Page 89 of The Fall

Forty-Two

Over Calgary, on our approach, Blair leans across me to look out the window.

“See that neighborhood?”

He points past my shoulder, his finger drawing a line across the glass. City lights bleed amber through the window. “That’s where we lived.” His voice is soft. “That was our home.”

That’s where we lived.

I’ve… I’ve heard him say this before, felt the trust in those four words. His breath catching when he pointed, the way our fingers?—

No. That never happened. We’ve never flown into Calgary side by side before.

“Me and Cody.” Blair stays close, our arms still touching. “Our billet family was good people. They came to every home game.”

I make the right sounds, ask the right questions, but my head is full of static, like trying to tune into a radio station that keeps slipping out of range. I feel like an intruder on a memory, all this white noise rattling around inside me.

We land, collect our bags, and file onto the bus to the hotel. It’s the normal travel routine, nothing special, except for the itch under my skin that won’t quit.

My hotel room is too small at midnight. I’ve kicked the sheets off twice, pulled them back up, and turned the pillow over searching for a cool spot that might let me sink into sleep.

That’s where we lived.

I stare at the ceiling, counting shadowed grooves in the drywall. There’s a charge under my skin, every nerve ending tuned to the wrong frequency.

I grab my phone before I can think better of it.

You up?

Three dots appear immediately.

Unfortunately. You?

Can’t sleep. Mind if I come by?

Door’s open.

Most of the team is on this floor, but at this hour, it’s only me and the ice machine’s distant hum. Blair’s room is six doors down, held open by the swing lock.

He meets me inside, hair mussed and eyes soft. Gray sweats ride low on his hips, and he’s shirtless. He looks warm and rumpled and delicious.

“Hey. You okay?”

No, I’m not okay, and I don’t know why. I’m wound tighter than I was going into Vancouver, every nerve firing in every direction, while he looks like he could drift off any second. I need?—

I cross the room and drop in front of him. The lamp casts him in amber and shadow, highlighting his muscles that taper down to where my fingers rest against the elastic of his sweats.

Blair’s breath catches, his pupils dilating, suddenly awake. “What are you?—”

I hook my fingers in the waistband of his sweats. “Can I? Please.”

His answer is a shuddering exhale, and he nods, so slight it’s barely there.

I tug his sweats down, revealing him inch by inch, and drink in every detail: the tense set of his abs, the way his thighs bracket me on either side. All that edge from earlier, the wildness he brought onto the ice, is here too.

“Fuck,” he whispers.

My hands slide up the backs of his thighs, muscles flexing under my grip, and I look up until our eyes lock. When I lean forward, his breath catches, and when my lips brush the inside of his thigh, he curses.

I nuzzle into the heat of his groin and breathe him in—clean soap under sweat, the faint tang that means Blair and only Blair. My tongue follows the crease where thigh meets hip, tasting salt and skin. I kiss the soft dip below his bellybutton, feel the twitch in his stomach under my mouth.

His eyes are heavy, pupils blown, blue turned almost black in this lamp glow, and I drag my tongue lower, inch by inch, and hover over the thick length of him, flushed and hard, curved toward me. His precome beads at the tip of his cock.

My lips graze his shaft, barely there, a tease that pulls a curse out of him. I want to hear every sound he makes, draw them out until he’s wild for me. I drag my mouth lower, tongue flicking against the thick vein along the underside of his cock. The tension in his thighs ratchets tighter.

I open for him and take him in slow, letting the head of his cock glide over my tongue, then easing down until my lips meet my fist where I’m holding him at the base.

He fills my mouth; my jaw aches and I welcome it.

The heat of him in my mouth is maddening.

I could stay here forever on my knees for him, giving and taking until we’re both undone.

His eyes lock on mine.

Everything else blurs, and there’s only this: his hand trembling against my cheek, the heat throbbing on my tongue, his breath hitching with every inch I take. I want to give him everything. I want to let him see how wrecked I am for him.

He bites down on a moan, and I feel it everywhere, burning through me like a fever.

I hollow my cheeks and drag back up, letting spit pool around the base before swirling my tongue. His mouth falls open, and he folds forward, one hand threading through my hair. “Wait,” he says, tugging.

I let him slip free with a last slow lick up the vein to the crown of his cock. My mouth feels empty. “I want you.”

He hauls me up and walks me backward until my calves hit his mattress. We fall together in a tangle, his sweats caught at his ankles, him warm over me. He shoves my T-shirt up and off, his mouth on mine, kissing me desperately.

“Please,” I whisper into the kiss. “I want?—”

He rolls, and I go with him. I slide down his body, mouth open, tasting a line down the center of his chest, biting at the sharp cut of his hip. I settle between his thighs again and he props himself on his elbows so he can see.

I work him with my mouth and tongue, licking the head and circling the slit, lips dragging down the underside where he’s most sensitive before I take him deep again. Quiet gasps slip free from him, and his thighs tremble beside my shoulders.

I pull back until only the head sits on my tongue, swirl, then slide down again, cheeks hollowing as I seal around him. Precome and spit run over my bottom lip.

His head falls back, throat open, tendons standing out, breath coming fast. “Torey,” he warns. “I’m close.”

I answer him by sucking harder, until he groans and hitches his hips, pushing up into my mouth and coming.

He watches me while it hits, mouth parted, cursing.

His stomach tightens, his thighs go iron-hard, and he floods my mouth with his heat.

I swallow it all and keep stroking him with my tongue until his hand softens in my hair.

“Come here,” he whispers. I crawl up his body and sink into his arms. He kisses me, tasting himself on me, and his hand slides under the waistband of my shorts. “Let me take care of you.”

I nod. His hand wraps around me. I groan into his neck.

He’s slow at first; he knows me and what drives me crazy.

Then he’s a little faster, a little tighter, his palm dragging over my cock head, thumb circling where it lights me up.

Pre-come slicks his fingers and spreads, every glide smoother, every pull more.

My hips thrust into his fist, and I pant into his jaw and bite down on a groan.

“That’s it,” he says. “Let go for me.”

The coil inside me snaps. My back arches off the mattress and I spill hot over his knuckles. He keeps working me until I shudder through the last of it, stroking me until I fall into him, boneless. I’m a puddle in his arms, and when I come back to myself, his eyes are on me.

“What’s gotten into you?”

Everything. Nothing. The phantom touch of his hand in mine while Calgary spreads below us on the plane. The trust in his voice when he shared that piece of his past. The way my body knows things my mind insists never happened.

“I needed you,” I breathe.

He pulls me closer and kisses my temple. “I’m here.”

I lose my phone somewhere between Detroit and Tampa, and I’m pissed. My photos with Blair, with the guys, with Hayes and Erin and Lily—they’re all gone. For days, I walk on nails, afraid of the headline: “Torey Kendrick’s photos reveal all.”

But it never happens. My phone is probably buried in some dump, wedged between baby diapers and kitchen trash. It seemingly being gone forever doesn’t make me feel any better about the loss.

I buy a new one, and Blair and I have dinner at Hayes’s, where I take all new photos to replace the ones I’ve lost.

“You boys look tan, eh?” Hayes says when we arrive. He’s wearing a wicked grin, and he’s looking at Blair like he’s about to decipher a secret. “Good vacay, eh?”

“The best,” Blair says simply.

I agree.

Hayes’s smile can’t get any larger.

Lily and I duke it out in a two-story Nerf war, carrying pot lids for shields and shooting at each other from the upstairs landing. Hayes does the dishes and Erin and Blair talk on the patio, and life is perfect, absolutely perfect.

The rhythm of our lives narrows to a single drumbeat: win, recover, win again. February bleeds into March with barely a seam between them, marked only by the urgency in Coach’s voice during practice and the extra hours Blair spends reviewing tape after everyone has gone home.

We live and breathe the standings. The playoff race has tightened to a razor’s edge, a gauntlet of must-win games.

“Three points out,” Hayes says during morning skate, skating backward beside me as we circle the ice. “Three fucking points away.”

Three points. Two wins. One bad night for Montreal. I track the red line in my mind, picturing how another win pulls us forward on the board. Lose, and someone else will feast on our dreams. Finish, finish, finish.

The gap narrows. The numbers on the standings board shift again.

Practices run hotter. We’re holding the last playoff slot, but half the conference breathes down our necks.

After one brutal skate, I stay behind, alone in the rink, staring at the empty seats. The Zamboni has already laid down a fresh sheet and the cold in the air carries the gritty smell of the skate sharpener from the equipment room.

The ghost of a memory brushes against me. Having this, holding it, and then… What? The thought frays; I can’t grasp it.

Morning skate, team meeting, recovery, go again. I wake in Blair’s bed tangled in his arms, and the soft hush of his breathing has me believing in a future close enough to gather in my hands.

The schedule keeps squeezing tighter. I sleep restlessly. The city’s pressure mounts, hungry for victory.

Our chance is right here.

In bed, Blair draws plays on my ribs with feather-soft fingertips. “We’re going to make it,” he whispers.

I close my eyes and see playoff ice and hear the roar of a crowd I haven’t stood before yet.

“We will,” I echo back to him.

The stupid thing stops me mid-step. It catches my eye the second I turn down the novelty aisle, tucked between a plastic Zamboni clock and an over-bright Stanley Cup mug.

It’s got a stacked puck base, a retro-style Mutineers logo printed into the glass, and little plastic hockey players floating through a column of blue goo.

The plastic packaging says “Official NHL Licensed Product” like that makes this lava lamp dignified.

It doesn’t. It’s ugly, a discount-bin gift.

—the scrape of my skates, Blair’s laugh spooling out in a half-lit room, slow-curling blue painting his cheek. Blair laying in too-crumpled sheets, my hand stretched out. His arms wrapped around me from behind, his lips on my cheek, cheers around us ? —

I’m freezing and sweating at the same time. Nothing I can think untangles how real these flashes feel, the shiver of not-memory pooling in my veins.

I buy the lava lamp without thinking. The teenager at the register says “cool,” and I mumble “thanks” like I didn’t just purchase a hallucination.

The lamp rides shotgun all the way to Blair’s. I feel completely ridiculous. Who gives the man he loves a lava lamp with action figures drifting through melted wax?

Me.

Dinner’s already cooking when I walk in. Blair’s hair is wet, and he’s dressed comfy in athletic shorts and that team t-shirt with the little fray in the collar. He’s barefoot and stirring a pan on the stove, and when I walk in, he looks up and smiles.

I slide the box onto the island. “I got this for you.”

He arches one dark brow and takes the box, eyebrows climbing with every inch of ugly plastic he uncovers. “No way,” he breathes. “This is…”

“Terrible?”

“Unbelievable,” he says, as if he’s holding the Stanley Cup and it’s full of cinnamon rolls. “Is this Mutineers blue?”

“It’s limited edition.”

His eyes are flickering with that delighted mischief he saves for me, the same that I remember on New Year’s and when he teases me when we’re alone. “It’s perfect.”

He brings the lava lamp to his bedroom, sets it on his dresser, and kills the overheads. The light is weak at first, but it warms up, slowly and surely, until the little hockey players float in lazy spirals between blobs of blue goo. The whole thing looks stupid and dreamlike and right.

The room is underwater: blue swells sliding slow-motion up the wall, shadows drifting and colliding, mirrored in the window and doubled in the dark. Blair flops beside me, his face full of lamplight.

Dream memory bleeds in: Blair asleep beside me, that exact light pooling across his bare shoulder. I invented that; I dreamed it up. It was part of my dream, but here I am, and here that shivering glow is.

Blue swells and shrinks. He takes my hand and twines our fingers together, bringing them to his chest. The lamp gurgles quietly as my breath syncs with his. I almost forget the borders between dreams and reality; I could almost believe I never lost anything.

The blue rises. Folds. Falls. Blair’s heartbeat drums against my knuckles, steady as waves on sand. His thumb strokes across mine, and I open my eyes to watch the blue melt over him, real, solid, and here.

“I love you,” he whispers.