The Fall

by Tal Bauer

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.

If I pick up this fucking pencil and nail down the angles where his cheekbones slide into his jawline, maybe I can catch a piece of him to hold on to. Maybe I can preserve the whole ocean that stays trapped behind his eyes.

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?

Twenty-eight days sober, and Blair Callahan is still the only drug I can’t quit.

It’s all a dream, a beautiful dream. I remember skating beside him last night, last week, a year ago, a year from now. I remember his lips on mine, both never and forever. Past and future collapse into this single point where Blair exists, where we exist together, where every version of us that ever was or could be converges into now. I breathe through it, through this ache that tastes like hope and fear.

Every version of me orbits this same truth: he is the fixed point in my universe.

If love alone could rewrite fate, I’d already have dragged us clear of every nightmare.

To change this, I would have to betray this. I would have to play with less than everything I have, throw games, sabotage their future. To steal this chance from him would be a betrayal beyond words. How do you refuse fate when it wears the face of everything you love? No, I will not dishonor him by giving him less than the man I have become. However much time resists or repeats itself, I can’t be the one to quit first.

If joy could shatter walls, there’d be nothing left but sky.

I lift my head and meet his eyes. The blue there runs deeper than any ocean I’ve ever imagined, and God, how many times have I fallen into those exact eyes? Infinite times. A number that stretches out behind me and before me, a constant in a universe of variables.

I fought for a year to rebuild this life, and I have only succeeded in reconstructing the path to the grave.

Time is a river that only flows one direction, but I am the stone in the waters.

I have always known that I would end here. Dark water calls to dark water, the ocean inside me rising to meet its larger self. It’s like coming home, like closing a circle, an ending that chews its tail and calls itself a beginning.

His kiss holds the quiet peace and infinite patience of the ocean. He is the beginning and end of every timeline.