The Fall

by Tal Bauer

“Sometimes I look at you,” he says, his voice low, “and I forget how quiet my life was before.”

What did I do to become the person who could fill a silence in Blair Callahan’s life?

He’s got that captain’s aura, that indefinable something that makes you want to follow him into battle. Or off a cliff. Or head over heels in love.

I know, as deeply as any man can know a foundational truth: Blair and I are meant to be together. On the ice, off the ice. We are two halves of one singularity.

The heat of his hand has spread, blooming across my skin like watercolor on wet paper.

I bite into my croissant. Flaky, butter-rich layers dissolve on my tongue. Everything tastes better when you’re happy.

Outside the window, the world is a black ocean of stars, and we are suspended in the swells, caught between where we were and where we are going.

You are the part of me I never knew was lost, my missing piece I never knew I needed.

Fuck memory. It was real to me, more real than anything, but now I have to keep living in this world, the one without him. I don’t know how. I don’t know if I can.

I’m trying to part fog with my hands to find fading fireflies.

His eyes drift over me and then away, and that’s it. That’s all. What did I expect? That he’d take one look at me and remember something that never happened? That he’d feel what I feel—this impossible ache for someone I’ve never actually touched? No, of course not. So this is how it begins. Again. For the first time.

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?

“And if you want something breathtaking, you’d better be willing to burn for it.”

Another firework screams upward, and in the brief flash of green light, I want to tell him he was—and is—every reason I had to keep going, to keep fighting, to keep building, that he was my sun when everything turned to darkness. He is my sun and my moon and every star in my sky.

people cheer. Car horns blare. The city celebrates another year survived.

His next words are low enough only I could ever hear them: “I don’t know how not to fall for you.” His confession sinks past bone and into the very center of me. “Fall,” I choke out. “I’ll catch you.” He stills completely. The roaming of his hands halts. Every muscle in his body goes taut. For a long second, he doesn’t move. Then, slowly, he lifts his head. “I think you already have.”

“You’re not the only one falling in love.” He cups the base of my skull and holds on, forehead resting against mine. “Don’t say it unless it’s real.” “It’s real.” It’s you, Blair. Everything in me starts and ends with you.

I go through the motions of getting ready for bed. My face in his bathroom mirror looks strange. Tired, uncertain, caught between memory and this moment. Being here feels like breathing in ghosts.

If love alone fixed people, none of us would break at all.

How do I explain that the fear isn’t of shadows, but of the light? That this much happiness feels like a height from which I could fall.

None of this is guaranteed, not the next day or the next shift or the next quiet morning.

What if fighting destiny is what creates it?

He’s whole and here and alive, and I love him with the devotion of tides that always return no matter how far they’re dragged into the deep.

Why does love always feel like holding your breath underwater, waiting for either salvation or the sea to claim you?

So this is it; this is what it is to love so completely that it terrifies you.

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.

“You and me, Kicks,” he says. He is what the universe will take from me. “You and me, forever.” He’s making a vow he doesn’t know he’s breaking. Forever is not an open expanse of days; it’s a closed loop with an ending that rips me open every time I reach it. His forever is a promise; mine is a memory I’m doomed to relive.

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

There is no prayer or promise more sacred than giving him my heartbeats.

written into the spaces between synapses.

this man who would set his dreams on fire to keep me warm.

Blair’s eyes lock on mine, trust and love and every midnight we ever shared packed into two ocean irises. He’s a constellation against the dark of night, and he folds his hand through mine. He squeezes once, strong and certain. This is Blair, the man I crossed time to reach again.

Time brings us where we’re meant to be,

ghost haunting my own life. He saw me;