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Hayden Pike woke up knowing something wasn’t quite right, but he couldn’t put a finger on what it was.
Looking at his phone he realized it might be that 10am was a little late for a father of four to be waking up, even in the off season. Off season? Why was that relevant?
He was wearing clothes, more than he usually wore to bed. He was pretty sure they weren’t his. He didn’t remember having a t-shirt that said “World’s OKest Best Man” when he left his house, which he had to assume was yesterday.
Thinking of it, this didn’t appear to be his bed. It wasn’t, strictly speaking, a bed at all, more a couch.
And now that he’s noticing things, he wasn’t sure this room was in his house either.
With all that information flooding in, last night was still opaque. Hayden wasn’t in his clothes. He wasn’t in his house. But he had no idea how either of those things happened.
There was a party involved. He had a vague notion of alcohol and a psychotic Russian insisting he drink more. He knew there were people wearing less than was normally socially acceptable.
And there was something about Cliff Marlow. Hayden was very fuzzy about that.
But what stood out in his mind was the various faces of Shane Hollander. There was the stoic face that meant something Shane was uncomfortable with was happening but he was going to power through it because he thought normal people wouldn’t be uncomfortable. There was the annoyed face that meant Shane was both uncomfortable and either knew anyone would be or no longer cared what anyone else would feel. There was the shocked face that meant Shane was seeing something new. There was the blank face that meant whatever was going on Shane was needing time to process it.
And there was the blissfully joyful face Shane only wore when he thought no one else was noticing he was looking at Ilya Rozanov.
Ilya Fucking Rozanov!
That was what was the missing piece.
The previous night began to slowly form in Hayden’s foggy brain. The food. The booze. The karaoke. The booze. The strippers. The booze, The cigars.
Oh God, the karaoke. There was gonna be video of the karaoke.
The beginning was clear. There was a gathering in a private dining room at a place much more serious than its name, e18hteen. There were canapes, a seafood tower, charcuterie, starters, mains, desserts (including an inexplicably good pumpkin spice cake in the middle of the summer) and very expensive and difficult to source Russian vodka that a French cuisine restaurant specializing in seasonal Canadian ingredients had no business being able to get.
There was a whole lot of that vodka, in fact.
Hayden had shared the ice with most of the guys, but didn’t know the Centaurs or Bears there very well. Luca Haas seemed like a good kid. Hayden kinda wished the night hadn’t whisked him to and fro so he could have spent more time chatting with him.
Hayden seemed pushed toward the beautiful Russian siren Svetlana. Evidently she was his counterpart on the other groom’s side of the wedding party. Her English was nearly unaccented, which made sense since she’d spent a great deal of her life in Boston where her father was legendary Boston goaltender Sergei Vetrov.
Haden had chatted with Evan Dykstra for the first time in his life, as their interactions usually resulted in Hayden being smushed into the boards by the defenseman’s bulk. Turns out they had more in common than he’d thought, both being from Manitoba, though Dykstra was a farm boy through and through while Hayden was born and raised in the big city of Winnipeg.
Wyatt Hayes, the Centaurs goalie and therefore a Weird Guy(™), had tried to get Hayden to weigh in on who would win in a fight between a Green Lantern and Spider Man. Hayden didn’t really follow the conversation and got away as soon as he could.
Cliff Marlow was there too. Hayden briefly talked to the now Boston captain who seemed more interested in making sure Hayden knew he was really, really sorry about the whole broken collarbone and concussion thing from four years ago than talking about anything currently going on.
Once dinner was over, it was on to the Lookout Bar for karaoke.
When they got there the man named Harris (last name? first? Hayden wasn’t really sure) who up to that point seemed firmly in Troy Barret’s orbit suddenly became the one in charge. The MC running the bar’s already in progress festivities immediately gave up the mic and DJ booth and the little bearded blond started handing out the song assignments.
The very expensive and difficult to find vodka that had lubricated interactions at the restaurant had somehow found its way to the club and was well into the lowering inhibitions part of inebriation.
Which was likely how Hayden and JJ had gotten talked into doing Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” except instead of gesturing at each other for every “Babe” they were pointing at Shane. Who was annoyingly not drunk, despite drinking copious amounts of clear liquid out of small glasses.
Ilya Fucking Rozanov, on the other hand, was definitely inhibitionless, not that he had many of those when sober.
He’d started the night in what Hayden had come to know as Slavic fuckboy chic. By the time they got to the club, the shiny, gaudily patterned shirt was entirely unbuttoned and untucked. Rozanov was not wearing an undershirt. He’d somehow managed to get glitter all over his chest.
Then he was belting out song after song, most of them in English, some of them in Russian and one of them in Japanese, which Hayden only knew because Ilya dedicated it to his “beautiful Japanese crane” and went on a five minute rant about the faithfulness cranes represent in Japanese symbolism before launching into a song called “Senbazuru”.
This was the time Hayden primarily saw the intense look of love and lust on his best friend’s face.
His memories of the night were turning from narrative to momentary flashes of various people getting fleeting moments at the mic before Rozanov took it back for another love ballad sung for Shane:
- Luca Haas singing an impassioned “Peaches” (Beiber, not Presidents)
- Wyatt Hayes in a Wonder Woman t-shirt doing his best to honor “Holding Out for a Hero”
- Svetlana Vetrova with a surprisingly authentic rendition of Patsy Cline’s “Crazy"
- Cliff Marlow with a… unique version of “Uptown Funk”
- Rose Landry, who got a lot more attention in this bar than any of the hockey players, putting her sultry best into “The Rose”
- Troy Barret drunkenly warbling “My Guy” while lustily leering at Harris
- What appeared to be a group of the younger Centaurs performing a very enthusiastic, if not entirely accurate, rendition of “Gangnam Style”
And that’s where anything coherent stopped being available to Hayden. There was a seedy backroom at the Lookout, or maybe it was another club that was closed, but they’d somehow gotten them to open up for the private party. That’s where he was pretty sure the people wearing less than was socially acceptable showed up, as well as the cigars.
In the staticky television that was replaying that part of the night he vaguely saw close quarter gyrations by what appeared to be professionals of a variety of genders.
His wallet had $1000 in $20s when the night started and was empty now. He had the bad feeling he’d stuffed the majority of those bills into various undergarments.
There was definitely a moment he’d been closer to bare breasts that didn’t belong to his wife than he had been since meeting her in a Montreal bar where Shane had no idea he was being a very effective wingman. Frankly, there were a lot of body parts he wasn’t usually in proximity to suddenly very close to a variety of his parts.
There were definitely some sizable… muscles pressed up against both Shane and Rozanov.
Harris had found himself between two gentlemen egged on by Barret who seemed very interested in just how red they could make his face. The answer was very.
It wasn’t at all clear to Hayden, but he thought perhaps Luca Haas had slowly progressed from very hesitant to interact with the performers to very eager to do so.
And that was the end of anything but black from the night before.
Which brought Hayden back to a couch he’d slept on in a house he didn’t own, in clothes that weren’t his wondering just how badly he’d derailed his otherwise orderly life.
A mop of unruly brown curls poked around the door to observe Hayden. Of course Ilya Fucking Rozanov would have to be the one Hayden had to deal with first thing in the morning (if 10:00am can be considered “first thing”). “How is Montreal’s 14th best player feeling this morning?”
“Do you ever turn it off, Rozanov?”
“No. Do you think you can handle waffles, Pike?”
“Barely, but I think not eating would be worse.”
“Good, we wouldn’t want world’s OKest best man dying of malnutrition before wedding day.”
While the details of the last night weren’t getting any clearer, Hayden’s connection to the reality of the present was rapidly firming up. He was in Rozanov’s Ottawa home. Actually, Rozanov and Shane’s Ottawa home, now that Shane had officially signed with Ottawa and they were marrying next week, which explained last night's bachelor party.
Bachelor party. Karaoke and strippers were making more sense now.
Evidently he’d been too loose legged to make it upstairs to the guest bedrooms and wound up on the couch in what must be Shane’s study, a book lined room with framed clippings of his hockey career, pictures of his parents and a pile of all the play books he’d ever received from any organized team he’d ever played on.
Hayden made his way to the kitchen looking forward to the promised waffles and, hopefully, lots of anything that would reset his electrolyte balance.
“Hayd!” Shane brightly exclaimed as Hayden came into the sunny kitchen area. “Ready for some waffles and Gatorade?”
Shane and the morning’s sunny dispositions were just short of getting on Hayden’s nerves. He was at least able to summon the courtesy of a mumbled “please”.
A few of last night’s compatriots were littered around the living and dining rooms as well as the open kitchen. Rose Landry was definitely just as beautiful snoring in the easy chair as she was on the silver screen.
Cliff Marlow was much less intimidating playing on the floor with the border collie mix Hayden was pretty sure was named Anya.
Svetlana somehow made a caftan and turban look mysterious and alluring in the bright light of morning while puttering around the soon to be hockey husbands’ kitchen.
Hayden assumed the Centaurs had managed to make it back to their own Ottawa homes.
Waffles, fruit, orange juice, coffee and, most importantly, Gatorade appeared one by one in front of Hayden. He consumed them all steadily and with gusto, realizing he was more hungry than hung over. The imagined nausea disappeared almost as soon as nutrition hit his gullet.
Watching Shane and Rozanov dance around each other in the kitchen was a revelation to Hayden. Sure, he’d had some social experiences with the two of them as a couple and then there were the camps, but he’d never encountered them in such a purely domestic setting.
For the first time Hayden emotionally understood what he’d intellectually realized a long time ago, the two of them were perfect for each other. Shane’s solidity anchored the Russian’s manic energy. Rozanov’s intense extroversion formed a bridge between Shane and the rest of the world.
But even now, practically on the eve of their wedding, Hayden couldn’t help but wonder, weren’t there any nice men in Montreal?