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Ilya doesn’t care if leaving makes him look petty or homophobic or whatever. He just needs to be able to breathe.
He steps out into the balmy summer night to find his mother with an empty wine glass and smoking a cigarette. The scene is comforting in its familiarity. To complete it, he only needs Alexei around to call him a fag for crying and running to mama.
Irina stubs out her cigarette and holds her arm out in invitation for Ilya to sit and tuck himself into her side. It takes him a moment to situate his six foot frame to comfortably rest his head against her shoulder, their golden curls now practically indistinguishable.
The TV continues to blare the sounds of a celebration underway, but Ilya’s able to tune it out now. He closes his eyes, lets Irina gently card her hand through his hair, and swears the second hand smoke is helping him breathe easier.
“I’m glad he found happiness,” Irina says, apropos of nothing, breaking their companionable silence. Wine tends to make her thoughts difficult to follow and melancholy in a way that makes Ilya avoid it altogether. “Such a polite boy but...very stubborn. He didn’t want to let you go.”
A wave of dread moves head to toe through Ilya's entire body, leaving his hands cold. He lifts his head and searches Irina's eyes to try and make sense of it. “Mama?”
She pinches his chin in a playful gesture, her mouth tilting into a small smile. “But how could I blame him for loving you, hm?” A sweet sentiment that hits Ilya’s gut like poison.
She sighs. “Eventually, though, he understood. I made him understand. That one day you would need things he couldn’t give you: your family, the security of a wife, the joy of children,” she says, all the while fixing his necklace so the cross and his wedding ring lay together, centered. “He was a good boy. But he was never going to be for you, Ilyushenka.”
Tonight, Ilya had to watch as Shane Hollander kissed his husband—openly loved someone else—on center ice.
He thought no one understood. But he should have known better—his mama always did.