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At least Shane didn’t have to lie to Ilya. His depressed boyfriend told him to leave, and so he did. Now he was on a plane, taking him further and further away from the only place he wanted to be. Three hours into the flight and he’s already upgraded his ginger ale to bad vodka. Ilya would give Shane hell for drinking airplane vodka when Ilya himself had taken great pains to educate him on good vodka. Ilya would have teased him mercilessly for being three mini-bottles deep before noon, Montreal time. Or, at least the old Ilya would. This version of the love of his life was different. He wouldn’t have registered the cheap vodka, even if he were the one drinking it.
Being in a middle seat in Coach on a packed plane for hours felt like penance. The girl in front of him let her thick blonde hair fall down the seatback so it covered his movie screen almost completely, and a boy in back of him rested his shoeless teenage-stinky feet on both of his armrests as the businessman to his left and old woman on his right squishing him on either side.
He deserved this. He was a terrible boyfriend and it had taken four months for him to realize it. Shane adjusted his airpods and opened the app.
Four months earlier…
Ilya kept the therapy sessions to himself. Shane knew enough not to ask how they went; the answer was always ‘fine.’ Sometimes Shane thought they were helping, other times he wasn’t so sure. This was one of those times. Shane had made him borscht and potato pierogies. From scratch. For the first time ever. And Ilya ate very little, and couldn’t even bear to look Shane in the eyes.
“Ilya?” Shane said, tasting the borscht himself and realizing he’d messed up; too much salt.
“Yes?” Ilya said.
“Maybe take a nice long shower? You haven’t showered in a while, baby. If you want I could help you. Been a while since we’ve had shower sex. Not that we have to have sex at all. So, there’s no–”
“Hollander,” he said and for the first time Shane’s name hurt coming from his lover’s mouth in such a dead tone. “Enough.”
“We could go to a movie tomorrow? The new Spider-man or something?”
“I got stuff to do.”
“Stuff?”
“Stuff,” Ilya confirmed. “Thank you for the borscht, it was very good.”
He pushed his half-eaten bowl and his uneaten platter of pierogies forward and walked the twenty steps to the couch in the living room, where’s been for the last ten days.
Turbulence. The older woman’s arm grabbed Shane’s arm. For someone so frail-looking she had quite a vice-grip.
“Dear God!” She exclaimed with a hint of a Russian accent.
“Think of a big ship sailing on the water. Sometimes the water gets choppy. Or if that doesn’t work, picture a big plate of Jell-o, with a toy plane on top. No matter how much you shake the plate, there’s no way the plane’s going to fall to the bottom. The Jell-o is solid enough to hold the toy, just like the air is enough to hold the plane.That’s all this is,” Shane said.
The woman cocked her head to the side and surveyed his face to see if she should believe him or not. “I see,” she said, and it wasn’t until she loosened her hold on Shane’s arm that he felt like he had passed a test.
“That makes some sense, at least,” she said. “A bit of a mind trick, though, maybe.”
“Yeah. I fly a lot for work so I know all the mind tricks.”
He went back to focusing on the words and sounds coming through his headphones. He repeated some of them in whispers, others he just mouthed.
“What’s the matter?”
“What?” Shane asked, eying her like he’d done something completely wrong.
“Your face, very sad.”
He saw some version of himself asking the wise old woman on the plane he really hoped was not homophobic how he could fix things for his very depressed boyfriend. He heard her give this version of him some sage advice, some absolute cure-all for Ilya. But it sounded like Simlish.
“Oh, no, I’m not, I’m fine.” Fine.
Two months earlier…
Ilya suggested they go for a walk. Just up the street and back, nothing special, no big deal. Except it was a very big deal. Ilya never suggested they do anything anymore. Every how-was-your-day question was answered with an inhale, a beat and a very blank “fine.” So this was extraordinary and Shane beamed as he held Ilya’s hand on the sidewalk.
“Beautiful day?” Shane asked.
“Yes, it is,” Ilya said.
“Hard to be sad on a day like today,” Shane said.
“I manage it,” Ilya said with a slight smile.
Shane didn’t like Ilya’s dark humor but Ilya did, so Shane smiled.
“Maybe we should take a trip, get away from here? Capri? Turks & Caicos? We could go anywhere you want, anywhere you feel like.”
“There’s no where I feel like,” Ilya said with difficulty. “Home is fine.”
“Ilya, I just think a change of scenery would do you–”
Ilya stopped, took his hand out of Shane’s. Shane felt the absence too sharply not to glare back at Ilya.
“Hollander.” There was his name in Ilya’s dead voice again, hurting Shane more than he could ever admit to Ilya. “This is not a change-of-scenary thing. My mother wouldn’t magically still be alive if she just changed her fucking scenery. You don’t understand it, and don’t mistake me, I’m glad you don’t understand it. I’m so glad you have no idea what this is like. But I just wanted a nice, silent walk outside, okay? No trips, we travel enough during the season anyway. Just walk with me to the fucking fire hydrant and back.”
Shane wanted to tell him that from his perspective, Ilya wasn’t even trying to get better, not really. The only thing he does is therapy. The rest of his days are spent on the couch watching the Game Show network until he falls asleep. The walk was the first thing he suggested to do in literal months. And he’s still only showering once every ten days or so. But he knew enough to shut up about all this by now.
They walked in silence to the fire hydrant and turned around. Just before the door to their apartment, Ilya turned to Shane, with a softer expression than he’s had in weeks. “Picture walking through molasses with ten thousand lead blankets draped over your shoulders. Picture speaking and hearing as if you’re in a tunnel underwater. Picture seconds and minutes crawling all over you like roaches. That’s what it’s like for me to take a step, that’s what it’s like for me to have a conversation even with you, that’s what it’s like to just exist in my stupid fucking skin.”
“Has your therapist talked about any drugs?” Shane didn’t know why he said it, just the sheer panic of imagining the man he loved, the man he knew deserved all the best things in the world feeling like that every minute of every day. The desperate need to fix everything for Ilya. The need to solve all his lover’s problems because his lover was the most special, most wonderful person on the planet. His lover could always, always make Shane feel better. Why the fuck couldn’t he do the same for Ilya?
The lights in the cabin dimmed and half of the passengers had their flimsy blue airline blankets over themselves. While the businessman kept reading The Economist, the old lady slept, clutching her straw purse on her lap. Shane noticed a simple wedding ring on her wrinkled and age-spotted finger. He imagined that hand young, reaching for the hand of a young man. Hope shining in their young, and beautiful eyes. Did he and Ilya have hope? Ilya, for sure, didn’t. But Shane did. It wasn’t hope that Ilya would get better. It used to be, but not now. It was hope that Shane could do better for Ilya. Not better measured by Ilya’s better moods and healthier choices. But better measured by how well Shane was being the best partner for Ilya. That was the major shift, the day he realized that proof of Shane being a better partner didn’t come from any results Ilya could give him.
One month ago…
Shane did a stupid little dance. Not sexy. In fact, the opposite of sexy. He danced around directly in front of Ilya’s unamused face like a freaking cartoon bear high on honey. Somehow he had gotten it in his head that the thing to do was to make Ilya laugh. If Shane’s utter embarrassment and shame could elicit just one small chuckle from Ilya, it would be worth it.
But as Shane danced stupidly in his boxers and undershirt with his fingers pointing up at the ceiling, Ilya didn’t even crack a smile.
“Quit blocking the TV,” he said.
Shane stopped immediately. He sat down on the edge of the couch so as not to bother Ilya’s legs as they stretched behind him.
“I’m sorry,” Ilya said in a small voice.
“It was stupid,” Shane said. “I just thought–”
“It’s not your fault, Hollander,” Ilya said. “It’s not your fault so you can’t fix it and I’m sorry for that.”
“It’s not your fault either,” Shane said.
They sat then listening to the soft murmur and the occasionally sharp sounds of buzzers, bells and audience applause punctured the silence.
“If I asked you to leave for a couple days, would you?”
The question suckerpunched Shane. Not only was nothing he did or said helping but now his simple existence was making Ilya feel worse.
“I don’t want to leave you when you’re like this.”
“No,” Ilya said. “You want to send me away to that clinic.”
“Ilya–”
“You left the brochure where I sat down to eat. Right where my plate would be. You wanted me to see it and go, oh, that’s what I need three weeks in a fucking loony bin.”
“I didn’t say anything about it, did I? I didn’t say you had to go.”
“No, but you would, if that was how these things worked. I know you would.”
“I’m trying to give you solutions.”
“Because I’m miserable to live with day in and day out, believe me, I know.”
“Because you’re miserable,” Shane corrected softly, braving a hand on Ilya’s shoulder. He flinched and shrugged it off.
“Hollander, just leave me please. At least for a night. I’m sure your parents would love you to visit.”
“Ilya, I can’t leave you.”
“You won’t leave me,” Ilya threw back bitterly.
“If something happened to you–”
Ilya sat up and shoved Shane off the couch. “Do you really think I would put you through that? Do you really think I would make it so you’d have to find my body? After what happened to me as a kid? You really think that way, Hollander?”
Shane just stared at him, before saying, more firmly. “I can’t leave you.” He wanted to say so much more than that. But he knew he couldn’t do it without crying and he couldn’t put Ilya through that. Especially not when Ilya himself hadn’t cried at all through this episode. That was the one thing he ever shared about his therapy visits. She’d told him crying was a good sign. That depression makes you feel a lot of things and then weighs all those feelings down into one big paralyzing anvil growing and growing inside you. And when you cry, you lighten that weight a little. But Ilya wouldn’t even do that in front of him. Shane hadn’t seen his boyfriend cry since that first time at the cottage where they told each other “I love you.’
“I want to be better,” Shane whispered to himself.
The old woman beside him, who was now up and bracing for the plane to make its descent. “You speak Russian?”
Shane laughed with embarrassment. “Oh, yeah. I mean, no, God no. Nyet, actually, so so nyet.”
“But you’re learning?” She said, gesturing to his phone.
“Not very well, but yeah. My boyfriend’s Russian.”
Her eyes widened and she put her hand on his arm in a tender way before leaning in. “Is that why you’re here, flying to see him.”
Shane shook his head. “Flying to see someone important to him.”
“Is he the one?”
“Without a doubt,” Shane said.
She smiled and unconsciously twisted her wedding band. “I know the feeling.”
“What brings you to Moscow?”
“Bringing my husband home,” she said.
“Oh, no, where is he? I could have switched seats with him so you wouldn’t–”
“Son,” she said, patting her purse. “He’s right here. Right here.”
Shane imagined a taped up makeshift urn next to her keys, her wallet, her lipstick and breathmints.
She laughed, “I suppose it’s a little crazy of me, flying fifteen hours just to dump my husband’s ashes over a playground he loved as a child.”
“I think it’s beautiful. He’s your soul-mate.”
“No, no,” She said with a smile. “We were something more amazing than that. Soul-mates are fated, they fall easily and meaninglessly in love because that’s what soul-mates do. Petr and I chose each other again and again, every day, sometimes thirty times in a single day. Things got hard, we chose each other. Bumps in the road mark every time we could have walked away and instead chose each other. Because our love was not all neat and predetermined. Our love was messy and alive and the most wonderful magical thing there ever could be, really. So, to call us soulmates? No, much, much more than that.”
Shane quickly wiped a tear from his eye and looked away, embarrassed. She squeezed his arm and he peered at him until he looked at her.
“You and this boy, soulmates or–”
“Much, much more than that,” he whispered.
“Good, now say it in Russian.”
15 hours ago…
Shane was being good, he thought. He was giving Ilya space and room. He didn’t push him to do anything, not showering, not eating, not even to wake up before noon. Shane did the hardest thing in his life and just let his boyfriend be sad. But a month in, it didn’t work. Ilya was losing weight, smelled like an oil rig, and seemed to vacillate between insomnia and narcolepsy. But a new, bad thing happened today: Ilya canceled his therapy appointments and simply fell back to sleep on the couch, where he now lived full-time.
Shane saw Ilya spirallying lower and lower. He didn’t know what to say or how to be so he just sat there with him.
“I know what you want to say,” Ilya said. “I know and you’re right, I shouldn’t have cancelled. I should go. I feel better when I go. I should have but I just couldn’t.”
“It’s okay,” Shane said because that was what he was supposed to say, right?
“Shut up, it’s not. I’m just so. I’m just such a…”
“Ilya, it’s alright.”
This just made Ilya more angry. He sat up on the couch and shook his head. “It’s not and I know that’s really what you’re thinking. I know that and I don’t blame you. You’re thinking, why in the fuck am I with this depressed sack of shit. And I don’t blame you. You deserve so much better, Hollander. You really–”
“Shut up!” Shane was on his feet. “For God’s sake shut up! I decide what I deserve, not you. Me! You’re my soulmate, okay?! We’re soulmates! Don’t tell me I don’t deserve my own fucking soulmate.”
Ilya sighed. “It’s not like I don’t see how to act. It’s not like I don’t see what my next step should be. I just can’t fucking move. And you staying here, you’re just a fucking reminder of how I let all the people I love down.”
“So, what am I supposed to do? What do you want me to do?”
“Honestly?” Ilya asked, looking up at him, hugging his blanket to him like a child.
“Yes.”
“Leave. Just for a day, or two tops. Your parents would love to see you, I’m sure.”
“And you?”
“It’s easier for me to breathe when you’re not here.”
“Oh,” Shane said dumbfoundedly. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” Ilya said.
“I make it hard for you to breathe?”
Ilya blinked and dropped his shoulders, seeming to realize the implications of what he just said.
“It’s not like that, not really. I just–”
“No, no, it’s cool, fine. I’ll go.” He stared at Ilya for a few seconds. “I mean, I’ll just go.”
They stared at each other for what felt like a full minute and Shane wanted Ilya to reach out and take his hand, take everything back. But he didn’t. They didn’t. And so, Shane left.
It was six pm in Moscow and Shane was now in the cemetery. A hazy darkening glow fell over the rows of stone statues and marble headstones. He pulled the stack of photographs from the inside pocket of his jacket. And flipped through all the pictures of Ilya and Shane and Ilya, and Shane and Ilya with Shane’s parents, until he found the one picture with nobody in it. A small picture he found in an old photo album that belonged to Ilya’s aunt. Irina’s grave, a small, flat headstone flanked by two giant headstones, the one with the chiseled stone lion in mid-roar belonging to Ilya’s father. The other belonged to someone whose name Shane did not know. He found the lion easily enough. Irina’s headstone was covered over almost completely by grass in muck. He set his carry-on down and grabbed handfuls of dirt and grass with his hands. Once the last speck over overgrown nature was removed, he stared at Irina’s name, and the tiny picture in between that and her dates. Ilya always said it didn’t do her justice. No picture ever did her justice, Ilya said. And all the photos Shane had ever seen of her were breathtaking. And in this one, showing off her long wavy blonde hair and her sharp eyes, she was ethereal. God, Ilya looked so much like her.
“Hello,” Shane said in his crappy Russian. “Hello, Irina, I’m Shane Hollander.”
He paused and pressed his hand against her headstone. “I wanted to tell you that I’m in love with your son. I know he’s a lot like you, too. So I think I know I would have loved you, too. I wanted to tell you that I’ll keep him safe and try to make sure he’s happy, but that, I know, is not true. I can’t do that. Anymore than your husband could for you. So what I promise you instead is this: Ilya will never go a day feeling less than or worthless or stupid or a burden because of me. Your husband failed you. Not because he could have stopped you, I don’t really think he could have, but he didn’t have to make it so difficult for you. He didn’t have to drive you to it. You deserved so much better.”
Shane paused and considered taking most of that back, but he didn’t. Mostly because his Russian was so laughably bad that he probably didn’t even get his point across anyway. But he liked thinking that his attempt made Irina laugh.
He cleared his throat and brought out the pictures. He went through each one, stopping to share stories in his broken Russian. “And these,” he said, holding up the last two. “These are my favorites.” He presented her photo with his favorite photo of Ilya of all time– Ilya holding the first Cup the Raiders had ever won. “He looks like he’s five-years-old, doesn’t he? Just so happy. You know what he shouted on the ice that day? ‘This is for you mama. So, this is for you.’” He set the photograph over the corner of the gravestone.
Shane imagined Tatiana, the old woman from the plane, pulling her husband’s ashes out of her straw purse and spreading them all over the place where her husband played as a boy. He wiped a tear from his eye before it could fall and held up the last photo. It was a picture of Shane and Ilya taken by his mom. They didn’t know she was taking it. They were just at the table, holding hands, looking at each other and smiling. The thing he liked about it was how he could practically see the love going from his eyes into Ilya’s and vice versa.
“And this is us,” Shane said. “I hope you see what we see when we look at it. I hope you can see how much I love your son and how much he loves me. I feel like you probably can.”
He set that photograph down at the other side of the stone.
He sighed. “Anyway, I should be getting back to him. So, there’s just one last thing I want to say before I go. And that is thank you. So much of what I love about him came from you. I know you battled impossible demons, and I know he does too. But you’re both so fierce and clever and strong and the kind of people who do anything for the ones they love. He’d do anything for me, Irina. He really would.” Shane paused and laughed to himself about how bad his Russian probably sounded to her if she could hear him, and he believed she could. “Okay, last thing for real. No one loves your son more than I love him. Not even you.”
Shane felt a gentle little wind slap upside the head and decided it was Irina. “Okay,” he said laughing. “You and me. I love him as much as humanly possible and you love him the rest of the way.”
Two hours later he was back on a plane. Seventeen hours later, at eight pm Montreal time, he was walking into his apartment. Ilya was on the couch in the same place, in the same clothes he’d left him in, what like a day and a half ago? Two days ago? God, up was down for Shane right now. He needed to go to bed and sleep forever.
“Hey,” Shane said as Ilya sat up. “Is it okay that I’m back?”
Ilya nodded.
“Okay, I’m pretty tired, so I’m just going to go to bed early tonight. You good?”
Ilya nodded.
Shane didn’t wait for anything more than that, he knew nothing more would come. He dropped his bag on the floor, pulled off his jacket and shoes and fell right into the bed. Despite having the bed to himself for four months now, he still kept to his side of the mattress. He was just about to fall asleep when he heard strangely shy throat clearings and ums, coming from Ilya. He opened his eyes and looked at the doorway, where Ilya was framed, like a beautifully unkempt, unshaven beast of a man.
“You okay?”
Ilya nodded. “But you’re not. You look exhausted, your eyes are bloodshot. Your hair is, well, really awful.”
Shane sat up and shook his head. “No, I’m fine. I’m good.”
He wiped his eyes. “I’m good.”
He expected Ilya to go back to the living room, but instead, he took a small tentative step inside the bedroom. And then another. And then another, until he was at the foot of the bed.
“I know I look awful,” Ilya said, climbing onto the bed, slowly. “And I know I smell awful.” He moved closer and closer and Shane held his breath worried that he would say the wrong thing and ruin whatever was happening right now.
“And my hair is gross and matted and the beard is ugh. I know.”
He made himself small, curled against Shane’s chest, so that oil from his awful matted hair was rubbing off on Shane’s chin. But Shane didn’t give a fuck. He followed Ilya’s lead and collected his stinky, dirty, hairy boyfriend into his arms and held him. And when Ilya had his head on Shane’s shoulder, Shane just went for it, he couldn’t help it. He pulled together his best Russian and said, “I love you so much.”
Ilya gasped and Shane felt his arms wrap him up at his back. Encouraged, he went on in Russian. “You are so strong and fierce and clever. I love everything about you.”
“Even this?” Ilya whispered in English.
“Even this, because you wouldn’t be you without it,” Shane said in Russian.
“Is this why you’ve been fixated on that Duolingo app for the last four weeks?”
Shane laughed. He didn’t think Ilya noticed. He didn’t go to great lengths to hide it, but it wasn’t like he was doing it out in the open in front of him. “It is, baby, it is”
“You’re pretty bad,” Ilya said laughing for the first time in forever. God, it was music to Shane. He wanted to play it over and over again. “But I understand you.”
And after a few beats of silence, Ilya started to cry. He cried hard, clutching Shane like he was a life-raft. Shane didn’t ask questions, he just held him because this was something he could do. He held him as the bedroom darkened with the night, and kept holding him until Ilya stopped crying. “I called the clinic yesterday,” Ilya said. “Have an appointment tomorrow.”
Shane kissed his boyfriend’s snarled mop of hair. “I’m so fucking proud of you.”
“Will you go with me?”
“Of course, baby.”
“Thank you,” Ilya said, holding him close.
“Hey Ilya,” Shane said, cautiously in Russian.
“Hmm?” Ilya said sleepily.
“Remember when I said we were soulmates?”
“You always say that.”
“Well, we’re not, baby,” Shane said softly before adding quickly, so Ilya didn't have time to get the wrong idea. “We’re much, much more than that.”