The Fall

by Tal Bauer

I don’t know how to be a man who won’t give up; I don’t know how to be a man who doesn’t give up on himself. And I’ve tried so hard to become someone else. I don’t remember what tomorrow is supposed to look like, and I don’t know what to do.

How do you fix yourself when you don’t know what’s broken? How do you find your way when you’re so lost you don’t know which way is north? Or worse—what if you’re not broken and this is just you, as good as you’ll ever get? What if this is it?

I’m not suicidal, but I’m desperate, and the difference is razor-thin. Here, hovering on the knife-edge between the two, I can’t say which way I’ll fall.

I’m drowning in all of it, in what I could have been, what I wish I could be, if only⁠— I want it to stop. I want to hold on to the silence of a world where I’m the only thing in it. And I’m so tired of being alone.

A hopeless part of me clings to happy endings. I want destiny, and forever, and my name stamped in silver that screams to the universe that I existed, that I mattered.

Dreams die in slow, rotting stages.

Inhale, exhale. Does anyone remember that I am living inside this disappointed life?

Someone learned to love me. I do not have his courage. Not yet. But I want to. I want to remember how I fell in love. Let me try, at least. If I built this life once, maybe I can build it again.

I already know who I am without him—alone on a midnight beach, skinned raw by regret—and I’m not going back there.

I’m lost in this dark, and I wish so much that there was someone I could reach out to, someone I wouldn’t break in half if I admitted the truth. Someone whose heart wouldn’t shatter if I said, “I don’t remember you at all.”

His lips brush my temple. I don’t remember loving him, but like this, with his heart thudding against mine, I can’t imagine not.

It scares me how deep this love runs when I have no memory of how we got here. Every atom of me is oriented toward him. He is my North Star.

I want to burn this moment into my broken memory so deeply that it can never be stolen away again. Nothing’s truly lost until you forget the taste of another man’s lips. And I will never forget him.

Who is this version of me that could have such an impact? This ghost in my memories has done so much with himself.

Here he is, offering himself: captain, builder, believer, lover. The man who leads us, who absorbs every hit and asks for more, has stripped away all his armor and is simply standing here, waiting. He is giving me his world without condition, asking only if I want to step inside, share his horizon.

I was vulnerable. Desperate for connection. My brain—fucked-up from the hit, starving for anything to hold onto—latched onto Blair and built a world where I mattered, where I wasn’t⁠— Alone.

“You’re gone.” I knew that already. “We’re shipping you out. We’ve offloaded you.” I blink. “What? Like a trade?” He pauses. “It’s a cap dump. They’re taking you, your contract, everything.” “Where—where am I going?” “Tampa.”

Somewhere in this city, Blair is completely unaware that I’m about to walk into his life carrying a dream that died before it began.

How do you mourn someone who’s standing right in front of you? How do you let go of a love that was only ever yours?

It’s so easy to disappear. My hand twitches toward the drink. It would take nothing. It would take everything I still might be. A thin ember within me refuses to go out.

I love him. It’s a love that wants to carry water for him, sharpen his blades, and stand in front of whatever wind is cutting his face. I will swim in these dark waters forever as long as Blair is there with me.

What do you give the man who steadied you through storms and then hands you back the sky?

I want to give him… everything. How do you wrap love in paper and a bow? What do you give the man whose heartbeat I can still feel against my cheek, even though he’s never held me that way?

“What the fuck was that out there?” Blair growls. My rage flares up again. “He boarded you. He could have broken your neck.” His eyes narrow. “I don’t need you to fight my battles.” “Too bad.”

“Leave the fighting to me. That’s my job. I’m the one who buries guys, and I’m the one who puts them through the glass if they fuck with you.” “Then who stands up for you?” “You think you should?” “I do.”

“You shouldn’t have fought him,” he says. “I’d do it again.”

“Did you land some decent punches at least?” “You didn’t see the replay?” “Oh, I saw it. You fucking psycho.”

“Don’t fight for me,” he says. “That’s not what I want.” “I’ll take on the whole fucking league for you, Blair.”

“I can take hits,” he says. His voice is soft. “I’ve taken worse than tonight. I can’t take you breaking yourself for me. Don’t. Don’t, Torey.”

Blair points to my stick. “That’s staying right there,” he says. “As a reminder of what happens when you never, ever quit.” The thunder of sticks against floor reaches fever pitch. Blair’s voice cuts through it like a blade. “And if you want something breathtaking, you’d better be willing to burn for it.”

Blair’s voice echoes inside me: if you want something breathtaking, you better be willing to burn for it. I want to blaze.

A thousand tiny moments—shared looks, incidental contact, a private joke—stack up inside me. I’m braced for impact or for launch; I don’t know what I’m waiting for, only that I am. Sometimes, it feels like Blair.

It may never have happened, but the heartbreak I feel is real, and so is this craving.

I close my eyes and let every broken piece of my mind—from a night that never happened, under these same lights that never saw us dance—slash into my heart and bleed through me. I want. And I break.

I lie flat on my back on the bed, tie loose. I’m dressed for success, and failure has never been closer. I’m not tired. I’m empty. I don’t want to be alone; I don’t want to be with people, either. The contradiction burns.

Never let me remember again. Never let me imagine, or want, or hunger for what I can never have. And, at the same time, I would bleed myself out for one moment of that life back. I would give up everything, I would sell my soul, I would sacrifice my last breath if I could kiss Blair again.

“How’d you get the glasses?” “Asked the bartender. Pretty sure he thought I was trying to impress a girl.” “But you brought them to me instead. He’ll be disappointed.” “I’m not.”

“Am I interrupting? Are you… heading to bed?” He hesitates. “Or were you… going out?” “No, definitely not. I was… lying around.” I might as well have said, Staring at the ceiling and trying not to think about you.

Hope is a terrifying thing, rising in your throat after you’ve spent so long learning to live without it.

“Tampa wasn’t an accident, Torey. I asked them to bring you here.”

“Some days, watching you on the ice was like watching his ghost. And when we play together, it reminds me of when I played with Cody.”

“With you, the game isn’t broken, Torey. With you, I’m not broken.” He tries—and fails—to smile. “Even if I am.” I breathe in the night air. My hands shake. I hide them in my pockets where he won’t see. “You’re not broken,” I say. “Not to me.”

Up here, we’re not captain and rookie. We’re not the guy who lost his brother and the guy who might remind him of that loss. We’re Blair and Torey, standing at the edge of a new year with the taste of truth still fresh between us.

I want to touch him, to kiss him, to pull him close and breathe him in until we’re one person instead of two. I want to know if his heart races when we’re close like mine does. I want impossible things.

I want to ask if he dreams about a life he’s never lived. If he ever wakes up reaching for someone who isn’t there. If he’s ever felt like he’s missing something vital but can’t name what it is.

I’d listen to him talk about anything—his childhood, his fears, his dreams—for hours. Days. All I want is to bring him peace, even if what he needs isn’t me. Even if I unravel. Even if I break.

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.

He knows the truth now. He saw my desperate, suffocating need laid bare across those pages. He saw my obsession.

I’m in love with him. Helplessly, hopelessly in love, and now he knows it in lurid black and white. He’s in my veins, under my skin.

“Why are you here?” His thumb stills. He swallows. “I got the text about your medical flag and I—” His hands slide up to the sides of my neck. “I came here for you.”