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“What the—“
”I’m coming to the cottage.”
Shane doesn’t lie to his parents. Or, Shane believes himself to be a person who doesn’t lie to his parents. His choices and their perception can live alongside each other, as long as Shane puts forth the effort needed to sustain several different stories at once.
“Shane? What’s going on?” his mother calls from the other room.
“Shane? Are you there?” Ilya’s voice asks from the phone.
The phone is hot. The case needs to be cleaned. It’s hot from Shane’s hand, and hot from all the texts he and Ilya had been sending during the game. Hot because Shane needs him, needs to talk to him, even if Ilya is boarding a plane to Russia tomorrow. Or the day after. Ilya is being cagey about the whole thing.
No, not Russia, Shane corrects himself. And not cagey, not anymore, not after the Big Night for Hockey and not after I’m coming to the cottage.
Shane is warm too. Warm from the sling that locks his arm close to his chest. Warm from the changing of the seasons and his mother’s need to have three weeks of open windows before turning on the air conditioning. Warm because Ilya has managed to change on a dime, and sounds so sure while he does it.
“You are speechless,” Ilya says.
There’s a laugh in his voice, sweet like syrup squeezed from the drenched pancakes Shane used to eat when his dad took him to breakfast after hockey practice. Free refills for kids in jerseys on Saturday mornings. Unlimited black coffee for exhausted hockey parents.
“Shane! You’re missing this!” His mother calls. “I knew something was up with Scott Hunter!”
“Shane, Shane, can you believe it?” Ilya asks.
“Just going to the bathroom!” Shane calls, yelling directly into the phone glued to his ear.
“Fuck– you will blow my eardrum, Hollander.”
Ilya’s laughter is warm, like fond friendship spanning years. They’d had years together, but not nearly enough. What if they’d had more time? Childhood buddies. High School Sweethearts. Those boys are inseparable, his mother would have said, if he’d known Ilya then. They’re going to go to the pro’s together. Everyone would know the truth because it would be clear as day. He wouldn’t have to tell the truth. He wouldn’t have to lie.
Shane wonders what Ilya had been like as a child. What would it have been like to have a friend like him in the loneliest years of Shane’s life?
“Shane, hold on, I’m still here, just give me a minute.”
Ilya speaks in muffled Russian to someone, like he’s holding his phone close to his shirt. Shane leans his cheek against the wall, imagining the soft worn cotton covering Ilya’s heart. A woman’s voice answers. More Russian, but then English.
That’s great, Ilya, she says, and Shane knows someone good is there with him, someone Ilya doesn’t have to lie to, someone who is relieved to hear that Ilya will see Shane soon. That’s really good.
Soon.
“Ok, I’m back,” Ilya says. He sounds like he’s walking.
“Shane! Are you ok?” His mother calls again, her shout more insistent. “I thought the meds weren’t bothering you?”
“They’re not!”
“Use your words here, Hollander,” Ilya’s voice is back at full volume, but with a different reverb, like he has moved locations. “Stop answering your mother. Answer me.”
Take off your clothes. Get on your stomach. Touch yourself. Don’t fucking do this, Hollander.
It’s always been so easy for Ilya to say exactly what he means.
Shane unsticks his dry tongue from the roof of his mouth, forming it clumsily around a question. “What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to tell me I’m still invited. I hear cottage country is nice this time of year.”
“People say that,” Shane breathes.
Scott Hunter is still on the TV in the other room. They would be interviewing him soon. He would have to say something about what he had just done. He would have to do a debrief about kissing something. Maybe a press release. About kissing a man.
“People.” There’s a squeak of bedsprings, like Ilya has flopped on his back. Shane remembers that bed. The frame had squeaked a little and he had wondered if Ilya had any WD-40 before Ilya had fucked him hard enough to make the sound a part of the experience. “What do you say?”
Shane’s mother rounds the corner, her glass of wine nearly empty, but not empty enough to warrant a refill.
“I thought you were in the bathroom?” she asks.
She has not liked his answers. Shane knows that he could have done better.
“I was,” Shane says. “Stomach thing. False alarm.”
Another lie on top.
“Did you take another pain pill? It’s like you’re in a daze. Who are you talking to?” she asks, turning her head to see the screen before he can answer.
Shane presses the phone hard to his ear, hiding the screen.
“It’s Rose.”
“Landry?” Ilya asks in his ear. No laugh this time.
Shane heads for his room before his mother asks him to be honest. Or to lie better. The junior hockey trophies rattle loudly when he shuts the door. He winces when it slams.
“Why are you slamming that door?” his mother calls up the stairs.
Shane thinks it’s safe to ignore that one. Sometimes it’s just an exclamation. Just a movement of air. Sometimes he’s not meant to respond.
“I’m sorry,” Shane says into the phone. He hopes Ilya is still there.
“You are sorry that you are acting crazier than Scott Hunter kissing some guy on the ice? Or you are sorry you ever asked me to come to your house?”
Shane’s going to fuck this up. He can’t think quickly enough and there’s no response he could have prepared in advance.
“Ilya.”
“You asked me to be brave and I am here now, being Brave Little Toaster for you–”
Toaster. Shane is thinking of breakfast foods again. Shane is thinking about waking up at his cottage and making breakfast with Ilya. Shane is a fully grown adult with real estate and a career in professional sports. Shane is in love with Ilya, and wants to spend time with him. More than anything, he wants this. He wants it so bad he’ll tell a hundred more lies for it.
“–but if you are having second thoughts you should tell me now. It’s only polite.”
Shane would make a plan to get Ilya outside by the lake around sunset. The perfect golden hour to get the light really dancing off of his curls. If Shane was lucky enough maybe the dappled light on the water would dance in his eyes. Maybe he wouldn’t even have to make something up to get Ilya to go with him. Maybe Ilya would go with him because Shane would say he wanted to see the sunset, and Ilya would want to go with Shane.
“Sorry,” Shane says again, covering his bases. There must be something else to be sorry about and it’s good to get it out of the way first. “I’m doing this all wrong. But. Come to my house. I never stopped wanting you to come to my fucking house.”
“Mmm.” It’s one of those Ilya sounds. Is it yes, is it no? Doesn’t matter, Shane’s brain registers it as a sex noise and it goes straight to his dick. “Yeah? Do you still like me a little too much?”
Shane squeezes his eyes shut, counting the starts that spring up behind his eyelids. “More every day.”
“Good. Because I already canceled my flight to Moscow while you were having your panic attack.”
“On your phone?”
“Yes?”
“You shouldn’t do flight stuff on your phone. Those apps are really unstable.”
“Hollander.”
Shane drops his head in his hands. “I can’t wait to see you. I want to see you now. But I’m… Ilya, I need you to know that I want to see you.”
Ilya is quiet for a moment. And then, he asks next question with a voice void of all effect, only the honesty of a question that needs an answer:
“You are sure?”
In one heartbeat Shane says:
“I’m sure.”
Shane can make sure Ilya knows he’s welcome. He can make this comfortable for him and make sure Ilya has a nice time. After all, Shane had been raised to be good. His parents have been good to him. He knows how to be good to people he loves.
“What if I kissed you like that at the All-Star game?” Ilya asks. There’s no arrogance in the half-whisper. “Would you never speak to me again?”
Shane recognizes the question for what it is: How hard can I push? Is there a limit to this new thing? Would you be mad if I tested it?
“I don’t think there’s anything you could do that would make me feel that way.” Shane’s heart slows as he speaks, the truth calming him, the inevitability setting him at ease. “Maybe there used to be, but there isn’t anymore.”
Be gentle with me, he wants to say, Be careful with my lies, they’re all I have.
“I wouldn’t do it.” There’s an tinkling sound, like Ilya is drinking something with ice in the glass. “But a part of me wants to. I’m pissed Hunter did it first.”
The words are fragile. Ilya is scared. Ilya is being honest. Ilya is testing the same boundary Shane works to balance.
“But I will start with kissing you at your house in the woods.”
It’s like Ilya to finish with something familiar. Something safe to them both. Poke Shane with something sharp, then soothe the wound with his own tongue.
But Shane has weapons of his own.
“I’ll kiss you in front of everyone then, if you’re not brave enough to do it.”
Ilya gasps around the lie, takes it in, nearly thanks Shane for it. A lie can be a gift, a story told to keep something fragile alive. And like any good lie, it contains a singular truth: what Shane wants more than anything in the world.
It’s hard to walk barefoot into the kitchen again, phone burning in his pocket. It’s vibrating now, because Ilya can’t stop messaging him, even though they just said goodbye. Shane peaks at the previews.
I still can’t believe it
I want to hold you
I want everything, Shane
Fuck, is that crazy?
Tell me you want this
Tell me what you want
“Crazy end to a crazy season,” his father says, cracking open a pilsner as if to prove the point. Shane slips his phone back in his pocket. “You ok, kid?”
Not a kid. Not the time to assert it. It’s never the right time to make simple truths known. Not after you get a whole childhood of breakfasts after hockey practice.
“Yeah,” Shane says. “I’m good. Things have just been crazy and I think I maybe need a little time.”
His father toasts him with the amber colored bottle. “Well that’s what time off is for, buddy.”
“Yup.” Shane hooks his thumbs in his pockets. “So I just got off the phone with a new trainer and he’s recommending these silent retreats to all the athletes he works with.”
Yuna pops her head around the breakfast bar with a freshly filled wineglass. “Oh yeah? Sounds kind of hippy dippy. What’s it entail?”
Shane goes to the fridge and grabs a can of ginger ale. He examines the nutrition label before popping the top. He takes a sip, coughing artfully as if he’d swallowed wrong. It gives him just enough time to–
“Um, yeah, it seems really cool, and it’s backed by research. There’s a whole philosophy behind it where you kind of just detach from everything, especially tech, since we’re really all overexposed, you know, and then–”
Lie.