Chapter Text
Mae hadn’t wanted to go to the club in the first place. What she’d actually wanted to do was spend the night snuggled up in her dorm room in her comfiest pajamas and streaming her comfort medical show from the 2020s until she fell asleep at a reasonable hour. Instead, she was sandwiched between two of her hockey teammates in a rideshare at 11:30 on an early autumn night, wearing the mini skirt and cropped sweater her other teammate (and roommate), Sarah, had thrust upon her when she claimed to have nothing to wear for a night out.
“You need to have some fun, Hollzy,” Sarah had said as she painted Mae’s eyelids with her own blue glitter eyeshadow. “This semester has been insane. You need to have fun and get out of this room.”
“I leave!” Mae had protested. “I go to practice, I go to class, I go to labs. I’m hardly ever in this stupid room.” She’d gazed longingly at her laptop and the episode of the Pitt that was queued up.
“You need to have fun,” Sarah repeated, adjusting Mae’s sweater so that more of her cleavage was showing. Mae immediately adjusted it back.
“I’m leaving after an hour,” Mae grumbled. “We have a game tomorrow.”
“In the afternoon,” Sarah said. “You have the entire morning to sleep and hydrate and whatever it is you think you need to do on a Saturday.”
“Like my homework?” Mae quipped, but Sarah pretended not to hear her, and began to apply mascara to Mae’s already long, dark lashes. The primping continued until Sarah finally managed to push Mae out of the dorm and into a car with France-Pascale and Regan, slamming the door behind them, and climbing in the front seat.
“Have you been here before, capitaine?” France-Pascale asked as they pulled up to the club.
“La capitaine hasn’t been to any clubs,” Regan chirped, playfully nudging Mae’s side. Mae flushed, thankful that no one could see her face in the dark of the backseat. “She stays home and writes plays and equations all night.”
“I go out!” Mae argued while her friends laughed. “I went to that bar in Edmonton with everyone after the championship last season.”
“A bar is not a club,” France-Pascale said. “You do not dance at a bar.”
“Someone should have told Bishop that,” Sarah said, giggling. “She was on top of the table by the end of the night.”
“Right, and I helped her down and made her drink water,” Mae reminded them. “See, I go out!”
“We’re just glad you’re here tonight, Hollzy,” said Regan, placing an affectionate hand on Mae’s knee. “We’ve missed you this semester.”
Once the car stopped, the girls piled out onto the crowded downtown Montréal street, thanking the driver in French, and making their way to the neon light of the front door. Mae felt her phone buzz in her pocket and reached in to grab it.
“Sorry, I have to take this,” she said after looking at the screen. Regan and France-Pascale went right ahead without turning around, but Sarah paused, searching her roommate’s face.
“Everything okay?” she asked. Mae nodded.
“Just my dads,” she said, and Sarah relaxed.
“See you in there,” she said, and before she turned around, added, “I had better see you in there.”
“You will,” Mae said, waving her off. She hit accept on the phone. “Hi Papa.”
“Maezy!” Her papa said happily. Her nickname sounded even more childish when he used it. “You are still awake!”
“It’s Friday,” she said.
“Is it?” he said. “Since your brother left for New York, I don’t think I know what day of the week it is anymore. Anyways, I just wanted to let you know Dad and I will be at the game tomorrow. Which I guess is Saturday. Do you still want me to braid your hair?”
“Of course,” Mae said, surprised. Her papa had braided her hair before every game when she was a little kid. He still did before home games, driving the two hours from Ottawa with her dad, but tomorrow was supposed to be the first home game either of her dads had missed since she’d started at McGill two years ago.
“What about Karina’s show?” Mae asked. Her older sister’s jazz trio was playing their first show in Ottawa at the same time as Mae’s game, and Mae had told them they should go.
“Cancelled,” Papa said. “Drummer has the flu, and Karina isn’t feeling great either. We will stop by her apartment with soup.”
“Cool,” Mae said, looking back at the club. The only reason she’d agreed to go out tonight was because she’d thought her dads wouldn’t be at the game the next day. But now they would, and if she didn’t play at her full potential because she was out tonight, they would see it firsthand. She couldn’t bear the thought of disappointing them like that.
“Is everything okay, lisichka?” Papa asked, concern flooding his voice. “You are not sick, too?”
“No, I’m fine,” Mae said. “Just nervous about the game.”
“You will crush them,” Papa said confidently. “Get a good sleep and we will see you around noon.”
“Okay,” Mae said. “Tell Dad I say hi.”
“I’m right here!” Her dad’s voice came over the line. “Sorry, I was busy.”
“He is doing the crossword,” Papa said. Mae could hear his eyes rolling over the phone.
“It’s the Spelling Bee,” Dad corrected. “And Mae sent me her score for today already; I’m trying to beat it.”
“No way,” Mae said. “It’s called Genius level for a reason.”
“I’m aiming for Queen Bee,” Dad said. Papa laughed.
“You are both my Queen Bees,” he said. “We will let you go to sleep, solnyshko. Spakoynay nochee.”
“Spakoynay nochee,” Mae said, hanging up the phone. She glanced behind her. The car was long gone – she’d have to order a new one. But first, she needed to tell at least one of her friends that she was leaving, or else they would think the worst. She could text, but she doubted they were checking their phones. It wouldn’t take her long to find one of them inside, at least eight of her teammates were in the club according to the group chat Mae had muted a long time ago. She would just go inside and say that she wasn’t feeling well and had to go home. Easy.
“ID,” the bouncer said at the door, and Mae held up her Ontario driver’s license. Her home address was still her dads’ address in Ottawa at the house where she grew up. Eventually she would have to change it to Québec, or maybe, if she was drafted to the PWHL or accepted to med school, somewhere entirely different. For now, there was something comforting about her ID marking her home as Ottawa, where her dads and grandparents still lived.
The bouncer examined the ID and frowned.
“This is fake,” he said, his Québec accent heavy. “It’s a bad fake.”
“It’s real,” Mae argued, holding it to the light. “See? It has the reflective thing.”
“It says you were born in 2028,” the bouncer said.
“Right,” Mae said. “I’m twenty.”
The bouncer looked at her and the ID again. He slowly handed it back.
“You’re over eighteen?” he asked. She nodded. “You look it. Fine. Don’t show that to anyone else.”
“Thanks,” she said, and pushed through the door. That was a first, not that she went out that often, as her teammates loved to remind her. Still, no one had ever accused her of using a fake ID.
The inside of the club was dark and loud with strobing lights. Mae immediately felt overwhelmed by all of it. This was the main reason she didn’t go out with the girls – she hated how loud it was at these places. Right now, the Montréal club was blasting a classic Drake song – she only recognized from one of the many playlists her papa sent to her and her siblings in the family group chat. Mae was more of a Kendrick fan, as was her dad and little brother Niko, but neither of them had ever dared say that to Papa’s face.
Mae had hoped it would be easier to find her friends, that maybe they would all be at a table in the corner waving their phone flashlights around, but she didn’t see anyone at all that she recognized. The only thing she really noticed outside of the loud music and bright lights was that everyone was dressed kind of weird, like they were at a decades party for the 2010s. The skinny jeans and corset tops were a dead giveaway, all straight out of one of Mae’s aunt Rose’s photoshoots from 2016. Mae pulled at her own skirt again, willing it to cover her ass and cursing Sarah’s insistence that she not wear jeans. Obviously, jeans were a perfectly acceptable club outfit.
It took a few minutes for Mae to realize she was just standing still in the middle of a dance floor. People moved around her, some of them looking at her, others looking straight past her as they danced. What was she doing here, again? Right, looking for the girls. The bar, they might be at the bar. Buying drinks. Because that was what you did at a club.
Mae dodged her way through the crowd of sweaty bodies (why did people think this was hot when it was actually kind of gross) and sidled up to the bar. She craned her neck to look at both ends but didn’t see anyone she recognized.
“What can I get you?” A honeyed voice asked. Mae turned to see a bartender looking straight at her, smiling.
“Oh, um,” Mae said, glancing back and forth again. “Sorry, I’m just looking for someone.”
“Me?”
The man standing next to Mae was tall and broad, maybe four or five years older than her, with shaggy dark brown hair. He smiled down at her, and she felt her stomach flip a little. He was handsome, but he was also obviously older, and somehow familiar in a way Mae couldn’t place.
“Um,” Mae stammered, looking between the bartender and the tall guy.
“Whatever the lady wants,” the tall guy said. “On my tab.” He nodded at Mae, and then, to her relief, he turned and walked away. The bartender looked at Mae expectantly.
“Oh, uh, a whiskey ginger, please,” she said, trying not to show she was panicking. She hadn’t actually planned on drinking tonight. If she was, what she really wanted was a sip of her papa’s favourite imported vodka that burned bright as it went down your throat and then turned off your brain, but she was pretty sure that wouldn’t be available here. “A double.”
“Coming right up,” the bartender said. Mae sat on a barstool and continued to scan the room. Why had that man looked so familiar? He looked like an athlete, although you could never be sure, Mae knew, if someone was muscular for athletics or aethetics. But there had been something, she thought, that made him seem like an athlete. His teeth, maybe. A few were fake, she could tell, because Mae had spent her childhood surrounded by male hockey players with fake teeth that they didn’t properly replace until they retired. Her papa’s friend from Boston, the one who had hit Dad by accident that one time…what was his name?
“Here you go,” the bartender said, handing Mae the drink. She thanked him and put down a five dollar bill as a tip (were you supposed to tip at a club, Mae had no idea), before pushing off her stool, and resuming her search for her friends.
She didn’t mean to down the drink so quickly, in fact, she hadn’t planned to drink much of it at all, but she was thirsty, and the bartender had used the good ginger ale, so within minutes the glass was almost empty. Her teammates were still nowhere to be found. Had they left without her? Was this some kind of weird prank because she was captain now? No, they wouldn’t do that to her. Sarah wouldn’t do that to her.
Her panic rising, Mae pushed her way through the dancers towards the bathroom. It would be quieter in there, she thought, darker. She could splash cold water on her face. She could sit in a bathroom stall and play Spelling Bee until she hit Queen Bee level and then call an uber or a taxi or one of those car companies her dads used sometimes when they travelled. She’d text Sarah and then go home. Fuck trying to be one of the girls tonight, trying to be fun. Mae wasn’t fun. She was boring, just like her dads who were at home on a Friday night and in bed before midnight.
She was almost to the bathroom when Mae saw him again. The man. He was grinding on another woman, one more age-appropriate, Mae thought, but the expression on his face was focused in a way that made it so Mae finally recognize him.
Cliff. Papa’s friend Cliff, the friend who had once sent her a Boston Rozanov jersey for her birthday and visited Ottawa every few years to take Papa out for a drink and a drive in his sportscar. The expression on his face now was the same as it was when he played a game or drove a Porsche really fast. He was a nice guy, Cliff, but he was also in his fifties. This man was in his twenties. His son? No, Cliff never got married, never had kids, Mae remembered that. So, just a coincidence? What about the teeth?
It had to be a coincidence. Mae was almost to the bathroom, almost home free, when she saw them. Two figures that she would know anywhere: her aunt Rose and her dad, but decades younger. They were dancing…on each other? But no, Dad was home with Papa, and more importantly, Dad and Aunt Rose were just friends. And Dad and Aunt Rose were also in their late fifties, not a few years older than Mae on a dance floor in Montréal.
No, no, no. Mae pulled out her phone and dialed her papa. Something was very wrong. Maybe someone put something in the drink, maybe her brain was short circuiting from stress, but Mae needed help, and there were only two people she called in a crisis.
The call went straight to voicemail, and the moment the beep went off, Mae started talking.
“I’m fine,” she began, hoping it was convincing, “but please, call me back as soon as you can. Ya lyublyu tyebya.” She hung up the phone, keeping the phone in her hand so she’d feel the vibrations as soon as they started.
“Y govorish' po-russki?”
The voice behind Mae was raw and raspy and slightly higher than she was used to, but she knew it. She turned around slowly and saw the face she’d been expecting, but thirty years younger. He had her papa’s wild curls and bright green eyes, but his skin was completely smooth and tight, with none of the laugh lines or softness that Mae knew as well as the back of her hand. Ilya Rozanov was standing in front of her, in his mid-twenties, and he was at least tipsy if not completely drunk. Mae had never seen his face look so sad.
“Nemnogo,” she said, trying to remember that this couldn’t possibly be her father. “My papa is from Moscow.”
The man’s lip turned up slightly. “Moscow, good!” he said. “Me as well.” Mae felt her shoulders relax. Of course this wasn’t Ilya Rozanov. His accent was much thicker than her papa’s, his English nowhere near as good. “I go every summer.”
“I’ve never been,” Mae admitted, looking down at her empty glass. The man’s eyes were too intense for her to maintain eye contact with, not that Mae had ever been good at eye contact. “Not safe. For our family, I mean.”
“Ah,” the man said, and nodded. He looked more intently at Mae’s face, and she saw as he drew a breath in. “I like your freckles,” he said softly. Mae touched her cheek without thinking.
“Thanks,” she said. “I get them from my dad.”
“From Russian?” The man asked, and Mae was about to shake her head and say no, when she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Hey!” A bright, familiar voice said, and Mae turned to see a woman who was identical to a younger version of her aunt Rose behind her, smiling the way she did for press. “Mind if I steal her?”
The man shrugged, although Mae saw a look pass over his face that, if it was her father, she would recognize as pure rage. He turned to leave, and Mae felt her arm being tugged in the opposite direction.
“Sorry about that,” the woman said, hurrying them through the crowd. “I don’t know if you follow hockey at all, but that’s Ilya Rozanov, and he’s a real player.” She paused, studying Mae’s face. “I mean, like, a womanizer. You can go after him if you want, but I saw you alone with him, and you looked pretty uncomfortable.”
“That was Ilya Rozanov?” Mae asked incredulously, and the woman nodded. “What do you mean he’s a player?”
“He just has a reputation,” Rose said, kindly. “Sleeps around with different women in every city, you know that type. I’m Rose. My boyfriend’s also a hockey player, but he’s a nice one. You should sit with us for a bit. What’s your name?”
“Mae,” Mae managed to say, and then she was following Rose through the sea of people. The music changed to another song Mae knew from her papa’s playlists, something about the backseat of a Rover.
“I’m back!” Rose announced, seating them at a table with two men. One was movie star handsome, and Mae immediately recognized him as Miles, an actor friend of Rose’s she’d met a few times when she was visiting LA. He had a daughter Mae’s age who was equally gorgeous, and who she’d had a crush on all through high school (sadly, the daughter was straight).
The other man was Shane Hollander, Mae’s father, also in his mid-twenties. His usual salt and pepper hair was jet black and cropped short, and his skin was as smooth as Ilya’s had been. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, but then he hadn’t started wearing them all the time until recently. Most notably, he looked more miserable than Mae had ever seen him.
“This is Mae,” Rose said. “I rescued her from Ilya Rozanov.”
Mae watched as the young version of her dad’s face fell even further. He looked directly at Mae, and she saw the hurt in his brown eyes.
“Mae, this is my boyfriend, Shane,” Rose said, gesturing at him. “And this is Miles.”
“Boyfriend?” Mae sputtered before she had a chance to think. Her dad and Aunt Rose had been best friends for years, but they hadn’t dated. Had they?
“It’s new,” Rose said obliviously, placing her hand on Shane’s. “We met through friends a couple months ago.”
“Rozanov was bothering you?” Shane asked, still looking directly at Mae. She wondered if he could see his own face mirrored in hers, the way she always had. Mae and her siblings weren’t supposed to know which of their parents was their biological father, but it had always been obvious that Shane was hers. They had the same freckles, the same brown eyes, the same neuroses. It didn’t really matter, both of her dads were her dads, but there was something comforting about seeing her face in Shane’s.
“I don’t think he was hitting on me,” Mae said quickly. God, she hoped he hadn’t been hitting on her. Gross, gross, gross. “He just heard me speaking Russian.”
“You’re Russian!” Rose squealed. She had definitely been drinking.
“My papa is from Moscow,” Mae said. “We grew up speaking it around the house but I’m not fluent.” She felt the familiar wave of guilt that came with not living up to her potential. She should be fluent, for her papa. Dad was.
“Wow,” Miles said, joining the conversation. “What brought him to Canada?”
“My dad,” Mae said. This was mostly true. Her papa had moved to North America for hockey, but he had moved to Ottawa for Dad, and he had stayed in Canada for their family.
For a moment, Rose looked confused, before a light bulb went off. “You have two dads!” she said gleefully. “How chic!”
This was the sort of comment that Mae and her siblings usually found borderline offensive and would incite a Rozanov level chirp. But if this was really happening, and Mae was beginning to think it was really happening, then this was thirty years ago, and so maybe it was a perfectly fine thing to say. She glanced at Miles, who hadn’t reacted at all, so she adjusted her face to smile politely back at the woman who would one day be her godmother.
“Was that hard?” The voice was her dad’s. Mae looked over to see him watching her face, just below her eyes, but intent. “Having two dads?”
Well, that at least was an easy answer.
“Never,” Mae said. “They’re the best. I mean, they’re totally overprotective and dorky and kind of boring, but I wouldn’t trade them for anything.”
“Boring?” Shane raised his eyebrows.
“I don’t know, they’re dads,” Mae said. “They made me do my homework and coached my hockey teams and got mad if I wasn’t home before curfew.” Mae was always home before curfew, but that was beside the point.
“You play hockey?” If Shane had been entirely focused on Mae before, he was even more lasered in now.
“I play for McGill,” she said. “I’m in my third year and we’re pretty good.”
“I don’t know much about women’s hockey,” Rose said. “Do you get drafted like the men?”
Not into the PWHL in 2016 or whatever year this was, Mae thought, but she shrugged.
“Maybe,” she said. “It’s nothing like playing for the NHL though. My goal is to play for Team Canada at Worlds and maybe the Olympics, but I’m also pre-med, and I think I’d like to go to med school eventually. I don’t know, I’m still figuring that out.”
“I can’t imagine being that good and not playing hockey,” Shane said matter-of-factly. Mae laughed involuntarily. She’d heard this more than once from the same man, but it was always followed up with something about how proud he was of his daughter who wanted to use her brain to help people off the ice.
“There’s more to life than hockey,” Mae said, repeating what she’d grown up hearing her dads say over and over. “Speaking of which, I should probably go find my friends. Thanks for the assist, Rose.”
“Anytime,” Rose said, smiling. “It was nice to meet you, Mae.”
“You too,” Mae said. She looked back at her dad, who wasn’t looking at either of them. His eyes were scanning the room, and Mae hoped he’d find who he was looking for.
Gripping her phone, Mae made a beeline for the exit. She passed the bouncer who nodded at her, and then, finally, she was outside in the fresh autumn air. She breathed in heavily and looked around. Outside looked the same as it had when she arrived – the same trees, the same coffee shops and corner stores. She was back in the present.
Relieved, Mae checked her phone. Shit. Five missed calls, all from one number. She hit redial.
“Ty v poryadke?” Her papa’s voice was urgent, frightened. It was him. Thank God.
“I’m fine,” Mae said, running her hand through her hair. “I told you, I’m fine.”
“You said that,” this voice was her dad, also sounding scared, “but we could hardly hear you over the noise. Where are you?”
Mae thought about lying, saying that it was noise from the dorm, but they weren’t stupid, and she was tired of hiding things.
“I’m at a club downtown,” she said. “With the team. I’m sorry, I just got lost and I think I was confused and I got scared. I really don’t ever do this,” she added, hoping that they would believe her.
“You are safe?” said Papa.
“I’m very safe,” Mae said. “I had one drink, that’s it. I promise.”
“Good,” said Dad. Then, “Is there anything else wrong?”
Mae paused.
“Why didn’t you tell me Papa was a player?” she asked. There was silence on the other line, and then Mae heard her dad’s explosion of laughter.
“I was not a player,” Papa drawled over the sound of his husband’s cackling. “I was a gentleman.”
“A gentleman who got around,” Dad said. His laughter was muffled a bit, and Mae wondered if Papa had shoved a pillow over his face.
“Who said I was a player?” Papa asked. “You were talking to Uncle Hayden? He is upset because I did not send thank you card yet for anniversary gift?”
“No,” Mae said. “I was, uh, online. I saw pictures of you at a club, and people were saying you were a player.”
“I went to a lot of clubs,” Papa said easily. “And I had a lot of sex. Is not a crime.” Mae choked.
“Ilya!” Dad wheezed, still laughing.
“She is twenty, she can hear this,” Papa said, again without any hint of embarrassment. More seriously, he continued, “But it is important, Maezy, that you know I was always very respectful; I never took advantage of any women or men. I promise on my mama’s grave.”
Mae thought about her papa, the man who always braided her hair and painted her nails without complaint, who had bedazzled her older sister’s figure skating dresses by hand, and who had insisted that her little brother learn about consent as soon as he could understand.
“I know that, Papa,” Mae said.
“Why are you searching me on the Internet?” Papa said. He still sounded serious. “Is there something bothering you, solnyshko? Did I do something?”
Actually, I was transported to the mid-2010s by walking into a club in downtown Montréal and I met you and Dad and Aunt Rose, who I didn’t know Dad dated by the way, talk about gross, and that’s why I brought this up now. Mae couldn’t say that, but she wanted to, if she thought it wouldn’t lead to a psychiatric hold the night before a game.
“I guess I was feeling guilty about going out,” she said instead. “You two are always talking about balance, making sure I’m rested for hockey and school, but I wanted to know if you ever, like, went out. Had fun.”
“I have told you kids so many times how cool I was,” Papa said. Mae could picture him throwing up his hands, exasperated. “I had lots of fun. Too much fun maybe. I went out all the time. I was a one man party.”
“First, I am so sorry, but I can’t picture you being cool,” Mae said, remembering the silk shirt with leopard design that she’d just seen her papa wearing in the club. The image made her shudder. “And second, I was thinking more about Dad.”
A pause on the other line.
“I didn’t go out as much as Papa,” Dad said carefully. “I don’t really like clubs – they’re too loud and bright. I went with Aunt Rose a few times.” Oh, I know, Mae wanted to say but let him continue. “But I did things with my friends. I hung out with Hayden, and I went to concerts with Papa. We went to cookouts at Bood’s all the time when we played for the Centaurs, you remember those.”
“We went to gay bars before you kids were born,” Papa continued. “I made your dad talk to strangers and he hated it.”
“I did not,” Dad argued. “But Mae, what I’m hearing is that you’re worried we’ll judge you for going out and spending time with your friends. Is that true?”
“A bit,” Mae said. “I actually kind of hate clubs, but I miss spending time with my friends. Between hockey and school, I don’t feel like I ever get to just be a person anymore.”
“That makes sense,” Dad said. “You’re under a lot of pressure right now. This is a crucial time for your hockey career and your classes. But you need your friends, and you need time to just be Mae.”
“I don’t know how to do all of it,” Mae said, feeling tears finally prick at her eyes. “I feel like I’m holding too much and if I make one wrong move, it’s all going to collapse on top of me.”
“It will not,” Papa said firmly. “You ask for help. And you will go out to bad club with your friends as long as you are safe.”
“I’m safe, Papa,” Mae repeated, smiling. “I might go hang out with them a little longer. But I think next time I’d rather just have a movie night or go out to a bar or something. I don’t think clubbing is for me.”
“Good,” Dad said. “I don’t need another Rozanov loose in the clubs to worry about.”
“Hollander-Rozanov,” Mae corrected. “And I don’t think Karina or Niko are going out clubbing.”
“Rina, no,” said Papa. “But we have to keep an eye on Niko. He is maybe too much like his papa.”
“There’s no such thing,” Dad said sweetly. “Maezy, go have fun. You can sleep in tomorrow, just text us when you’re awake and we’ll come by so Papa can do your braids.”
“And text when you get home,” Papa said. “Obeshchay mne.”
“I promise,” Mae said. “I love you guys.”
“We love you so much,” said Dad. “You know we only want you to be happy, right?”
“I know,” Mae said. Then she added, “Dad, did you and Rose ever go to a club at the same time as Papa?”
This time, the laughter came from Papa.
“Another time,” Papa said. “That is a story Dad should tell you when he has had a shot of my vodka. Or maybe two.”
“Good night, Mae,” Dad said loudly. Mae snorted.
“Good night,” she said, and shut off her phone.
Mae looked back at the club. The music had changed – she could hear the bass of a song that came out last summer. She checked her texts again. One from Sarah: Where are you?
Coming, Mae texted back. Then, she pocketed her phone, and without looking back, she walked into the club to meet her friends.