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“The necessary condition for the occurrence of such a strange state of affairs in a person’s erotic life appears to be that at a very early age, somewhere in the prehistoric period of his infancy, the two opposites [love and hatred] should have been split apart and one of them, usually the hatred, have been repressed.”
–Sigmund Freud, The “Rat Man”
"and they’d all be so disappointed / cause who am i if not exploited?"
–Olivia Rodrigo, brutal
When Shane is little, he learns that Yuna’s smiles mean different things.
His favorite is the easiest for him to understand. It’s her smile when he’s on the ice. When he’s—how old was he, four?—maybe five—and asks her for a hockey stick for his birthday. When he’s eight years old and the coach of his peewee league pulls her aside after practice, Shane clinging to her skirt, and tells her in a low voice, as if telling a terrible secret, that he thinks her son has something really special. When he’s twelve and slams a defender so hard against the glass that his nose cracks and bleeds all over the ice; later, Shane will skate through the frozen blood, creating red ridges of slush. He didn’t mean to hurt him; he was just intent on the puck and all he could think was this was an obstacle in his way. The kid is twice his size, blonde, and swears after him in snarling Quebecois. Shane could have retorted perfectly, but he doesn’t because he’s not that kind of boy. Yuna was born in Canada but, because her parents don’t speak French, hers is clunky at best; when she takes Shane home after practice, she clicks her tongue and tells him to be a good sport, but for the rest of the car ride, she can’t stop beaming.
She has other smiles, one of which Shane discovers later; he sees it only a few times, and always by accident. In middle school he gets obsessed with Pokemon. He knows the names of every single one and all their stats; he beats every game, even the old ones, and eventually he starts trying to draw his favorite characters. He doesn’t have a knack for drawing from memory, no natural sense of figure or perspective, so he looks up pictures online and painstakingly imitates each line, erasing with a hiss of frustration when he misses a stroke, biting into the pencil so hard that, sometimes, it breaks. One night after hockey practice, he’s working in his sketchbook and Yuna comes into his room. She looks over his shoulder; he doesn’t try to hide his drawings from her, though later he will, without understanding why. Much later, over some Christmas or New Year’s when he’s nineteen or twenty, Shane will look through the sketchbooks piled in a corner of his room and realize he wasn’t very good. Yuna must have known it too, because her smile is slight, reserved. It makes him feel lonely, but he doesn’t know why, or even that loneliness is what he’s feeling.
“That’s very nice, dear,” she says, and though he doesn’t understand what she means, he immediately understands that this is nothing like her other smile. Nothing like when he’s eight years old and they’re at the dinner table, and David asks them who holds the record for most games in a season with a goal scored (as opposed to most goals scored overall), and they both answer at the same time—Brett Hull—and they both have it right. When she smiles this smile, her mouth cuts across her face, and her eyes light up at him. The light is so bright—conspiratiorial and covetous, the light of shared secrets. Shane struggles to understand most people’s expressions, but not this one. He knows exactly what it means.
You are just like me, and I am just like you, and we will be together always.
It’s a promise, a serious one, and Shane is a serious child. So, when he’s twelve and they decide he is going to try to make it to the MHL, he makes a promise to Yuna in return, slashing it deep in his soul. He promises that he will do everything in his power to make the draft. It doesn’t matter if he overworks himself, if he’s too careful or too assiduous; he will leave no stone unturned. That way, if the time comes and he fails, he will know it could not have been his fault. Shane can tolerate harsh discipline; he can tolerate working harder than he really needs to; he thinks he could even tolerate not getting drafted, if that’s how the cards truly fell; but he does not think he could survive knowing that, by his own negligence, he let his mother down. So, to avoid this pain unimaginable, he promises he won’t.
A promise feels like certainty. Shane likes certainty. At twelve years old, he creates a training schedule, carefully recording the exercises he has to do each day on white index cards with check boxes beside them, and he keeps to it. He keeps to it even over the summer, even over Christmas, and he creates a diet, the first of many, and he keeps to that, too. Meanwhile he does well in school; he’s not the quickest in the class, but teachers love him, sweet, dutiful Shane; girls love him, too, which embarrasses him, and he turns them down, which he thinks maybe pleases Yuna, though later she will begin to worry that he doesn’t go out more; he doesn’t have many friends either, and he knows this worries her too, but he gets along with his teammates, and soon that’s all that matters. Because, as it turns out, Shane is really fucking good at hockey.
Shane is so good at hockey, in fact, that as long as his life stays set within these tight parameters—as long as hockey is the only thing that matters—he has absolute power to make everything go right. And it does. And it feels good. He feels happy. For years, he will think of his childhood as only happy.
Ilya is the first time he ever puts himself in a situation to endure doubt. Doubt, doubt, doubt all the time—when they’re first hooking up, doubt after every encounter, of facing again the bare truth of how badly he wants this and how little he knows whether he will ever get it again. Then, when he realizes he loves Ilya and decides to chase after him, doubt in that hotel room in Tampa, Ilya pushing him away, Shane not certain that, if he pushes back, Ilya will fall towards him. It’s a leap of faith, faith which allows doubt and outlasts it. Faith is different from certainty, which prohibits doubt, seeks to banish it. Faith—smooth, flexible. Warm as skin. Is it faith that keeps Shane awake that night in the cottage, putting together the plan for Ilya to go to Ottawa? The plan that makes Ilya turn his face away, that makes Shane turn his face back, laughing, touching the tear that slips down his cheek? Is it faith that makes Ilya summon up his own bravery in turn? That makes him tell Shane the truth? That makes Shane say it back? That makes everything possible in a different way than it has ever been possible before?
Alone in a hotel room in Denver, after a mediocre game they won no thanks to his distracted playing, Shane sits on the edge of the bed and chews on his thumbnail. He and Ilya have made a promise to each other, too. But Shane doesn’t quite know where to place this promise in the series of promises that have made up his life so far.
Ilya is not doing well. It doesn’t take a master empath to see this. He’s distant; Shane pushes; Ilya snaps at him; they fight; they make up; they have sex; Shane misses Ilya; Ilya misses Shane; still, when they’re together, Ilya isn’t there, or a piece of him isn’t. Shane has known this for a while now. He’s tried to talk with Ilya about it a few times, and it hasn’t worked, and he hasn’t pressed, but the last time they were together was different—that is, worse. It’s after they get home from watching Hayden’s kids, after the fake wedding, pink and purple plastic rings still in their pockets. They’re watching a movie in Shane’s living room with dinner in the oven. Things feel normal. Quiet. Nothing bad has happened. In fact, the afternoon has been good. Better than good. It has been moving. Important. Maybe this has something to do with why, sitting with his shoulder pressed against Ilya’s, Shane feels him so distant it’s as if, no matter how close he presses, they do not really touch.
Shane screws up his courage.
“Ilya?” he says.
Ilya says, “Yes?”
“I feel like, maybe, you’re not okay. Sometimes.”
“Not okay how?”
Frustration flares in Shane, but he doesn’t waver. Being with Ilya brings out a determination in him that he’s never experienced before. It’s not the same as the determination that makes him an excellent hockey player, that draws him to regimen, to structuring unsettled things. This new determination is just as flinty, set in him like foundation, but there’s no edge of desperation to it; it doesn’t try to ward anything off. It is this determination that, years ago, made him sit beside Ilya at the hotel bar in Tampa, that made him, sizing up his loud Hawaiian shirt, smirk at him (smirk!) and say, “Well, you’re pulling it off.” It is this determination that made him push back in the hotel room, made him, when Ilya lied—“Is simple for me”—face his own anger for once in his life and retort, “Bullshit.” This was a bravery so unfathomable it seemed not to belong to him, that it wasn’t his choice but simply had to be true: that is, he could no longer balance to himself the equation of not trying to have Ilya with the safety of denial and so understood, as little as he wanted to risk himself to this boy who, by all reasonable predictions, would only crush his heart, that such a risk was necessary to avoid the still more catastrophic loss of possibility itself.
This didn’t feel like a choice, but it was. Many people lived in denial of what they needed, survived without it, for years. For their entire lives. Shane had thought he would be one of them. Then he decided not to be. It was his choice. It was his bravery.
Now, gazing at Ilya across the couch, the same determination rises within him and makes him say, “Sometimes you seem…sad. Or, I dunno, withdrawn.”
Ilya keeps his eyes on the TV. “Withwhat?”
Shane isn’t sure whether he really doesn’t know the word or is trying to throw him off. He persists.
“Withdrawn, like, um, quiet.”
“Everyone is quiet sometimes. You should try it.”
Shane draws in a breath and decides to let this one slide. He knows meanness is one of Ilya’s first defenses. If he can push past it—steady, earnest—he will break through. He reaches out and places a hand on Ilya’s knee.
“You don’t have to deal with anything alone, all right?”
Ilya doesn’t look at him. “Yes. Fine.”
“I’m serious.”
At last Ilya’s gaze snaps to him. He’s angry. A real flash of it—deep, vicious. Panicked. Shane knows that this anger is a second emotion, that underlying it is always fear, but that doesn’t make it easier for him to weather it. It wasn’t easy on that rooftop in Vegas—you are here for view, Hollander, this is view, fucking check it out—it wasn’t easy in that hotel room in Tampa—because Russia, I could not go back to Russia—and it’s not easy now. It’s hard, always hard, but usually Shane has the stuff, earnestness tough as flint, cutting through. By now Ilya knows this too. When he decides to, he lets Shane in. But tonight he doesn’t decide to.
“If there is something, I will tell you,” he snaps. “But there is nothing. So let’s eat bad lasagna and shut up about it, okay?”
It’s true: the lasagna Shane made for them is bad. On some level, he knows this. Zucchini noodles suck. But it’s not a coincidence that Ilya uses this to throw him off, and it works. Shane had hoped for a while that bravery was a permanent choice. That it was a decision you made once—an invitation to the cottage, a kiss on the ice—that changed your life forever. But it isn’t. Shane does not want to talk about food. So, if Ilya brings it up, Ilya is going to get what he wants: they’re not going to talk at all.
This isn’t the first time this has happened, which irritates Shane, but not enough to make him consider changing his behavior. Sometimes he even tells himself there’s no behavior to change. Shane has had diets for years, just one of many structures he creates for himself. It’s normal. All athletes do it. Even Ilya, no matter how relaxed he seems, drinks protein shakes and avoids carbs and chooses lean meats like everyone else. Shane isn’t sure why this diet feels different from all the ones he’s had before. It’s only sometimes that he can admit to himself that it feels any different at all. Half the time he insists to himself it’s nothing new. Just trying something out. Nothing fundamental has shifted.
He doesn’t like having these two halves of himself, the one who knows and the one who doesn’t want to. Sometimes he wants to blame Ilya for it, as if Shane’s ambivalence began with him, but he knows this isn’t true. It began a long time ago. It began before the day he sat in a restaurant in Toronto with Rose, her eyes growing softer and sadder across the table at him; before his father rushed out the door of the cottage, speeding away; before his mother told him about a Swedish prince then changed it to princess. I don’t want you to lie, Shane. That’s not who you are. But no matter what she promised him, “who he is” was never guaranteed. There’s always been possibility for who he can choose or not choose to be.
He wishes he could crush that possibility like a bug. Exterminate forever the option of betraying himself, be certain he was doing the right thing. He used to feel certain all the time. He doesn’t know how anymore.
Shane is brushing his teeth in Denver when his phone lights up with a Facetime call. He smiles, mouth full of toothpaste; he spits; he picks up just before the last ring. Ilya is blinking back at him, the phone held close to his face, looking rumpled, but Shane doesn’t miss that glint in his eyes, which he attunes to like a dog to a whistle, or a child to danger. A curl of desire answers in his belly, but he waits. Something about the exhaustion in Ilya’s eyes, its soft impact on his entire face, pulls on a tender spot in his heart.
“I thought you weren’t going to pick up,” says Ilya, and Shane doesn’t think he means it to be poignant, but that’s how he experiences it.
“I was brushing my teeth and I had to spit and rinse first,” he says, nonetheless matter-of-fact, which makes Ilya smile.
“Of course,” he says, with an answering tenderness that makes Shane’s stomach swoop. How curious to know that their hearts are pulled on by each other in the exact same way. How lovely. How terrifying that this overlap, so precious, is coincidence, completely outside of Shane’s power to ensure.
“How are you?” Shane asks softly.
“Okay,” says Ilya, and it feels honest. Even through the screen, Shane can feel him present. It’s strange how the distance isn’t always there. “I miss you.”
The Centaurs lost today. Shane knows, too, that Ilya is hard on himself; even though he doesn’t show it in the same way—all glibness and chaotic breakthrough, brilliant, unscheduled—he works just as hard as Shane, or nearly, and he wants to be good, and he feels bad when he’s not. Shane has many times wanted to ask him how he really feels about his team, but here is another place where fear stops him. He’s not proud of this, but he’s not ready to know how Ilya feels about what he sacrificed so they could be together.
“I miss you too,” Shane says instead, which is also honest. It’s strange how in a relationship truth and deception can cohabitate for long periods of time, how he can fail to say many things while other things he does say can still be true.
Ilya watches him for another minute.
“You look pretty,” he murmurs. It’s an old line, a line from a time when truer ways of speaking with each other were unavailable to them. Shane wonders why he’s bringing it out again now, but he’s half-hard already, has been since he heard Ilya’s voice, and doesn’t want to dwell on it tonight. He’s sitting on the bed propped up against the pillows; he palms himself once, twice.
“So do you,” he says.
“No, no I don’t.” Ilya leans back, a smile beginning to make its way onto his face. “I am exhausted.”
He’s baiting him, Shane knows, but not for compliments as he pretends to be. He wants exactly what Shane is going to say, which is:
“Okay, fine. You look like shit then.”
This is the miracle: this is what Shane most naturally wants to say. Even if Ilya hadn’t wanted it. But he does, and he laughs with delight, long and luxurious—a laugh that wastes time, that spools out like a cat between them, like there isn’t so much else to be concerned with. It’s a laugh Shane is incapable of, and he feels it warm in his chest. Ilya is watching him, and even though they move their phones away so they can see more of each other, even though it’s sex, or maybe precisely because it is, there’s something about his gaze that delves, at once effortless and with surgical intent, towards a tiny point hidden somewhere deep inside of Shane.
He’s always been able to do that. From the first day they met. It always exhilarated Shane, but it took him a long time to allow it. For a while after they finally got together, Shane thought that he had done away with the other half of himself. The half that didn’t want to know. That there was nothing left to hide. It had been proven, right? He had told his parents, and Yuna had held him. She cried and said, “Please forgive me.” And he had known she had meant it.
So he said, “I forgive you, mom,” because it’s what he wanted to say. It’s what he wanted to be true.
At this angle, Shane’s phone camera cuts off the image of him just below his torso. Ilya takes out his cock; as Shane watches it flush and thicken in his hand, he winds his fingers deep inside himself. He does it before Ilya tells him to, and when Ilya does tell him to, as he knew he would, he says he already did and watches Ilya’s pupils blow black with it. He reaches deep, so deep, like he can touch that tender spot within himself that Ilya so easily pinpoints. Suddenly he’s desperate; suddenly he’s terrified. It feels like he’s reaching deeper than he’s ever reached before, deep enough that it starts to hurt. He keeps going because he feels like if he can touch that spot, he can protect it. Pain is the proof of this, somehow.
“Show me,” Ilya says, and Shane adjusts the camera. His whole body is shaking. He thinks even Ilya looks startled then.
“So deep, baby,” he breathes, and instead of the actual words it sounds like a wavering question, like, “Are you alright?”
Shane is glad Ilya doesn’t actually ask; he doesn’t know the answer. Being with Ilya makes something terrible and wonderful happen inside of him—or rather, makes something terrible and wonderful about himself apparent to him. For years, this wild thing was something to control, a second dark heart beating inside of him that he had to, at all cost, hold down with many ropes. Though he’d like to pretend otherwise, the truth, is not much has changed since then. Shane still has to control it. The only difference is now he wants to less. In moments like this he doesn’t want to at all. He knows the price. Knows it well. He wants to risk it anyway. He can’t believe he wants to risk it anyway.
Shane shudders against his own fingers. He’s leaking wet all over his stomach.
“Fuck,” says Ilya, and Shane imagines it’s his cock inside him, reaching deep, deeper still. There’s two halves of himself: one who knows and one who doesn’t want to. He wants and he fears. He is torn in two, and it is this point of rupture that gives life to doubt. He is so, so close.
“Shane,” says Ilya, and to his surprise it’s Ilya who’s begging. “Please, Shane.”
Shane opens his eyes; he had screwed them shut. Ilya’s face is contorted and the sight scalds Shane with desire at the same time as it frightens him. His boyfriend’s expression is stiff with pleasure, but there’s something grave to it. Urgent. It is the mortal tension of implosion, of something about to pass the point of reconstitution in any of its prior forms.
“Come for me,” rasps Shane, trying to summon some composure, lead Ilya through this moment that has become so inexplicably laden with meaning, but he curls his fingers inside himself and finds he can’t quite manage it. He started his diet last summer, a few weeks after Ilya left the cottage for the second time. Shane remembers standing alone in the living room, the early afternoon light dappling the empty space as a black hole of longing condensed inside him. He loves Ilya; he wants Ilya. For every inch of control he cedes, his fear strengthens, too, and the old ways—passing drills, ice baths, meditation, podcasts—don’t work anymore. He finds he’s not as brave as he’d like to be. He needs something new to help him bear it.
Ilya comes first, but only by an instant, flinging an arm over his eyes, which is unlike him, usually so brazen. Shane comes untouched on his fingers, which would usually delight Ilya, make him smug for weeks, but he doesn’t see—it takes him a long time to lower his arm, and Shane doesn’t tell him when he does.
“Good?” Ilya says finally, a wolfish gleam returning to his eyes, which comforts Shane; this, at least, is familiar.
“Yes,” says Shane, expecting him to smirk, to make fun. Instead his gaze grows soft.
“I love you, Shane,” he says.
“I love you, too,” says Shane. Ilya’s eyes are suspiciously bright now, like tears, and Shane wants to ask again whether he’s okay. He doesn’t. They hang up, and Shane draws his fingers out of himself. They’re slick and gleaming, and suddenly the sight of them raises such a wave of revulsion in him that he can’t move. He wishes Ilya were still on the call. For an instant, though, he also wishes to never see his face again.
There’s another smile of Yuna’s. Shane’s most vivid memory of it is from second grade, the year before he starts junior league hockey. The kids at school, having only seen David picking Shane up at school—Yuna is taking a night class in business at this time—spread a rumor that he’s adopted from China. Shane doesn’t remember feeling hurt. He doesn’t remember understanding. This will happen many times as he’s growing up: other children will be cruel to him and he won’t know it, and his parents will have to explain it to him later, gentle, sad, until he learns to tell the difference. After this incident Shane does remember a hushed conversation between his parents in the other room while he does his homework at the kitchen table. He remembers Yuna coming in, her eyes too bright. She runs her hand through his hair. Her touch is so gentle. He leans into it as he looks up at her. She sniffs, then she smiles. It’s similar to her first smile, the one she gives him when he’s on the ice, in that he understands from it the same thing: you are just like me, and I am just like you. But this time, it’s not conspiratorial; it’s not joyous. It’s sad. He doesn’t understand why, but it feels like an apology.
Kids will continue to tease him, but it isn’t until he’s an adult that he learns to fully differentiate cruelty from kindness and to avoid it. Rather it’s his skill at hockey—and his body, the growing breadth of his shoulders, the muscles pulling at his arms—that finally brings it to a stop. Indeed, the better he gets at hockey, the less often Yuna gives him her sad smile, until finally, she doesn’t do it ever again. Not even when, after the draft, the owner of the Montreal Voyagers looks between the two of them, clears his throat, and smiles, broad in a way that Shane, eighteen years old, has finally learned to understand as false.
“Uh,” he says. “We are thrilled that Shane is Asian, or Asian-Canadian. Very thrilled. I mean, we've historically broken barriers, and we're doing it again, so nothing to worry about there.”
Yuna smiles at him, placating.
“Oh. You certainly have.” She sips her drink. “And, I mean, to be a part of the most legendary franchise in hockey, right? Oh, my!”
She doesn’t have to give Shane one of her pointed looks for him to know that he needs to say something next. You are just like me. And I am just like you.
“I'm still in shock,” he manages. “But, uh, I—I'm so excited.
“I am the world's biggest Metros fan,” adds Yuna, gaze trained on the owner. “It’s part of how I came to feel Canadian.”
The owner beams at Yuna. Yuna beams backs. She doesn’t smile any of her smiles at Shane. In fact, she doesn’t look at Shane at all.
The next time Shane and Ilya see each other, it’s Christmas, and they’re with his parents. On the first night, they lie awake cuddled in Shane’s childhood bed. Shane is talking about the training regimen he wants to suggest to Hayden to improve his angling, outlining the details of each exercise, and Ilya is listening to him, nose buried at the nape of his neck. The bed is tiny. Their legs are tangled beneath the sheets. Every once in a while, Ilya makes a soft noise to indicate he’s still listening; meanwhile his hands, loose at Shane’s chest, brush lower and lower, down his stomach, into the hair rising from Shane’s boxers to his belly button. There’s no real intent behind it; still, Shane is half-hard, and when he hears Yuna’s footsteps in the hallway, he tenses involuntarily, like he’s a teenager and they’re about to be caught even though teenage Shane never did anything like this, would have never dreamt of it—in fact, couldn’t have dreamt of it, his longing so suppressed the thought would literally have never crossed his mind.
Her footsteps pass. Ilya chuckles softly into his neck, his warm breath stirring the hair at his nape.
“Did I ever tell you,” he murmurs, voice gravelly from disuse; he’s been listening to Shane for the last twenty minutes. “About how I met your mom right before the first time we fucked?”
Shane stiffens in his arms but pointedly doesn’t sit up to face him. Ilya’s tone is amused, and for some reason, the idea of looking at him—Shane knows he won’t be able to keep his own expression neutral—terrifies him, like it will reveal something he cannot, at any cost, betray.
“No,” he says carefully. “You never told me about that.”
Sure enough, he can feel Ilya’s smile curving against his neck.
“Yes,” he says. “When I was going up in the elevator to see you, she was going down. The door opened and she tried to introduce herself to me. It closed before she could. But.” He pauses here for dramatic effect, voice sinking to a velvet tone. “I knew who she was.”
“Oh,” says Shane, trying to understand why the smugness in Ilya’s voice sends an erotic sizzle down his spine and why he also feels sick and wants to crush it.
Ilya is oblivious to this. His voice is teasing, his hands kneading Shane’s stomach with affection but, again, no real intent.
“I wonder if she remembers,” he murmurs.
“I hope not,” says Shane, hoping he sounds impassive.
“Mm,” Ilya says, sleepy, lips mouthing weakly at Shane’s neck. It’s soft, not sensual, and soon he falls asleep, his breathing even and arms loose but possessive around Shane’s stomach. Shane lies awake for a long time. He doesn’t understand why the story bothers him so much. It’s objectively funny. And yet his skin bubbles with anger. He’s surprised to find the anger is directed at Ilya. For thinking it was funny. For being so easy with it. He wants to shove Ilya’s arms off him. Stomp downstairs. Make him wake up alone, without understanding what he’d done. Truthfully, Shane doesn’t understand what he’s done. His mind produces the thought, how dare he?, but he doesn’t understand what it means. He doesn’t know what, exactly, he feels Ilya has dared to do.
The next day, Ilya tries to get Shane to eat a cookie. He refuses even though he wants it; gazing at the jam glistening in the thumbprint, he really, really wants it.
“Yuna,” Ilya calls. “Tell your son to eat a cookie.”
“Leave him alone,” she calls back from the other room. “We love Shane even without carbs.”
Ilya crams another cookie in his mouth. Shane turns away. Later, Yuna brings Shane a pomegranate so he can have something sweet; he accepts it. Ilya teases him as he breaks it open and pulls out the seeds, but it’s kind, lighthearted, so Shane leans across the counter and pushes a seed between Ilya’s lips. Ilya waggles his eyebrows at him.
“Sweet,” he says, and Shane shivers as he sucks, for a moment, at his fingertip. “Not as sweet as the cookies, though.”
“Yeah, yeah,” says Shane.
“Or some other things,” flirts Ilya as he walks to the fridge and pulls out the eggnog. Shane tries to ignore it even as the sight of the thick yellow liquid filling the glass raises a wave of nausea in him so strong he almost has to brace himself against the countertop. Ilya takes a long sip; Shane doesn’t miss the way he eyes him over hte rim of the glass.
“What?” says Ilya after a moment. “No lecture?”
Shane slams the pomegranate down.
“Would you please fuck off? I don’t give a shit what you or anyone else eats, Ilya.”
“That is not true. You bitch at me all the time.”
“Because you always start it!”
Ilya doesn’t reply; he lifts the glass again and drains it, then wipes the white-yellow residue off his upper lip. In another world Shane knows he would have made it suggestive, but they’re too angry with each other right now, the tension real and painful between them. They can’t really fight because David and Yuna are within earshot, though Shane suspects this may be a convenient excuse for them both, that neither of them wants to talk about what’s actually going on. Ilya puts the glass in the sink. Shane turns away and begins to wipe the spattered pomegranate juice off the counter.
An hour or two later, Ilya is in the living room watching a documentary with David, and Shane is in the kitchen helping Yuna with dinner. He is still trying to pick one of the pomegranate seeds out from between his teeth as he chops carrots and she massages kale for a salad. At one point, Ilya comes in to get some beers for himself and David. As he passes Shane, his hand lingers at his waist, but he doesn’t come closer. Once he leaves, Yuna reaches out and turns off the kitchen speaker; they had been listening to Tchaikovsky, which she used to play in the car for him driving him home from practice. Shane looks up. She is gazing at him with concern.
“Is everything okay between you guys?” she asks.
The question startles Shane. He hadn’t thought they were being obvious. It also makes him angry. Startlingly angry—so angry, hot and immediate, that he’s a little shaken. He doesn’t know where it comes from or what to do about it. It makes him feel crazy, out of control and confused.
“Yeah, of course it is,” he says. “Why do you ask?”
Yuna shrugs. “I don’t know. You just seem distracted.”
Shane turns back to the carrots.
“I’m okay,” he says. Then, lamely, “Hayden’s angling is weak. I’m stressed thinking about how I can get him to improve it.”
“Okay,” says Yuna, and he wonders if she believes him. He’s not sure whether he wants her to or not. She turns back on the Tchaikovsky, and they work without speaking until the oven timer dings. Yuna goes over and takes out the lasagnas. The smell of meat and cheese rises heavily in the air. Shane’s stomach growls. He’s hungry, he realizes. Really hungry. Out of nowhere he feels an intense twinge of anxiety.
“You made one with gluten free noodles for me, right?”
Yuna looks over her shoulder at him; he can’t tell if her expression is mocking or not, and his anxiety spikes higher still. He hates when he can’t read someone’s expression, and it almost never happens with Yuna; usually he can tell exactly what she means. But now he feels like he’s back in elementary school, trying to figure out what on earth the other kids are thinking; he feels like maybe she’s about to give him one of her sad smiles despite the fact that her eyebrows are raised at him in what is probably a pantomime of shock—though, he can’t be sure.
“Oh, no,” she says. “You can’t eat gluten?”
“Mom!”
“I was joking, Shane, oh my god.” She puts the pans down on the cooling rack. “You know, it wouldn’t kill you to lighten up on Christmas. Live like the rest of us mortals for once.”
This is what makes the anger inside Shane explode. He thinks, This is who you wanted me to be, who you forced me to be, and now you’re making fun of me for it? And yet, he does nothing. He looks at his mother and he can’t act. Can’t say anything to her. And so, like a bright star bursting, the rage arrested in its outward trajectory instead reverses course and turns inward to the center of his heart, where it condenses, becoming impossibly small, and black, and dense. It settles there, where it has always been.
Ilya is not the first boy Shane was ever attracted to. Of course not. The first one he remembers—and there were probably many before, lost from consciousness—joins Kingston’s junior league team in the eleventh grade. He’s a goalie, Braxton. He’s tall, white, with beautiful chestnut-colored hair. He’s also got a look behind his eyes, a certain heaviness, that makes him seem older than he is. Shane doesn’t get to know him well enough to ever find out the source of it, but he remembers this quality because Ilya also has it—a seriousness, behind the charisma and swagger, that Shane recognizes now as evidence of some premature loss, whether literal or emotional, too much responsibility too soon. Shane remembers Braxton as less brash than Ilya, less of a jester; he also remembers that he knew everything about being a goalie, that he and Shane could talk hockey statistics for hours. In fact, one evening after practice while they’re waiting for their parents to pick them up Shane gets so distracted talking to him that Yuna has to honk twice for him to notice she’s there.
“Sorry,” he says, rushing into the car, breath puffing out in the January cold.
“No problem, sweetheart,” she says, and her eyes are genuinely warm. “I’m glad you have a friend.”
It’s a nice thing to say, and yet, it makes Shane feel bad, hollow, somehow, and he doesn’t know why. He will not understand for years that this feeling is loneliness. He and Braxton never get to know each other better. They’re at the end of their last season. In a few weeks, Shane will be selected to anchor Team Canada in the World Junior Ice Hockey Championship in Saskatchewan. Braxton won’t be. He will go to the draft and get picked, but lower than Shane, much lower; Shane won’t even remember what team he joins. Now, after practice, he watches Braxton. He watches his biceps, which bunch and loosen as he lifts his jersey over his head, and he watches the way the slope of his neck melds into his shoulders, smooth, precipitous. His mind flashes with a vision of himself sinking his teeth into the muscle there, how warm and firm it would be, how it would resist then puncture slowly. He doesn’t know what he feels. At the time, he doesn’t even know that he feels it. All he has is the image, which quickly dissipates. A trick of the light. For years while he was fucking Ilya, Shane would think that he couldn’t possibly be gay because if he was he would have known earlier, and he truly had not the faintest idea. How could his mind have possibly repressed something so important if it was true? And even if it was possible, why would he?
After Shane gets selected for the Championship, Yuna and David take him out for dinner at an Italian place they both like. Shane doesn’t feel any way in particular about the restaurant, but he never does—already, food to him is mostly functional. They talk about hockey, like usual, for nearly the whole meal; they’re sharing tiramisu by the time they move on to other topics. David begins to discuss how it’s college application season and Shane’s cousin Carolyn has just finished applying to Yale, Brown, McGill, Oberlin, and NYU, as well as a bunch of safeties. Her grades slipped last year and now she’s super stressed; Yale denied her early admission and put her in the regular pool, which is never a good sign; apparently, he comments, more to Yuna than to Shane, she’s begun losing her hair.
“The things they put kids through these days,” says Yuna. She reaches across the table and pats Shane’s hand. “It’s nice we don’t have to worry about that.”
Shane doesn’t know whether she means college applications or him losing his hair or both. It’s probably both. Over the years Shane has picked up on how Yuna struggles around David’s family, around his sisters and his mother who slip sometimes into Quebecois, maybe without thinking, maybe on purpose. Yuna’s father drove vans for a hotel in downtown Vancouver and her mother was a nurse; Shane’s cousins are high-achieving, confident; one is premed, and the other works for a nonprofit in Toronto. Carolyn is the first to show any sign of struggle. As Yuna fills her spoon with tiramisu, she smiles at Shane, bright, conspiratorial, familiar—and, he thinks, victorious. It occurs to him then that he hasn’t seen her sad smile in years. That he actually can’t think of the last time. There’s no reason for it anymore. Shane is so, so good at hockey. Kids don’t tease him. Agents call them. And when his parents throw him a graduation party in May, the entire family comes. There’s no fear anymore, even for superstitious Shane who avoids hubris like a warding spell, that he won’t be drafted. The only question is whether he’ll be first or second pick. Indeed, Shane is so good at hockey it feels like it fixes everything about the entire world.
The best part is, sitting in that restaurant as Yuna calls for the check, Shane has the distinct feeling that he brought this reality into being through his action alone. That chance had nothing to do with it. That he kept his promise—his index cards, his exercises, his diet, everything—and so the world’s promise was kept to him. He can be certain that, if he rinses and repeats this his entire life, he will always be happy, and his chest swells with satisfaction. He thinks, then, that this satisfaction must comprise the entire contents of his heart, that nothing else could be buried beneath so complete a feeling. How could it be? How could it be and he not know?
When the waiter brings the check, he whisks away the remains of the tiramisu. Yuna and David don’t seem to have noticed that Shane has only taken two bites. It’s not that he doesn’t like it. It’s good—delicious, actually. This makes it feel even better to resist. If he didn’t want it, it wouldn’t be hard. But now he feels so strong. He feels so certain.
You are just like me, and I am just like you.
Yuna squeezes his shoulder as they leave the restaurant.
We will be together always.
It’s a beautiful promise, and he believes it then, wholeheartedly. Only there’s one crucial way he’s not like Yuna. Not like Yuna at all. Ilya lopes back into the kitchen to deposit his and David’s beer bottles in the recycling. As he bends over, he scratches his stomach, and his shirt rides up; Shane gets a tiny glimpse of golden hair, and the bolt of lust that shoots through him is so intense, so confusing, that he has to look away like he did in the shower all those years ago. He doesn’t understand. It’s been more than a decade. Why is he dragged back here again?
He’s shocked by the tears that sting his eyes. He hasn’t understood anything that he’s felt today. This scares him, but he doesn’t have time to retreat and try to get to the bottom of it; they have dinner, then they go to the living room to unwrap presents, and Ilya gives him a stupid beautiful photograph for Christmas from the photoshoot they did all those years ago, before they had ever kissed. It makes Shane feel guilty enough to temporarily staunch his desire to seek order, to try and tie up these stinging unresolved ends between them. It’s not like he doesn’t love Ilya anymore. He loves him desperately. He doesn’t want to be at odds with him. He just wants everything to be better. The guilt holds him over until Boxing Day. Yuna and David have left; Shane stays at Ilya’s house; late in the evening, Ilya brings up the fact that Bood is throwing a party the day after tomorrow. He says it pointedly, like it means something. Shane has no idea what.
“Did you want to go or something?” he asks.
“I want you to go too,” says Ilya. “I want you to come with me to the party.”
Shane stares.
“Wouldn’t it be weird if we showed up together?”
Ilya shrugs, as if it doesn’t matter to him. “We are friends, so I invite you to a party. No big deal.”
“Too weird,” Shane says. “I don’t think so.”
To his surprise, Ilya stalks out of the room. Shane follows him to the kitchen.
“What’s wrong?”
Ilya is standing at the counter, drumming his fingers on the granite. He isn’t meeting Shane’s eyes, but his turned-away expression is stormy. Shane feels the distance between them wide as the universe.
“What isn’t wrong?” Ilya bites out.
Shane feels panic rise in him. “What does that mean?”
“It means I have a boyfriend who doesn't want anyone to know I am his boyfriend.”
Shane is terrified, but he tries to hold onto some calm, tries to—and he can’t quite admit to himself that he’s pretending, but he is—tries to pretend like he doesn’t understand what Ilya is trying to talk about.
“Uh, sorry. Did I miss something? I thought we were on the same page about this.”
“We are not on same anything.”
Now Shane is angry, too. Ilya has pushed him away at every turn. Even now he speaks in riddles, waiting for Shane to push, to crack him open like always, rather than doing the work himself. Maybe if Ilya really tried to talk, Shane reasons to himself, Shane would really want to listen.
“I don’t fucking understand you,” he says.
Ilya looks at him then with a terrible, sardonic look, a look Shane recognizes from ten years of distance, that he hasn’t seen since before the cottage.
“Sorry. My English, you know.”
“No, not your English.” Shane is yelling all of a sudden. “You don’t talk to me.”
“I’m talking right now.”
“No, Ilya, you don’t talk to me. Something’s wrong. You’ve been messed up for months and you won’t tell me why.
“Oh, so it’s a problem when I don’t talk, but when it’s you, it’s okay?”
Shane blinks, this time genuinely thrown.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Ilya rips open the fridge. The sterile light spills out into the kitchen. It cuts across Shane’s face. It’s Ilya’s fridge, so it’s full of things Shane would never have, takeout containers, full-fat milk, beef, ice cream.
“This bullshit!” he says. “You won’t touch it. Look. Milk. Juice. Cheese. Fucking Christmas cookies from your own mother that you won’t even look at. It’s not normal, Shane.”
Now, a different kind of panic is rising in Shane. It’s not the panic of losing his boyfriend; it’s not even the panic of considering coming out, which he knows, on some level, is what Ilya wants to ask him to do. It’s much worse, much deeper set—a feral, bristling terror, a terror as if the very hinges of the world were coming apart, and which sets as its only goal, no matter the cost, the defense of the tender, unspeakable thing beneath.
“I have a nutritionist, Ilya,” Shane says, voice perfectly even from the effort of pushing it all down, the desperate lid shuttering; he must retain control. Shane thinks Ilya recognizes this as the cause of his sudden deadpan, for he becomes even wilder with rage.
“Nutritionist—Shane. You wouldn’t kiss me the other day because I just had Nutella.”
“It’s a performance diet,” Shane says.
Ilya stares at him for a long moment. The look in his eyes startles Shane. For a moment it’s not angry. It’s almost disbelieving. Helpless. Scared. Shane, still ruled by his own desperation, senses an escape.
“Ilya,” he tries again. “If you would just talk to me—”
Rage comes rushing back into Ilya’s expression.
“Do you hear yourself right now? Jesus, Shane. Spill guts, Ilya. Tell me everything, Ilya. If they found out, what would they do to you, Ilya?” Shane realizes with a jolt that he is quoting their conversation from Tampa, now nearly three years ago. “How did your mother die, Ilya? How old were you, Ilya? What was her name, Ilya?” Ilya’s hands are in fists at his sides. “You ask me for guts. I give them to you. But you never owe me back?”
Shane knows, on some level, that Ilya is right, but he also doesn’t know if he will ever be able to explain how much it hurts him to hear his attempts at reaching past Ilya’s walls, which took so much determination from him, so much bravery, described in this way.
“Fuck you,” he says, eyes stinging with tears. “Fuck you, fuck you for bringing this up when it’s not what you’re really mad about.”
“Oh, so you are analyst now?”
Shane ignores this. He needs safer footing. He traces back his steps.
“Stop it. Just stop,” he says. “You want me to go to this party and you’re mad that I won’t, but you’re not explaining what the fuck is happening”
Ilya throws up his hands but seems to accept this retreat to firmer ground.
“What’s there to explain, Hollander?”
He walks to the living room. Shane follows. He’s not totally sure why. He wants this to be over. He could leave it here and they could talk later. Try to salvage something. It’s probably better that way. By continuing they run much greater risks. And yet the idea of leaving it here feels intolerable, like he’s being set on fire.
“It’s not easy for me either, you know,” he pushes, despite the creeping feeling that he’s making a mistake. “We’re both hiding, and we’ve both made sacrifices that—”
Ilya whirls, eyes wild.
“What sacrifices, Shane? What have you given up?”
“Seriously? If we get outed, our fucking careers might be over! Everything I care about, gone.
Ilya stares. “Everything.”
“Not everything. But hockey is pretty fucking important to me.”
“No shit.”
“Oh, fuck you.” And Shane doesn’t know where it comes from, and he regrets it as soon as he says it, but he says it anyway: “Sorry I still want to win cups instead of smoking weed with my teammates between losses.”
Ilya’s expression shutters; for the first time, truly shutters. He looks at the floor. When he speaks, his voice is low, worn out.
“You wouldn’t even choose me, would you? If it is between me and hockey.”
Shane stares at him. That’s not at all what he was expecting Ilya to say, and it surprises him so much he forgets his fear and anger. His next question comes from a place of sincere confusion.
“Would you choose me?”
From Ilya’s expression, Shane knows it was the wrong thing to say, but he still doesn’t know why.
“I already chose you, Hollander,” he says. And suddenly Shane is hot with rage, the most rage he’s felt this entire conversation. Ilya is wrong. He thinks he’s asking Shane to make the same choice he did, but he and Ilya are not the same. Ilya doesn’t need hockey—or maybe he did before, to get away, but now he has. Ilya is charismatic and confident and white. No sports reporter has ever compared him to Serena Williams or Tiger Woods. There’s nothing he needs hockey to make up for.
“It’s not the same choice,” Shane bites out, and Ilya’s eyes widen. Shane can tell that Ilya picks up on his hurt, that his anger is softening into curiosity, concern, that here is a moment where it would be possible for them to connect. But Shane isn’t ready for that. He knows that if he lets Ilya in now, there will be no letting him out again; that he will, with his surgical precision, reach beyond Shane’s control and touch what lies beneath. If Shane allows this, he doesn’t feel there can be any promise about what will happen next. So he shoulders past Ilya and drives back to Montreal without packing any of his things. He doesn’t know if Ilya watches him go.
In high school, Shane doodles Pokemon absentmindedly in the margins of his notes; one day, a classmate notices.
“Wow!” she says, whispering as their teacher lectures in the background. “You’re really good at that, Shane.”
It’s a drawing of Lucario. Shane copied Lucario so relentlessly as a child that he can now do it from muscle memory. He covers it immediately with his hand, cheeks warming; he’s surprised at how acute the humiliation feels. He hasn’t drawn much in years, only occasionally when his mind really wanders in class, as it has now. And he's not good at it. It's only because he's done the same thing so many times that the drawing comes out decent.
“Oh, no,” he says. “It’s nothing.”
“No, it’s good,” she smiles.
“It’s really not,” he insists. He’s not sure why he’s so avid to defend his art against accusations of high quality, but he is. It feels important somehow. The thing Shane is good at is hockey. That’s who he is. Set. Clear. Certain.
“Okay,” she says, like a normal person who is of course not going to insist on a compliment after he deflects multiple attempts. She smiles again, more hesitantly, and turns back to the teacher. Shane is relieved. He’s careful not to doodle in front of people after that.
A week after his fight with Ilya, Shane calls Yuna. He’s not sure why. It’s late after a game. They win. Shane scores two goals. The other team’s defense was strong; it was an impressive feat to get past it. Probably only a player like Shane could have done it twice. Years ago he would have rode this high for weeks. Tonight it makes him feel nothing. He doesn’t plan to call Yuna. He doesn’t plan what he’s going to say. When he Facetimes her, it feels like he’s watching himself do it from afar. She picks up on the third ring.
“Hi, baby,” she says. “Great goal tonight.”
“Thanks.” He clears his throat. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
He doesn’t plan this either. Doesn’t even know he’s going to say it until he does.
“When was the first time I ever talked about wanting to play hockey?”
Yuna blinks. “Huh?”
“LIke, as a kid. When was the first time?”
She smiles, warm with memory. “Oh, I don’t even remember. You started so early.”
“Right.”
Shane chews on a fingernail. Yuna’s face is full of fondness. Silence. Finally, she says, “Why do you ask?”
Shane clears his throat. Again, a question leaps unbidden from somewhere within him.
“Did you ever think I might want to do something else?”
She looks confused.
“What do you mean?”
“Like. Did I ever, like, as a kid. Like. Seem to be interested in anything else?”
Now he comes thudding back into his body and realizes that he’s treading into water far deeper than he’s ready for. He doesn’t know what he’s trying to say. It’s not that he doesn't want to be a hockey player. He does. He loves it. Loves it more than anything. He has no idea where he’s going with this or if he even wants to go there. Yuna, too, looks lost.
“Uh, I don’t…”
“Nevermind.” He scrubs his hand over his face. “Sorry. Weird question. Forget it.”
Yuna blinks again. The silence stretches on.
“Are you alright, Shane?”
No. Not at all. But Shane has the distinct fear that if he tells her about his fight with Ilya, she’ll act concerned, offer advice, but deep down, she’ll be satisfied. Rationally he doesn’t think this concern is fair to her. She loves Ilya. Loves Shane. Wants him to be happy. But he fears it all the same.
“I’m fine,” he says. “Just thoughtful, lately.”
He pauses. Yuna waits. And one last time, from some hidden place within, he asks, “Mom?”
She waits for him patiently.
“Do you think there’s anything wrong with the way I eat?”
She blinks. Suddenly Shane’s whole body flushes hot with embarrassment. He can’t believe he asked her that, but he can’t take it back now. He can only wait.
“Well,” she says, seeming to choose her words carefully. “I’ll admit, it seems intense. More intense than your usual diets. But you’re a professional. Lots of players eat like that, right? As long as you’re happy with it, I don’t see the problem.”
“Right,” Shane says. He has no idea what he feels.
“Why? Are you worried, sweetie?”
“No.”
“Well, then there’s nothing to worry about.”
Shane blinks. His chest feels hollow, and this time, he knows it’s loneliness. Even though that’s exactly what he wanted her to say, it’s still loneliness.
“Thanks, mom,” he says. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she says. And he knows she means it. That’s the craziest thing—he knows she means it. “Get some rest, okay? You look tired.”
He laughs and promises her he will. Then he shuts off the phone and, without getting up to turn out the lights, change his clothes, brush his teeth, anything, he falls asleep.
Shane and Ilya haven’t spoken in two weeks when Svetlana shows up in Shane’s locker room. They’re playing an afternoon game in Boston, which already had Shane on edge; around every corner he sees ghost versions of himself and Ilya, boy children dancing around each other, so scared, and has to ask himself if they’ve really changed. He plays well nonetheless—Boston isn’t what they used to be—but then, like his worst fear summoned, Svetlana appears in the door of their locker room. Shane wonders, distantly behind his panic, how many strings she had to pull to get back here. Given her connections, he thinks, probably not that many.
“I need to talk to you,” she says, and from one look at her face, Shane knows there’s nothing he can say to get her to back down. They’ll either talk in private or she’s going to say it here in front of all his teammates. He pulls her into the hallway to a spot he knows is out of earshot. She has the first word.
“Why did you guys break up,” she hisses. “He won’t tell me anything. Whatever it is, Hollander—whatever you did, whatever he did, and I’m not blaming it all on you, at this point, I don’t care whose fault it was. All I know is you have got to fix it.”
“What?” Shane is dumbfounded. As he processes what she said, an ache begins at the center of him, an ache so enormous it feels like he can’t acknowledge it or it will kill him. “We didn’t break up.”
Svetlana blinks.
“You didn’t?”
“He said that?”
The ache is growing now, becoming harder to ignore; Shane’s throat is tightening. Panic.
“Well, not exactly,” says Svetlana. Relief. “But, you know how he is, he doesn’t talk. I can’t imagine he’d be acting like this if you hadn’t.”
“We didn’t break up,” says Shane, feeling dizzy.
“Okay,” says Svetlana.
A moment passes. In the wake of his relief, Shane realizes he is worried now.
“He’s. Uh. He’s doing badly?”
Svetlana studies him for a moment; her gaze is even, calm, perceptive. In the whirlwind of the last few minutes—this is the first time they have ever met—Shane has forgotten that he has always been jealous of her. She is very beautiful, stylish even in her Boston Bears jersey, and possessed of that same charisma and social grace that animates Ilya, helps him illuminate rooms. Shane realizes he had hoped that he, Shane, Ilya’s other great love, would have nothing in common with her so that he could retain his other advantages—groundedness, drive—over these qualities of hers he knows he’ll never have. But he must admit that in this moment, as she holds him in her gaze, he feels her determination like the earth beneath their feet.
“Do you want to have dinner with me?” she asks.
Shane blinks. “What?”
“I think we should talk,” she says. “It might piss him off, but I don’t care.”
It is this moment that makes Shane let go of his jealousy; he likes her too much now. She leads him to a New American place on Crown. It’s sleek, fancy; they don’t have a reservation, but she’s ushered to a table anyway. It’s early, still light outside, and there’s almost nobody there. Svetlana seems to know the wine list already, asks Shane if he has a preference and when he says he doesn’t drink shuts the menu and orders. They order dinner, too; Svetlana gets the short rib with parsnip puree, and Shane gets grilled salmon with broccoli. He flushes as he asks the waiter to hold the hollandaise, knowing it’s gauche to order such specifications somewhere so upscale, but they’re gracious about it; maybe they’re used to dealing with the players Svetlana brings in.
“You know,” Svetlana says once the waiter disappears. “I was so surprised when Ilya told me about you.”
“Oh?” Shane keeps his expression neutral. “Why’s that?”
“I don’t mean, like, because you’re bad together or something. I just really wasn’t expecting it. Well, I suspected Jane was a man. But I hadn’t thought…” She shrugged. “Honestly, I hadn’t thought it would be someone else in the league. I never even considered it.”
Shane nods, though he’s not sure what she means yet.
“Ilya is very self-protective,” she says.
Shane still doesn’t get it, and Svetlana seems to understand this.
“What I’m trying to say is,” she supplies. “The league can be hard.”
Ah. Homophobia, yes. Masculinity. And so on.
“I’m used to it, I guess,” says Shane. The deflection is a reflex he instantly regrets, but he’s finding it difficult to do anything else. “It’s all I know, really. Since I was a kid.”
“Me too,” says Svetlana. “My mom and I went to all my dad’s games.”
Shane smiles, unable to resist a competitive urge. “My mom’s my manager.”
Svetlana smiles back. “I knew that already.”
Shane laughs. “I bet you did.”
A pause. Svetlana sips her wine, growing serious again.
“I’m sure you don’t need me to say this, but it’s not lost on me that you guys are up against a lot. Like I said…Ilya’s very self-protective. He wouldn’t do something like this if he wasn’t serious about it.”
Shane is moved—both by Svetlana’s understanding of Ilya and the gravity she assigns to their relationship. She’s right on both accounts. He manages to say, “Yeah. I mean. Yeah, me too. I mean. I’m serious about it.”
He watches as Svetlana seems to deliberate over something. Then she says, “Can I ask what that was like for you? Growing up in the league, I mean. And working with your mom. Sorry if this is weird to say, but I’ve seen her at games before, and she’s obviously fucking great at her job, you get the most deals of, like, any player I’ve ever seen. But I have wondered sometimes. About you. Especially since you and Ilya got together, but even before that.”
People have asked Shane this before, teammates and coaches and reporters and friends and Rose and Ilya, and he has lots of answers. Great. She’s awesome. She’s done so much for me. I wouldn’t be anywhere without her. She’s one of my best friends. I look up to her so much. I’m so grateful. They all die in his throat. He swallows. Opens his mouth. Closes it.
To his surprise, Svetlana doesn’t ask him another question; she reaches for her phone. She scrolls for a long time, and Shane is startled by what seems to be rudeness, wondering if she’s trying to feign nonchalance to avoid pressing deeper, though it’s not like he exactly wants her to—or, he does, but he doesn’t. Then she finds what she’s looking for and shows it to him. It’s a photo of her as a child, part of a carousel on Instagram; her hair is long, straightened, and dyed a much lighter shade than it is now, almost blonde. She’s smiling, wearing a bright pink sequined dress, standing around a tall table scattered with hors d’oeuvres; beside her, their arms around each other, stand a tall black woman and a stocky man who looks so stereotypically Slavic it makes Shane smile with a sudden warm surge of love for Ilya. Her parents, surely.
“That’s my mom,” she says. “I was like, eight years old here, I think. Some hockey gala.” She laughs softly. “My hair, oh my god. Those relaxers burned the shit out of my scalp. But my mom never, ever took me to a hockey event without doing my hair. Or hers. It took hours.” She puts her phone back down on the table. “She was trying to protect me, and she was probably right to do it. I’m sure what she did kept me safe.”
Shane swallows thickly.
“Probably,” he agrees.
“Right,” says Svetlana. “But still.” And she tugs on a curl now, long, loose, buoyant. “It took years for me to grow my shit back the way I like it.”
Shane can only nod. The moment hangs between them, tremulous. Shane is so grateful for it. Then Svetlana blows up her cheeks exaggeratedly with air and lets it out, allowing the tone to shift.
“Parents! Complicated, right?”
Shane smiles, grateful for this too.
“I’ll say.”
Svetlana returns his smile. The waiter appears with their entrees. Svetlana thanks him, orders another glass of wine, and Shane breathes deep, taking advantage of the brief interruption to gather himself. Svetlana reaches for her fork.
“Look, Hollander,” she says. “And then I promise we’re done with business for the night.”
“We’re talking business?”
“You know what I mean.” She brandishes the fork at him playfully then puts it down, her gaze turning soft, serious. “I don’t know what happened between you and Ilya. But he loves you. Like, in a way I’ve never seen him love anyone. And that’s…hard for him. I know he probably doesn’t tell you things. I say that because he doesn’t tell me things either. And it’s not fair. To either of us. You get to be mad about that. I wouldn’t try to take that away from you. I’m actually glad you’re mad—I used to be the only person who cared that he kept secrets.”
Shane opens his mouth, but she shushes him with a slight dip of her chin.
“The thing I’ll say is,” she says. “He’s been like this ever since I’ve known him, and I’ve never seen him try this hard before. To be different, I mean. For you. And that has to count for something.
Shane’s throat feels clogged.
“It counts for a lot,” he manages.
She holds his gaze for a minute—judging, he imagines, whether he really means it—and, seeming satisfied, smiles, and reaches again for her fork.
“Alright, enough of that,” she says. “This is one of the best restaurants in Boston, which is…maybe not saying a lot. But still, let’s eat.” She takes a bite, makes a sound of pleasure. “Okay, it’s pretty fucking good. Do you want to try?”
She gestures at her plate, pushing it towards him. Shane gazes at the food, short rib smothered with jus, the oil catching the light, velvety, delicious, and knows he can’t say yes. It strikes him for the first time, cracking into him like pain, like the earth splitting and light getting in, that here is someone who’s gone out of her way to connect with him, who he wants to connect with so badly, and who is inviting him, again, to share an experience of life, and he has to say no. He simply can’t say yes. Even though—and the desire is not even buried deep anymore, it is rising, dangerously, to the surface—he really, really wants to.
Svetlana is right about Ilya. He is trying. He needs to try harder, Shane thinks, and it’s true. He does. Still, as Shane pushes his fork into his salmon, as he chews, and swallows, and doesn’t taste it at all, he admits for the first time that maybe he needs to be trying harder too.
When he calls Ilya, standing outside the restaurant the moment Svetlana disappears into her Uber XL, he picks up in the middle of the first ring, and it makes Shane’s heart lurch with hope. He has his answer already: they are no longer boy children. Ilya has already changed so much. Shane has too. Surely they can change a little more.
“We’re not broken up,” says Shane.
“Okay,” says Ilya.
“Just setting the record straight.”
“Okay,” Ilya says again.
“And, I think we should talk,” Shane says. “Can I come to Ottawa?”
It’s just after seven o’clock on a Saturday; their next games aren’t until Monday. If Shane drives up now he’ll arrive around three in the morning and have to leave the next afternoon.
“You have practice tomorrow,” says Ilya.
“I’ll call out sick,” says Shane.
He and Hayden are sharing a hotel room; he’ll cover for him. Still, Shane never calls out. Ilya is quiet for a long moment. Hope, too, Shane finds, is different from certainty. Hope is terrible, and vibrant, and living. It flutters in his chest: a heart. When Ilya answers, his voice is thick and mortified with it.
“Yes,” he says. “I’ll see you soon.”
Ilya comes to the door in sweatpants and a Boston Bears hoodie, rumpled and exhausted; Shane guesses he hasn’t slept. They don’t hug; they walk upstairs together. There’s a pause. Ilya has a guest room down the hall from his room. Shane can sense the hesitation in Ilya’s body, in his own. Then, a small miracle: Ilya reaches for him. He doesn’t hold him, just touches his cheek once. Shane closes his eyes, opens them again. His overnight bag is still slung over his shoulder and his back is beginning to ache from the weight of it. They walk into Ilya’s room together. Shane brushes his teeth and changes into pajamas; they climb into bed side by side, not touching, and sleep. Even though Shane is exhausted, he wakes around 7:00, his body tight with anxiety. The mattress beside him is empty; he gets up and finds Ilya in the kitchen brewing coffee. He’s already blended Shane’s smoothie, knowing the ingredients he likes; it’s waiting for him on the counter. The sight makes Shane’s stomach turn with the stakes of this, of who he and Ilya are, who they might become, what they could mean to each other if—and in this moment it feels like the most enormous if in the world—they can find their way.
The coffee finishes percolating. Ilya pours himself a huge mug and drowns it in cream. Shane has always been charmed by this; you’d think Ilya Rozanov would take his coffee black, but there is always a carton of half-n-half in his fridge. Shane sips his smoothie. He doesn’t finish it; he doesn’t have much of an appetite. Ilya doesn’t comment, recognizing this as a different problem of hunger. By tacit agreement, they sit down across from each other on the couch. They haven’t touched since Ilya’s one touch to Shane’s cheek the night before.
Ilya has not drawn the curtains in the living room, and the clear morning sun is full, direct. It illuminates every corner of Ilya’s face, chases the shadows out of his clavicle, which emerges slightly from the collar of his tired white undershirt. It’s strange to have a conversation like this first thing in the morning. But they don’t have a lot of time. The thought occurs to Shane, with sudden, acute resentment, that they don’t get to do anything at a normal time. Everything, for them, is minutes counted down, run ragged with urgency. Svetlana was right: they are up against a lot. But here they are.
This is what makes Shane begin by saying, “I guess the first thing I want to say is, I’m sorry.”
Ilya looks at him. “Sorry for what?”
“Um. To be honest, I don’t completely know. I’m not trying to be, like, evasive. Or avoid accountability or whatever. I’m just. Like. Still figuring it out.”
Ilya smiles. Shane feels a rush of relief so powerful it makes him dizzy.
“Me too,” says Ilya, and his hand flexes on the couch cushion; Shane doesn’t dare yet, but he wants to take it badly.
“But,” Shane says instead. “I am sorry. Really.”
“Me too, yes. I’m sorry too.”
“I…” Shane holds his breath. “Svetlana visited me.”
Ilya’s eyebrows rise, but he doesn’t look angry, not yet.
“Oh?”
“Yesterday when we played in Boston. We got dinner. She said you were pretty messed up.”
“Oh. Did she.” Ilya is smiling again, staring into his cup of coffee. He takes a long sip. Then his expression softens. He meets Shane’s eyes. “I guess I was. Am. Messed up. About you.”
Shane’s heart aches, knowing how significant this admission is for Ilya; years ago, he never would have said it. Even so, Shane can tell his guard is still up. To be fair, so is Shane’s. He closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath. Keeps going.
“She, um. She got the short rib. We went to this fancy restaurant. They seemed to know her there, which didn’t surprise me. She seems like the kind of person who. Like. They know her places. She reminds me of you in that way. Anyway. It was a big menu. I got the salmon. They let me put the hollandaise on the side, I thought maybe they wouldn’t but they were cool with it. Her food, it had like, parsnip puree, and like, this gravy? Like a pan sauce or something. It looked good.”
Ilya appears understandably confused. Shane squeezes his hands together, willing away an old urge to disappear; he needs to stay here.
“Sorry,” he says. “I’m not making much sense. All these details, they’re not—well, they matter. But uh. I’m trying to say. What I mean is. Um.”
“Hollander,” says Ilya. His voice is soft but firm, and he holds very still, as if trying not to spook a scared animal; still, there is a glint of amusement in his eyes, and this is what makes it possible to continue, this and his use of Shane’s surname which would in another moment signify distance but in this instant grounds him in a time where he needed Ilya to excavate his every desire from where they lay buried deep within him, and Ilya, miracle of miracles, was able to do so.
“We talked,” says Shane. “About you. And about some other stuff. It was…really nice, actually. Then, she offered me a bite. Of her food. And. I couldn’t say yes.”
Ilya is very still now, the amusement gone from him; Shane shuts his eyes. It is the only way he can make it through this moment.
“I…” he says. “Maybe. It’s not just a diet.”
Silence. Several heartbeats pass. Finally, Shane opens his eyes, though he can still only gaze at his hands.
“Maybe I need help. Like, from a professional.”
“Shane,” Ilya says, and his voice is so full that Shane’s eyes immediately sting with tears; he can feel in Ilya’s tone the full weight of unconditional love, and it makes him want to run away more badly than he’s ever wanted to run away in his entire life. He knows, when Ilya says his name like that, that all expectations are lifted. That Shane has no duty to fulfill. That he is free. This terrifies him. It terrifies him so much that Shane feels that what he does next cannot possibly be his choice. It feels like an act of God, far beyond his own willpower, but he knows, deep down, that it is indeed by his own decision, his own courage, that he turns and meets Ilya’s gaze. Ilya’s eyes are stricken with compassion. The sight makes Shane nauseous. He cannot endure this. Why does it hurt? This is something so good, so impossibly good—why does it hurt?
Shane knows why. It hurts because it introduces loss. This love that sets free, that surrenders—having it now makes clear to Shane that he did not have it before, which in turn raises the question: who would he have been if he had? He is aghast with grief; he is aghast with gratitude. Ilya watches him. Shane wonders if he can tell what he’s feeling. What he’s thinking. He doesn’t think he can put it into words. Maybe one day. He wants to be able to, one day.
“There is something I have not told you,” says Ilya at last.
No shit, Shane wants to say. Instead he waits.
“I have been seeing a therapist too,” Ilya says.
Shane blinks. “What?” He doesn’t want to get angry, not right now, but he can’t help it. Hurt radiates out from the center of him as if Ilya had struck him in the chest. “Ilya, what the—why did you keep this from me?”
Ilya looks away. Is he ashamed? Rationally, Shane knows he must be. That must be the reason. But it feels like another attempt to shut Shane out. He closes his eyes. It hurts so much.
“I’m sorry,” Shane says, trying to control himself. “I didn’t mean to lose my temper, I just—”
“It’s not because I don’t trust you,” Ilya interrupts.
“It feels like it is.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But it’s not. It’s because I wish it wasn’t true.”
“I know that, Ilya, but…” Fuck. His eyes are burning. He’s angry, yes, but he’s also really fucking worried, and he’s still so hurt. “You can’t keep shit like that from me. How are we supposed to make it through this if I don’t know what’s really going on with you?”
Here he feels Ilya pull away from him a bit.
“Two can play at that game,” he says quietly.
Fair enough. Shane inches towards him across the couch. They still haven’t touched. Shane is beginning to feel the lack of it like a wound, but he doesn’t quite know how to bridge the gap yet.
“You’re right,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
Ilya says nothing, staring into his coffee.
“Ilya,” says Shane, quieter, more insistent. His old determination rearing its head despite everything. Ilya looks at him. He thinks, maybe, there is a plea in his eyes—that here, Ilya needs Shane to pull them through.
“I’m really sorry,” says Shane. “I’m sorry I couldn’t admit that I had a problem. I couldn’t admit it to myself. I don’t…Ilya, for a long time I didn’t want to stop. I’m not even sure I do now. But I’m going to try.”
Ilya’s jaw works for a long moment. When he speaks, it is in a voice so low Shane can barely hear.
“It hurts me too, you know,” he says. “For you to keep it from me. Makes me feel like you think…” He takes a long pause. Shane waits. “Like you think. Uh. Fuck. Um, like maybe you look at me and you think oh, my boyfriend is too messed up to take care of me. I can’t rely on him.”
“What?” Shane is genuinely flabbergasted. It breaks his heart to imagine Ilya thinking that. “I’ve never thought that, Ilya. Not once in my life. I couldn’t. You are…” He looks away now, overwhelmed by emotion, by a feeling of smallness that makes it hard to look at Ilya. “You’ve…what you’ve given to me. There’s no-one…you…I don’t know if I could have ever admitted it to myself. What I wanted. Without you. Sometimes, it feels like you saved my life.”
They are sitting much closer together on the sofa now. Ilya’s eyes are shining with tears.
“I did not, Hollander,” he says. A tear slips out. “People save their own lives, if they really want to.”
Shane wants to argue with him. He wants to reach for him so badly. But somehow he still feels he can’t.
“All I’ve ever thought, when I knew you were struggling,” he says instead. “Is, why won’t he let me help?”
He expects Ilya to crumple then, to admit, like Shane did, that he needs help, but he doesn’t. He puts his coffee down on the table and keeps his gaze trained on it. The distance yawns back open between them. This, more than anything else, terrifies Shane. He doesn’t know what it means. What to do.
“Ilya?” he says, trying not to let his panic tinge his voice.
“What if you can’t?” says Ilya.
“Can’t what?”
“What if you can’t help?”
And then Ilya puts his face in his hands. He’s crying. Despair. And Shane finally understands. It’s not because he doesn’t trust Shane that Ilya keeps him out. He keeps him out because he doesn’t have any hope things will get better. It breaks Shane’s heart, but it also takes away his terror; Ilya is being honest with him at last, and now he knows what to do.
“Hey,” he says and like he has so many times, he reaches for Ilya, takes his arm and tries to pull his hands away from his face, but before Shane can climb into his lap, Ilya is reaching for him, folding him into his arms himself, burying his face in his neck and sobbing. It takes Shane’s breath away, how much progress it is. In this moment he vows to himself to never underestimate again a person’s capacity for change, no matter how much it scares him to think of what might be possible if this is true.
“Ilya,” says Shane, low, running his fingers through his hair as he cries. “Ilya, Ilya, Ilya. I love you.”
He doesn’t know how long they stay like that. Eventually, Ilya stops crying. He rocks Shane back and forth for a while, hands gripping tight at his back. Finally, he says into Shane’s chest, “I am not okay.”
“I know, baby. I’m here.”
“No. I mean.” He is still speaking into Shane’s chest. “I am…maybe like my mother. Depressed. Sometimes. And it is not fixed. It might not be something to fix.”
Shane is very still as a thought occurs to him. Ilya is still talking, voice muffled against Shane’s shirt.
“You cannot blame yourself, if it…gets bad.”
But Shane can barely hear him, words ringing in his head clear as a gong, as the morning light.
You are just like me, and I am just like you.
“Ilya,” he says softly. “Look at me.”
Miracle of miracles, Ilya lifts his head, face flushed and swollen from crying, eyes huge and beautiful. Somehow, unbidden from somewhere within Shane, the words come, words he could have never thought of on his own behalf but needs to hear, he knows, just as much.
“I’m sure you’re like her in so many ways,” he says. “But you can be different, too.”
This is another good thing, he thinks. So why does it break his heart to say? We will be together always. This he doesn’t understand yet. It will take him years to. It’s okay that he doesn’t right now. He’s done enough. Ilya’s eyes fill with tears again. He leans up and kisses Shane, damp, tender. When he leans back, he’s quiet, but Shane can tell he’s not done. Shane cradles his cheek, brushes the curls gone askew over his forehead, kisses him, there, over lines that are just beginning to form.
“Tell me,” he says.
Ilya shuts his eyes. “Are you.” He struggles. Shane waits. “Are you. Um. Scared?”
Shane considers it. He knows he owes Ilya the truth.
“Yes,” he says. Ilya looks stricken. Shane’s heart aches for him, and yet, he can’t help smiling. It feels right, somehow, to let a moment of levity into this moment that Ilya clearly thinks is the end of the world.
“What, Rozanov?” He thumbs at the tears on Ilya’s cheeks. “You think I’m a chicken?”
Ilya stares at him, and then, disbelievingly, he laughs, one single, wet sound—a question, almost. Shane leans down and kisses him. He knows Ilya is beginning to understand what he means but still needs to hear him say it in no uncertain terms.
“I’m not a chicken,” Shane says when he pulls away, the same words he said to Ilya so many years ago, in the orange-dark of a hotel room, moments before collision. He meant them then and he means them now. “I am scared. I can’t imagine losing you. But it’s not going to scare me off.”
Ilya is crying again. Shane kisses him over and over, his forehead, the bridge of his nose, the mole by his cheekbone.
“I don’t think I will ever do it,” Ilya manages through his tears. “But I can’t promise you I won’t.”
Shane kisses the soft divot above his upper lip, tastes the salt there.
“I don’t need a promise,” he says, and finds, to his surprise, that it’s true. Ilya says nothing, just shakes his head like he maybe suspects this is a dream and wants to determine its reality. Then he pulls Shane close again, down to the couch cushions; they stretch out, Shane’s face buried in Ilya’s neck, and stay like that for a long time. Shane knows, somewhere in his body, that they’re not finished—there is more to say—but he also understands that this moment is necessary for them to keep going.
Finally, from above him, Ilya says, “Shane?”
“Yes?”
“When we were fighting, you said something that stuck with me. About hockey. You said. Um. That my choice was not the same as yours.” Another pause. “What did you mean by that?”
Shane sits up. He feels resistance pull in his chest. He doesn’t want to talk about this. But Ilya has done it for him. He knows he has to try, too.
“When I was a kid,” Shane begins. He’s not sure why he begins here. “I didn’t have any friends until I played hockey. Nobody, um. Talked to me?” He swallows. “It used to make my mom really worried. So when I started playing. She was like. So relieved. And so happy.”
He stops, feeling new tension in Ilya’s body. He had been worried about this, he realizes. For a long time—so deeply worried he hadn’t had conscious words for it until now.
“Can I ask you something?” Shane says, voice tremulous.
“Yes,” says Ilya.
“Does it. Um. Hurt you? For me to talk about my mom like this, I mean.”
He feels Ilya inhale and exhale.
“I assume,” he says at last. “That you don’t want me to lie just because it’s easier.”
“No,” says Shane. “I think both of us probably have to stop with that.”
Ilya chuckles. “Then yes. It does hurt.”
Shane reaches for his hand and presses it.
“I’m sorry.”
“Is not your fault, Hollander.”
“I’m still sorry.”
Shane says it in a way to let Ilya understand, let me be with you in your grief without you dismissing it.
“Okay,” says Ilya, in a soft voice. “I accept your apology.”
Shane smiles.
“On one condition,” says Ilya.
Shane rolls his eyes.
“That it doesn’t stop you from talking about her.”
Shane has to sit up then and meet his gaze.
“Deal,” he says, and kisses him. Then he settles back against his chest. It’s a bit easier that way. Not having to look at him.
“When I got that deal with Reebok way back when we were rookies,” he continues. “My mom told me it mattered for two reasons. One, it was a lot of money. I don't know if you know this, but she wasn't that rich growing up. So she was always thinking about stuff like that. But. Um. Anyway. The second reason, she said, was because there were so many kids looking up to me. That they didn’t…see people like me very often. And I needed to be careful.”
“I see,” says Ilya.
“And I don’t think that. For like, white people. I’m sorry, but—”
“You don’t need to be sorry,” Ilya interrupts.
Shane swallows. “I guess it’s just like. Nobody was saying that to you. Probably. And you like. Um.” Shane fidgets with the hem of his shirt. “Fuck, I feel like an asshole.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m making all these assumptions about you.”
“Just say it, Shane. It’s okay.”
“You’re so. Confident. And I never was. Like. Before I got good at hockey, kids used to make fun of me all the time, Ilya. Like, hockey was the only thing that made them stop. Cause outside of hockey all I was, was like. Weird. And Asian.”
“And gay?” Ilya adds, tone glimmering with amusement, helping Shane with the gravity of saying these things out loud in the same way Shane helped him moments ago. Shane shoves him; he loves him; he’s grateful.
“Yes, Ilya, and gay. Not that I knew it then.”
“Some children have remarkable foresight,” says Ilya.
“I’ll say. Man, it was bad. You have no idea.”
“Thank you for telling me,” says Ilya mildly. “I will kill them.”
Shane laughs. “We were, like, six.”
“Does not matter. They are grown now, yes?”
“Shut up,” says Shane warmly, and kisses him. They lapse into silence for a few minutes, Ilya stroking Shane’s hair; occasionally Shane feels his lips press against the top of his head.
“So,” Ilya says. “What you’re saying is, is easier for me to risk leaving hockey than for you. Because there’s less pressure.”
Ilya has put it well, but still, Shane hesitates. “I. I guess, yeah. I’m sorry. Maybe that’s not fair.”
“No,” says Ilya. “Probably it’s true. I’m sorry, Shane. For not thinking about it before.”
Shane sits up and shifts so he and Ilya are sitting next to each other again.
“It’s okay,” he says.
Ilya touches his face. “You do not have to say that. I will think harder next time.”
“Okay,” says Shane, voice tight with emotion. “Sounds good.”
Ilya studies him for a moment.
“There is something else you want to say,” he says. Damn. He is so perceptive when it comes to Shane’s desires.
“Yes,” admits Shane.
“It is about your mother,” says Ilya. “You want to say something bad about her. But this is hard for you. Maybe you have never done it before. And you do not want to seem ungrateful. To her, yes. But also to me.”
Shane’s mouth is a bit agape. Ilya raises an eyebrow.
“Just because your mother is not dead,” he says dryly, “does not mean she cannot do anything wrong.”
Shane has to laugh, but when the laughter fades, he is still faced with how hard this is. Noticing his hesitation, Ilya says, serious now, “I’ve often wanted to ask you about her. But I’ve been worried about how you would respond.”
His worries are not misplaced. Shane’s ears are ringing. We will be together always. We will be together always. So he’s come to a crossroads. Why does life have to have so many fucking crossroads? For the hundredth time he wishes that to live bravely, to be happy, required only one decision, that all could be decided and set in stone in a single, glorious blaze of choice. But it can’t be. He will have to keep deciding, and deciding, and deciding. Now Shane observes himself in his own mind as if from a distance and presents himself with a challenge. Is what he said to Ilya about not needing a promise really true? If it is, he knows, he has to push on.
This time, when he makes the choice, there’s no illusion; it feels like his.
“I’m starting to think,” he says. “Um. I’m starting to think she made some mistakes that maybe, if she hadn’t made them, I might’ve been…different.”
Ilya takes Shane’s hand. The levity has faded, pure gravity between them now. Shane knows it can’t be ignored or dissipated. That this moment matters. Matters enormously. Will matter forever.
“Different like how?” ask Ilya, so patient, and Shane feels again the terror of his love, of his pure acceptance, and allows himself to stay in it, to tolerate the possibility it creates, no matter how painful.
“Um,” he says. “Freer, I guess.”
Ilya’s grip on him tightens. Shane wills himself to continue. He hasn’t cried yet during this conversation, and he is startled by the sudden rush of tears, previously untapped; he quells them for a few moments longer because he knows he needs to say this, that if he doesn’t do it now, he never will.
“And maybe. If she had been different. Maybe I could have. Maybe I wouldn’t have.” It feels like agony, but he says it. “Maybe. At the beginning. I wouldn’t have run away from you.”
Shane shuts his eyes against the tears, so he doesn’t see, only feels Ilya lunge for him, gather him into his arms and hold him close against his chest. The warmth of his body, the pressure of his arms, breaks Shane’s last defenses: he cries, and cries, and cries.
“I love you, Shane,” Ilya whispers. “I often think the same. About me and my mother. And you.”
Shane cries through the loss, all the years extinguished to fear, to confusion and not knowing love, or not knowing a love that breathed, that allowed; he cries because he can feel Ilya’s heart beating beneath his cheek, and he can’t bear to think of how much sooner they might have lain like this if the world had been different; he cries thinking of himself as a child, so small, and confused, and scared, and he cries because on some level he hates this child for having not known what else to do, and he doesn’t know how to stop hating him; forgiveness, despite everything, is still far off, and he cries because he knows they will have to muddle through anyway, seeking, as best they can, to meet its challenge, the incandescent dare to open oneself to life, to keep trying no matter how many times they fail to fulfill its promise.
Shane cries, and Ilya holds him. The grief will never end, but he can’t stay here forever. He stops crying and lies quietly in Ilya’s arms, hands pressed to his skin under his shirt, feeling his stomach rise and fall with his breathing. In the wake of his grief, a new decision begins to formulate inside of Shane.
“Ilya?” he says.
“Yes?”
“I’m thinking summer,” he says.
“Summer for what?”
“For everything. Coming out. Going public.”
Ilya goes tense beneath him. When he speaks, his voice is breathless, disbelieving.
“Yes?”
Shane sits up so he can meet his eyes.
“Yes. I know it’s going to be a shitshow, but I’m tired of being scared of being found out. I want to tell people, on our own terms. I think I can handle anything that happens as long as going public is a choice we made ourselves. Together.”
“That is what I want,” says Ilya, staring at him like he’s the only thing on Earth. “We tell people ourselves. Together.”
“Okay,” says Shane. “So that’s what we’ll do.”
Ilya swallows, eyes glassy.
“This is what you want, Hollander?”
“So much.” Shane touches his cheek. What he says next doesn’t feel strained, or desperate. It doesn’t feel like a spell to ward anything off, and he doesn’t feel conflicted about it at all. It feels simple, and quiet, and true. “I promise.”
“Okay,” says Ilya, voice so soft. “I believe you.”
A year later, at Christmas, Shane comes upstairs to find Ilya in his room. It feels like a century has passed since they were here last. Shane got a therapist. Ilya started seeing his therapist more, twice a week now. He began antidepressants. Shane started exposure therapy for OCD. They’ve been outed, Shane joined the Centaurs, and now they’re engaged—though, Yuna and David don’t know yet. It was just a few weeks ago. They’re going to tell them tonight.
Now, Ilya is sitting on the edge of the bed gazing at something in his lap. Shane starts when he realizes it’s one of his old sketchbooks.
“Where did you get that?” He tries not to sound accusatory, but Ilya seems totally unabashed regardless.
“Snooped around for it,” he replies sweetly, kissing Shane on the cheek when he sits down beside him. Shane peers at the drawing. It’s Plusle and Minun. Their red and blue coloring is done in crayon, carefully contained inside the lines, which he seems to have done in ballpoint pen. He’s also written their names at the bottom along with his own signature. His cheeks warm. Why was he, as a twelve-year-old, drawing Pokemon in crayon and singing off on it like Picasso?
“Ugh,” he says. “That stuff is embarrassing. I really wasn’t good.”
He half-expects Ilya to protest, to say, “No, it’s great!” or, “You were a kid, it’s cute.” But he doesn’t. He just keeps smiling. It’s a smile, Shane realizes, that he recognizes. He recognizes it from a hotel room as Shane folds his clothes into neat piles. From a bar where he orders ginger ale. From across the dashboard when Shane says he told his parents he’s on a silent retreat. From the cottage as he cooks eight burgers, from their bed where he reminds Ilya, as he spells out their master plan to be together, that they’ll still go hard against each other on the ice. From an Italian restaurant where Shane orders chicken parmesan after telling Commissioner Crowell to go fuck himself, where he eats it all and lets Ilya feed him six bites of tiramisu afterwards. From the sidewalk where they hold hands in front of God and everyone, all the way home.
It’s almost a private smile, so warm and quiet. Like even Shane isn’t meant to see it. But he does.
“Oh, who cares whether it’s good,” says Ilya. “It reminds me of you.”