Page 84 of The Fall

Forty

Days blend together in soft layers. Some mornings start with Blair’s mouth brushing against my shoulder, others with my fingers following the line of his spine beneath the sheets. Then the sheets tangle around our ankles. Pillows tumble to the floor.

Some days, we manage to leave the villa.

When we do, our kayaks cut through water so clear it seems unreal, paddles leaving silver trails as we follow darting fish through the shallows.

On the driving range, my golf balls disappear into sand traps more often than not, but Blair rewards my terrible swings with long and lingering kisses. Strange how my game never improves.

We race into waves like teenagers freed from supervision, rating the splash of each other’s cannonballs and laughing at bad belly-flops. The waves speak in whispers as the sun melts into the horizon, and we drink virgin pina coladas as we sun ourselves on the dock.

Night pulls us into the ocean, naked in the warm water. We bob beneath the stars, holding on to each other.

And every night?—

God, I’ve dreamed of him exactly this way, not once or twice but a thousand times.

The feeling of him, thick and hot, pushing inside me is not a dream. It’s real, and he fills me completely. He sinks into me inch by excruciating inch until he’s buried.

This is what my dreams were missing. The stunning, absolute reality of him inside me.

His heat seeps into me, burning away every thought that isn’t him, isn’t us. I’m starving for him, for the drag and push of him, for the way he unravels me.

Every frayed edge of me, every broken piece, knits together around him. I see my own soul reflected in his eyes.

There’s no part of me left that isn’t his.

Every day, I fall deeper in love. He shares pieces of himself that have been tucked away for years: his first wobbly steps on skates, the boy in his freshman homeroom who made his heart race.

One evening, he sits behind me on the dock and summons the courage to confess how nervous he was before our first date at his house.

He hides his face in my neck as he speaks, and I feel the curve of his lips as he laughs at himself.

“I was more nervous than putting on the C for the first time,” he admits. “I didn’t want to screw anything up.”

“You didn’t.” I thread our fingers together and lean back in his arms.

“I must be doing something right,” he says softly.

“You are.” I reach behind him and cradle his head, twisting in his arms until our lips meet. His breath catches, and mine follows, our rhythms matched closer than the waves.

Days blend into stretches of gold-tinted light or deep-blue shadow. Small moments expand to fill entire lifetimes?—

his kiss against my temple, the sweetness of coconut and honey on his lips, our quiet laughter between cotton sheets, sea foam gathering around our ankles, Blair humming while he works shampoo through my hair, my voice breaking around his name, our fingers laced beneath a canopy of stars?—

and always returning to Blair breathing beside me, constant as the tide, both of us falling in love over and over and over again.

The fire in front of us is showing its orange bones, and Blair kneels, holding a marshmallow skewered and spinning in lazy circles over the coals. Smoke curls around his wrist. Embers pop and splinter. The ocean is close, folding in on itself.

There’s a metal skewer in my hand, too, with a marshmallow skewered at the tip, but it’s already blackened.

I hand Blair my ruined marshmallow. He takes it and peels off the shell with his teeth.

“You keep burning them,” he says around a gooey mouthful.

“You like it that way.”

He laughs and hands me his perfectly golden marshmallow. I take it and eat slowly.

“You’re good at this,” I say.

“Years of practice.” Blair reaches for another marshmallow from the bag between us.

“Did you go camping a lot as a kid?” I prop my elbows on my knees and watch him work.

Blair shakes his head, eyes on the fire as he positions his marshmallow at the perfect distance from the embers.

“Mom worked nights, so Cody and I would cook s’mores in the microwave, but they were never right.

” He rotates the skewer. “I bought a gas stove with my first big bucks from my newspaper route so we could toast them properly.”

So Blair, so perfectly him. I hoard these nuggets of his past he offers like jewels.

“Your turn.” He offers me the skewer. “I’ll guide you this time.”

I take it from him as he moves behind me. His hand covers mine, adjusting my grip, our fingers intertwined.

“Lower,” he says, his breath warm against my ear. “Not too close to the coals.”

We turn the marshmallow together. His other arm wraps around my waist, holding me against him. The night air is cool on my face, but everywhere Blair touches me is warm.

“There,” he says when the marshmallow turns golden brown. “Perfect.”

He doesn’t move away when it’s done, just stays against my back, his chin resting on my shoulder. The fire dances, amber flames licking at the darkness.

“What are you thinking about?” I ask.

His breath is slow and steady against my neck.

For a long moment, the only answer is the hiss and crackle of the wood.

“That we never did this,” he says, his voice a low rumble that travels through his chest into mine.

“Not under an open sky.” He shifts then, pulling away, and settles onto the sand beside me.

His eyes are fixed on a point somewhere past the stars. “Cody used to know all the constellations. He’d drag me outside, and we’d lay on the hood of my car for hours while he pointed them out.”

“I bet you complained the whole time,” I say, bumping my shoulder against his.

“Every minute.” He smiles, still gazing upward. “But I’d give anything to hear him go on about Orion’s Belt one more time.”

“Which one was his favorite?” I ask.

Blair points up. “That one there. Cassiopeia. The queen.” His finger draws a zigzag pattern. “He said it looked like a W for ‘winner’ when we won games. And an M for ‘moron’ when I pissed him off.”

I laugh softly, trying to see the pattern he’s pointing out. Our arms brush as I lean closer.

“I stopped looking up after he died.” He stretches out on his back on the sand, and I lay beside him, our shoulders touching.

“I wish Cody could have met you,” he finally says, so softly.

“Tell me about him?”

“He was trouble.” Blair lets out half a laugh.

“He was a pain in the ass, but he was my pain in the ass, you know?” A breath rattles in his lungs.

“He was funny. Quick with comebacks. And loyal, so loyal. He’d fight anyone who said a word against me, even when I deserved it.

” He pauses. “He played guitar. He could talk to anyone. He loved knock-knock jokes.”

I reach for his hand.

“He lived with me, before…” Blair breathes in and holds it. “After things fell apart overseas. The team cut him when they found out about the drugs.”

His hand tightens around mine. I let him squeeze as hard as he needs.

“He wanted to quit,” Blair says, voice brittle at the corners. “He really wanted to, you could tell. So I had this routine all worked out. We were together nonstop. Working out, playing ball hockey, eating together.” His voice twists. “I guess… I thought I could be enough to replace that shit.”

Sand shifts beneath me as I roll toward him.

“Then the season started,” Blair says. “And I was away more. Practice, preseason...” His voice has gotten so small. “He couldn’t hold on.”

His face is half in shadow, half illuminated by fading embers and dying coals.

“Our last conversation was a huge fight. I came home early from practice because I had a bad feeling, and I got home as fast as I could. I found him high and wrecked in my living room. I was so fucking angry, Torey. So fucking angry. I raged at him?—”

His breath catches, and he’s silent for a long, long time.

“He told me he wished he could make me happy again.” A tremor rides through his voice, a ripple beneath his words. “And I told him if he wanted me to be happy, all he had to do was stop using.”

The ocean is black glass, barely breathing.

“I told him to get his shit together and that was the last...” He trails off, his throat working. “Two days later, the police called the team during morning skate?—”

Blair stops, staring at the stars. His chest rises and falls, rises and falls.

“He was in the park,” he finally manages. “On a bench.”

Everything in me gives way. I have a paper soul, torn loose and fluttering. The surf crashes, eats another line of beach. “I’m here,” I whisper.

“I keep thinking about what I could have, should have, done differently,” Blair says. “If I’d been calmer. If I’d gone after him.”

“Blair—”

“I was supposed to protect him. That was my job.”

“You loved him?—”

His laugh is soundless. “Not enough, clearly. I failed him. I missed something . I feel crazy sometimes, like if I replay every second maybe I’ll see what went wrong, or I’ll know what to say?—”

There are no words large enough, or strong enough, or soft enough for this. I move closer, pushing my forehead to his temple. I squeeze his hand until I feel bone. “You loved him.”

“And it wasn’t enough,” he whispers.

“It was. It was, Blair.” There’s nothing I can say that can ever be enough. My words are useless against a wound this deep. The only thing I have to offer is my solidness, the steady beat of my heart against the night.

The sea sighs against the shore, a long, drawn-out exhalation, and a tremor runs through him.

He turns his cheek into mine. “You know what scares me most about loving you? That I’ll fuck it up the same way.

I’m terrified of missing something important again and—” Blair’s grip tightens.

His fear seeps into my bloodstream, echoes between my heartbeats. “I’m so fucking scared of losing you.”

“You won’t lose me.” My words barely climb over the breakers. They’re small things to offer, smaller still in the face of everything he’s already lost.