Page 66 of The Fall

Thirty-Three

In Dallas on New Year’s Day, the ice is fast and the game is faster. It’s end-to-end action, bodies colliding, sticks clacking against the puck.

I take a high stick in the second period and taste blood in my mouth. Blair’s there immediately, helping me up, checking me over. I spit red onto the ice; warm blood drips down my cheek.

In the room, I tell Dr. Lin I’m fine. She gives me an ice pack and three stitches in my temple and says I’m in the clear, but my head’s still echoey and thick behind the eyes. There’s a headache chasing the curve of my skull.

Worth it, though. We crush Dallas 4-1, chase them up and down their rink until they cough up every inch of clean ice.

Now, Dallas is behind us, 30,000 feet below and dissolving.

We’re flying into night as we head east, and there’s nothing but the hum of the plane and the occasional thump of turbulence with us.

Most of the guys are working toward sleep.

A few scroll lazily through their phones, decompressing in that limbo between cities, where the adrenaline has dropped but the body hasn’t caught up.

In the back row, unbothered, I ice my head and draw.

My head has a drumbeat of its own behind my left eye. I’ve taken a few more high-hits than I would prefer over the past month, and the headaches last a little longer each time.

I don’t need to think when I draw. I slip the pencil between my fingers and let the graphite lead me.

I don’t tell myself to draw him bent over the dot; I’m trying to catch what’s real, to pin it to paper, to force it to hold still.

The chase of it calms me, and my sketchbook is full of him.

It’s become my meditation to linger on the curve of Blair’s jaw and the length of his thigh, or etch his secret smile into another weathered page.

The sketch I’m working is nearly done, this one of Blair during warm-ups. I got the tension right this time in his neck, in the grip he has on his stick. Motion in stillness.

Deeper in my notebook, my sketches aren’t harmless, or confined to the ice.

In those, Blair is in my bed, his arm half-flung over a pillow.

He’s shirtless, sleep-warm, and realer than any photograph.

Those drawings are hidden behind dozens of hockey poses, tucked away where no one would ever find them unless they went looking.

They’re my secret, my weakness captured in graphite.

I’ve got my headphones in and jazz dripping straight into my blood when the air shifts beside me.

It’s Blair. I know it before I look up.

I tear an earbud free, blinking as my eyes adjust to the cabin’s dim light. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he says, voice pitched low enough that only I can hear it. He stands in the aisle, one hand gripping a water bottle, the other braced against the overhead bin, and his gaze drops to my sketchbook.

I’m caught; I go perfectly still. There’s no way to close the notebook without making it worse. The lines are already there. He can see himself on the page.

“Mind if I sit?” he asks.

My mouth goes dry. I stare at the page where his form is frozen mid-motion, captured in graphite strokes that betray too much attention to detail. Every muscle, every shadow.

“Yeah, of course.” I try to sound casual as I shift my sketchbook, not enough to hide it completely—that would be too obvious—but enough to make it less obvious, less prominent.

Blair drops into the seat beside me.

“Head still hurting?” His eyes track to the ice pack I’m balancing between my temple and the bulkhead.

“It’s all right.”

“You drawing?”

I close the sketchbook, too late.

“What were you working on?”

“Nothing important.” My voice sounds thin.

“That’s me, right?” He nods toward the page.

“Warm-ups,” I confirm, keeping my voice steady. “I’m… working on motion studies.”

“Let me see?” His voice drops lower.

The plane hits a pocket of turbulence, jostling us briefly. My fingers tighten around the edges of the book. If I refuse, it only confirms what we both already know. I pass him the sketchbook before I can change my mind.

Blair doesn’t open it right away. He holds it in his hands, studying the worn cover, running his thumb along the spiral binding where some of the metal has warped from being stuffed into my bag too many times.

The overhead reading light casts shadows across his face as he opens to the first page. I stare straight ahead, focusing on the headrest in front of me, counting breaths to keep from snatching the book back.

His expression is unreadable as he turns the page.

His breathing changes. He keeps turning pages, and the space between each flip grows longer.

“You’ve been watching me,” he says.

My gut clenches. I’ve exposed too much.

Heat burns beneath my skin. My teammates snore softly around us, oblivious to how my world unravels in this narrow airplane seat.

Blair turns another page. Each rustle of paper strips me bare. He breathes in sharp through his nose. I dig my nails into my thighs through my jeans. The ice pack slides, forgotten, into the gap between seat and bulkhead. Someone mumbles in their sleep.

I want to reach over and slam the book shut, pretend this never happened. But I stay still, breathing shallowly, as Blair holds my heart in his hands.

He turns another page to the sketch of him mid-laugh, head thrown back, the column of his throat exposed. How can I stop drawing him when he looks like this?

Then he finds the other drawings.

He’s shirtless, his hand lost in his hair, standing in the doorway.

He’s curled in bed, the morning sun soft on his face.

He’s lying stomach-down in a rumpled bed, every muscle defined beneath skin I’ve never actually touched.

He’s smiling at me, lying on his side in bed, soft-eyed across rumpled sheets, his hand reaching for me in a moment of intimacy that never happened, a moment I fabricated completely.

There’s a study of his hand holding mine, our fingers threaded together as though they belong that way?—

His face closes like a door. The wrinkle between his brows deepens.

I stare at my knees, heat crawling up my neck. My body cycles through contradictory impulses—run, stay, explain, hide. Every private fantasy, every stolen moment I’ve created, every desperate wish; it’s all exposed. Every line. Every lie. Every unspoken longing.

Now he knows I spend hours capturing him in graphite.

“Don’t—” I whisper. “You can stop. You don’t have to keep looking.” My voice cracks.

He shuts my sketchbook.

I stay very, very still. What must he think of me now?

This is it, the moment I’ve dreaded. I try to speak, to explain, but words abandon me. I’ve crossed a boundary that can’t be uncrossed.

Blood rushes in my ears as I stare at his hands, still wrapped around my sketchbook. His knuckles pale against the cover. His thumbnails dig little half-moons into the binding.

I want to snatch it back. I want to erase the last ten minutes. I want to go back to when these drawings were mine alone, before I had to face what they reveal about me.

A wounded, wary look slides across Blair’s face. His throat works on a slow swallow. I’ve drawn him countless times, but I can’t decipher what this expression means, or what hides behind the storm surge in his eyes.

“Torey—” His voice breaks off, my name hanging between us. “We—” He starts and stops. His jaw tightens twice. “We need to talk about this. Later.”

“Blair—”

“Later. I—” His voice sounds strained, like he’s fighting for control.

He stands abruptly, almost hitting his head on the overhead bin. Without another word, he walks away, never looking back. His footsteps make no sound. He doesn’t curse, doesn’t call my name. He offers nothing but silence.

Time stretches endlessly during the remainder of the flight. My lungs burn from holding my breath. My sketchbook is heavy in my hands, filled with my longing, my obsession, my inability to separate what’s real from what I’ve created.

We land in Tampa at 1:17 a.m., wheels down with a two-touch bounce.

Blair is one of the first off the plane.

I’m the last.

I trail behind everyone as we board the bus. Blair sits near the front, Hayes beside him, and I slide into an empty row near the back.

Forty minutes of silent agony pass as we are shuttled from the airport to the arena. I count each second, watching the back of Blair’s head.

The parking garage is nearly empty when we arrive. Everyone scatters to their cars, but I linger, waiting for Blair. Is this later? Or is later never?

I spot him moving to his truck, his head down, shoulders bunched. “Blair.” My voice barely carries through the quiet.

He turns. Our eyes meet across thirty feet of asphalt. His face is a mask I can’t read.

He holds my gaze for three heartbeats, then drops his eyes, unlocks his truck, and climbs inside.

His taillights disappear up the exit ramp of the team’s garage.

The garage ventilation system hums, marking time I waste standing here. A car horn blares, the sound bouncing off concrete walls. I breathe in exhaust fumes and rubber. I should move. I should call an Uber and get out of here. But home means being alone with these drawings, alone with the truth.

And whatever fragile thing we’d built, I’ve destroyed with my inability to separate delusion from reality.

Pain explodes behind my eyes, white-hot and blinding. I stagger, and the edges of my vision go dark.

Get away get away get away ? —

I stumble out of the garage, heading back into the arena and into the maze of hallways beneath the rink. I walk blindly in the near-dark, turning corners, bouncing from wall to wall, moving deeper, moving away. Away from eyes, away from light. Away. Blair’s face swims before me?—

I double over. My skull is about to crack open; my brain is trying to squeeze out of its base, pop through my eyes, bleed out of my ears.