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1.
There’s always a party. Shane learned this long ago. There’s always a party he’s expected to go to, and smile for, and enjoy himself at.
This one’s at least lowkey — a tangle of overlapped and interleaved conversations in one of the better suites at the hotel where Rose and her colleagues are staying. Costars and their partners and the innermost circles of their respective entourages drink Smirnoff Ice for the joke of it and filter in and out of the balcony to smoke cigarettes and other things.
He’s wedged between Miles and a costar; the one with top-billing, someone Shane has been watching in boilerplate blockbusters and occasional awards bait since his early teens. He’s very good looking, and has no interest whatsoever in Shane, so Shane’s mostly just getting in the way of his and Miles’s conversation about industry people Shane doesn’t know, and it’s fine. It’s a relief, actually. They both have a lot of cologne on, and Shane can’t really smell the intermittent wafts of cigarette smoke coming in from the balcony which make his teeth ache in ways he won’t examine and can’t explain, and sometimes Miles nudges him out of the way with a warm palm on his shoulder so someone can pass through the crowd and it’s really not a bad party. No one expects a single thing from him.
Miles’s stylist, a forty-something from Tennessee, is sipping a canned cocktail in the corner while he fingers the ends of Rose’s hair, making critiques. He stands an easy contrapposto, and when he isn’t touching imagined split ends his hand is fluttering over her low back, leaning in close to get his ear to her lips so he can hear her over the din.
Shane doesn’t need anyone to tell him “oh, don’t worry about it, he’s gay, it’s nothing” because that’s obvious, and because he knows the meaning of the sly little glances the rest of them keep giving him — waiting for him to say something, to be uncomfortable, to prove his backwardness. But he’s actually at his ease.
It’s a little thrill to be with someone so much more famous than himself, especially when they get together anywhere but Montreal. Heads still turn for them, but it’s her they’re turning for, and the attention always makes her paradoxically more eager to get close to him, to exclude the intruding world. To pull their clasped hands to her belly, to catch and hold his eye. She catches his eye now, winks at him. He laughs, because he does feel a little giddy under her focused attention. A little starved for air.
2.
After the party — well before, in fact, the party ends, he brings her back to his place. She’s sick of craft services and the shit her trainer makes her eat and comped restaurant food, so he cooks for her.
Someone else did the shopping. Later, someone else will chase the crumbs out from the corners of Shane’s kitchen floor and scrub the sink to gleaming. But the rest he does himself.
It’s a skill he learned from his father. There had been a time (Shane doesn’t really remember, but he’s been told) after college that David Hollander had toyed with the idea of trying out culinary school, maybe going into the restaurant business. But reality had settled like a fog; the things Shane had needed to secure his professional future had not come cheap, and the TBS was a reliable, fulfilling place to work.
David doesn’t really know how to talk to his son about women, so instead he sends recipes, carefully annotated, and Shane follows them, just as carefully.
He sits Rose at the kitchen island with a glass of wine in front of her, and she watches him at the stove. He waves her away when she offers to help. He drapes a towel over his own shoulder to clean up little spills and she laughs at him for it, and he pretends to flick it towards her, playful and easy. He’s not hitting a false note. She really likes him. He likes her too. They can keep doing this for as long as they want.
3.
As she eats, he observes her, makes notes. The way the inner membranes of her lips are stained mulberry pink by the wine. The way she watches his hands as he works, only chiming in with a remark every few minutes. She’s noticed how valuable he finds his silences, how accustomed he is to being alone in this space. Even his parents almost never come here.
After she eats, she takes her glass to the couch. She sprawls against the leather, her head tipped back against the armrest so she can watch him upside down, smile at him while he stands tidying up.
She calls him over to her, and he comes, and bends down so she can brush a kiss over his cheek, just a prelude.
“Can I help you clean up?”
“No, I’ve got it.”
“A handsome man cooks for me and I’m not even supposed to offer to do the dishes? What do you take me for?”
She’s so pretty. It’s getting late. If he times it right, and kisses her now, they’ll only have to make out on the couch for a few minutes before he offers to drive her back to her hotel. He’s done it before, and when he texts in the morning to ask how she slept she’ll say very well, thank you, and that she’s glad they spent the night before being so responsible.
4.
She puts the game on.
“We don’t have to—”
“Shush. This is for me. I want to watch.”
It’s late, the last few trailing moments of Detroit at the Garden. Boston players in black swarm the ice; they’re down one, and their net is already empty.
Shane doesn’t look at the screen. His shoulders are high by his ears, and he knows he’s bracing for the announcers to say Rozanov’s name. He comes alive in these moments, loves nothing more than to pull his team back from the brink. He’ll do it now, Shane is sure; he’ll work a miracle, send them into OT—
It’s only once the final buzzer sounds that Shane remembers. Rozanov is still on IR. Upper body injury. His own fault; he’d gone in for one of his signature sly checks against a guy far bigger than him and too smart to fall for his usual tricks. He’s lucky he’s not out for the season; that’s what everyone said. But he’s probably out for another game or two, a chance for Shane to widen the gap in their stupid little head-to-head points race, which he still gets asked about in every fucking scrum, every fucking press conference. It doesn’t matter that he gives the same answer, verbatim, every time. They keep fucking asking.
He’d thought about joining in on the ribbing Rozanov must have received at the hands of his teammates and friends; sending something innocuous after the injury, better luck sneaking that foul next time, etc etc. But then he thought about how it would feel to send the message and get no response, and refrained. Besides, that’s not what he’s doing. He’s quit. He promised himself. Rozanov had never been something he needed but only something he thought that he needed; a chemical trigger. The way some guys snuck addys or drank to oblivion after a loss. Shane had never even gone in for smelling salts; his body already had everything it needed to do its job. It was just a matter of replenishing what he physically expended — calories, water, salt.
People do the math on his performance all the time and have come to the conclusion that it scarcely matters to Shane Hollander if he’s playing at home or away, what time of year it is, who he’s up against. None of it matters. His consistency is his cardinal virtue. His reliability. You can have moments of brilliance, Hunter-type runs that only served to remind everyone around you how much of a slave you were to your own headspace, or you could go out every night, every game, and produce. Be a steady asset.
A crack. He’s dropped a salad plate into the sink. Thankfully, it breaks cleanly, perfectly in two. No stray splinters to worry about. Rose cranes her neck over the back of the couch to ask if everything’s okay, and he gives her a little wave with the towel, grins back at her.
5.
When the dishes are done Shane joins her, switching the channel as he sits, the new picture flickering to life just as they cut to postgame press. Basketball? Sure. But Rose isn’t watching the screen anymore. She’s looking at him now. Again, that clear, appraising eye. That eagerness to know.
I’m trying to guess what you’re thinking she says, often, when the weight of her gaze can’t be ignored anymore and he’s hiding a nervous chuckle behind his palm. It’s not as though she ever asks him to tell her. She never makes demands.
On a whim, he slides to the floor to sit at her feet. Her hand drops to his hair, before drifting to the back of his neck, digging into the twin tense columns of muscle holding up his skull with surprising strength. She likes his toughness, or so she has implied; and not because it makes her feel somehow more delicate or feminine. She has other reasons.
The last time she was over, she’d told him what it was like having a house full of brothers, in contrast to his own solitary childhood. The noise, the mess, the roughhousing. He’d shaken his head; he’d gotten all that and more from his teammates, but that was never what his own home life had been like. He didn’t even have any cousins to wrangle with. And she’d said she thought that was a little bit sad, had offered to teach him some of the moves she’d learned from her own brothers, and it had ended in a bout of half-hearted grappling on the floor which had left him with the beginnings of a hard-on because she play-pinned his wrists to the hardwood floor.
6.
He kisses her first, because that way he can decide when it happens. She still tastes a little like the food he made for her, and breath mints, and lipstick. Her hand on his neck still feels good, honestly good, and when she moves to drop it to brush against his chest he does something new and plucks it off his shirt and puts it right back where it was. She makes a pretty little hum.
“Does that feel good?”
Eyes closed, a tight nod.
They kiss again. She cards her fingers through his hair. You are so beautiful, she says, and he likes that too. He’s making a meticulous thought-catalogue of all the things he likes so he can look back on them later, flashing snippets of excised experience. This part was good. I liked that. I enjoyed that. And then ignoring the rest will come easy.
The kiss becomes peripheral to the therapeutic pressure of her fingers at the base of his skull, her nails against his scalp (she keeps them short for stunt work.) And he can finally feel himself start to unspool, can finally say he’s enjoying himself, when she pulls away.
“It’s not too late for you, is it?”
He blinks. It’s not too late. It is still not too late. He can send that message he’s been drafting and redrafting in his head about Rozanov’s shoulder, rib him about being back in fighting form for All Stars in a month. Show him the door’s still open. It’s not too late.
But obviously she means morning skate, and his routines, meditation and physio and breakfast in the morning, all his supplements laid out in a neat row at the front of his spice cabinet.
“Not at all.”
“Because I was hoping…” She returns her hand to his scalp — slow, languorous scratches. He swallows. She goes on. “I know you’re a gentleman. I love that about you. But two weeks is a long time.”
Of course. He’s been clinging to this roadie like a lifeline; not because of Rose, but because he’s been desperate for a break, desperate to break out of the bounds of his apartment and to sink into the endless rituals he uses to surround his away games, to find the furious focus everyone assumes he needs to play his best. But really, it’s just a chance for him to do exactly what he wants for a few extra hours a day.
He licks his lips. This was going to happen eventually. He’s tried girls who were waiting for marriage, or said that they were, and found it was never worth it. They still wanted him to push. To make demands. To sigh in their ears about how much he wanted them and how hard it was to wait, but he would wait, wanted him to declare his desire in such a way as to effectively count as a proposal. Rose, to her great credit, has never played those kinds of games with him.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. I’m asking.”
He chooses to play coy, still, because she thinks it’s cute.
“Asking for what?” He kisses along the sharp line of her jaw, where her perfume is strongest.
“For you to take me to bed,” she says, simply. And she’s so cleareyed. What, he wonders, must it be like to live in her head.
7.
He fumbles with her bra. She does not laugh at him. He misses her mouth and kisses the tip of her nose in the dark of his bedroom, and she does not laugh at him.
He palms her bare breasts. He lets his mind wander where it needs to as soon as he feels himself stiffen so he can stay that way. It’s like an exercise. A kind of spiritual drill. Notice everything that passes in the present moment so that nothing will escape you and you won’t have to experience being yourself all day every day for the rest of your life until you die.
He can just notice Rose. He can follow her very specific instructions, which she is so generous with. She showers him with information, with feedback, responding in ways he never needs to guess at.
She is so good to him. He can be good for her, too.
He lingers on her neck, her ears. He slides his left hand up the tender dip of her waist to her chest, cupping without squeezing, thumbs swiping over her nipples without pinching or twisting. She hitches her hips up against his, and it’s working, he can feel it working, it feels like incipient triumph. With his right hand, he reaches down.
His hands are good. Skilled and sensitive, and even if he doesn’t know exactly where he is he can feel how Rose responds, work his way to the right places, the right pressure and tempo.
She instructs him. Holds his wrist in place, tilts her hips, and asks him to just brush her clit with the pads of his fingers, barely touching her. And it takes time; she tells him that it will. He has to be patient. He is patient. And eventually he hears her little sigh, feels the unmistakable flutter of muscles under the heel of his hand.
“Coachable,” she remarks, and he colors bright. Wonders if they might possibly be done now. Swallows the thought.
It’s the first time he’s ever managed it, making a girl cum. It’s a secret he’ll take to his grave.
8.
He goes again. Midway through, and it isn’t that he’s losing focus or patience, but maybe he is losing interest. All these repetitive, tiny movements. All this stillness and the sound of their mutual breathing. And then, just as he can feel his will starting to slip sidewise into distraction, Rozanov is there. Or, just his gaze. Just his eyes. Soft, settled, watching them.
The vision is so vivid Shane might be honestly hallucinating, might have finally — he tilts his head to one side, this silent, watching construction of Shane’s imagination and Shane ducks his head, redoubles his efforts. His wrists and his forearms are just right for this; the guys talk about it often, how much their WAGs love getting fingered, what a treat it is for them before proceeding straight to fucking, how they have to dole it out carefully, every once in a while, and how their prowess means they don’t have to go down on their girls except for anniversaries and birthdays (if then.)
When Rose stretches out, momentarily sated but not yet worn out, Shane thinks he hears a low hum, an ironical Well done, Hollander murmured from across the room.
Rose goes back to playing with his hair, feeling up the mass of his shoulders.
“Are you gonna fuck me, or not?”
9.
Once, in this bed, Rozanov had asked him what kind of porn he liked best. And Shane hadn’t sputtered, hadn’t gone quiet with shame, but snapped back, quick as anything.
“None of your fucking business.”
And Rozanov had laughed, and pulled out his phone, and swiped through a few open tabs (not even Incognito Mode, as though he’d never heard of it) and made Shane watch two girls on the floor of a dim, vague space (gym? yoga studio?) twining tongues and limbs, stripping each other out of sweat-soaked athleisure wear before grinding their pussies together.
And Shane had allowed this because he wasn’t yet prepared to tell Rozanov that the porn he watched never had women in it, and the dreams he woke hot and sticky and shameful from never had girls in them, and it was all he could do to avoid the performers who looked and moved the most like Rozanov himself. And Rozanov spent the five minute duration of the video jerking Shane off in that methodical way Shane most often used when he was alone, and Rozanov’s breath in his ear drowned out the noise from the tinny little speaker. And Shane could tell he wasn’t really watching and was only really paying attention to him.
And when they’d gone for round two, not an hour later, Rozanov had done that thing he liked which Shane always protested where he used more lube and more fingers by far than Shane needed to open him up, so Rozanov could finger him soaked and purr against the back of his neck about what a pretty pussy he had.
10.
“If I were a condom where would I be?”
Rose’s hand trails up the inside line of Shane’s thigh, a little slick with sweat. He’s always sweating, always too warm, ever since puberty. It’s something teammates and bedmates alike are routinely surprised by, for obliquely racist reasons.
Shane gestures to the bedside table.
He could warn her off. Say that he's okay, needs sleep more than he needs to get off — it’s only the thought of Rozanov watching that’s kept him half hard. But they’re about to spend two weeks apart; the eight days of his roadie and a long weekend in New York for her shooting promotional shit, taking meetings with her East Coast team. She’s thinking about taking a break, she’s said, doing some Off Broadway for a while. Shane doesn’t know what that means.
“God, I’m gonna miss you,” he says, rolling over so he’s on top of her, and she sighs and hitches a leg to hook around his waist and hold him closer and he rolls his hips against hers experimentally and she’s all yielding flesh over sharp iliacs and there’s only so much surface area to her, he’s worried he’ll just push her right through to the bedframe.
She shakes her head, dissatisfied.
“Like this.”
And then she’s on top, her thumbs hooked into the boxer briefs he hadn’t slipped off yet. A crinkle of a foil wrapper (and, god, had she seen the lube at the back of the drawer, the bulk-size bottle nearly empty?)
You’re going to make her do all the work, Hollander? Men really are pigs.
And he’s still there, if Shane looks for him he will see him there, legs sprawled wide, palming himself like he does when he asks Shane to fuck himself with his own toy; a pointless exercise, because he always gets jealous of the dildo before it’s been in Shane’s ass for two minutes. So he makes excuses, tells Shane off for doing it wrong, no, not like that, and once Shane ignored him and persisted long enough he had to smack the toy out of Shane’s hand and then smack his ass for good measure.
The next day, sitting and watching tape with his team, Shane had been unable to ignore the sore, steady warmth were Rozanov’s palm had brought the blood close to the surface and Hayden, after catching sight of him in the showers, had been unbearably smug as the only one who knew about the freakier propensities of Boston Lily.
11.
The first time Shane saw Rose’s breasts was onscreen, three years ago. It was a vehicle for her costar really, and a role she fit into with some difficulty. An older guy, a period piece, and her playing the bright, icy protege, eventually brought to heel by the hero’s wit and charm and competence into sleeping with him at long last. Shane had been on the plane, had looked away during the love scenes so no one could accuse him of watching something salacious while everyone else was asleep.
After he and Rose met, exchanged numbers and a first kiss outside her hotel room, he thought about that scene, tried to remember what he’d felt, watching her body in the artful lighting, her midcentury makeup, her coiffed hair. Her character hadn’t seemed to be enjoying herself all that much, and maybe that colored his perception of it, but the whole thing struck him as peculiarly cold blooded. Even sterile.
He can’t help but make comparisons, when one of the guys complains about their girlfriend’s not putting out, not wanting to give head, and feel a smoldering smugness. Even if he only got Rozanov some of the time, what he got was always good, always what he wanted and needed, even if he didn’t know it in the moment. And now he got to be smug about fucking a movie star. Someone everyone else fantasized about. Who everyone else wanted.
He draws in a deep breath, surges upward, craning to meet her in another kiss as she grinds her hips against his thighs, plastering the dark hair to the skin. Oh fuck that’s good, she says and he tries to meet her in a good rhythm, doesn’t quite manage it, not used to being the person who sets it. Who says when, and how, and how fast.
12.
He gazes up at her, staring at her open mouth, not quite able to meet her eyes. He hasn’t had this before. He likes this. His other girls were nothing like Rose, had nothing like her easy, well-earned confidence.
This could be good, he thinks. Once they settle into things, learn each other, it could be really good. It’s better to be good at things you’ve worked hard at. This is a lesson his parents taught him early. When it just comes to you, it matters less. You shouldn’t brag about things you can do by instinct alone. That isn’t fair to others. It’s not fair to the other boys.
That’s okay. That’s fine. He knows how to work hard at things. How to improve. He plants the soles of his feet on the mattress, and experiments with a few controlled thrusts upward,matching Rose’s own pace, all senses tuned toward her.
The sound of it has him softening. The room is so quiet, she makes so little noise, he can’t get away from the sound of her pussy in the dark. A schoolboy panic shoots down the line of his spine, his outer thighs, like he’s been speeding and sees the blue lights of the traffic cop oscillating in his rearview. And then, right on cue, Rozanov’s voice again, right against the shell of his ear: Pathetic. You have a woman like this in your bed and you can’t stay up for her?
Yes, Shane thinks. I’m pathetic. I’m worthless, I’m nothing. You should have had her. You should have been here.
You should have been here.
And then, like an awful little miracle, he is there. Shane can hear him, not just his voice but the way that he breathes when he’s in the throes of it, huffing through pursed lips, heavy and fast, moaning with each exhale. Like a porn star. Like someone’s watching them.
You can do better than that. I know you can.
The heat of his breath, his hand at the back of Shane’s neck, forcing him to stay put while he fucks Shane’s throat. The skill he practiced relentlessly, brutally, before he ever put it to use for the first time, before swallowing Rozanov down like it was nothing and Rozanov had responded like Shane was the second coming of Christ, lasting only a handful of seconds before shooting down Shane’s throat, making him choke (he could only practice for the preamble, after all.)
The phantom hand on Shane’s neck brings him back to himself, to the moment, to his duty. Again, he feels Rozanov’s gaze on him like a genuine weight. He bucks up, and the wet warmth that wraps around him might be something else, might be Rose’s mouth, which he doesn’t know the feel of yet. Or Rozanov’s. Rozanov’s mouth when he got greedy, desperate to see Shane make a fool and a mess of himself. When he wanted Shane’s voice to reach that particular inaccessible pitch.
But it’s not that. And Rozanov isn’t here. He’s still on IR, he can’t even play, and if he can’t play there’s no way he can fuck the way he likes to fuck — furious and free. He’s not tucked tight against a woman’s open legs, thrusting up into her, urging her on, coaxing her forward, aching to cum in the silk-slick depths of her.
Shane’s train of thought derails, abruptly, with all the momentum of the real thing; screeching iron and the whistle of pressurized steam, to find Rose still looking at him, into him, her gaze all placid understanding and feminine cleverness. It’s an expression that says she will not be fooled. It’s the same expression his mother wears, often.
He can feel himself going soft again. He can feel himself begin to panic.
“Is this okay?” she asks. “Do you want —”
And he nods, and grips her hips, and flips them over so she’s underneath him. Starts again.
He realizes he’s angry. His anger is directionless, unbounded. It should be aimed squarely at himself — this is, after all, his failure, his mess, his responsibility. There is nothing happening here that he didn’t want to happen. That he didn’t choose.
The insides of Rose’s thighs around his hips are grown tacky, making a sticking sound in the dark with every movement up and down. The high pitch of her breath sticks in his ear like a referee’s whistle, leaving his every nerve raw, on high alert, ready to either dispute the call or focus in on the penalty kill. He’s only growing softer.
Mhm, is this all? Very boring. The voice is closer now, he needs it closer, right against his neck, right where Rozanov could bite down if he wanted.
You can do better than that, I think.
And Shane groans at the imagined nip of teeth, the phantom impression of hands on his own hips, pushing him down. The memory of those nameless women on the gym floor, rolling over grimy foam tiles, grappling with each other, as angry with each other as they were desirous of each other. Shane surges up, pushing Rose along the mattress towards the headboard, her breath punched out in pleased little sighs, already surrendered to him. He resents her for it, just for a second. Wishes she would push back, just a little. Demand more from him. Grip him harder, make herself a match for him. But the Rozanov of his imagination is pleased by this. Shane feels him plastered against his own back, a grounding weight, his cock an unmistakable brand.
What, you need me to show you how? Do I have to do the fucking for the both of us?
Shane cries out, drops his open mouth to Rose’s shoulder, allows himself a graze of teeth. He won’t be able to get her to finish again, not like this, but he doesn’t have to disgrace himself.
You want it over, maybe? You want to cum?
And Shane nods against Rose’s neck, hips stuttering.
You need my permission?
A bitten-off cry. He doesn’t need it, and Rozanov doesn’t often make him ask for it, but the times that he does, he sometimes makes Shane wait for an eternity, strings him out until he’s sobbing for it, spit and sweat and tears soaking the pillow and Shane is cursing his name.
“Please,” he says, out loud, not caring that Rose can hear him, “Please, I—” and if Rozanov were here he wouldn’t be satisfied with that, would want him to beg properly.
Mhm, good girls don’t get to cum without permission. You know this.
He would make Shane spell it out, every last little piece of it — please let me cum on your cock, please, use it to make me cum, I’ve been good, I’ve been a good girl, please — and then finally, at long long last Rozanov would give over, the right angle, the right pace, the right grip on Shane’s dick, and Shane would white out with the force of it, the power like the power of nature. Until all those polite metaphors in old movies (waves crashing, lightning striking, trains shrieking through tunnels) seemed like understatements.
But right now, he just needs it to be over. And it’s only Rose who hears the “please,” who responds by bearing down, tightening around him, tangling her fingers in his hair and tugging hard. Like she’s a little angry with him too. Like she doesn’t mind if it hurts a little. Or more than a little.
And Rozanov is gone from him, but he’s still watching, peering at them through the screen of his phone, reclining in a hotel bed, cock in one hand, and Shane needs to keep his attention, his focus, lest he turn his gaze away and scroll in search of something else.
Rozanov likes his porn loud, so Shane gets loud. He likes girls who get wet, so Shane reaches down to feel where Rose has gone slick again around him. He likes to see, likes a view, so Shane sits suddenly up, kneels, leans back on his heels so the place where they’re joined is clearly visible for the camera. He imagines Rozanov’s feet planted flat on the bed, fist flying in those last fast vinegar strokes, mouth pursed in that absurd tight moue that makes him look like a pornstar.
And it ends. Just like that, it’s over. A few quick, warm pulses into the condom and his own orgasm is exorcised, excised. Dispensed with.
He rolls away from Rose before his weight can crush her, sucks in a few lungfuls of stale air. She reaches for his hand. He lets her take it, but they don’t look at each other, and neither of them avert their gaze from the ceiling.
13.
Her sweater still smells like the party. Her black lace underwear is cold and wet at the gusset. While she showers, Shane drops her clothes into the wash — she’ll get them back once his road trip is over and she’s back from New York and they can pick up where they left off. In the meantime, she can borrow some of his things.
He stands in front of the washer for a while once the cycle starts, watching it spin and froth.
It’s going well. She likes him. He likes her.
They can keep doing this as long as they want.