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“Am I a bad friend?”
Hayden’s mom told him once that he was an easy baby. She said he practically slept through his first two years on earth. She said he wasn’t very interested in walking at all until the first day she brought him to a rink and laced up his baby skates—which are still in her house, framed in a shadow box on a cabinet in her dining room. “Then,” she said, “it was like you woke up for the first time.”
He has never had trouble sleeping. He’s never been an insomniac. Of course, the kids had necessarily brought on some sleep deprivation, but even during their consecutive baby years, even during the twins’ terrible first year, when they had never, not once, woken up or gone to bed at the same time, the problem had never been with falling asleep. It might have even helped; his body knew that when he got into bed (any bed, or a comfortable armchair, or sometimes slumped over the kitchen island, dangerously close to sliding off his stool), it was time to shut off his brain.
He had always slept deeply and soundly. He never dreamed much. He’d once joked to Jackie, “It’s because my life is a dream,” and kissed her.
Now, it is 3:00 a.m.. The baby monitor on his nightstand has a little blinking clock in the corner, and Hayden, though he is lying on his back, keeps glancing at it. Amber is sound asleep, and she’s like him, she sleeps like a rock. A perfect little lump. She’s an easy baby, too.
Jackie rolls over, putting her cheek on his chest. She just got back from the bathroom, which is why Hayden asked her, because he wouldn’t have woken her up for something as dumb as this. “You’re my best friend,” she says. They’re both wearing pajamas. Neither of them likes sleeping naked, and since the kids, that’s pretty much been impossible. But Hayden’s t-shirt is thin enough that he can feel the warmth of her skin on his pec, and she can probably hear his heartbeat. “I think you’re good at it.”
“Good,” Hayden says.
“Shane is okay,” she tells him, because she knows him. God, does she know him. She knows him so well, and he knows her so well, and it’s been the pursuit of practically his entire adult life to get to know her even better. “He’s doing okay. You did nothing wrong. He just wasn’t ready to tell you until now.”
“I know,” Hayden says, and he thinks he does know. “That’s not—I don’t care that he didn’t tell me,” he says, hoping that repetition will make it true and eventually silence that mean, bitter little voice inside his head that wants to know why Shane was keeping secrets from him all this time. “He was obviously allowed to come out whenever he felt ready, obviously.” Those are the right words, the right sentiment, Hayden is pretty sure. He’s trying so hard to get this right. He doesn’t think he’s ever known a single gay guy before. Jackie hums. “But why didn’t I notice?”
“Notice that he was gay,” she asks, “or notice that he was with Ilya?”
Hayden swallows twice. He clears his throat and checks the monitor. Amber’s little chest rises and falls, and the rest of her is still. The world is so simple to her now. The world felt simple to Hayden just a few weeks ago. “Both,” he says.
He has been the guy Shane joked with, the guy he trusted to feed him without mocking him. He’s been the guy Shane carpooled with, the guy he roomed with on the road, even when they were both vets and Shane signed as one of the highest paid players in the league, and Shane is the only man who has ever seen Hayden cry.
Hayden and Jackie do yoga with Shane every week, even though they can never keep up with him. They share tips on meal-prep services that can handle their caloric intakes, they train together in the off-season. Jackie texts Shane whenever she finds a cafe or restaurant that can accommodate his diet. Shane babysits their kids at least twice a month—hell, Shane’s parents babysit the Pike kids almost as often as their actual grandparents, and Hayden loves Shane.
He fucking loves him. They are like brothers, and they have been for almost ten fucking years.
Teammates have mocked them, have called them gay, have called them worse things, and Hayden has never cared. He’s never given a single shit.
Because he’s always been Shane’s guy, Shane’s best friend.
Except, all along, maybe that wasn’t true.
Ilya Rozanov, apparently, had been the guy. Before Hayden had ever met Shane, Ilya Rozanov had been there.
And Hayden had never fucking suspected.
There are so many ways they are close, so many places their lives touch and interweave. Shane is everywhere. Shane had been at the club the night he had met Jackie, he had pushed Hayden’s shoulder and laughed in his face and told him to ask her to dance. Shane went ring shopping with Hayden and took the pictures when he proposed. He’d been his best man at his wedding. He was at the birth of each of his children, was the one to drive Hayden to the hospital for Jade and Ruby’s birth while Hayden had a panic attack in the passenger seat, and had driven Jackie when Hayden had been out trying to track down her favorite brand of chocolate. He is their godfather. He is Arthur’s favorite person in the world. Hayden and Shane have gotten drunk together, have cried together, have slept in the same bed together, and they have won two Stanley Cups together. God, they’ve been skating together for eight fucking years. For all of it.
Shane is all over every inch of Hayden’s life.
And Hayden thought that was reciprocal. Or, at least, he hoped that one day, it would be.
But Ilya fucking Rozanov had been in Shane’s life the entire fucking time, and Hayden never even knew about it. He would never be there, hyping Shane up before their first date or encouraging him to text before the allotted three days had passed. He hadn’t been the first person Shane had called when they exchanged I love yous for the first time. Hayden hadn’t been around for any of the fights, any of the hard times, any of the break-ups or the make-ups.
Or, actually—Hayden had been around for all of that, for every minute of it, and he had never fucking noticed.
“Oh, God, I’m a terrible friend,” he says, sitting upright in bed so that he can bury his face in his hands.
+++
“You look tired, Hayds.”
Hayden looks at his captain. “I have four kids,” he says dryly. “Exhaustion comes with the territory.”
The rest of the locker room laughs. Shane frowns a little and tilts his head like a curious dog. There’s a little furrow between his eyebrows. He gives Hayden a searching look. He’s confused, and Hayden swallows.
The rest of their teammates laugh, but Shane knows that Amber is sleeping through the nights and that Jade and Ruby aren’t sick, and that Arthur is as silent as a mouse at all times of the day, unless he’s lost sight of Chompy, and Shane would have known if Chompy was missing because Hayden would have called him right away.
Shane knows all those things. Shane knows everything about him, Hayden thinks despondently.
“Everything okay?” Shane asks. “Is Chompy-”
Hayden laughs, loud and sharp, one great burst. He covers his face, hiding his eyes.
He met Shane when he was twenty-one, fresh off two seasons in the AHL. He met him during preseason training camp, a familiar, terrible grind that was a little better that year because, for the first time, Hayden made a real friend. And with Shane fucking Hollander of all people—the greatest player in a generation. God, even then, he had been so fucking good it was almost magical to watch. He seemed superhuman. Hayden looked at him and thought, “He can’t even be real.” He had liked Shane right away, liked his awkwardness and his kindness, liked that he was shy and quiet, and he had felt protective of him from the very beginning, too. Jackie says that Hayden was put on this earth to be a dad. Shane had been like a little brother from day one, not that much younger, but when Hayden wrapped an arm around his shoulder, they fit together so well.
“Chompy is fine,” Hayden says, putting on the bright, cheery voice he uses with the kids whenever his face is bruised or there’s a splint on his wrist. Whenever he needs to hide that he’s hurting. “Everything’s good. Jackie was dealing with some insomnia and I stayed up with her.”
He drops his hand to watch Shane nod, his expression turning from confused to focused. “I can stop by after practice and bring her more of that Hojicha tea for her,” he begins, “she said it helped last time-”
“Or you can just wear her out properly, Pike!” Couillard quips, tugging his jersey over his face in time to reveal a shit-eating grin. “Come on, man, you’ve got four kids—I know you know how to take a bitch for a ride!”
Hayden stands up so fast that he feels a little lightheaded for reasons other than his sleep deprivation, yelling over the immediate guffawing and ribbing that followed. “Don’t you fucking-”
Shane claps his hands together. “We’re all skating suicides,” he shouts, forehead furrowed, lips pursed, tone dark. “We’re not stopping until I call it, and I want to see perfect form the whole way through,” he says, cutting a look across the room that dares anyone to object. “You can all thank Coolie for that. We don’t fucking talk like that in this locker room. We’re teammates; we’re brothers. We respect each other, and we stand up for each other. Do you understand me?”
There’s Shane, standing up for Hayden. Defending him. Teammates and brothers.
Couillard looks murderous, but he’s glaring at Shane, not Hayden. Most of the rest of the guys have split their attention, unsure who to be mad at, but no one raises an objection, not yet. Shane runs a tight ship after all. He never lets anyone get away with those kinds of comments about other men’s partners, and they know it.
But Hayden thinks about the things Shane does let slide. The words, the jokes, the phrases he doesn’t even look up at. Gay jokes, hell, even the slurs—they have never made Shane Hollander flinch. Maybe that’s why Hayden didn’t notice.
“I said, do you understand me?” Shane yells.
“Yes, Captain!” the Voyageurs yell back, even Couillard. They continue getting dressed, the room subdued now. Shane nods once and sits down to lace his skates.
(Hayden knows how he laces his skates. He’s watched Shane do it a million times. Shane replaces his laces often. He always starts by lining them up from the base, raising his arms straight into the air to check that they are perfectly even, nudging them millimeter by millimeter until they match his exacting standards. He laces the right one first, always. He skips two eyelets, one at the curve of the ankle, and the final at the top, because he’s a dynamic skater and skipping those holes gives him extra flexibility on the ice. Of course he makes sure each bend lies perfectly flat. He laces them up loosely, right then left, then slips them onto his feet, then does them up tighter at the ankle and looser at the top. He ties a bow, triple-knots it. He stands and tests and will redo it all if anything about the tension is wrong or uneven. Hayden remembers him crouching in front of Ruby, holding her tiny foot in his palm, saying under her intense, watchful gaze, “You take one lace, fold it like this, and that’s your bunny’s first ear, see?”)
Shane taught his daughter how to tie her shoes. Hayden didn’t notice the sadness Shane carried with him for years until he saw him with Ilya Rozanov and saw a smile on his face that Hayden had never seen before.
“All good?” Shane asks again.
“Yeah,” Hayden says. “Just tired.”
+++
Locker room talk is ubiquitous. Shane is their captain, and he will sometimes draw a line in the sand, but he can’t hold back the tide. There are some concessions he has to make if he doesn’t want a mutiny on his hands.
And what the guys are saying today isn’t even that bad. They aren’t talking about cheating on their partners or mocking their wives or complaining about their children or listening to the American players preach about their awful political stances.
They’re just making fun of Ilya Rozanov and, as far as Hayden is concerned, that’s still fair game. Fuck that guy, right? He’s barrelled all of them into the boards at one point or another even though, as a star center, he would think Rozanov had more important shit to do than chirp them about their mothers or the size of their dicks or being the fifteenth best player in Montreal (which wasn’t fucking true, and a part of Hayden still can’t accept that Shane believes he’s in love with that asshole).
Okay. Maybe Hayden’s even a little pleased that Shane is listening to the guys talk shit about Rozanov. Hopefully, it’ll help him come to his senses. He’s not proud of that thought, but Shane deserves better. If Hayden had noticed, if he had been Shane’s wingman, then maybe he could have found someone who actually deserves Shane.
Or anyone but Rozanov.
Comeau is stomping around the room with a foolish gait and loudly complaining in put-upon broken English, mocking Rozanov’s accent and his country: “My babushka, she is gooder skater than all you! Yes, yes, I am hockey player, hear? I eat borscht to grow up big and strong—Ra-Ra-Rozanov!”
It’s not that funny, but in Montreal, they fucking hate Rozanov, so any slander is good slander.
“I make Mother Russia proud!” Comeau shouts to a rain of booing. “Go home and give Putin a high-five! Then, oh no! He puts me in the guillotine and cuts off my head! Not this one, no,” he says, pointing at his skull, then pointing at his crotch. “This head, da?” he says with a leering grin, to more cheering laughter.
Hayden’s laughing too, at the absurdity of the joke at least, but Shane isn’t.
Sometimes, even now, Hayden sort of… forgets that Ilya Rozanov, who just re-signed with the fucking Ottawa Centaurs of all teams, is the same Ilya Rozanov that Shane claims to love. The thought is just incompatible sometimes.
Hockey players tend to come from hockey families. The cost of beginning, including the equipment, the lessons, and the ice time, is incredibly prohibitive. Professional players generally have to start exceptionally young in order to be good enough. It’s not like there’s a ton of four-year-olds out there passionate enough to be laying out budget plans to justify the cost of entry. So, usually, it's the parents who decide to strap blades to their toddlers' feet and send them out with cages on their heads to face other toddlers holding miniature weapons. Usually, it takes a certain kind of parent to raise a kid like that. Hayden’s dad played hockey for his college, and those were his glory days; he talked about them nonstop until he died, and one of the last things he ever said to Hayden was how happy he was that his son made it into the big leagues. But more than the hockey itself, his dad was always talking about the guys he played with—those were the good old days, and those boys were real men, and things were better back then.
Hayden always knew what his dad was implying. He can’t exactly imagine David Hollander saying anything similar, but then again, David Hollander also played hockey in college, and he also strapped knives to baby Shane’s feet.
Just the thought of his own kids toddling around on the ice gives Hayden anxiety. He was kind of relieved when Jade and Ruby immediately gave up on the serious programs, preferring their chill, once-a-week lessons to the more intensive training Hayden was already in by their age.
He and Shane grew up in locker rooms. They’ve been around this their entire lives.
And this isn’t really that bad, you know?
“What was your crime, Rozanov?” Hayden asks Comeau in his newscaster voice, mimicking holding a microphone as he jumps in on the joke. “The people want to know!”
Comeau leans in, winking. “I fucked a bitch,” he says in a loud whisper. “But I do not kiss and tell, so I will give you three options to guess: one, a literal bitch in heat—worth losing my cock over? Well, I would do it again!” More laughter, more booing, some of the guys wrinkle their noses in delighted disgust. “Two: I stuck it in Putin himself—I know, I know, but a hole is a hole, and I am a proud advocate for man whore rights!” Here, Hayden laughs a little too hard because he thinks it’s fair to make fun of Rozanov for being a slut of all things, because it’s fucking true! And it’s one of the many reasons he doesn’t deserve Shane, so that ugly part of Hayden hopes that Shane is listening to this part, hearing the kind of reputation his boyfriend has. “Option three,” Comeau says, smirk widening into something like a sneer, “I have earned the American title of ‘motherfucker.’ Now that,” he clucked his tongue, “was not worth the loss. My old lady was dry as the Sahara. Any bitch would have been better!”
Hayden laughs, because everyone’s laughing, and then he catches Shane’s eye, just for a moment.
Shane isn’t laughing and he isn’t smiling.
The first time Hayden noticed Shane forcefully holding back tears in his deep, damp eyes, watery and on the verge of overspilling, had been during their rookie year. He remembered a practice after a lost game and the then-captain, a bitter old man who resented that the team that drafted him third overall had never gotten any better, shouting Shane down on the ice. “You want to be the face of hockey? You think you deserve it? You want to come in here, into our house, and act like you’re better than the rest of us? Then you had better fucking have the talent to back it up! You were a fucking mess in the third, Hollander, what the fuck was that? You think we’re going to let you coast by on that bullshit? I’ll fucking tell you right now, we fucking won’t.”
Hayden, on the bench, had been vibrating out of his skin in anxious self-righteousness. It was so fucking unfair how all the veterans talked about Shane, who never bragged, who never spoke up, who was just that good, even though he hadn’t asked to be. He worked harder than everyone. He cared more than any of them. They all acted like it wasn’t true. Hayden remembers wanting to break his stick over the barrier in protest, and he remembers sitting silently, watching with everyone else.
Their captain had spit on the ice. “Bag skates,” he’d ordered. “And since you’re so determined to impress the rest of us, then you’d better give us a fucking show, Hollander.”
None of the coaches had interrupted or objected as Shane had sprinted back and forth across the ice for nearly twenty minutes while the rest of the team had sat and watched from the bench. They weren’t allowed to leave. Some of the guys had chuckled at the beginning, but no one was laughing by the time Shane spun out, tripping and colliding with the boards and rising quickly on trembling ankles, and even the captain hadn’t said anything else when he dismissed them.
Hayden had always thought of it as one of the things they had gone through together, something that had bonded them early on, when he had been the one to linger in the locker room and had slung one of Shane’s arms over his shoulders and dragged him out to his car, carrying his weight.
He’d thought of it as something they had gone through together, but in retrospect, it’s so fucking obvious how alone Shane was.
Alone, on the ice. Singled out.
Hayden, on the bench, not realizing how bad things were, even when the evidence was right in front of him, not speaking up until it was too late.
He opens his mouth, trying to find the words. The laughter in the dressing room swells. They are surrounded by their teammates, and Hayden is a part of the huddle. What would he even say?
Hayden shuts his jaw with a click.
Shane looks away.
+++
Jackie hurt her ankle, maybe broke it, and Hayden is fucking freaking out, okay?
Of course, Shane was the first person he called.
The kids barely seem to notice; they are too excited to have their favorite babysitters over. Jade and Ruby are assembling a beauty parlor in Hayden’s living room while he frantically runs around, trying to assemble a bag for what he worries will be an endlessly long wait in the ER.
“We can paint Arthur’s nails too!” Jade says happily, clapping her hands.
“Nail polish is for girls,” Hayden says without thinking, then freezes.
Ilya Rozanov picks up a little bottle of pale blue polish, putting it between his palms. “Rolling it gets rid of the bubbles while still mixing it,” he tells Jade seriously, “and then it goes on smoother. I will show you. My friend Svetlana paints my nails all the time—she likes to try new colors on me.” He leans in. “She even has some with glitter.”
“Really?” Jade and Ruby exclaim together, attention rapt.
“Right,” Hayden says, choked. He needs to leave right now, needs to get to the car, and is only grateful that Jackie wasn’t in the room when he made such an ass of himself, words that his own dad told him two decades ago popping out of his mouth like he’s a cassette player and not a father of four. “Of course, I didn’t mean-”
“Please, Daddy?” Arthur asks. He’s looking at Hayden. His little baby. He’s looking at Hayden for permission. He says, “I like the blue.”
Rozanov is polite enough that he doesn’t even look at Hayden. He has to be a little pathetically grateful for that, too.
Hayden needs to go, but he needs to be here first. He leans down, juggling Jackie’s backpack, and cups the back of his son’s head, the hair still so fine, as he kisses his forehead. “Of course, bud,” he says. “I’m sorry. That isn’t true, and I shouldn’t have said it. You can-” His voice catches. “You can have whatever color you want.”
Arthur’s a stoic little kid, but he smiles at Hayden for that. His heart is breaking, and his wife’s ankle is broken too, and Hayden has to go.
Shane returns from the kitchen, weighed down by juice boxes and single-serving packets of Goldfish. “All good, Hayds?” he says, frowning, because Hayden has been trying to make it back to the car for five minutes now. “Did you lose anything? Did you remember-”
“Yes,” Rozanov answers for him, and, yes, Hayden is actually fucking grateful to Ilya Rozanov right now, because he is frazzled and scared and his wife is hurting and Hayden just told his son, his son who reminds him so much of Shane every single day, that he couldn’t wear nail polish. What the fuck is wrong with him? “Bag is double-checked, he is going.” Rozanov raises an eyebrow.
Pulling his hand away from Arthur hurts, but Hayden does it. “Mommy and Daddy will be back soon,” he says, inching down the hall, waving at his children, who look so happy, all sitting together on the plush living room carpet. Arthur has already crawled into Shane’s lap, and he looks so content there, content in a way that only Shane and Chompy can inspire. “We love you! Be good,” he says, “for Uncle Shane and Uncle Ilya.”
“Bye-bye!” Jade cheers, not even looking at him, focused on Rozanov’s hand, his fingers spread, offering himself as a canvas for her choice of color.
Shane gently plucks Amber’s hand up and waves it for her.
Rozanov raises his eyebrow again. Then he smiles.
Hayden flees from his own house.
+++
Hayden has spent way too long in the little bookstore, staring down the shelves of children’s books like a firing squad. Why does he feel such a strong urge to put on a baseball cap and sunglasses? Why is he so embarrassed? Literally, what is wrong with him?
He decides to be brave. “Hi,” he says to one of the store employees, specifically seeking out the one with baggy pants covered in patches who's got a giant metal bar through the top of their nose. He hopes they know he’s not profiling them or anything, but they were in the children’s section, so, goddamn, time to bite the bullet. “Can you help me find something?”
He comes home bearing gifts. A few books the employee helped him find and some toys that the store also had sold. Maybe he’s over-correcting, but he buys Jade a set of Hot Wheels, Ruby a Cars-themed Lego set, and Amber a little sock monkey because she’s just a fucking baby so why would she even care about any of this? Hayden has never thought that he and Jackie were gendering their children’s toys, but as he was browsing, he realized that Jade and Ruby both had baby dolls that they never even touched, but he has never given Arthur anything like that.
He buys a pack of soft dolls, three of them, because Arthur likes to cuddle with his stuffies and maybe he’ll like these two; there’s a ballerina, a doctor, and one dressed like a classic baby doll with a bib and a bonnet. He thinks about Shane as he runs a thumb over the fabric of their faces and decides that they’re soft enough. It doesn’t matter if Arthur doesn’t like them, at the end of the day. There are dozens of toys in the house that never get touched, but if Arthur does like them? Fuck. Maybe it’s as simple as that.
The kids tear into their gifts. Jackie watches, chin in her palm, with a soft, damp look in her own eyes. Hayden meets them as Arthur reverently places the three dolls in front of him on the floor, touching all their clothing accessories and running his fingers over their soft faces, just like Hayden had done. Jackie looks as emotional as Hayden feels.
Maybe they both have stuff they need to work on. God, they’re so fucking lucky they get to do it together, as a team.
“Thank you, Daddy,” Arthur says, cradling the ballerina and the doctor in his arms.
Hayden kisses the top of his head and breathes in the fading scent of his infancy. Amber gnaws on the tail of her monkey. “I love you, Bud.”
“Vroom!” Jade shouts, sprinting around the living room with her new car. “Skrrt!”
That night, at bedtime, Jackie puts Amber and Arthur to sleep while Hayden cuddles up with Jade and Ruby and the book he bought, each of them curled under one arm. No matter how big they get, they’ll always fit. He flips to the first page, a picture of a park with lots of people and families gathered around, and they immediately begin pointing out every dog and cat they can see. “Look at all these families!” Hayden reads, realizing that it might be too young for them, but they don’t seem to care. “Look at all these happy families!”
The next page is a biracial girl drawn with her Black dad, Hispanic mother, and two sets of grandparents. “I love my family!” Hayden reads from her speech bubble. “I call my mom’s parents Abuelo and Abuela, and my dad’s Gramps and Grammy!”
“She looks like Louisa,” Ruby tells him, naming a girl in her class. “She’s got the same color beads on her braids, look!”
“Wow,” Hayden says, turning the page. Three children stand holding hands in front of two adult men. Hayden swallows. “I love my family! I love both of my dads, and I love my brothers!”
“He kind of looks like Uncle Shane,” Jade points out, “but he,” she jabs the page, “doesn’t look anything like Uncle Ilya.”
“Maybe we can find another picture that looks more like him,” Hayden says, and fuck, he should have fucking done this years ago. Maybe Jackie thought of it, showed them something like this in the library, but this book should have been on their shelf years ago. He feels so fucking guilty.
Jackie appears in the doorway silently. Maybe she heard his voice carrying down the hallway and wanted to come see. Hayden sees her raise her phone subtly against her hip, taking a picture. Good. They should remember this, he thinks.
“My dad has one leg!” Hayden reads. “I don’t have a dad,” another child says happily, “and I love my Mommy and Grandma! They both take care of me!”
“Mommy!” Jade exclaims, looking up at Jackie in the doorway with a happy grin.
Jackie smiles back, lowering her phone and slipping it into her pocket.
“I love my aunties!” Hayden reads for a little girl with dark brown hair, pointing to a woman in a red saree and one in a white dress. “When my aunts got married, I was their flower girl! I loved being a flower girl!”
Ruby yawns. She puts her little head on Hayden’s shoulder. It is so light, but she’s still getting bigger. “When Uncle Shane marries Uncle Ilya,” she asks sleepily, “do we get to be flower girls, too?”
They aren’t grown yet. It’s not too late. Hayden is their dad. He’s a parent. The job assignment is to raise his kids better than he was raised. To make the world a better place by doing that.
He takes a deep breath. He can do this.
He can try.
+++
“I wish I understood what he went through,” Hayden says, sitting on the side of their bed, staring at his socked feet. “I just wish I understood what his life was like. All those years.”
Jackie looks over her shoulder, giving him a sympathetic smile. “You’ll learn,” she said. “It will just take time.”
+++
“Can I ask you something?”
Shane gives him a sidelong glance. “I guess,” he says.
Hayden rolls his eyes. He buries his fingers into the seat cushion. Down on the lawn, Jade and Ruby are screaming their heads off as Rozanov and Jackie chase them down the shoreline, little floaties wrapped around their upper arms and water shoes protecting their feet. Svetlana, Rozanov’s childhood friend and a total fucking smoke show, is sunbathing on a picnic blanket, Arthur beside her, silently playing with his new dolls and Chompy. No one at the cottage said anything about the dolls, even though Hayden’s hackles were raised from the minute Jackie pulled them out of the toy bag. Rozanov didn’t even glance at them.
But Shane’s eyes had lingered. Hayden had seen.
Rose fucking Landry just stepped inside to make them all a pitcher of lemonade, because Hayden’s life is a dream and now sometimes movie stars, literal superheros, make his kids extra sweetened lemonade, what the fuck? He and Shane are left alone on the deck, sitting with the remains of lunch and Amber’s baby monitor. She’s sleeping inside, in a crib that Shane keeps here year-round.
“Rose is nice,” Hayden says. He keeps looking between his daughters and Shane and those fucking dolls. “Really nice.”
“Yeah,” Shane says slowly.
“Uh.” Hayden sighs. “You don’t have to answer. But… I know Rozanov-”
“Ilya,” Shane interrupts.
Hayden winces. “Sorry. You’re right. Ilya. I know Ilya,” he’s not even sure he’s pronouncing it right, god, he’s such a bad friend, “is bisexual. You said you were gay, though?”
Shane sighs. He obviously understands the question Hayden is asking without him having to say it. It’s not like he’s being subtle right now. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “I am gay. Totally gay.”
“So Rose,” Hayden tries, “and—what was her name—was it Jennifer? Jessica. And those other girls, the ones from the clubs and stuff, or whenever you agreed to go on those dates Jackie and I were always setting you up on—and I am sorry about those, by the way.” He bites his lip to force himself to stop talking. Shane’s eyes are narrowed, and he’s staring intensely out over the lake like he’s trying to read a sign on the far shore. “Were they—were those relationships just a… cover?” He kind of wants to say beard, because he read about that term recently, but he isn’t sure if it’s offensive. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” Hayden rushes to add, but this is one of those things about Shane’s life that he just doesn’t understand. There is so much he doesn’t understand, and he hates it.
He just wants to feel like he knows Shane again. He hates that he feels like he doesn’t.
Slowly, Shane shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Ah. No. It wasn’t a cover. None of it was ever intentional, I mean,” he says, giving Hayden a quick, intense glance, like he thinks Hayden is accusing him of something, and Hayden wants to interrupt and tell him that he’s not, that he wouldn’t, that he doesn’t even understand enough to know what the accusation would be—but he holds his tongue. Shane wrings his hands together and turns back to the lake. Rozanov is on the dock now, theatrically pretending to trip over a coiled rope and a bucket, like any moment he might topple into the water. Jade and Ruby are shrieking with joy, and Jackie is laughing so hard she’s clutching her stomach. “A few years ago, I didn’t even really have the words to describe what I was doing, uh, but I guess I thought—I hoped—that I was also bisexual?” Shane picks at his nails. “Ilya and I hooked up when we were nineteen, and… I couldn’t fully deny it, after that, but I wanted to. And I had already slept with a few women at that point, but I spent a very long time trying to convince myself that I liked girls, too, and that I was just waiting for the right one.”
“The right one,” Hayden echoes.
Shane’s smile is tight. It’s an unhappy smile, even though there is so much laughter drifting up to them. “The girl who could make me feel like Ilya makes me feel,” Shane explains.
“And you never found her,” Hayden says.
“She doesn’t exist,” Shane corrects softly.
“Right, obviously, I meant-” Again, Hayden physically bites back the next words, teeth clicking. “And you didn’t… know? That you were gay?”
Shane shakes his head. “Nope.”
And Hayden doesn’t understand. “So the sex was still good then, I guess? Or… normal, at least?” Hayden asks, a little blunter than he would usually be with Shane, who is always so shy, but this is the part Hayden really doesn’t understand. He wants to, and he thinks maybe he is supposed to just get it, but it never even occurred to him that he might be attracted to men, and he just can’t quite wrap his mind around why the same wouldn’t be true of Shane with women. Isn’t attraction obvious? Like, the most obvious thing in the world? It’s always been that way for Hayden. So the only thing he can maybe understand is if Shane was having sex that felt good. Because, Hayden figures, it would probably always feel good, on a purely physical level, to get your dick sucked or to have sex even if you weren’t attracted to your partner, right?
But he doesn’t know. He’s never slept with a person he wasn’t attracted to. Why would he? Why would anyone?
Shane turns his face away. Hayden figures he probably shouldn’t ask any more questions, but he still doesn’t understand.
“It didn’t feel good,” Shane finally says quietly almost a full minute later. (The clock on Amber’s baby monitor. Hayden was staring at it, waiting for the time to tick over.) “It never felt good.”
“Oh,” Hayden says, and his voice abruptly sounds raw with tears even though he isn’t crying.
“I can’t explain to you how badly I wanted to be straight,” Shane continues, still facing away, “and how much I was willing to… suffer, honestly, to prove that I could be attracted to women. I just can’t explain it. I wanted to be normal. It never mattered how humiliated or confused or stressed it made me feel because it would have been worth it if it made me normal.”
“Fuck,” Hayden says.
His heart feels torn out.
Over the years, how many dates had he set Shane up on? How many times had he pointed out girls to Shane, or even brought up fans in nightclubs in front of their teammates, encouraging Shane to bring them home? Shane sometimes denied those advances, but he had accepted them often enough. Hayden had snickered with the other guys, watching their captain on the dance floor or stumbling through flirtatious banter, awkward as a baby deer, very obviously never knowing where to put his hands. It has always been funny to Hayden how awkward Shane is in real life compared to how lethal he is on the ice.
He had thought it was fucking funny.
And, how often, really, had Hayden done it because he wanted Shane to be like him? Because he loves his wife and his kids, and he fully, intrinsically, deeply believed that Shane would only ever be as happy as Hayden is if he also had a wife and kids?
A husband never even fucking occurred to him. This was Shane fucking Hollander, the best athlete in a generation. There had never been space in Hayden’s head to even consider the possibility, too many biased assumptions and deep-rooted stereotypes clouding out what should have been obvious. Still, Shane had told him, over and over, that he was happy alone, and for some reason, Hayden hadn’t been willing to believe that either. He’d forced the issue until Shane bent to his will.
He’d done that.
Hayden stands up. He crosses around the little fire-pit and sits down next to Shane, the wicker loveseat groaning under their combined weights. It is small enough that their thighs are pressed together, muscular, each trained under the same strict regimens, and it is so natural for him to reach around and wrap his arms around Shane’s broad, strong shoulders—shoulders that Jackie has cried on, shoulders that had supported Hayden when he nearly passed out from adrenaline on his wedding day, shoulders that Ruby has vomited over, shoulders Arthur always wants to hide his face in when the world gets too overwhelming. Hayden understands that particular urge. He buries his face in the crook of Shane’s neck as he feels Shane’s arms come up instinctually to return the desperate hug.
(That part, maybe, is the only point Hayden allows in his favor. He has never been scared of touching other men, of loving his friends and telling them that. He has never listened to his own dad’s lectures about “real men” and “boys will be boys.” Hayden has always thought of himself as a good guy. He’s glad that he’s never shied away from touching Shane or telling him how much he means to him. He hopes that, somehow, sometimes, that has made a difference in Shane’s life.)
It feels nice to squeeze Shane. They used to hug like this all the time, but while Hayden’s been quietly reckoning with everything he got so wrong, he realizes that he’s probably pulled away a little.
God, he fucking hopes that Shane didn’t notice. He hopes he didn’t think it was because he was gay, because it had nothing to do with Shane and everything to do with Hayden—the things that are wrong with him, and the things he is working on.
“I love you,” Hayden tells him without pulling back to look at him, because Shane doesn’t like eye contact anyway. He only likes physical touch from the people he loves, so Hayden knows it’s a good sign that Shane is squeezing him back, just as tightly. “I’m sorry-” How can he encapsulate everything in words? “I just love you.” He holds him tight and hopes that’s enough.
“I love you too, Hayds,” Shane says. “You know that.”
Hayden is going to sit down and write out everything he needs to say, so that it doesn’t come pouring out of his mouth in an insensitive, illegible jumble. He’s going to make a list, Hollander-style. He’s going to apologize for never asking if Shane liked men, and for never jumping to beat up the guys who casually threw around queer slurs, and also apologize for the times Hayden treated those same words like insults. He’s going to apologize for telling Arthur he couldn’t wear nail polish and for making Shane think he was dumb enough to believe that pink is for girls and blue is for boys. He’s going to apologize for their shitty locker room, and JJ’s bad attitude, and the times that Hayden has thought, “Why did he lie to me all this time?” and he is especially going to apologize for treating Rozanov like crap, and making Shane think it was about anything but the other man’s shitty personality.
Fuck it, maybe he’ll apologize to Rozanov while he’s on a roll. Not about hating the guy. But about not being clear why. (Because it would also be sort of homophobic if Hayden never hated any gay/bi dudes on principle, right? Sort of like how it’s kind of sexist not to hit a woman because you don’t think she can take it, right? Right?)
Hayden’s got a lot to learn. And he’s going to do it. He fucking will. He’s got four kids, Jackie, and Shane Hollander, and he’s not going to let any of them down.
He doesn’t pull away until Rose fucking Landry the superhero returns with a pitcher of lemonade and a handful of napkins that she quietly, graciously hands to them so they can dab at their damp faces.
Hayden looks out across the lawn and sees Arthur watching him with a frown on his little round face, and a part of him thinks, Good. Good, he should see this. Men can cry, too. Fuck, sometimes it feels good to cry. Hayden is breaking generational curses he wasn’t even aware of a few years ago, and his kids are going to grow up so, so loved, exactly the way they are, but hopefully they’ll turn out more emotionally intelligent than their hockey player dad. It’s not a high bar, but Hayden’s going to raise it.
Then he meets Ilya’s eyes, so much more serious than usual. He gives him a nod.
After a second, Ilya nods back.
It’s a little crazy how important his approval has become to Hayden.
Fucking Rozanov.
+++
The Ottawa Centaurs have just beaten the Montreal Voyageurs 4-1. In any other year, this would have been a major upset, but this season, the Centaurs have Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov on their first and second line; it is only November, but every goalie in the league is already dreading their upcoming Centaurs games.
Montreal had left limping.
Hayden had veered away from the team bus and ordered himself an Uber to the address Shane had sent him ahead of time and arrived at Zane Boodram’s house after a quick detour.
Shane immediately bursts out laughing when Hayden walks onto the back deck, carrying the most expensive bottle of wine he could find in the grocery store. “What am I supposed to do with this?” Shane asks, standing. Ilya’s arm had been wrapped around his shoulders and it fell off smoothly, his hand trailing down to his wrist and giving Shane’s fingers a tiny squeeze as he steps away. It looks like a gesture they have performed a million times.
Hayden makes himself roll his eyes. “It’s not for you, dipshit, it’s for my host,” he says, accepting the hug Shane buries him in, the wine bottle fisted in his hand and awkwardly knocking against Shane’s shoulder blades.
They hold on for too long. But they have always done that, haven't they? They had sure gotten mocked for being too touchy-feely by the other Voyageurs plenty of times.
But here, no one says anything.
“Think Jackie would let me show up empty-handed?” Hayden asks when they finally pull back, just slightly. He hopes his voice doesn’t sound too strained.
But Shane definitely won’t call him out for it, not when his own eyes are glistening. “I think Jackie wouldn’t let you leave the house with a bottle that terrible,” he quips.
Shane introduces Hayden to his new teammates, and Hayden realizes that his capacity for jealousy is much deeper than he ever knew. These are the guys who share a dressing room with Shane now, who trade off press responsibilities and try to cajole him to go out for a celebration after games. They get to play professional hockey with Shane Hollander three or four times a week. Hayden will get to play with him four times this season, and they’ll be on opposite sides of the centerline.
Tonight, he played against Shane for the first time in their lives, and it was awful.
But it wasn’t awful to look over and see Shane laughing on the bench between shifts. Zane Boodram had laid a hand on his shoulder and leaned in, whispering some observation or word of encouragement close to his ear. When Luca Haas, their youngest player, had scored, everyone on the bench had whooped and cheered and welcomed the blushing kid back over the walls with exuberant, genuine affection.
It wasn’t awful to see Shane smiling, even in the middle of his game-day focus.
Drapeau muttered something under his breath, just out of Hayden’s earshot, but he could guess what he said. JJ began spitting Québécois sacres at Drapeau, and Theriault sent them to opposite sides of the bench for the rest of the game. Hayden had gritted his teeth and muscled through it, snapping at anyone who muttered about Shane to shut the fuck up until Theriault threatened to bench him. Whatever. It worked, more or less.
The Voyageurs aren’t in a good spot. But Couillard retired over the summer, and Drapeau and Comeau are slowing down, so hopefully they’ll be done next. Hayden hopes that he will still be around to usher in the next generation of Montreal players and, maybe, he can take a little of what he has learned in the past year and apply it to his rookies. Make the world—make hockey—just a little better than he found it.
The Centaurs have already accomplished that.
Shane leads him around to the delicious-smelling buffet next to Bood’s grill. Everyone seems to be present, no one left out tonight, and all their partners are there, too, and plenty of family members—including Harris Drover, Troy’s boyfriend, and Wyatt’s sister and her wife. Shane smiles at them. Hayden tries to imagine the Voyageurs welcoming so many queer couples into their midst and can’t.
So, yeah. Hayden is a little sad for himself, but he’s trying to be optimistic. That’s an easier feat when he’s watching this, witnessing the community that Shane has found.
Hayden and Shane load up plates and make their way over to a section of padded benches. Shane sits next to Ilya, who kisses his cheek and takes his free hand, giving it a squeeze. No one even blinks. Luca Haas passes Shane a ginger ale.
And Hayden is happy to be here.
He and Shane fall back into a groove quickly, like they never stopped. They tell war stories about Theriault’s early days and draw laughter from the other dads in the circle with anecdotes about the twins, and no one complains that Hayden is talking too much about his children. The food is delicious. Ilya spends the night pressed up against Shane’s side, and he looks happy too.
“You guys played in the Juniors together, right?” Wyatt asks Hayden, cutting into a story where he and Shane kept speaking over each other when the other broke into laughter, and finishing each other’s thoughts.
“No,” Hayden says, a little surprised. Sharing a rookie year with Shane Hollander has always been part of his lore, one of the ways that his career has been, admittedly and justifiably, overshadowed by Shane. “We were a few years apart and Shane played in the OHL, and I was in the QMJHL. I never played on the international teams either, so we met at training camp and we shared our rookie year.”
“Oh, shit,” Wyatt says, looking surprised. “I thought you guys went back further than that.”
“Well,” Shane says, shooting Hayden a smile. The can of ginger ale in his hands is his favorite brand. Comeau and Drapeau had never missed a chance to mock him for the drink, to his face or behind his back, until Shane had eventually stopped having them at team events, even though Hayden always kept them stocked in his fridge. “We go back a long time.”
“Not longer than me,” Ilya interrupts loudly, proudly, and Shane laughs, and Hayden only twitches a little. “They are both only children, no siblings,” Ilya tells Wyatt, as if that explains everything.
Wyatt acts like it does. “Ahh,” he says, nodding with understanding.
“So what?” Hayden asks.
Dykstra, a redneck with a prairie Manitoba accent so thick it makes Hayden cringe, points between the two of them. “Brothers from different mothers!” he declares.
Hayden smiles. Shane is blushing, visibly even in the flickering light of the fire, but he’s smiling too. Ilya kisses his cheek again.
The gathering goes on for hours, and it’s nothing like the Voyageur equivalent. First off, everyone is here, down to their backup goalie. The Voyageurs have always had in-groups and out-groups: vets and rookies, the chill guys (usually the cheaters) and the pricks (Shane, Hayden, Miitka—anyone who loved their life partners and didn’t love getting wasted). Hayden hosted events like this at his house every now and then for anyone who was interested, but he can tell that family-friendly barbecues are the standard for the Centaurs, and even if attendance isn’t mandatory, everyone shows up because they all genuinely want to be here.
Hayden gets a little tipsy after a few hours, a half dozen beers, and a shit ton of food. He watches the other guys with their wives and partners and wishes that Jackie was here, too, or that they had a team like this one.
After a while, it’s just him and Shane sitting on the back porch steps, shoulder to shoulder. They’re staring out over Bood’s darkened backyard, and Ottawa is a quiet enough city that there are even a few stars overhead.
Hayden can’t see the stars from his backyard in Montreal. Maybe he should visit more.
“It’s been great,” Shane says, turning his refreshed can of ginger ale around and around in his palms. Hayden watched as Shane loaded up his plate and then went back for seconds, and accepted a small dessert when Ilya pushed it toward him. He hasn’t exactly abandoned his performance diet, but it seems to have relaxed, and Hayden relaxed when he realized that. And he caught Ilya’s wrist in a moment alone and whispered, “Thanks. For taking care of him.”
Again, Ilya had just nodded.
“Living in Ottawa?” Hayden teases. “Or living with your husband?”
“Both,” Shane says sheepishly. Shane’s smile is gentle and shy. He never used to smile that way around their teammates, but he smiled like that in Hayden’s house all the time. Hayden knows that smile. His heart hurts in a good way. “The team is—I mean, I know you’ve noticed.”
“Yeah,” Hayden says. “I have.”
They both sit with it. They don’t need words.
“It’s wonderful playing for them,” Shane says when the moment ends. “I feel like there’s no expectations, maybe because they’re used to losing, or maybe because they’re used to being around someone of Ilya’s skill level. Either way, it’s nice.”
Shane takes a sip of his drink. His cheeks look fuller than they used to. His eyes are brighter. His freckles are definitely a little darker, like he’s been spending more time outside.
Hayden knows his face so well. He plans to know it for the rest of his life.
“And Ilya?” Hayden asks. “What’s it like having him as a captain? I’ve gotta imagine he loves having you on his team.” Everyone who has ever played with Shane loved having him around. He is kind, funny, and just so fucking good—he’s rare. Hayden misses him and is also glad that he’s gone.
Shane’s smile widens. It’s irresistible. “He’s wonderful too,” he answers quietly.
“Does he deserve you?” Hayden asks, because he knows that he doesn’t deserve Shane Hollander and has never deserved Shane Hollander, but goddamn it, he’s trying, okay? And if he’s trying, then he’s willing to give Ilya the same chance. “I mean.” He falters. He tries again. “He makes you happy. I know he makes you happy.” He grabs Shane’s hand impulsively. “I’m glad he makes you happy.”
Shane smiles like he knows what Hayden means. Of course he knows. He’s Hayden’s best friend; he knows everything about him. “Yes. He does.”
Hayden lets out a sigh of relief. “Good.”