The Fall

by Tal Bauer

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 want destiny, and forever, and my name stamped in silver that screams to the universe that I existed, that I mattered.

The last thing I see is Blair Callahan skating the blue line, watching me across the ice.

This is nowhere close to Vancouver. This is not my apartment, not any version of my life I recognize. Sheets—wrong. Bed—wrong. Man in the bed—profoundly, catastrophically wrong.

Last night, I thought about ending everything on that beach. I thought I could walk into the ocean and vanish from this earth. I didn’t, I fucking didn’t, and then there was the game, and the hit, that hit, and now⁠— I’m here, in the future, with Blair.

What are the symptoms of a major concussion? Nausea, vertigo, splitting headaches, sensitivity to light, and, in some cases, episodes of amnesia. Amnesia.

I can’t decide which hurts deeper: the loss of the past year, or the envy for the me who earned all this.

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.

Can I learn enough in four hours to fake my own life?

“When I walked in here a few minutes ago, you had the same look on your face that you had the last time you had an episode.” Her voice is low and intimate. “Like your whole world has collapsed.”

Punta Gorda.

Oof I used to live here

What do I say to the man who loves me when I can’t remember holding his hand?

What hurts worse—your dream come true and losing it, or realizing it came true for someone else?

He makes me want to drop to my knees and part his thighs in front of everyone, fuck the secrecy, fuck the NHL, let me bury my face in the heat of his⁠—

“Someone could see.” But he doesn’t pull away. He exhales and drops his helmet to mine again. “I don’t care.”

“Torey ... Do you want to be asked?”

“I never used to believe in soul mates,” he breathes. “But you…”

“You are my forever.”

As long as I have this, as long as I have him, I can face anything, do anything, become anything. Even myself.

“I love you. Never forget that.”

“I could never forget you,” I promise.

I wait, listening for the echo of the fall, half-certain it will start again if I move. Every muscle screams, taut with a terror that has no name, no source. If I breathe deeper, I feel the fall again.

The Fall

All I know for certain is the fall.

We are sideways on the bridge when a truck T-bones us.

What the fuck

His eyes are ocean-deep, a blue I could fall into and never surface, but the sun is setting within those eyes. I’m watching the light fall out of him.

A year. A whole year, gone, erased. Again.

Without Blair… God, without Blair, what am I? Who am I? Every inch of me is washed in terror. I can’t go back to the Torey I was before him.

Where? Where did he go?

WHERE'D YOU GO GO, ALLEY ROSE?!

Please, please. Don’t take him away. Don’t make me live in a world where he doesn’t—where I can’t—where I⁠— I love you. Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.

Irrationally, my words taste like betrayal, like I’m wiping away Blair’s touch from my skin and his love from my life.

There are no palm trees here.

Here I am in the dark, clutching him through the static of my phone screen. Blair in pixels, me in fragments.

Maybe I blacked out and Blair was the last thing I saw before I lost hold of reality, and I built up a new one out of the blue of his eyes.

I know these more than I know myself. The scent of Blair’s skin after a game. The feel of his hand in mine. His laughter, low and warm, all for me.

the more detailed the lines I draw, the more agonizing his absence is. He’s here, but he’s not.

He exists in the graphite beneath my nails, in the hammering beat of my heart. He has to.

“Tampa.”

SCREAMINGCRYINGTHROWINGUP

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.

I’ve always been drawn to places I can drown.

There’s no broken hockey stick nailed to the wall.

My love was—and is—the only real thing in this whole mess,

“Kicks—” His voice cracks. “Torey. You saved her.”

I AM SOBBING

Blair’s younger brother. Dead at twenty-two. It was an overdose.

Cody and me, two kids drowning in the same ocean at different times.

This puck weighs nothing and everything. It’s three ounces of rubber that sailed past a goalie’s glove. Three ounces that brought Blair’s eyes to mine across twenty feet of ice. Three ounces that brought his hand to mine, his fingers against my fingers.

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

This is a small circle of proof that I could be what he needed. For one shift. For one shot. For tonight.

Twenty-six days sober, and Blair still leaves me feeling drunk.

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

“You are Lily’s new best friend, man.” He says it like a badge of honor. “And you’re stuck with us forever.”

Crying