in the dark, replaying the footage over and over. Two a.m., three a.m., four a.m., the blue glow of a screen illuminating his tears. You gave him back his brother.

Another puck sits at his blade, but he only bats it back and forth. “I haven’t seen him since— Haven’t...”

The empty arena swallows his words. I skate closer, slow enough that he could wave me off if he wanted. He doesn’t.

“He looked good out there,” I say. “That pass in the first?—”

“He had the best hands.” Blair’s mouth curves slightly. “He could thread a puck through traffic like he had it on a string.” He finally shoots the puck, but gentler this time. It slides into the net with a whisper.

The admission hangs between us. Blair grabs another puck from the pile. “C’mon,” he says, skating backward. “We’re running a new breakout today. I want to go through it with you first, work out the rough edges.” He taps his stick on the ice. “You coming?”