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Yuna’s day so far had been, excuse her French Canadian, de la marde. First, her flight from New York had been delayed for 3 hours because of a snowstorm above Québec. Said storm had then made it impossible for her to drive safely back to Ottawa that evening and had drenched her to the bone in the 5 minutes it took her to enter Shane’s apartment building in Montréal. She was now dripping in the elevator, well and truly done with the weather and her soggy clothes, and wanted nothing more than a hot bath and the comfy pajamas waiting in her suitcase.
Using the key her son had entrusted her a few years ago, Yuna let herself in. The flat was silent, lights out, but pleasantly warm and dry. Shane was supposed to come home this evening after a series of away games in the US, but she was not sure when he would be arriving and her text warning him that she would be unexpectedly crashing at his place for the night because of the weather was still unread.
In her haste to take her shoes off and hang her coat and scarf to dry (Shane would not like to come home to a dirty hallway, especially with the frosty apocalypse raging outside), she did not spot the definitely-not-Reebook trainers neatly put away in the shoe rack, nor the Raiders keychain innocently laying in a bowl.
She dashed to the kitchen and put the kettle on: some warm tea sounded like an amazing idea right now. Carrying her purse with her, she took out the files from her meeting with the Rolex representatives, the reason for her trip to New York in the first place. She was pretty sure Shane would like the new ad campaign she had negotiated for him this coming spring and selfishly hoped it would help clear that weird awkwardness the trip to Wimbledon she had suggested earlier this year had created. Thankfully, the thick stack of paper was dry and she laid it on Shane’s coffee table, next to a… pretty massive bouquet in a vase. That gave her pause. She had never seen her son purchase any kind of flower arrangement, his style leaning towards a more minimalist and modern aesthetic. The flowers looked very nice, though, even if the color scheme (yellow lilies and some very dark brown, almost black, dahlias, with some additional greenery) was a bit unusual.
(In retrospect, she would be so mad at herself for missing the obvious clues. The flowers were fresh, evidently bought a few hours ago, and Shane had been away from home for close to two weeks at this point. Of course someone else had recently brought them there. Of course she had not connected the dots).
With the water boiling, the next step was getting out of her damp clothes and enjoying a scorching shower. Yuna lifted her suitcase and headed for Shane’s bedroom. She smiled, thinking of her sweet, nerdy, real estate-fixated son. He had been boasting, in his own demure way, about his ensuite bathroom, its spacious shower and perfect water pressure and now seemed like the perfect occasion to try it out.
All thoughts of her well-deserved shower came to a halt when she pushed open the door of Shane’s bedroom and came across a broad, muscular, definitively male back peaking from the waist up in her son’s sheets, pale skin adorned with small black moles and darkening bruises. A gold necklace was laying on his nape, below a mop of light curls. What was an unknown man doing (sleeping) in her son’s bed? Was he a squatter? Should she call the police for a home invasion? The door had not looked forced open, oh my god, did Shane know about…
In the kitchen, the kettle whistled, making her jump. The man turned (oh god, what was she going to do if he woke up, would she need to fight, she had no weapon) and the handsome visage of Ilya Rozanov, captain of the Boston Raiders, now faced her. He looked… tired, for one thing. The rings under his closed eyes were deep and dark, nearly purple. But also… younger, almost vulnerable, in a way he never let anyone see him in public. Still asleep, thankfully, and it all slowly started to register: the Raiders clothes and a headset laying on the floor. An open suitcase against the far wall. A phone charging on the nightstand. A book with Cyrillic script on its cover on the other nightstand, Shane’s. That finally took her out of her daze and got her moving. A step back, then another one. She was closing the door when its hinge squeaked. So much for Mr. Real Estate, what was the point of owning a million-dollar-worthy flat if he could not be bothered to oil its doors? Rozanov stirred, let out a soft groan and burrowed his face in the pillows next to him. Her son’s pillows.
Yuna backtracked to the kitchen, in a state of agitation she had not experienced since Shane’s injury last spring and – ohmygod Rozanov had visited him at the hospital. Her entire worldview was slowly, painfully adjusting. The Russian man sleeping in the room next door was no home invader. She was the intruder. She had to get out of here.
The kettle long forgotten, she grabbed her suitcase, all of her stuff, too bad for her still wet coat, she would lie, say to Shane that she had changed her mind at the last minute, that the weather had been so terrible that she had booked a room in an airport hotel, deny that she had ever stumbled on something so unexpected, so inconceivable a mere hours ago that her brain was still trying to process everything, and made for the door.
And because her day had been and continued to be absolute shit, Shane was standing on the other side of it when she pushed the door handle.
“Mom? What are you doing…?”. The rest of the sentence died in his throat, as he noticed Ilya’s shoes and keys in the entryway and his eyes grew bigger and – frightened.
“Shane, I am so sorry, the snowstorm, I… I sent you a text !” She winced, her tone too defensive to her own ears.
He squeezed his eyes shut. “Did you see…”, then gulped, unable to finish his sentence and moved past her, closing the door.
She could try and deny it. Yuna had always been the best liar of the family, which had come in handy when negotiating endorsement deals. Would Shane buy it? She somehow felt that it was vital - to her, to her relationship with her son, and wasn’t that a sobering thought - to be as honest as possible at that very moment and nodded.
“I… I think we should sit down.”
Leaving once again her stuff and coat in the entryway, she followed Shane towards the kitchen. He moved to the sink, his knuckles gripping the faucet, then the countertop, as he was drinking a large glass of water and seemingly contemplating trying to drown himself in it. Yuna knew the signs of an impending panic attack: the tense shoulders, the shortness of breath, and she was the one causing it, not the mean kids at school, that rude coach in Ottawa or the conniving journalists after a cruel loss, no, his own mother. He was still evading her gaze, when his eyes landed on the large bouquet in his living room and his whole physiognomy lit up.
“Oh my god, what an asshole.” Such a comment should have raised all the red flags in the world in any mother’s mind, save for the naked affection in his voice. Yuna then witnessed, transfixed, as her son got closer to the bouquet, smelled its scent, and slowly regained control of his breathing pattern. In. Out. In again. His back relaxed. All thanks to… some random flowers? He was smiling, panic attack well on its way out, when he turned to her and whispered. “He got me flowers. Boston lilies – see, black and yellow? Lily is his fake name. In my phone. He is a little shit like that.” Shane then sat down on the couch and she followed suit. It did not escape her that he chose the seat closest to his bedroom door.
“He has a weird sense of humor, but he’s a sweet guy off the ice, I promise.” He sighed and messed up his damp hair. “I’m gay. Sorry for not telling you sooner.”
“No no no, Shane, don’t apologize!” Shane winced at the volume of her voice. She continued, lower. Mindful of the Russian man sleeping next door. “You should never apologize for who you are.”
“You were leaving, mom”. His voice was so sad and, okay, she probably deserved it. Yuna so wanted to stroke his cheek, to ruffle his hair, but she was not sure her touch would be welcome right now and prudently kept her hands to herself.
“Only because I realized that I was infringing on your privacy, sweetheart. I wish you could have come out to me, to us, on your own terms, but it doesn’t change a thing and I love you so, so much.”
He sighed. “Thanks, mom. Look, I… I’m sure you have a lot of questions, but I think he should be there for this conversation. Can we let him sleep, please? He had a rough week,” and because her brain was terminally obsessed with hockey, she reviewed all of the Raiders stats from the past days (1 loss, 2 hard-won victories, and Rozanov had suffered an illegal check against Detroit). “He texted me that he set an alarm for 8 pm, when I was supposed to get home. I got lucky with the airport shuttle.”
And because she was now apparently living in a world where her son was privy to Ilya Rozanov’s nap schedule, she nodded. The next minutes passed in an awkward, but not unkind silence. Shane went back to the entryway to put his luggage away. She busied herself with her phone. She did not even think of showing him his new Rolex contract.
On the dot of 8, an aggressive rap song started resonating in the flat and Shane dashed to his bedroom. All Yuna could hear were some sheets rustling, Shane’s soft “Put a shirt on, please” and a few whispered words she could not understand – Russian, maybe? A few minutes later, Shane was getting out of his room, Ilya Rozanov’s hand firmly held in his. And well, what kind of mother would she be if she did not stand up and welcome them with a bright and, to her own surprise, sincere smile, as they began to tell her about hotel rooms, NHL-shattering secrets, “summer before” and loons?
- - - - -
The next morning, Yuna was lying on the couch with a bad cold for staying all evening long in wet clothes. David was driving over, with the cryptic promise of Shane “having some important news to share and someone to introduce to us”. She had offered to keep their secret but Shane had declined. Selfishly, she was relieved: she did not know how long she could have kept it from her husband. In the kitchen, Ilya was teaching her son how to mix a Russian winter drink (“Is called sbiten, Mrs. Hollander, very good for colds, you’ll see!”) with some honey, water, ginger and a truly concerning amount of spices, and, if she had to guess the cause of Shane’s sudden outraged cry, was most likely trying to lick some honey off his fingers.
She burrowed under her blankets. There would be time, after her recovery, when her brain would no longer feel like scrambled eggs, to prepare - statements, contingency plans, PR meetings. For now, all she had to do was to coax her son into giving her Ilya’s Boston address and find a shop willing to deliver some kind of outrageous white and blue flower arrangement to a Massachusetts house.