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Ilya watches Yuna leave the table and knows it must be killing Shane. He knows what pain it is, to feel that you are disappointing your mother.
"You should go after her," David says.
Shane looks up, and the two men have a silent conversation with their expressions. It's a coded one though, because Ilya can't work out entirely what it is about, only that Shane gets up from the table, picks up Yuna's sweater from where it is draped over the back of a nearby chair, and does as his father has suggested.
"She'll be kicking herself out there," David says when he's gone. "They're too alike, that's the problem."
Ilya nods, and takes a sip of his drink. David has good taste in vodka, at least.
"So," David says. Ilya had been hoping they could sit in comfortable silence but it seems as if that is not David's style at all."Your parents, do you think they'll be just as surprised as us or…"
David trails off, leaving a space for Ilya to fill in the blanks. Ilya swallows hard and tries to make a smile appear on his face.
"My parents are, uh, dead." He says. There really is no way to sugarcoat that and he doesn't know that he would even if he could.
"Ah, right." David says, face blanching a little. He takes a sip of his own drink. "I think I did… read about that. Actually."
Shane might be like his mother for the most part, but he is a little like his father too. Ilya hopes the same is not the case for him.
"So you don't have anyone on your side in all of this, huh?" David says.
"On my side?" Ilya asks.
"You know," David says. "Fighting your corner. Going to bat for you."
Ilya thinks that is one of those baseball references Americans like to make. He would have thought it strange coming from a Canadian but what does he know?
"I have Shane," Ilya says.
A funny expression flits over David's face. Like he's putting a puzzle together or something.
"Of course," he says. "Of course you do."
There's a beat, and Ilya thinks that will be the end of it. When is Shane coming back in? How long can it really take to unpack years of unexamined trauma with your mother?
"And us," David says suddenly, ripping Ilya from his thoughts.
"I'm sorry?"
"You have us," he repeats. "We're with you."
Ilya blinks at him. As far as his experience with them goes, this isn't how he usually expects fathers to act. He'd be happy with the comfortable silence, with the begrudgingly tolerance. He doesn't expect Shane's parents to accept him, but as long as they don't make Shane's life a misery over it then Ilya will be okay with that.
But this? This he doesn't understand.
He must give something away, perhaps with the slightly terrified expression that must be on his face, because David continues to explain.
"I won't pretend this all isn't a bit of a surprise," he says. "It still is. But, I trust Shane. If he has made his choice then— well, you've got me in your corner. Yuna too."
"I do not think Yuna will— what did you say? Go to bat for me."
"She will," David says, with a nod. "Yuna worries. Shane worries. Me? I don't worry so much."
"No?" Ilya says."What do you do?"
It would be useful, he thinks, to know how David loves someone like Yuna. Because Yuna and Shane are similar and Ilya loves Shane.
"Me?" David chuckles. "I cook."
"You cook?"
"Yes." he spreads a hand flat on the table, palm open as if letting go of his secret strategy for 'loving a worrier'. "People worry less when they're full. Diverts the blood from the brain to the stomach, I think."
Ilya thinks briefly of Shane in his house, of asking him to stay, of making him a tuna melt and checking his ginger ale was cold enough.
"I see," Ilya says. "This is good tip, thank you."
"Do you like pasta?" David asks.
"Pasta?"
"Yes. Come on, I'll show you."
David rises from the table and Ilya goes after him dutifully. He glances toward the window where he can just glimpse Shane and Yuna outside. There is a sorrowful slope to Shane's shoulder and Ilya wants to fix it.
And so he goes to cook. Because David says that it will help, and David has far more experience with this than he does.
David shows him how to cook the pasta in a massive pot. He adds salt and stirs and chops and makes sauce and lets it bubble away. He talks Ilya through it as if this is a recipe Ilya is going to remember.
Perhaps it should be, Shane is awful at cooking, he does not even know how to cut a recipe in half.
When it is simmering— a word David teaches him that means boiling-but-not or something close— David turns to him and takes out his phone.
"Give me your phone number."
Ilya is taken back at first, like the request is something to be feared. He worries that perhaps he has done something to anger David in the past few minutes.
"Why do you need my phone number?" he asks. He knows he's being a little rude, but he does not know how else to phrase it.
"Because. You're hanging out with Shane and-- For emergencies. You know." He softens the request with a smile, holding his phone out so that Ilya can type his number into it.
He puts his name as Ilya Rozanov (Boston), just in case. Not that he thinks David will need a reminder of who he is. Unfortunately, he thinks perhaps David can never forget who he is given everything he has seen today.
David takes back his phone and taps on the screen for a few seconds, resulting in Ilya's own phone vibrating softly against his thigh.
"That's my number," he says. "If you need anything, use it."
"What would I need?" Ilya asks.
"I don't know. Anything."
Ilya stares down at the numbers on his screen. He doesn't quite know what to do with it. Save it as David Hollander, obviously, but after that? He's never— this isn't what he expected.
"Thank you, David," Ilya says, but David has already turned back to the pasta, stirring it and taking a piece out to test.
Ilya puts away his phone, and falls into step alongside him. He doesn't test the pasta, not yet, he wants it to be perfect.
They combine the sauce and the noodles and when they carry it back in, David with the pots and Ilya with his arms full of plates and forks and a tiny dish of cheese, Shane and Yuna are back at the table.
Shane still looks fraught, the rims of his eyes red. But Ilya can smell the sauce he and David cooked together, and thinks that perhaps David is right, and this will work. This will be the first home-cooked meal made by a parent that Ilya will have eaten since he was twelve years old. He looks at the table, a small, cosy thing bathed in bright light from wide windows, so different from the stiff, cold dinners back in Russia.
The last meal he ate with his family was his father's funeral. The meal was dry, Ilya's throat even moreso. It could not be more different than this moment, Ilya cannot wait to eat the pasta. To divert the blood, as David says.
He hands out plates, he takes his helping, and though things are not fixed, though this is not yet over and there is so much further yet to go, for now there is pasta, and family, and he knows, just for that moment, that things are going to be okay.