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All things considered, telling his parents that he was gay went pretty well. Of course, the first thing his mom asked was "Well! So do you, are you— are you seeing anybody?"
"No!" Shane said, then "Okay, yes!" because wasn't that the whole point, to be able to tell the truth, for once? Even if he couldn't tell all of it. Not exactly.
He regretted saying even that much when his mom's face lit up. "Oh, that's great, Shane! That's great! Can we meet him?"
"No!" Shane said firmly. Of course they'd meet Ilya eventually. But later. Much later. When he came to Ottawa. After they started working on the charity together. Shane's parents would have a different framework then; they'd be able to see Ilya as something besides a rival, Shane's constant nemesis.
"Well— all right, can you tell us about him? What's his name? What does he do?"
"I can't, I'm not going to tell you that!" Shane said, wincing at his dad's surprised look. "It's complicated."
"Is it someone we know? Does he live in Montreal?" Yuna pressed on. Shane just shook his head. "Can we see a picture?"
"No! No, no."
"Okay," Yuna said, and gave David a significant look across the dinner table. "So, Shane, honey, it... It sounds like maybe you aren't dating anyone?"
"What? No, I am! He's from Canada— he's from a different part of Canada!" Technically sort of true, as Ilya was already looking into buying a house in Ottawa. "You don't know him!"
"Shane, I get it," Yuna said, reaching across the table and squeezing Shane's arm. "Maybe you don't feel like you can date right now, but you should! I don't want you to be lonely! And you can't just put it off until you retire!" She reached for her purse, pulling out her phone. "I'll make a list," she said, already starting to type. "I'm sure there are boilerplate NDA forms we can use, and then maybe we can get you signed up on Raya—"
"Mom, no! No," Shane said. "I have someone. I really do." He glanced over at his dad. David nodded. Shane took a deep breath. "I just can't tell you anything about him. Not yet. It's not— I can't."
"Ah," Yuna said, "I see, well. Hmm." She looked at Shane for a long moment, then down at her phone. Thoughtfully, she tapped the web browser open, and a website began to load. The layout and color scheme were all too familiar; it was the Major League Hockey analytics site that Yuna had set as her homepage a decade ago and never changed. As usual, the first page that came up was laid out like a spreadsheet of all current players, sortable by their wins, goals, assists, plus/minus and a dozen other stats. "So," Yuna said, glancing up, "is it... Aaron A. Aaronson?"
Shane would have gotten up and stormed out of the dining room like a teenager, but his feet felt like they were encased in blocks of ice. "What?!" he sputtered instead. "Of course not! Mom!!"
"Honey," David said, reaching out for Yuna's wrist, but Yuna blinked and lowered her phone before he made contact.
"Oh, you know what, of course not." She bit her lip, glancing down at the stats page again. "I'm sorry, Shane."
"No, it's okay," Shane mumbled, slumping down in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest protectively.
"Ridiculous to even think so, honestly," Yuna muttered.
"I know! I mean, jeez, Mom—"
"—Aaron A. Aaronson is a second-rate player on a third-rate team," Yuna said with an eyeroll. "As if you'd ever. Let me sort this list so that the stat leaders are at the top, and start again from there." She let out a sudden, surprised bark of laughter. "Ha!"
Now Shane's whole body was frozen. David looked at Shane, and opened his mouth—
"Here's a funny one to cross off the list right away, I guess," Yuna said, still laughing. "Is it Ilya Rozanov?"