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That piece of shit ornament.
He didn't even know what it was supposed to be: a lamp? A vase? A fucking sculpture?
He hated it. He hadn't chosen it, that was for sure. Maybe it came with the place, maybe the decorator had bought it, Nick, or Rick, some stupid American with a stupid name, and put it on the coffee table to make the place look modern. Guess what? Ilya hated that thing. And now there it was, and he couldn't look away from the eyesore.
He couldn't, because if he moved his eyes a few millimeters he would see the can of ginger ale and the plate with the tuna melt crumbs that Hollander had left on the coffee table.
And if he let the ornament go, his eyes would land on his own stomach, a mess of himself and Hollander.
The tv was still on, some Western Conference game, the announcers' voices reaching him lazily in one ear.
He was cold. The cum was drying on his skin, pulling at it with every breath. He would have to get up eventually, if only to clean himself.
He couldn't do it. He stared at that goddamn ornament and counted his breaths, anything to not think about how less than half an hour ago Hollander was on that stomach, thighs gripping his hips, mouth devouring his mouth.
He had really left, and Ilya didn't know why.
He had lost, and his brain did what it did after every lost game: go back, find the mistake, file it away, never make it again.
He had started badly that night. He had asked to have him on top so he could look at him, and later, when they were fucking and Hollander braced himself with a hand flat on his chest, Ilya covered that hand with his own. He watched him the whole time, until they both came.
He had asked him to stay. Not once, not twice, three times at least.
I'm not done with you yet.
He wanted so badly to spend the night with Hollander, to sleep next to him, find out if he snored, if he moved in his sleep, if he liked lying on his back, or his side, or his stomach. And maybe, maybe, for a moment, he could have offered him his chest as a pillow.
Fucking idiot.
Ginger ale good? Cold enough?
He had bought the ginger ale on purpose, because over all these years he had noticed that Hollander never drank anything else, and as if that wasn’t pathetic enough, he'd had to ask him if it was cold enough, like some kind of, like a...
He had put six cans in the fridge. Six. What was he hoping for?
He had made him a tuna melt, too. No, he hadn't made it for Hollander; he wanted one himself, he could make two. He watched him eating, slowly and neatly, with his hand covering his mouth when he chewed. He had put hockey on the TV, to make him feel safe.
And there had been a moment when it had even worked, for fuck's sake.
It is good to have reliable person. It is.
The girl in New York. He had served it up on purpose: she is getting married, Hollander, the spot is open. And Hollander had understood. He had smiled at him, after all.
Do you like them? Girls.
He had acted like a three-year-old who's caught a butterfly and can't resist poking at its wings. Why had he tortured him like that?
He already knew the answer. He had known it for years, maybe before Hollander himself did. And of course Hollander had lied, oh sure, yeah, of course, and Ilya heard the lie right away. He could have let it go, a smart man would have let it go. He doubled down instead.
I like girls. But I also like you.
It was the truest thing he had said all night, maybe in all those years, and for two seconds it hung there in the air, and Hollander looked at him, and Ilya felt the danger, and so he had to play it down and run back into his hole like a goddamn rabbit.
Not as a person, of course.
And he would have kept playing that game, one truth and one lie, two steps forward and one step back. It worked until that word.
Shane.
It had just come out, without him deciding it, at the moment he was least capable of controlling anything, and fine, that was the mistake. He had called him sweetheart that same night and Hollander didn’t blink. Why had he called him by his name? Who the fuck did he think he was, to be allowed to do that?
The point was that it didn't end there. In his head there was Hollander, still straddling him, tilting his face back to look at him, and saying, barely above a whisper:
Ilya.
No, that didn't count. It was an echo. It was something you say because the other person just said it, like returning a greeting. It didn't count, and there was no use keeping it on the table, because if it counted, if Hollander had really said it, and had run anyway, then it was worse.
He preferred to think he had run because Ilya had called him by his name. It was his fault. And that was fine, because if it was his fault, he could handle it. He could punish himself.
This is nothing, Hollander.
He had said that one when the damage was already done, with Hollander standing there looking for his shoes and inventing a team meeting, and Ilya sprawled on the couch, still dazed from his orgasm. He had given him that sentence as a gift. A way out: nothing happened. Tomorrow everything would be like before.
And what if Hollander had believed him?
The phone was wedged between the couch cushions. Ilya fished it out and opened the chat with Jane.
The last message was from a quarter to eight. But above it, if he scrolled, there was their whole story: taunts sent an hour before the face-off, obscene questions calibrated to make the captain of the Metros blush in front of his whole locker room. Cursing and insults, never cruel. And Hollander, always replying like Hollander: blunt, scandalized, sincere, endearingly bad at sexting. The jokes were his job.
He could text him now: something dirty and stupid, and tomorrow everything would be like before. His thumb hovered over the screen.
He stared at the chat until the screen went dark and mirrored his own face. He turned the phone over.
A roar exploded from the television: someone had scored with thirty seconds left, and the camera was on strangers hugging each other over a game.
The truth was that he had made the mistake a long time ago, in a parking lot behind the arena in Saskatchewan, when he shook the hand of a young phenom in a Team Canada ball cap and jacket and he saw his beautiful freckles for the first time.
Okay. Enough.
He got up from the couch and turned off the television.
He took the plates to the kitchen and put them in the sink. Then the cans: his coke and the can of ginger ale, which he expected to be empty, and it wasn't. He weighed it in his hand, there was still a few sips left, at least.
Right. Hollander had been in such a hurry to leave, to leave him, that he hadn't even finished his favorite drink.
This is what you do to people, Ilya. You make them run.
He poured the ginger ale down the sink. The smell of ginger stung his nose, and he tried not to think about it, and almost managed.
He would wash everything tomorrow.
Right now he just wanted a shower and his bed. He wanted to sleep and wake up on a morning where that night had never happened, where Hollander hadn't run, and Ilya hadn't tugged down on the hem of Hollander’s t-shirt, straightening it for him, a moment before being left.
He took a scalding shower and washed himself without looking. The bedroom was at the end of the hall, dark, the door half open the way they had left it.
The sheets were everywhere, still twisted into the shape of what had happened in them, and Ilya knew in a second that he was not getting in there, not tonight.
He did something against his nature: he stripped sheets, pillowcases, everything, down to the bare mattress, got clean ones, and made the bed. They were starting over, from tonight.
Fuck it. Fuck Hollander. Fuck everything.
He picked up the pile of dirty sheets to take to the hamper, and that was when he saw Hollander's underwear on the floor.
He had run without his underwear. The captain of the Metros, the face of the NHL, Canadian hockey's golden boy, had bolted out of his home with no underwear on.
Ilya laughed, then he picked them up and threw them in the hamper with his own things, and turned off the light.
The clean sheets smelled like nothing.