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Shane couldn’t sleep. He’d had almost two beers at the party and now his mouth tasted sour and his head was all fuzzy. His stomach wasn’t very happy with him either. It kept rolling, twisting, churning. He wasn’t sure if all of this was normal or not. He’d never gotten drunk before.
Not that he was drunk. Was he drunk? He didn’t feel drunk. He just felt—
Sad. Maybe. Tired. Strange. Not himself.
Anyway, they’d been celebrating that night. Shane and his team. They’d won the championship game that qualified them for the Royal Bank Cup in Brampton next month. They’d come back from being down by two in the third period. Shane had scored the winning goal as the clock was running out. A feeling he’d never get over. A feeling that he was sure was better than sex or drugs or anything else in the universe.
So he’d taken the first cup handed to him. His team yelling his name as they all downed their beers. Shane had drunk his slowly, hating the taste of it. Bitter and warm. But then he felt the eyes on him, all of his teammates watching him drink, and so he’d quickly downed what was left in his cup.
And then he’d taken the second cup that was handed to him. This time he noticed the hand offering the plastic cup. Long, pale fingers. Shiny nails. Surprisingly neat and delicate. Definitely not a hockey player’s hand. He looked up and saw Nick smiling at him. Nick wasn’t on the team, but he was always around. He was their goalie, Johnno’s, best friend. And the two of them were basically attached at the hip. Shane never saw one without the other being somewhere nearby.
There were rumors that Nick was—And that maybe he and Johno were—
But Shane never listened to rumors like that.
Anyway, between school and hockey, he didn’t have time for things like gossip.
“They’re saying you’re the best hockey player in Canada,” Nick said to him, talking loudly over the music that had just started blasting from a stereo somewhere.
“Who’s saying that?” Shane asked him, brow furrowing. He had to lean in so that Nick could hear him.
Nick laughed. “All of these fuckers,” he said, gesturing to the room.
“Oh,” Shane said, a little disappointed. He’d thought maybe a scout had been at the game and said something. Or someone from the press.
“Well, I’m only as good as my team,” Shane added diplomatically. He knew he was better than most of them. He knew he was the only one likely to go onto a professional career. They were a solid team though.
“It’s a little loud in here,” Nick said then. His voice sounded strangely stiff.
“Yeah,” Shane agreed, nodding. He took a sip of the beer Nick had handed him. It didn’t taste any better than before, but Shane was able to school his face and body into reacting normally to it.
Shane’s eyes darted quickly to Nick. He was taller than Shane by several inches. His body was clearly struggling to keep up with him, all gangly limbs and sharp elbows. He had thick dark hair that he wore longer than most of the guys Shane knew. And his face was—Well, it was handsome. Shane could admit that, couldn’t he? He had a very symmetrical face and had gotten over the acne that had plagued him two years ago. If you asked anybody here, they’d say Nick was a good looking guy. He just needed some more muscle.
A few moments had passed when Nick said, “Um, do you wanna go somewhere more quiet?”
Shane did want to go somewhere quiet. The thumping bass and the sound of everyone’s mixed voices was starting to overstimulate him. He could do with some fresh air too. “Okay, sure,” he said.
He followed Nick, but they didn’t go outside like Shane thought they might. They went towards the back of the house—Shane had no idea whose house they were in, now that he thought about it—and then Nick turned into a room with a door left open.
“Are we supposed to be back here?” Shane asked, glancing up and down the hallway before he stepped into the room himself.
Nick was already sitting on the foot of a neatly made bed. The room was clearly a guest room. There wasn’t anything personal about the room, no books or photos or anything, and it felt like it hadn’t been used in a long time.
The sounds of the party had faded to a steady hum.
“It’s totally cool,” Nick said. “Don’t worry.”
“Okay,” Shane said, nodding. He was nervous now. He hadn’t ever spent much time alone with Nick. And he wasn’t all that great at socializing with people he did know. He wandered around the room, looking even though there was nothing to look at. The walls were painted off white. There was one piece of art hanging above a dresser. A blur of colors, blues and greens. Shane assumed it was meant to be the ocean. He sipped at his beer, barely taking any of it into his mouth, and looked at the colors carefully, like it meant something to him.
“So,” Nick said from behind Shane. “What do you like besides hockey?”
Shane turned around. Nick was leaning back on his hands, his eyes on Shane.
Shane thought about the question. He tried to think of things he liked. “Um—”
“So just hockey then?” Nick said, laughing.
“Kind of,” Shane shrugged.
Nick sat up and scooted over a little on the bed. Shane understood he was meant to sit next to him. So he did. Leaving a few inches between himself and Nick.
“I guess that’s why you’re so good,” Nick said.
“I’m not that good,” Shane said, swallowing. Nick had moved closer. Those few inches disappearing. Shane lifted his cup and drank.
“You’re allowed to say it.” Nick’s long, slender fingers were suddenly touching the inside of Shane’s wrist, tracing the veins there.
“Say what?” Shane asked, confused, distracted.
“That you’re good.” Nick’s fingers were moving up Shane’s bicep now, disappearing beneath the sleeve of his t-shirt.
Shane’s heart was beating loudly. No one had ever touched him like this before. No girls. And certainly no boys. He knew he should pull his arm away. He should shove Nick back. He should leave the room outraged that Nick would even think he was—
But Shane didn’t move, didn’t stop Nick, didn’t say anything. When Nick’s fingers found Shane’s jaw and turned his face, he didn’t do anything either. “Can I?” Nick asked.
Shane nodded without really knowing what he was agreeing to.
Then Nick kissed him. A light press of his soft lips.
Shane kissed him back. Returning the same light pressure. Only for a split second. And then he was standing up, stumbling over the corner of the bed, nearly spilling his beer on the carpet. “Sorry, I’m—Going—Sorry.”
Shane hurried down the hall, looking for the front door. When he found it, he tripped out onto the front lawn, his chest tight, each breath shorter than the last, his vision fading. The cup he’d still been holding in his hands fell to the ground. He put his hands on his knees, kept his head low. He watched beer trickling through the blades of grass. He dug around in his pocket to find his cell phone and pressed 2 on his speed dial.
“Hi, honey,” his mom said. “Everything alright?”
Shane managed to take in a steady breath. “Yeah, fine,” he said. “I’m just tired and ready to come home.”
If his mom heard anything in his voice, she ignored it. “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” she said.
Now, he stared up at his ceiling, listening to the house. Listening for signs of his parents being awake. But everything was silent and still. He sat up in his bed and reached for his laptop, pulling it to him and turning it on. The screen glowed brightly in his dark room as he opened his internet browser and typed into the search bar: gay—
The rest autofilled for him: hockey players.
He would remember to clear his search history this time.
As always, there wasn’t really anything in the search results. There were a few bits of fanfiction, the URLs embarrassingly purple from having been clicked multiple times. There were a couple of articles about rumors surrounding female hockey players.
Shane closed his eyes. He didn’t like Nick. But he’d liked kissing Nick. As brief as it had been. He could see himself letting it not be so brief if he ever had another opportunity. He’d felt a charge go through him when Nick’s mouth had touched his. Not necessarily desire, but recognition.
No, worse. Confirmation.
“Fuck,” he breathed out. He opened his eyes again. Tried a slightly different search: gay professional athletes.
Again, there wasn’t much in the results. Though there was an NBA player who had come out earlier that year. He was a few years into his retirement, of course. And the reaction to his coming out hadn’t been exactly positive. Shane brought the laptop closer to his face as he read what another former NBA player had said about it. That gay athletes shouldn’t be allowed in the locker room. That he wouldn’t want a gay player on his team. That it would be hard to win with a gay player.
Shane closed the browser and shut his laptop.
Something twisted in him. Not the beer. Not anxiety. Something darker, something deeper, something stronger. He felt it move through his entire body until it was almost choking him.
A knock on his bedroom door sent the dark thing away, releasing Shane. His mom poked her head in, switching on a lamp that sat on top of Shane’s desk. “I thought I heard you moving around in here,” she said quietly.
“Hi, Mom,” Shane said, setting his laptop on the floor by the bed and moving over so there was room for her. “Can’t sleep?”
She lay down next to him and lifted her arm. He sunk down and put his head on her chest, feeling her arm go around him. They’d been doing this since Shane was little. Both of them prone to overthinking, to staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night trying to solve a problem. So his mom would come to his room and sit with him until they were both tired again.
Shane wondered if he was too old for it now. At sixteen, nearly seventeen. But he didn’t care. He breathed in the familiar scent of the lotion she always put on before bed and closed his eyes.
“Good game today,” she said.
“Great game,” Shane corrected her, smiling.
“I’m so proud of you I’ll even forgive your drinking tonight,” she said, her arm squeezing him.
“I didn’t drink,” Shane protested. His mom gave him a maternal, knowing silence. “Okay, I had, like, one and a half beers.”
She sighed. “I know you’re a teenager and I should expect these things,” she said. “But you’re still my precious little baby.”
“Mom,” Shane said, pretending to be annoyed with her, pretending he didn’t want to be her precious little baby. Really, he wished he could stay exactly how she pictured him. He wished he didn’t have to grow up and change. He wished he’d never have to disappoint her. He wished drinking was the worst thing he’d done that night.
“You left the party pretty early,” she said then, doing that freaky thing where she half read Shane’s mind. “Were you not having fun? Did something happen?”
Shane held his breath. His eyes focused on the flowers on her bathrobe. They were a muted pink. Almost the exact color of Nick’s lips as he’d leaned towards Shane. He could tell her, he thought. He could just get it over with now. He could let her down before they were both too high up for it not to hurt badly. He could let go of his MLH career before he got too tight of a grip on it. He could just say right now, in the dim light of his bedroom at two in the morning, “Mom, I think I’m gay.”
“No,” he heard himself saying instead. His entire body sagging with relief. “I was just exhausted.”
“Okay,” his mom said, clearly not fully believing him. “I do think it would be good for you to make some more friends though.”
“I have friends,” Shane argued.
“Outside of hockey, I mean.”
Shane groaned dramatically. His mom laughed.
“Alright, fair enough,” she said. “So, Royal Bank Cup. What’s the plan?”
After a while, Shane heard his mom snoring lightly as he was going through the stats of another playing competing in the cup who was almost as good as him. “Time for bed, I think,” he said, shaking her gently.
“I wasn’t sleeping,” she said as she blinked awake.
“Sure, Mom,” Shane said, sitting up and smiling at her.
She slid out of Shane’s bed and then ruffled his hair and kissed his forehead. “Don’t stay up too much later,” she said, yawning as she made her way to the door. She switched the lamp off before she left.
Alone again in the dark, Shane reached for his laptop. Waking it up and opening his internet browser. He did another all too familiar search: Ilya Rozanov.
He was a Russian player. Almost exactly Shane’s age. He was talked about maybe even more than Shane was in terms of major league prospects. He was aggressive with quick hands. Absolutely relentless on the ice, especially for a player so young.
Shane clicked through the results until he found what he was looking for.
The image loaded in a new tab, taking its time. Shane’s internet connection slowing down as if it knew it was the middle of the night and it was tired too. At that speed, Ilya Rozanov came to Shane inch by inch. His curls first. Golden copper, coiling wildly. His forehead, the tips of his ears. And then his eyes. As startlingly pale blue as Shane remembered them being.
The rest of the photo loaded all at once, the connection finally catching up. Shane’s heart thumped in his chest, unprepared for the sudden appearance of Ilya Rozanov’s perfectly bowed lips. Pinker than Nick’s. Fuller. Shane wondered what they would feel like pressed against his. He wondered about that for a long time, his tired eyes staring at them.
And then he clicked back into the search results, finding a video of Ilya Rozanov being interviewed after a game in Russia. Shane groped around his nightstand until he found his headphones. He plugged them into his laptop and then clicked play on the video. It was low quality, blurry and laggy, but Ilya Rozanov’s voice was right there in his ears. Already deep and rumbly at sixteen. He spoke in Russian, of course, and Shane didn’t understand a word, but he could tell from Rozanov’s posture—his hip cocked, his strong arms folded—and the clipped way that he spoke that he was confident, conceited, insufferable.
“Such a fucking asshole,” Shane murmured to himself as Rozanov shrugged and pursed his lips like he couldn’t care less about what he was being asked.
And yet when Shane put his laptop away—making sure he thoroughly cleared his browser history this time—and settled in to finally go to sleep, he was thinking about Ilya Rozanov.
He thought about bending to meet him at a faceoff. He thought about battling him for the puck. He thought about knocking him into the boards. He thought about scoring against him, shooting the puck right by him and into the goal. He thought about beating him, wiping that smug look right off his face.
But then he thought about Rozanov’s curls and what it would be like to push his fingers into them. He thought about that bowed mouth, that heavy accent, and what else Rozanov’s tongue was capable of. He thought about those eyes and what they might hold in their depths besides cold arrogance.
Shane thought about Rozanov knowing he was thinking these things about him. He thought about Rozanov’s icy eyes looking right through him and knowing exactly what it was Shane wanted from him. He thought about Rozanov spitting as he walked by, refusing to even be on the ice with Shane. He thought about Rozanov laughing in his face and then beating him over and over, chirping, “Maybe you’d win more if you were less gay.”
The ugly, dark thing was back. This time taking the shape of two strong arms that circled around Shane, winding tighter and tighter.
Crushing, crushing, crushing.