1 - 20 of 48 Works by Jacobi
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Svetlana blames her father. He was an enabler. He would take her to games and nobody said a thing because he was so big and so respected. He raised her to have opinions and hubris and greed. He gave her hockey, too, like anyone was going to let a little mixed girl on the ice on her own in Moscow. Ilya's mother used to skate close by her, just in case, her red gloved hands available to clasp the hands of Ilya, Alexei, or Svetlana at any moment. Svetlana knows she broke her father's heart with how much pride he has in her. She would have made a better son.
Series
- Part 23 of See you next season, Stupid
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Aleksander hides a smile by turning his head. It's a mannerism Shane usually associates with Ilya. He wishes he could tell the difference between things that are Ilya and things that are Russian, but he won't ever be able to ask. Not here, at least. Not to another male Russian hockey player who might be more concerned with how closely Shane catalogues Ilya's body language than anything. "You speak Russian like you will beat me up." Aleksander's accent is thicker than Shane ever remembers Ilya's being. It seemed like Ilya learned more English in the time between juniors and the draft than Aleksander knows two years in. Ilya and Aleksander are from different parts of Russia, though. Shane knows this, but cannot remember where Aleksander is from.
Series
- Part 22 of See you next season, Stupid
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It was Alexei who was afraid of dogs, not Ilya. Ilya, who recognized himself in the speed of four legs, the animal teeth. Alexei, who was afraid of Ilya then, too. Who is afraid of Ilya now, because Ilya has always loved like a dog, and Alexei couldn't bear this truth.
Series
- Part 21 of See you next season, Stupid
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"You'd tell me." Hayden says. It's a question and a statement.
"I'd tell you." Shane agrees. He is just now noticing that somebody has draw a little moon in purple crayon on the baseboard by the front door.
"But you didn't tell me for eight years." There's no malice in Hayden's voice. No accusation. Shane drags his eyes up to meet his friend's. They're blue, but not like Ilya's. Cornflower instead of jewel toned. The same, steady blue in every light.
"No, I didn't. I couldn't even tell myself. I'm telling you now." They keep standing in the little entryway between the door and the stairs. One of Jackie's boots is sideways across the tiled entrance. The nose of a toy race car peeks out of it.
Series
- Part 20 of See you next season, Stupid
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“Have you ever been knocked out before?" Shane asks suddenly. Ilya cannot tell from his tone and his closed eyes what the motive is behind this question. He picks his head up to look at Shane better.
"This is threat or question?"
"Yes." Shane says through a cage of his teeth. Asshole. "Question first. But if you keep moving me and being loud, it's a promise."
Series
- Part 19 of See you next season, Stupid
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“Not so good.” Ilya says, quick and to the point. His accent is something Cliff gravitates toward without meaning to. He keeps finding himself surprised when the bad guy turns out to be bad, because the man from Russia that he knows is endlessly good.
“Very bad, actually.” Cliff agrees. He puts his phone on speaker and sets his head down on Rose’s island. She touches the top of his head in passing, moving around her apartment and bringing it back to life after months of vacancy.
Series
- Part 18 of See you next season, Stupid
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They roast marshmallows after dinner and Ilya makes Shane's into s'mores so he doesn't have to risk getting his fingers sticky. Ilya is warm and solid in a way that Shane knows he hasn't been since last summer. There are still pieces of blankness in him that Shane will catch in the corner of his eye—Ilya staring off at a fixed point over breakfast, a missed laugh, a sudden silence here and there—but they are rapidly decreasing in frequency. I don't think I want to play hockey anymore.
Okay, Shane finally tells this truth. Okay, I hear you. It's killing you. I get it.
Series
- Part 17 of See you next season, Stupid
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Ilya gets to the bench. He takes off his helmet. He watches his team win. He holds the cup above his head. He is nowhere in this moment. Time slips every second. He only remembers where he is because he keeps being reminded of it by all the men in hockey gear. He closes his eyes.
Series
- Part 16 of See you next season, Stupid
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All the fans ever see of Shane is three twenty minute periods summing up the entirety of over twenty years of work. If he loses, when he loses, he will be the Montreal captain that lost to Boston in the semi finals. It won't matter that he was also the captain for back to back cup runs. And, if another twenty years passes and he and Ilya watch their jerseys get vaulted into the rafters as two people who are together instead of just standing side by side, there will always be at least one fan who will wonder if Shane let Ilya win.
Shane wants Ilya to win and he wants to beat him just as badly, and both truths are well worn stones in each of his pockets. Balanced. Shane has a feeling like dread and certainty and relief all together that he will not win the cup this year; he hopes he can still keep Ilya afterward.
Series
- Part 15 of See you next season, Stupid
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Ilya doesn't have one single photo of himself playing hockey before Boston. Sveta might, if he asked, but he knows Alexei threw out the contents of his father's house and the only thing left of his mother's is the cross he wears around his neck. It's a strange thing, to be the only viable source to prove your own history. When Ilya is gone, who will know that he used to walk to school? There are no more pictures left of him standing on the stoop of his apartment by his brother, uniform smartly starched. Who will hold the memory of a red glove, reaching down? He is twenty five years old and the sole keeper of the contents of all those years in total.
Series
- Part 14 of See you next season, Stupid
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Shane sees the way Ilya leans toward him, one arm loosened, like he's going to put himself between them.
"We had a good talk." Shane says.
Ilya raises his eyebrows and nods at Shane's soaking wet clothes. "Mm. So good you had to jump in the lake to get out of it?"
Series
- Part 13 of See you next season, Stupid
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"Well, ma'am, this is just about as far as this can go, because I really think you deserve better than the back seat of this car," Cliff tells her, all breath and a little bit of laughter. There's color flushed high on Rose's cheeks and her eyes are bright, bright, bright. The settled brown of tea still steeping.
"So stay the night, idiot. Make me breakfast. We'll throw your clothes through the laundry." Rose tugs his ear and gets out of the car. Yes yes yes.
Rose Landry, small little thing, and Cliff big and towering. She puts her hands on him and shrinks him down to size, puts his hands on her and tells him to stop thinking so much, which is funny, because usually people are telling him to think a little more.
Series
- Part 12 of See you next season, Stupid
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Six years later and Ilya has some answers, but not all of them. The more he learns about Shane Hollander, the more he realizes he doesn't know, cannot know, will never know. They name each other's truths. Shane names one now, back to Ilya and face under the water. "I love you." The thing Ilya cannot look at head on takes shape immediately, a flood of nebulous concepts solidifying. Shane's face, Shane's hands, Shane's laugh, Shane's voice. On the rink, off the rink, playing with and against each other, falling into bed. Things that are Shane without being him, physically. Sunlight through Ilya's cracked curtain. Ilya's toothbrush on the left side of the sink.
Series
- Part 11 of See you next season, Stupid
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Ilya picks them up in a Mercedes Shane has never seen before, which doesn't necessarily mean it's new. Rose raises her eyebrows at it and then the man getting out of the driver's seat to help them with their bags. "Am I going to hate this guy?"
"Likely, but he might grow on you." Shane replies before Ilya gets within earshot.
Series
- Part 10 of See you next season, Stupid
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Shane and Ilya live in the plausible deniability of the all star tournament's atmosphere like they are being paid for it. They are, sort of, Ilya reflects, but it's not the same thing. Ilya wants what he cannot have and he has what he cannot want, and both of those things are named Shane Hollander, and the man with that name has his hands all over Ilya's body beneath the water. Ilya finds Shane's general unknowable manner unbelievably enticing and his lack of inhibitions behind closed doors unbelievably attractive.
Ilya gets to hold Shane Hollander for one more night. Shane twitches sometimes in his sleep. Ilya holds this fact close to his chest. It makes his bed feel all the more empty when he is back in Boston.
Series
- Part 9 of See you next season, Stupid
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As the season progresses, two things become very apparent to Shane. One: he is going to have to add even more cardio to his training if he expects to have a hope of keeping up with Boston the way Ilya has been terrorizing the ice. Two: this thing between him and Ilya is starting to have a weight to it, like he could hold it in his hands and turn it to inspect it for a definition.
Shane's phone buzzes while he's packing for the short flight to Ottawa. He could drive, but the NHL is comping his ticket. He checks his phone to see a new message in the Montreal players' group chat.
JJ: link: allstar_livestream
JJ: For those wanting to tune in for the first game on Friday to see the fruits of our labor, Holly will be right wing
Hayden: To be clear, we tried our best
Series
- Part 8 of See you next season, Stupid
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Ilya grabs Shane by the chin and holds him still. He ducks his head to find where Shane's eyes are looking and tries to coax them onto his face. They land near his right eyebrow. Close enough. "You better fold your clothes really fucking fast."
Shane's grin is a lighting flash with nothing to ground it; it takes over his face immediately and spreads out, crinkling the constellations of freckles over his skin and half mooning his eyes. Ilya already has his hand on the live wire, the current electrocuting him again and again and again. He can't look away.
Ilya watches Shane bend at the waist to put his clothes on the dresser and realizes that it's the same motion as when Shane bends to set up for the face off. He will never be able to separate hockey from the things he loves.
Series
- Part 7 of See you next season, Stupid
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Summary
The team goes out afterward and drags Shane with them. He has to, objectively. It's a running tally in his head all the time: if I leave dinner thirty minutes early, I owe a night out. If I skip a night out, I owe brunch the next away game. The season is still young, and Shane wants to rack up his social savings before he gets truly tired and has to beg out of more than two things in a row. His phone buzzes in his pocket as he shrugs on his coat. They're going out in their pregame clothes, men with harsh faces and sharp bodies that know they look good because they are wearing money. Money makes the most broken nose look sexy in a violent sort of way, and the evening has an undercurrent of violence running through it from the start.
The game was choppy, fast, mostly due to Shane and Ilya pushing the pace past what anyone was conditioned for this early in the season, and his teammates make him pay for it in chirps that cut a little. Shane doesn't mind it too much. He can handle the chirps about the hockey. That's a reflection of himself that is good and clean and known. He can't handle the ones directed at the unknown part of himself that swirls in his chest and bites back.
Series
- Part 6 of See you next season, Stupid
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Sometimes things are fun and cheap and fast. Other times, the fun falls off and it's just cheap, peeling at the edges, a too-fast disintegration of corner store plastic. Ilya did not grow up poor. The government looked after its own, and his father was of the government. The problem was, Ilya did not belong solely to his father. He belonged a little to his mother and a lot to himself, and he had split this ownership along clear lines over and over as a child, wearing thin the drag path of self-determination in limping steps. Crawling toward some kind of light.
Series
- Part 5 of See you next season, Stupid
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Shane runs the pad of his thumb against the trimmed edge of Ilya's fingernails one by one. His head is filled with static. Ilya drums a beat on Shane's chest. Shane wants to tell Ilya thank you. Shane wants to tell Ilya that he's sorry. Shane wants to ask Ilya if they have deer in Russia. Instead, he breathes in and out and feels Ilya's fingers tapping rhythms into his bones and wishes for a different life.
Series
- Part 4 of See you next season, Stupid