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Ilya walks into the kitchen holding himself together like he’s balancing a glass full of cracks.
Shane is already there, his Shane, keeping an eye on the eggs as they sizzle on the pan. Sunlight spills in through the windows. He’s standing right in it, and there’s a bead of sweat on the back of his neck. So very lovely. Outside, the lake glints, winking at them. It’s a wonderful, calm morning, and—
“What if she was a bad mother,” Ilya says at the same time as Shane says, “Good morning.”
He’s been thinking about it from the moment he woke up.
Here it is: the heaviest act of love. He will carry this love forever, this grief. It will show up wherever he goes, in every sunlit morning and behind every corner. In the mirror when he’s brushing his teeth.
“I—I don’t—Ilya?”
Ilya leans his elbows on the counter and looks at him. He wishes Shane could give him an answer so that he wouldn’t have to think about it.
“Good mothers do not leave their kids.” It’s a horrible thing to say. He could never blame her. Not when he’s thought about it as well, sometimes, he’s his mother’s son. And that’s a horrible thing to think, especially when Shane is standing right in front of him.
But Ilya knows that even if it comes to that, the world will go on just fine. There will never be the end, only endings, because when he’s gone someone will carry that grief, too. Hopefully.
What a beautiful thing, to hold someone in your heart after they’re already gone. And now he’s twisting it into something ugly.
Shane opens his mouth. Closes it. Presses his lips into a confused line.
Before he can speak, Ilya puts his palms flat against the marble and pushes himself up. “She was a good mother,” he says, decisively, like it’s up to him. He says it, so it must be true. And it is, it has to be. The sun hides behind a wispy cloud, the light curling lacelike over him. “She really was, Shane.”
They both ignore the desperate edge to his voice. Shane walks up to him, takes his face in his hands, kisses his forehead. Then his cheek. Murmurs, “I know. Let’s eat first, okay? It’s alright.”
Later, Ilya curls up against Shane on the couch while Shane strokes his hair, eyes following the morning news half-heartedly. Ilya tries to watch too, but he finds the actual news boring, so he fixates on the way the studio lights bounce off the anchor’s bald spot.
“She loved me,” he says quietly. He doesn’t quite know why. But it’s important that Shane knows.
“She did,” Shane replies, like he’s certain of it. He cradles Ilya’s head to his chest. “Of course she did. You’re so easy to love.”
Ilya wants to argue, for the sake of it. He wedges his arm between Shane’s back and the cushions so he can squeeze his waist. Then he slots his leg between Shane’s and clings to him.
So easy to love. Then why—and Ilya refuses to say the words. Then why did she leave me. If it’s so easy. It would come off as childish and petulant. It’s a useless question, anyway. He knows why, and he forgives her, even though there is nothing to forgive.
“Do you think she is a bad mother?”
Shane is quiet. Then: “I don’t know.” Ilya can feel him swallow, he can hear it travel in his chest. “I can’t really say. You know that.” What do you want me to say?
Sometimes, at his worst moments, Ilya is angry at her. If she had only waited, just for a little longer, he could have helped her. He knows he could have. He is so bitter. Why didn’t she take him with her? He wants Shane to say yes, Ilya, you’re right. She was selfish and weak. She should have tried to hold on.
But Ilya doesn’t want to be angry at her. It is a suffocating thing, the guilt that follows. He wants Shane to say no, of course not. She tried her best. It was her last resort.
His sweet, saintly mother.
You never actually stop processing your grief. Therapy offers you nice phrases like that. You only make space for it and learn to live with it. Let it grow roots in your spine. Tearing those roots out is like murder and getting over it is the same as forgetting. And Ilya knows that when he dies, the last remains of her will die with him.
He’s like a child begging for something he can’t have. Reaching for things he’s not supposed to touch. I want Mama, he thinks when he’s cold and lonely and homesick. The loneliness in him belongs to a child. One that’s thousands of miles away and therefore too far for him to soothe.
Shane yawns. He massages Ilya’s scalp slowly, hand resting where Ilya’s arm is laid across his stomach. Ilya noses the crook of his neck.
“I want to keep you here,” he hears himself say. “Tie you up. So you can’t leave.” Their legs, bare and tangled, are sticky with sweat. He can feel the sun on his back.
“Mmm, here?” Shane’s cheek is pressed against Ilya’s head. “Not in your house?”
“It’s—not as private. I don’t want neighbors to think I keep Shane Hollander hostage. Pretty sure it counts as, ah, treason. You are national treasure.”
Shane’s laugh bubbles into the air. Ilya raises his head just to see him smile. He will spend the rest of his life making him laugh. This is love, too. And this, too, is its own kind of grief, knowing that one day it will end. Perhaps that is the only love he knows. This endless melancholy.
But for now, Shane’s eyes crinkle with a smile.
“You already have me,” he says, so earnest Ilya is sick from it. “You can’t keep a person hostage if they’re willing.”
A dumb, low-hanging fruit: “So you want me to tie you up?”
“Shut up.” Affection bleeds through every syllable. Ilya tucks his face back into Shane’s neck, where it’s dark and hot. He shifts to lie on top of him. Closer. Always closer.
He doesn’t want to open his life only for his grief to swallow Shane, too. He wants to set his love down here, in this cottage, this corner of their couch, this curve of Shane’s shoulder and neck. It’s painful. It’s awful. It’s incredible.
“I don’t want you to ever leave me,” he says. “I don’t want you to love anyone else.”
Shane’s hands settle on his back. “I’m not leaving.” It’s a lie. The summer will be over before they know it, and then he’ll be in Montreal and Ilya will be in Boston with no one to hold him. Just him and his ghosts. But one day. One day he’ll have Shane all to himself.
They’re swaddled in light. The television is silent now. Shane kisses his ear. “I love you,” he says. Quiet in the late morning. “You can tell me anything. You know that, right?”
Ilya has already opened his life to Shane. It was inevitable from the beginning. I love you, he says in Russian, because Shane knows what it means now. His heart squeezes in delight.
“I want to nap,” he tells him. They both know it’s too hot to sleep like this, glued to each other.
Shane’s fingers draw circles along his back. Okay. We can nap.