The Fall

by Tal Bauer

I’m not suicidal, but I’m desperate, and the difference is razor-thin.

The thread runs thick with inside jokes, casual I-love-yous, the mundane bliss of being known.

What do I want? Everything. I want to claw back the year I’ve lost, and I want his body to tell me who I am.

My heart is untamed and wild; there’s nowhere to hide, and no need for it now.

My hands fumble with his shirt. I should be suave, confident, but Blair strips me down to my rawest parts, peels back the bravado and the bullshit until all that’s left is my yearning.

He’s hard edges and sin, and he’s looking at me like I’m the only thing that matters.

I drift to the window overlooking the bay. I’ve always been drawn to places I can drown.

I trace Blair’s name on his jersey and let the night hold me, waiting for tomorrow to decide if I’m still worth saving.

It’s not meant to be hostile. Mountains aren’t hostile; they’re simply there.

Seeing Blair fail is like watching a mountain crumble.

Blair is swinging fists at shadows no one else can see.

I played better in the second period. I’m trying. In another life, you loved me.

My love was—and is—the only real thing in this whole mess, and it’s lodged in me like shrapnel.

The ice holds my confessions, each cut a conversation between me and what I used to be.

When I leave this moment behind, it becomes memory, and memories have proven unreliable in my life.

I will not beg the past to spoon-feed me a future.

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 don’t know how to reach for greatness when good enough has been my ceiling for so long.

Momentum doesn’t announce itself when it arrives; you notice it after, like a breath you didn’t know you were holding.

“Blair doesn’t throw flowers; he writes you into his battle plan. You’re on his line, right? From him, that’s saying a lot.”

“We take what tries to break us and we make it ours. We take their doubts and we forge them into something harder than they’ll ever be.”

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

That agony in his voice is the same one that lives in my marrow.

“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 may have wanted to woo me, but all he had to do was open the door.

The guilt in his voice rides shotgun with a love so strong it bends everything around it.

I brace his board while he hauls himself back on as delicate as a hippo trying to climb a ladder.

“I love you,” he whispers, over and over and over again, while starlight spills across our tangled bodies and all our tomorrows wait on the other side of this perfect darkness.

I watch the way his eyes shine in the low light, the way he looks at me like I’m a secret he’s been aching to tell.

His words settle over me like sunlight through a window I didn’t know was open.

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.

The air still hums with yesterday’s laughter,

He pushes his helmet against mine, forehead-to-forehead. “Play stupid games.” Blair grins. “Win stupid prizes. Nobody fucks with what’s mine.”

All our love can’t change the physics of falling.

His touch sears through my shirt. He always runs hot, but tonight he’s a furnace, and I want to burn.

Each sweep of his thumb rewrites what I know about wanting. “When you laugh like that...” His words hang there, and the air thickens, pulling all my focus into the charged space between us. “I think it’s my favorite sound in the world.”

I know exactly why he’s thinking about Cody tonight. Because we won. Because he’s happy. Because guilt comes for him whenever joy gets too close.

A small smile touches his lips. It’s a memory worn thin from handling.

Grief rewrites at the cellular level. It changes how love moves through your body.

I’d stand between him and any storm. If life tries to pull him under, I’ll be his mooring. For every scar he hides, I’ll press a promise against it: you’re not alone. I want to be the undoing that doesn’t wreck him, the safe place after where he can shelter his soul. Already, my heart carries him everywhere, the way the tide always carries the shore.

The loop can steal our tomorrows, but it cannot erase what we’ve already been to each other.

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

Blair, if wishes live anywhere, let them find you.

This is how I claim him, until there’s nothing left but us and the golden hush between heartbeats.

Yes. Yes. Always yes. This is what drowning feels like when you want to go under. This is what burning feels like when you’ve been cold your whole life.

If we stay perfectly still, if we don’t move or breathe or blink, maybe the universe will forget to tear us apart again.

If time is a loop, let tonight be the axis it turns on.

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.

If this is all I get, then I’ll love him fiercely enough to echo across all of time. I’ll hold him close enough to leave marks on eternity, and when the fall comes, I’ll face it knowing this: 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.

And what good is breathing when tomorrow he’ll be gone?