The Fall

by Tal Bauer

“I never used to believe in soul mates,” he says softly, laying me down. The words are hoarse and scraped from his throat; they are ghosts. “But you…” My fingertips catch on the stubble of his jaw as I follow the angle of his cheekbone, the curve of his lower lip. “You are my forever.”

“I love you,” he whispers. “Never forget that.” I close my eyes for a heartbeat, long enough to feel his lips on my brow. If this is what forever tastes like, let it linger; let it echo.

“I will never forget you,” I promise. If love could anchor us, we’d never fall. But time doesn’t suspend itself for love.

I know the sickening certainty of what follows. I understand now; I’m back at the beginning that was really the middle, heading toward an ending I’ve already endured.

Blair sleeps beside me, unaware that I’ve loved him across time, that I’ve lost him already, that I might lose him again. Each breath he takes is a beat in a song I am about to forget.

I loved him once without knowing why. I love him now knowing everything. I’ll love him always, even when time steals him away again.

I would rewrite the stars for you. I would tear the universe apart to keep you safe.

Please, please. Don’t let it be for nothing. I can’t lose him again I can’t go through this again please please please I can’t I can’t⁠—

“I would have followed you,” he confesses, his voice so, so soft. “In the water, or here. If they hadn’t brought you back, I would have followed you.”

“I’ve lost too much already, pieces of myself I’ll never get back. I survived, barely, but I did. But you—” His voice cracks. “Losing you would end me. There’d be nothing left worth fighting for. Nothing worth salvaging out of me.”

I would make the slow, terrifying, beautiful crawl back to him in every life, in every time, with every breath I draw.

Get back up, Torey. Always get back up. This smudge wants to steal my future? Fine. Let it try.

“How many versions of ourselves do you think there have been?” I ask. He turns his head, the water barely rippling around him. “I don’t know, but I feel bad for all of them. None of them get to be here now.”

“This version of you,” I whisper as the first hint of dawn illuminates his profile, “is my favorite.”

Science can explain so much. But not everything.

I lay my bouquet on Cody’s headstone, and I whisper, “I’ll take care of him.” Sunlight glints on the polished granite of his headstone, a flash as bright and light as a laugh.

“When you come back to playing hockey,” Lily asks, “will you and Uncle Blair have your names on each other’s jerseys?” Hayes chokes on his Dole Whip. “Lily, baby⁠—” “You said they were old and married, Daddy!” Blair laughs. “We might, hon. We might.”

You came back to me twice. Once from a future that couldn’t hold us, once from the edge of leaving me behind. We have faced the worst together and we survived. You are the bravest person I’ve ever known.

“I love you, Torey Kendrick. I want every day with you: the good ones, the hard ones, all of them.” His voice breaks as he falls to one knee. “Will you marry me?”

Time brings us where we’re meant to be, and I’m exactly where I belong.

Blair saved me in a thousand quiet ways.

I no longer need, or want, an explanation. What happened is the map that led us here, to each other and to the rest of our lives. Some might call it fate. Others might say coincidence. I call it ours.

We stripped away the impossible, endured the unthinkable, and built our own reality. And it is so much better than any dream.

“I would have found you,” he says, “even if it took a thousand lifetimes, I would have found you, Torey.”

He found me when I was lost in Vancouver, a ghost haunting my own life. He saw me; he wanted to pull me out of there. He found me here in Tampa, and he found me again in the water, pulling me from the wreckage.