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“There’s gotta be others, right?” Kip said. His hands rubbed even circles between Scott’s shoulder blades. “I mean, statistically.”
Scott hummed. In the midday sun he was halfway asleep, placid under the warm, familiar contact. “There are.”
The Yankees game played on mute: 42 rounded second base. It was good to watch something other than hockey, for once. The hand moved to his hair; there was an ounce of something like hope in Kip’s voice. “Do you know of any?”
Scott closed his eyes and leaned into the touch. “Not exactly.”
You didn’t have to be a genius. Or gay. It helped, probably, that Scott was, but they were just so fucking obvious about it.
When he first met them they were still green. Fresh picks from the draft, bushy-tailed, taking in all the details of the MLH with the kind of vivid eagerness only rookies could muster. It was always good to have new blood: their zeal was infectious, their unfettered love for the ice made it easy to remember why you loved it, too.
From the get-go their names were always together. Hollander and Rozanov became Hollander-and-Rozanov. The press couldn’t get enough. Everyone loved a rivalry; it made things more exciting, gave the money something worth changing hands over. It helped that they were both excruciatingly good.
Rozanov was annoyingly aware of it; Hollander was annoyingly self-effacing. They were polar opposites in everything except the game, which meant it was magnetic. Within the year the League had its golden goose; their names and faces were all over fucking everything. Brands clamored for sponsorships. All the sports mags buzzed.
It had been like that for Scott, and then it hadn’t. That was the way of things in hockey. But he had other things to keep him going: the team, the almost-captaincy, the ever-crushing weight of his dead parents’ legacy. Who needed a rival?
The rookies soared. Neck-and-neck. Probably dick-in-asshole, Muller had joked exactly once, before Scott shut it down.
In 2011 the All-Stars were in Nashville. On the flight down they played Tim McGraw and joked about deep-fried everything. It was warm even in February, humidity clotting their New York blood from the second they stepped off the plane.
Scott’s room was next to Rozanov’s. Even in their scant meetings in the hallway he was an asshole, his smirk perennial. His Russian bellowing butted through the walls; so did, Scott noted with some amusement, the dulled audio of Shane Hollander’s French. Maybe playing back the interviews was how Rozanov psyched himself up for a game.
Whatever it was, it was working. He was an asshole but he’d had a good season. Better than good; eclipsed only, maybe, by Hollander’s.
But they both beat Scott’s shot accuracy record. Hollander by a wider margin, which Scott took with marginal resentment and a greater degree of satisfaction for the look on Rozanov’s face. He wasn’t much of a patriot, but he’d wave the goddamn stars-and-stripes with glee if it meant sticking it to Team Europe and the cocksure Russian bastard.
“That’s gotta sting,” Cameron said, nudging him, but Cameron was always trying to get a rise out of him, so it was much more satisfying not to give in. Scott rolled his eyes and observed the rookies instead: Hollander was beaming. The cameras loved him, his boyish charm was front-page-worthy. Rozanov wasn’t scowling, just watching him.
Scott tried not to listen when they talked over the boards. It was impossible to miss it, though—the furtive smiles, Rozanov slipping Hollander his room number. They weren’t exactly discreet.
“He’s an asshole, right?” Scott said, testing the waters.
Hollander ducked his head. “I mean, yeah, basically.”
“Lucky me. I’m in the room next door to him at the hotel.”
Maybe it was nothing. Meaningless shit-talk, to anyone else. But Scott knew the look in Hollander’s eyes well enough.
He weighed the merits of earplugs.
From there it was a lot of little things. Or tip-of-the-iceberg things, things which were probably interminable beneath the surface, but which no one else was privy to. There was the hesitant comfort they fell into in interviews; the ads, which all made Scott feel like a goddamn voyeur. At the MLH Awards he did his best not to notice, but it was not easy; he was an observationist by nature, and of course it didn’t help that they were the only other gay people in the room, at least that he could suspect with any kind of confidence. The jury was still out on Eric.
It was nothing you could’ve pointed to. No hard evidence. Scott had gotten by for most of his life on that, on plausible deniability; in hockey it was the same as survival.
He caught Rozanov staring once. Hollander was the opposite; he only ever looked anywhere else, which was somehow even more telling.
They all did shots together. The span of their elbows ran against each other. We’re not friends, or anything, Hollander had said, glancing away.
Yeah, Scott thought, a little bemused. Okay, sure.
“Do you think he’s, like,” Carter hesitated, squinting at Hollander’s retreating back, and Scott’s stomach flipped, “a homophobe, maybe?”
“Who, Hollander?” Scott sputtered a laugh, thrown. “Why do you say that?”
Beneath them the Swedish skater’s backwards crossovers flowed seamlessly into a lutz. Scott had shared the ice with figure skaters for years but it still always amazed him, that skating could be like that, that you could wring all the aggression out of it and leave just the beauty. Hockey was in his blood, but sometimes he thought, maybe. In another life.
Carter was frowning but he still applauded dutifully. “He got weird, when I suggested his friend might be—you know.” He waved a hand. “He seemed pretty uncomfortable.”
There were several reasons Scott could think of for that, the chief one starting with Ilya and ending with Rozanov. “I think Hollander’s default is quiet and awkward,” he offered, but fondly, and then said, “and, y’know, it was kind of a stereotype.”
“Aw, no shit?” Carter turned to look at Hollander’s friend, who was unlacing his skates rows below them. “Was I wrong, though?”
Probably not, but still. Scott tilted his head, and Carter, bless him, was a fast learner. “Okay, yeah,” he conceded, a little abashed. “Maybe that was it.”
“Would it make a difference?” Scott heard himself say. He tried to keep the weight out of it. “About Hollander, I mean.” They didn’t talk about these things much. They talked about a lot, but not this.
Carter gave him an odd look. “I mean, yeah. It would make him kind of a dick, for one.”
It was so straight-guy-allyship, and so deeply Carter Vaughn, that Scott nearly laughed, but he didn’t, he just swallowed the sudden surge of immense affection and nodded. Carter had always been a good guy, he knew this. But a lot of good people had let him down before.
Carter looked up towards the balcony. Scott followed his gaze and there was Hollander, and Rozanov leaned up against the post across from him. Yards of distance between them. It could’ve been nothing. Scott wondered: about the Awards, about Russia, about all the years in between. Carter said, “What’s that about?”
Scott shrugged and played dumb. It wasn't any of his business. “Maybe he’s just there to gloat.”
He did consider it. Only once or twice seriously, but a bunch more on impulse. He was always reeled in by wondering what the fuck he would say. Hey Hollander, we’re both gay, let’s band together to solve homophobia in the MLH. It was ridiculous to even entertain.
There was a chance Hollander hadn’t even figured it out. Or that Scott had read it entirely wrong. Whatever the case he wasn’t going to push it. He was familiar enough with playing the odds to know when to rush the puck, and when to quit.
He met Hollander’s girlfriend in Detroit. Rose Landry was pretty; perpetually unfazed. He liked her smile and the effusiveness with which she moved through the bar, like she was old friends with everyone, a familiarity that would’ve felt contrived on anyone else but was charming on her. He bought her a Negroni while Shane challenged Carter’s title as pool champion.
“So what do you think,” she said, tracing the rim of her glass, “about Shane?”
Scott had had a beard before. Nineteen, freshman year, pre-draft. He’d figured he could give it a shot. Naomi was funny and clever and had come out to him first, so for about five months they had settled on a kind of mutual benefit arrangement that involved holding hands in public and giving heterosexual sex the old college try. So he knew what it looked like. He also knew there was a chance Shane Hollander was bi, but he was pretty sure it was slim.
“He’s good,” Scott settled on saying, “I’d never say it to his face, but maybe the best in the league.” Rose’s expression didn’t change; it was not new information. “He’s not like the others,” Scott continued, shucking bar peanuts. “Hockey players, we’re all assholes, y’know?”
She smiled. “Not him.”
“No, not him.” Scott thought of the first time he’d seen Shane: the draft party, his hangdog smile, the earnestness to him, foreign in the hockey world. He’d ordered a ginger ale at the open bar; Carter kept calling him boy scout. But Scott had learned to recognize sanctimonious assholes when they came around, and Shane was not one of them.
“When you’re that good that young—it fucks you up, sometimes.” Scott thought of Zullo, two months into rehab. “People burn out, or they get obsessive, or they get mean. It’s a lot of pressure. It’s easy to become someone you’re not.”
“Not that different from Hollywood, then.” There was a turn at the corner of her mouth, indecipherable. “Did it happen to you?”
Scott shrugged and smiled into his drink. “I was never that good.”
“Bull,” she scoffed. “You saved the Admirals. My dad hates you, after the playoffs. You’re persona non grata in my house.”
“Tell him to hedge his bets, next time.”
Rose laughed. It was a good sound, an honest one. He understood why Shane liked her; they mirrored each other’s sincerity.
“You’re good for him,” Scott told her, meaning it. “He’s hard on himself. It’s nice to see him with someone in his corner.”
Her eyes flickered. He followed her gaze to the table, where Shane was lining up the shot with the same fastidious care with which he did everything, the even slants of his shoulders tracing the line of the cue. “There are things he doesn’t tell me,” Rose said. He’d always liked her as an actor; she was good at not giving too much away. “Doesn’t tell anyone, maybe. I kind of worry.”
Scott hesitated, folding his napkin around the peanut shells. “We’re not the best with sharing our feelings.”
“Who, hockey players, or men?”
“Both, I think.”
“Good answer.”
Scott smiled. He wondered if she knew. He wouldn’t be surprised. She was keen enough, and he was sure, being around actors, that she’d come to recognize it. “He’ll come around,” he told her, watching as Shane sunk the ball and tipped his head back to laugh. “He’s better than the rest of us.”
It was a low blow. He knew that even as he said it. Jesus, if someone had said something like that to him, about Kip, right there on the fucking rink—
Shane Hollander didn’t really get angry, so the receiving end of his rage was a disarming, uncertain place, one that Scott disliked despite his best efforts to get there. There were hands fisted in Scott’s jersey; they were both shoving each other, both spitting as their teammates pulled them apart; Hollander’s fucking puppy eyes were gone, he was snarling.
Carter gripped Scott’s arm even after they’d left the ice. “Jesus, Hunter, what the fuck did you say to him?”
There was a long wire of tension coiled around Scott’s chest. Away games made him anxious and tetchy and shit on the ice. He hated Montreal, its composure, its forced pleasantries; he wanted the raw unrelentingness of New York. He wanted blueberry banana smoothies and the rank of the subway and Kip. “He started it,” he spat, but the heat of his anger was already petering out, leaving him empty. His hands were cold, he’d left his glove on the rink. “So much for hockey’s goddamn golden boy,” he added anyway, just for good measure.
He found Hollander without really looking. In his hoodie in the hotel alley he could’ve been the rookie Scott knew years ago: the baby face, the unsure, skittering way he moved, at such odds with the easy grace of him on the ice. The light from the doorway made a prism of lurid yellow. He wasn’t smoking, just standing there while his breath clung together in the cold.
“That was some hat trick you pulled,” Scott said.
Hollander didn’t turn, but when he scoffed some of the tension bled out of his shoulders. “Still watching the highlight reels, huh?”
“You’re not exactly sleeping soundly, either.”
Hollander shrugged, conceding this. Scott moved to join him against the brick wall; he wished for a drink, just to have something to do with his hands. He considered saying several things and decided against all of them: they were too trite, too formal, or revealed too much; Scott was good at pre-written gala speeches and at pep talks, but not at navigating this strange, unfamiliar territory which they’d entered.
If there had been any doubt left about Hollander and Rozanov, Shane’s reaction had squashed it. Scott knew now with surety what Shane was and he knew what he was himself, which should have made this easy, which meant now was the time for him to swoop in and save them both, be Hollander’s Yoda or whatever Kip would’ve called it, the guiding hand to the scared gay kid.
But Scott was still scared, too.
It was Hollander who finally broke the silence, always braver than Scott gave him credit for. “I overreacted.” He tilted his chin towards the sky and exhaled. “I shouldn’t dish it out if I can’t take it.”
“I’m a jealous asshole,” Scott said. A startled laugh burst out of Hollander. “You were better than me.”
Shane inclined his head but did not disagree. He carried the weight of being good with deftness; on Rozanov it was insufferable, on him it just was. He’d never been anything else.
He said, “That’s not why you said it, though.”
Scott gave him a considering look. Hollander stared right back. He was easy to read but not to understand, not completely, not with the strange duality of his heart on his sleeve and all the secrets he had learned to live around.
They were afraid of the same things. That was why he’d said it.
“No,” Scott said finally. “I figured it would piss you off. I bet you’re pretty sick of being compared to him all the time, right? Fucking Hollander-and-Rozanov, everywhere you go.”
It was the right thing to say, or maybe just the best thing available; there was the slow unfurling of Shane’s mouth, the relief that suffused him. “Right,” Hollander said, ducking his head. “Yeah. I don’t know. It doesn’t always suck, but sometimes.”
“It was the wrong button to push.”
He shrugged. “I guess I’m a little sensitive.”
“You’re a goddamn puppy, kid.”
Shane huffed a laugh. “Okay, old man.”
Scott grinned; just like that the easy chirping had returned. They were just two hockey players, shooting the shit, talking about nothing, nobody. No different from anyone else.
There were a lot of things Scott wished someone had said to him. There were a lot of things he still wanted to hear.
“You won tonight, Shane,” he said, instead of any of them. He held open the door. “Don’t let me take that away from you.”
Shane smiled at him over his shoulder. A real smile, not the one for the cameras. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
He’d had this coach, when he was fourteen. Coach Bennett. All the parents called him a bachelor, which Scott learned later was a polite way of calling him a fag; he was cool, at least as far as hockey coaches went, which was to say he made them do battle drills until they puked but then ruffled their hair after. Scott liked him. Maybe got a little too attached. He was newly orphaned and so he was looking for fathers everywhere.
In January it came out that Coach Bennett was gay. Scott never found out how they’d confirmed what had been only speculation until that point, but of course there was an ensuing uproar, moral panic over letting a gay man coach hockey, near enough to all those little boys for his homosexuality to infect them. Some of the kids rallied behind him, most of them shuffled their feet. Scott, who was battling his first crush on the left winger, threw up in the locker room trash can.
He didn’t hear from Coach Bennett again, after that. He went soundlessly into unemployment. They had a slew of mediocre substitutes until the season ended in April, and by fall someone new was blowing the whistle.
Kip opened the door. It was more, probably, than Scott deserved.
There was an unadorned Christmas tree in the living room. His dad was out. They almost fucked but in the end they just laid there in Kip’s bed, half-naked, holding each other.
“I’m moving out soon,” Kip told him, running two gentle fingers down the scruff of Scott’s beard. “February, maybe. I got a scholarship for next semester. Been picking up shifts at Kingfisher.”
They’d fought about finances once: Scott had offered to pay off Kip’s student loans. It was extreme. He’d known it even as he’d written the check. He could never do anything halfway, Carter was always saying it.
“Grad school looks good on you,” he said this time, reeling himself in. He meant it. Kip was in his second year now: there was a stack of textbooks on the shelf and the desk; a cup of pens and highlighters. A backpack on the hook on the door. Scott allowed himself to picture it: Kip doing his readings on the subway, making the trek from Brooklyn to Greenwich, listening to Elliott Smith or something else he’d tried in vain to get Scott to enjoy while nursing a London Fog. An imagined window into Kip’s life, not even close to the real thing.
The last time they’d seen each other had been in August. They’d both been drunk. There were no such excuses now, except maybe that this time of year made Scott’s loneliness vast and indomitable.
He didn’t say this but Kip, somehow, understood it anyway. “If you want,” he said slowly, softly, like Scott would bolt if he was spooked, “you could, y’know. Elena’s coming over for Christmas. Her whole family’s in London right now, so. It could be a friends thing. My dad would love it.”
He’d gotten used to being a holiday stray. Store-bought hams at foster home dinners; a few Christmases at the table of whichever of his teammates’ families were feeling charitable. A couple alone in his college dorm room. For the last few years he’d been the Vaughns’ adoptee: they’d put his name on a stocking, and Scott regarded it with the inappropriate eagerness of someone who hadn’t had a family since he was twelve. It was not the same thing, still. But he wasn’t ungrateful.
“I’m going to Carter’s,” Scott told him. “But thank you.”
“Sure,” Kip nodded. And then, “I have a date on Friday.”
The freeze ran through him with the efficiency of New York winter. “Oh?”
“It’s this guy who comes to the bar sometimes. I don’t even know him, really.”
“No, yeah.” It was imperative for Scott to be cool about this. “That’s—good. Good for you.”
Kip watched him carefully. He could undo Scott with just his eyes; Scott had figured that out the hard way. “I’m not over you,” he said, after a moment. He was never anything but honest. Scott had at first mistaken it for guilelessness, but he understood now that there was resolve behind it, that it required a kind of courage that he himself did not have. “I don’t know if I ever will be.”
Then don’t go, Scott wanted to say. Wait for me. “You don’t have to explain yourself,” he said. “I wouldn’t ask you to—” He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.
“I wish someone else would do it.” Kip touched his ear, just the barest graze of his fingers, and it was all Scott could do to not beg for more. “I wish you didn’t have to be the first.”
When he’d signed with New York the mags had called him a game changer. He’d taken on the epithet with the assurance of a rookie kid in the first-round draft pick, sure that he was capable of living up to it, and years later he’d changed absolutely nothing that mattered: the Admirals were better but hockey was the same, a snapshot frozen in time.
“I want to do it. Not just for me.” Scott reached towards the curve of Kip’s collarbone. He thought of Rozanov, of Shane. “If I was braver—“
Kip caught his hand. “I know, Scott. It’s okay.”
It was tired but not unkind. There were ways it could be easier but all of them were unimaginable; all of them required a resurfacing of the world, too big a task for even an industrial Zamboni.
“I miss you,” Scott said, stupidly, lamely. It was selfish. It wasn’t enough. They both knew that.
Kip leaned forward like he was going to kiss him, but instead he just closed his eyes. “I know, Scott. I know.”
Ilya Rozanov’s father was dead. A few weeks later the Raiders played the Admirals in the semis; before the game Scott cornered him off the ice.
“Are you here to offer me advice,” Rozanov asked, flippant, “Orphan-to-orphan?”
In the months after the wreck Scott had been impossible to talk to. Everyone from teammates to counselors to pastors had tried. He’d sat through therapy three times a week counting ceiling tiles and saying whatever would clear him for practice, willing someone to handle him without kid gloves.
“Well, I used to be the poster boy for hockey sob stories,” Scott said. “I guess you’re after all of my titles.”
Rozanov laughed; it was half-surprise; he looked up at Scott as though blinking awake.
“I’m not gonna ask how you’re doing,” Scott continued, taking the minute incline of his head as indication to continue, “I know it’s shit. Does it make it better or worse to play?”
“Better,” Rozanov said, without thinking, and then see-sawed his hand. “Mostly. Sometimes I forget why I do this.”
It was blithe, but the indifference of it was belied by the twisted corner of his mouth. More and more Scott could see him and Hollander in each other.
Scott said, “It’s gonna take a few months, and then it’s going to hit you. It’ll be the off-season. It’s gonna fucking suck.”
Rozanov took this in with the attentiveness typically reserved for didactic rundowns of a play. “And then?”
“And then nothing. It’s shit. Be somewhere where you’re safe.” Scott knew grief, knew how it opened you up and emptied it out. In six months he’d run from four foster homes. For a while the only thing he’d lived for was hockey, which could not sustain him eternally but was still doing its damn best. “No one’s gonna get it, okay? But they’ll want to be there anyway. Don’t disappear on them.” Scott treaded carefully, “You and Hollander—“
He had no chance to go further; Rozanov had shoved him up against the wall, his hands curled in the collar of Scott’s jersey, his eyes dark. “You know nothing.”
“Easy.” Scott held his hands up but didn’t pull away. In other circumstances he would’ve joked that their reactions to each other were all but confirmation; show a little discretion, guys, jesus, but Rozanov got a pass on account of being fresh from a funeral, then a hospital room.
“I know you need him,” Scott said gently. They'd played the clips of him standing over Hollander’s sprawled figure on a loop. Rozanov’s grip on him tightened. “Don’t run away, yeah?”
Rozanov wet his lips. He rarely fumbled but he was doing it now. For a moment Scott thought he might hit him, but he didn’t; he let go, and caught himself before his knees could buckle. Scott reached out to steady him, but Rozanov didn’t need it.
“I don’t run,” he told Scott, a raw edge to his voice. Then he took a breath. “I kick your ass on the rink. Cup is mine.”
Scott smiled, just a little. “Okay, sure. We’ll see about that.”
Later, in June after the awards, Rozanov would ask him what gave it away. Scott had known for years; it wasn’t just one thing. But, at the All-Stars, it had been—
“Fucking Hollander and Rozanov, right?” Carter said, bumping his shoulder and grinning. “Glad they’re on our team.”
Rozanov passed, Hollander scored. They could’ve been doing it their whole lives. You couldn’t play like that with someone you didn’t know all the way through. They both had those big puppy grins; they looked at each other the same way. The scoreboards, the cameras, none of it mattered. The world had narrowed down to them. Scott could see it, because he knew what it looked like.
Hollander was laughing. Rozanov pulled him in and pressed his mouth to his helmet. The crowd roared.
It was electric. It was chemical. The scintillations of light coming off of them were so blinding that you almost couldn’t watch, like the sun rising over the ice, turning the whole world into gold.
They could have this, Scott had thought, and then, We all could.
When the Admirals won the semis, he left three tickets to the finals in Kip’s mailbox.
Afterwards it was goddamn Times Square on New Year’s Eve: the swarm around them, fucking vultures everywhere. Scott couldn’t hear anything over his heartbeat in his ears. His head was spinning; his blood was lightning.
Thank god for Carter, who grabbed him and Kip by the scruffs and herded them away from the reporters, working defense with the same staunch ferocity that he did on the rink. They left the camera flashes behind for the sanctity of the locker room, where Carter held him by the shoulders, gave him a once-over, and then pulled him into a hug.
“Holy shit,” he said, a little breathless, “that was fucking badass.”
Scott felt the laugh punch out of him. The adrenaline was waning and he was pretty sure Carter’s firm grip was the only thing keeping him upright. “You think so?”
“Can’t do anything halfway, can you, Hunter, Jesus,” Carter laughed and opened his arm up to Kip, who was standing awkwardly by the bench, his hands in his pockets. “I’m Carter, man, it’s good to meet you. Sorry Scott didn’t introduce us, he can be such a dick sometimes.”
“Agreed,” Kip grinned, “we should compare notes.”
They shook hands, and Scott felt buzzed all the way through, stupid and giddy from kissing the cup and then his lover, national goddamn television, everyone cheering for them, not the ice opening up and pulling him under. “Carter, Kip.” He gestured haphazardly, still in Carter’s arms, still catching his breath. “Did that really just happen?”
Kip caught his hand and tangled their fingers together. “I’m so proud of you.”
“Thank you,” Scott said, trying to shove the full endless span of his emotions into it, “For coming down, for waiting. For everything.”
Kip pressed his mouth to the back of his hand. “Always.”
When he looked back over Carter was crying. “Jesus, don’t be a fucking queer,” Scott said, with immense affection, and Carter shoved him, and then they all started laughing and didn’t stop.
When he left the locker room his phone rang. There were any number of people who could’ve been calling him after that little show, his agent, or Coach Murdock, or the St. Thomas Scholarship board, but when he put the phone to his ear it was Shane Hollander on the other end of the line.
“You asshole,” Hollander said, but there was laughter in his voice, an open sound, unbridled the way Scott had only ever heard him after a sure win. “That’s how you knew.”
For the first time in forever there was a future in front of them. For the first time in forever, Scott was not afraid. “Shane,” Scott grinned, fond, alive, feeling warmer than he’d ever been, “That is not how I knew.”