The Fall

by Tal Bauer

“You were gone for three minutes before they brought you back.” Three minutes. The span of a pop song, the time it takes to brew coffee. An eternity when you’re watching the person you love slip away.

“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 never stopped wanting to make you proud,” I tell him, my voice catching. “Even when I was angry.” He nods, and holds my face in both of his hands. “I know. And I never stopped being proud, even when I couldn’t say it.”

“This is Torey. He’s...” Blair pauses. His voice crawls up from somewhere deep. “Everything.”

Our nameplates have been updated: Callahan-Kendrick.

Blair Callahan was the man who would save my life, not only by pulling me out of those dark waters and the sinking Escalade, but by pulling me out of every crashing wave and all the thousand drownings I was succumbing to.