Work Text:
Shane was still pulling out his earbuds when he heard a woman’s voice coming from the living room.
“...and then you’re going to yarn over, pull through two loops, and that’s your first single crochet.”
He stopped in the doorway. On the massive TV above the fireplace, a pair of hands were working a crochet hook through bright yellow yarn. The woman’s voice was patient and encouraging. The video title, in large white text across the bottom of the screen, read: CROCHET FOR ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS — Lesson 3: Working in the Round.
Shane’s gaze dropped from the screen to the sofa.
Ilya was sitting beneath the tutorial, mirroring it. He was wearing grey sweatpants and one of Shane’s old t-shirts, which pulled tight across the shoulders. Anya was curled against his thigh, her chin resting on a small, black, round object that Shane could not identify. In Ilya’s hands, a silver crochet hook worked through black yarn with effortful concentration. His brow was furrowed, his lips moving as he counted stitches under his breath. The hook paused after every few loops while he checked the screen, compared his work to the tutorial, and adjusted. His fingers looked too large for the hook, or the hook too small for his fingers, but he was making it work.
As Shane watched, Ilya miscounted, pulled the hook free, and unravelled three stitches.
“Блядь,” he said calmly. Then, quieter, to the yarn itself: “Ну куда ты лезешь... сиди.” Fuck. Where are you going... stay.
He re-inserted the hook and carried on without missing a beat. On screen, the woman said, “Great job! You’re doing amazing.”
Shane blinked. Looked at the TV. Looked at Ilya. Looked at the TV again.
“What,” Shane said, “are you doing?”
Ilya didn’t look up. “Crocheting.”
“I can see that.”
“Then why are you asking?”
Shane pressed his lips together and tried again. “Why are you crocheting?”
Ilya worked the hook through the next stitch, pulled the yarn through, and counted under his breath. “Is for injury prevention. There was a study last year, from the Moscow Institute of Sports Medicine. Dr. Volkov. Repetitive fine motor work in the off-hand during season reduces wrist flexor strain. Thirty-seven percent.” He paused, checked the screen, and added, “Bood sent me the link.”
Shane stared at him.
Ilya continued crocheting.
“Bood sent you a link,” Shane repeated. “To a study about crocheting.”
“Not about crocheting. About fine motor repetition. Crocheting is just the method I chose. Some players use knitting, but is less effective because the movements are bilateral. Crochet is unilateral. Works different muscle groups.” Ilya inspected his work, turning it under the lamp light, then carried on. “You could try it. Might help with your wrist. The one you keep icing after practice.”
That was true. Shane’s left wrist had been bothering him for weeks.
“I’ll think about it,” Shane said.
He took his running shoes off, lined them up by the door, and went upstairs to shower.
The water was hot. He stood under it for a long time, letting it run over his shoulders, and turned the conversation over. Steam thickened around him and the tile was warm under his feet.
The answer had been smooth. Detailed. Confident. It had the shape of something learned and the surface of something rehearsed, and Shane could not tell which. Ilya had mentioned a link without offering to show it, which was either a sign that he assumed Shane would ask or a sign that he knew Shane wouldn’t.
Both options were unsettling.
Shane reached for the shampoo and worked it into his hair. Knitting. Ilya had said other players used knitting. In a decade and a half in the NHL, across two franchises, several All-Star weekends, and more team flights than he could count, Shane had never once seen a single player knit anything anywhere. Not in a locker room. Not on a plane or bus. Not in a hotel room. That wasn’t to say it wasn’t true, just that he hadn’t noticed.
Which was concerning, because Shane noticed everything. He noticed when teammates changed their lace pattern. He noticed when the rink staff adjusted the Zamboni schedule. He’d once noticed that the soap dispenser in the visitors’ dressing room in Boston had been moved three inches to the left between periods, and it had bothered him for the rest of the game.
If NHL players were secretly knitting, Shane would have noticed. He was sure of that.
He rinsed his hair and stared at the tile. The study had been suspiciously specific. Thirty-seven percent. Not thirty-five, not forty. Thirty-seven. A number precise enough to sound researched and odd enough to sound real. The European Journal of Sports Physiotherapy. A journal he’d never heard of, which meant nothing, because there were hundreds of sports medicine journals. But also a journal he could not immediately verify, because it was European, and probably behind a paywall, and possibly in a language he didn’t read.
And Bood. Would Bood send Ilya a link to a study? Shane considered this. Bood would send Ilya a link to a study about anything if he thought it would give the team an edge. So that part, annoyingly, was plausible.
He turned the water off and stood in the steam, dripping.
The tutorial had been for absolute beginners. If crochet or knitting was an established injury-prevention method among NHL players, Ilya wouldn’t need a YouTube tutorial called Crochet for Absolute Beginners. He’d have a coach, or a physiotherapist, or at least a pamphlet.
Shane reached for his towel and dried his face.
He was going to let it go. For now.
* * *
Six days later, Shane walked into the kitchen at seven-thirty in the morning and found a row of black crocheted pucks arranged on the island counter.
Early light came through the windows above the sink and made the granite shine. The house smelled like coffee.
They were not identical. The first was lopsided, the stitching uneven in places, the wool stuffing lumpy where it pressed against the surface. But each one after it was better than the last. The one at the end of the row was firm and round, close to the size of an actual hockey puck, with a faint give when he picked it up and squeezed it. He turned it over in his hands. For six days of work, this was unreasonably good.
He knew who had made them.
Ilya was leaning against the counter near the sink, shirtless in joggers, crocheting. A mug of coffee sat beside him, and a ball of black yarn rested on the counter next to it, the strand trailing up to his working hand. A loose thread of yarn was stuck to his left forearm. Both hands worked the hook and yarn with an ease that had no business existing only six days after having learnt the craft.
“Ilya.”
“Mm.”
“There are crocheted hockey pucks on our kitchen island.”
“More soon.” Ilya set the hook down on the counter, picked up his coffee, took a sip, put it back, and resumed crocheting in one fluid sequence. The whole thing took about three seconds.
“You said this was for wrist injury prevention.”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you making hockey pucks specifically?”
Ilya glanced up and looked at Shane as though he’d been asked to explain how gravity worked. “Is not hockey pucks. Is вязаный шар.” Crocheted ball.
Shane waited.
“Traditional Russian practice,” Ilya continued. “From Vologda region. Is very old. Before competition season, men make round shapes from dark wool. Is for focus. Meditation. You make them with your hands, and the repetition clears the mind. My babushka’s brother, Dmitri, was the best in his village. Could make one hundred in a week.” He hooked the yarn, pulled it through, and added, without looking up, “But he was better than me.”
“Вязаный шар,” Shane said, trying to wrap his mouth around the sounds.
“Yes. You can look it up.”
Shane picked up his phone from the counter, then put it back down. Looking it up felt like it would prove either that Ilya was telling the truth, which would make Shane feel ignorant, or that Ilya was lying, which would start a fight at seven-thirty in the morning over yarn.
“Your babushka’s brother,” Shane said carefully, “was a competitive crocheter.”
“In his village, yes. Was a great honour.”
Shane looked at the row of pucks. Looked at Ilya. Ilya looked back, serene, and took another sip of his coffee.
He still had one of the pucks in his hand. He’d forgotten he was holding it.
Anya had not forgotten. She trotted into the kitchen, nails ticking on the tile, sat at Shane’s feet, and looked up at him with her head tilted. Before Shane could react, she lunged, snatched the puck from his fingers, and bolted for the living room with it clamped between her teeth.
Ilya watched her go. He set down his hook, closed his eyes, and exhaled through his nose.
“Great,” he said. “Now I have to make another one.”
Shane frowned. “Have to?”
Ilya picked up his hook and resumed crocheting. “Want to. I want to make another one. Because your dog just stole it.”
“She’s our dog.”
“When she steals things, she is your dog.”
Shane opened his mouth, then closed it. It was too early. He hadn’t had coffee yet, and that correction sat wrong in his ear, a false note he couldn’t reach clearly enough to examine. The tile was cold under his bare feet. He put the coffee machine on and let it go.
* * *
The pucks were spreading.
They had colonised the kitchen counter and migrated to the coffee table, the gaps between the sofa cushions, and the far side of their bed, where Shane found one wedged between Ilya’s pillow and the headboard. The puck Anya had stolen was on her dog bed, riddled with teeth marks, and a trail of white wool stuffing stretched across the hallway where she’d been working the filling out with the focused persistence of a dog who had found her calling. That one was beyond saving.
He went looking for Ilya and found him in the home gym.
Ilya was sitting on the hip adductor machine. Not using it. Just sitting on it, legs resting wide on the pads, with the stack of iron weights behind him untouched. A couple of finished pucks sat in his lap and he was halfway through another one in his hands, the black yarn trailing down to a ball on the floor between his feet. Morning light came through the glass doors that opened onto the back garden, and the rubber mats smelled faintly of sweat and cleaning spray.
Shane stood in the doorway for a full minute before Ilya looked up.
“Come to work out?” Ilya asked.
“Why are you sitting on that machine?”
“Is comfortable.”
“It’s a hip adductor.”
“Yes. And is comfortable.”
Shane breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth. “Ilya. Why are you crocheting hockey pucks?”
Ilya’s hands stilled. He looked up, and his expression shifted into an open, gentle surprise that Shane did not trust for a single second.
“I told you this, no? Is for the children’s hospital.”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“I am sure I did.” Ilya frowned, as though trying to recall a conversation that had never happened. “There is a girl on the paediatric ward. Kaycie. She is nine. She has leukaemia and she loves hockey, but she cannot play, so I am making soft pucks for her. Safe ones. She can use them in the ward.” He resumed crocheting, slower now, his voice quieter. “The other kids want them too. And the nurses say it cheers them up. So I am making enough for everyone.”
Shane opened his mouth. Closed it. What was he supposed to say to that? What sentence existed that began with “I don’t believe you’re making toys for children with cancer”?
“The ward coordinator asked me to make extras,” Ilya continued. “For the playroom. They do not have many soft toys.” He looked down at the puck in his hands and added, without emphasis, “Kaycie drew me a picture. Is on the fridge. You have not seen it?”
Shane had not seen it. He would check later.
“That’s really kind of you,” Shane managed.
“Thank you,” Ilya said warmly. He plucked the finished pucks from his lap, placed them on the rubber mat beside the machine, and went back to work.
Shane left the gym.
On his way to the kitchen, he stopped at the fridge. There was, in fact, a child’s drawing stuck to the door with a magnet. A figure in a red hockey jersey, rendered in crayon with the confident, proportionless joy of someone who was approximately nine years old. It hadn’t been there last week. Shane was certain of that, because he would have noticed.
He stared at it for a long time and felt a slow, uncomfortable knot tighten in his chest. Either his husband was making toys for a sick child named Kaycie, which was beautiful and he should stop questioning it, or his husband had acquired a child’s drawing from somewhere and stuck it to their fridge as evidence for a lie, which was so elaborate it bordered on unhinged.
He loved Ilya. He loved him so much that the idea of doubting him made Shane’s stomach hurt. Ilya teased and provoked and pushed boundaries with a casual fearlessness that Shane had never been able to manage in his own life, but he was never cruel. Not to Shane. Not to anyone he loved. He trash-talked with warmth and competed with joy and when he said he was going to do something, he did it. That was one of the things Shane loved most about him. Ilya was dependable where it counted.
So this was fine. The crocheting was fine. Shane was overthinking it. He was doing the thing he always did, where he picked at something that didn’t fit his mental framework until he’d worn a hole through it, and the only person it hurt was himself.
He made his coffee. He didn’t ask again for eleven days.
During those eleven days, he asked Wyatt in the locker room if he knew anything about a crocheted puck initiative for the children’s hospital. Wyatt blinked at him, opened his mouth, closed it, blinked again, and said, “No?”
Something crossed Wyatt’s face. Not confusion. The briefest flicker of recognition, bitten down before it could become a smile. Shane filed it away and said nothing.
That evening, he sat in his study with his laptop and Googled “вязаный шар Vologda tradition.” Nothing. He tried it transliterated. Nothing. He tried “Russian crochet meditation folk tradition.” Nothing. He tried “Dr. Volkov Moscow Institute of Sports Medicine wrist study.” Nothing.
He closed the laptop, then opened it again.
Each search returned nothing, and each nothing made the next search feel more necessary. This was the part of his brain that Shane could not switch off. The pattern didn’t fit. Four pieces of information, each individually plausible, each collectively verified by zero external sources. His brain kept rotating the shape of the puzzle, looking for the angle where all the edges aligned, and finding none.
But here was the thing that sat like a stone in his gut: What if he was wrong? What if the tradition was too regional for Google? What if the journal was in Russian? What if Ilya was doing something genuinely kind and Shane was standing in his study at ten o’clock at night, trying to debunk his husband’s charity work?
Shane closed the laptop. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and breathed.
Ilya wouldn’t mess with him like this. Not about something this elaborate. A one-off joke, sure. An offhand wind-up during a card game, absolutely. But a sustained, multi-week deception involving yarn, fake Russian traditions, and sick children? That wasn’t a prank. That was a campaign. And Ilya didn’t run campaigns against people he loved.
Did he?
The next afternoon, Shane called the children’s hospital. He told the receptionist he was inquiring about a patient named Kaycie on the paediatric ward. The receptionist told him, politely, that there was no patient by that name currently admitted.
Shane thanked her, hung up, and stared at the wall.
* * *
He found Ilya on the back deck after dinner, settled into one of the deep cushioned chairs with his legs stretched onto the ottoman. The air was cool, carrying the green, silty smell of the river. Crickets had started up in the garden, a thin, steady pulse beneath the sound of a boat motor humming somewhere on the water. The sky was fading from blue to the colour of a bruise. Anya was lying on the decking boards beside Ilya, gnawing on a crocheted puck. It was either the one she’d stolen days before, or she’d managed to get her paws on yet another one of Ilya’s creations.
Shane sat down across from him. He crossed his arms. Uncrossed them. Leaned forward.
“I googled вязаный шар.”
Ilya’s hook did not slow. “And?”
“Nothing came up.”
“Is not surprising. Is a very regional tradition. Not everything is on Google, Shane.”
“I also googled ‘Dr. Volkov Moscow Institute of Sports Medicine wrist study.‘”
“And?”
“Also nothing.”
Ilya shrugged. “Russian academic journals are not always indexed in English.”
Shane sat with that for a moment. Then he said, carefully, “I called the children’s hospital. About Kaycie.”
Ilya’s hook slowed. He looked up. “You called the hospital.”
“I asked if there was a patient named Kaycie on the paediatric ward.”
“And what did they say?”
Shane hesitated. What they had said, politely but firmly, was that there was no patient by that name currently admitted.
“They couldn’t tell me,” he said.
Ilya set down his hook. His expression was no longer gentle. “You called a children’s hospital,” he said, “to check if a nine-year-old girl with leukaemia is real. Because your husband told you he is making toys for her. You know they do not disclose patient information to someone who is not a family member or authorised contact.”
The sentence sat in the evening air between them. A frog called from somewhere near the water.
“I just wanted to—”
“What did you want, Shane? To catch me lying about a sick child?” Ilya’s voice was quiet and level, which was worse than if he’d raised it. “Is that what you think of me?”
Shane opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “No. That’s not—”
“Because I can call the ward coordinator right now. Her name is Angi. You want me to call?”
Shane did not want him to call. Partly because it was after eight in the evening and that felt rude, and partly because he was no longer certain what answer he was afraid of.
“No,” Shane said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called.”
Ilya held his gaze for another beat, then picked up his hook and resumed crocheting. The injured dignity radiated off him like heat from a stove. Shane sat in it and felt terrible.
A full minute of silence passed before Ilya spoke again, his voice softer now, as though he’d decided to forgive Shane for his transgression.
“Since you are asking so many questions,” Ilya said, “I was not going to say anything until the paperwork was finalised. But.” He paused. “The NHLPA contacted me. Equipment and Safety Committee. They are running a pilot programme for off-ice rehabilitation devices. Fine motor, like I told you before. They need test data on different stitch densities, different sizes, firmness levels. I fill out a form after each one, and send the results to the committee chair.”
“The NHLPA,” Shane said, “asked you to crochet.”
“Not crochet. To develop prototypical rehabilitation devices. Crochet is the method.” He picked up his hook again. “They asked several players, but most said no because they are lazy. I said yes because I take my career seriously.”
“Who’s the committee chair?”
“Dr. Pat Engström,” Ilya said, without hesitation. “Based in Toronto. Swedish, I think. Very serious woman. She sent a very long email. Fourteen pages of instructions.” He pulled the yarn through a stitch. “I am making a couple dozen prototypes. Is a lot, but the data has to be complete or the programme does not get approved for next season.”
The evening air sat between them. Anya continued dismembering her puck. This one looked new. She’d probably stolen one from Ilya’s pile of finished pucks, or he’d given it to her.
“Dr. Pat Engström,” Shane repeated.
“Yes. You could email her, but she is very busy. Hard to reach.”
“You’re telling me the National Hockey League Players’ Association is going to roll out a crochet programme based on your prototypes.”
“Not crochet programme. Rehabilitation device initiative. I keep saying this. You are not listening.”
Shane looked at his husband. His husband looked back, his face relaxed, his eyes calm, his chin tilted just enough to suggest that everything he had ever said in his life had been the truth. He had just, to Shane’s face, invented a federal-sounding rehabilitation pilot programme and staffed it with an imaginary Scandinavian bureaucrat. And he seemed at peace with that.
Shane stood up. Went inside. Closed the glass door behind him, walked to the study, sat down at his desk, and opened his laptop.
He typed: “NHLPA Equipment and Safety Committee pilot programme.”
Nothing.
He typed: “Dr. Pat Engström, NHLPA.”
Nothing.
He typed: “NHLPA rehabilitation device initiative crochet.”
He stared at that last query for a moment, then deleted it, character by character, because typing those words into Google felt like losing.
He closed the laptop and sat in the quiet. From upstairs, he could hear the low tick of the bedroom clock. From outside, the muffled shape of crickets through the glass.
Something was wrong. Shane’s instinct for it was the same one that told him a play was developing on the ice before the puck moved: a sense for the geometry of things, the gap between what should be there and what was. Every answer Ilya gave was structurally sound and externally unverifiable. Every claim existed in a space that Shane would have to make an absurd effort to check: Russian-language journals, regional folk traditions, hospital patient records, internal NHLPA communications. The lies, if they were lies, were designed for someone who checked things. They were designed for Shane.
But that was the thought he couldn’t afford to follow. Because it led somewhere ugly. It led to his husband sitting on the back deck in the evening light, crocheting and lying to his face, not because he was hiding something dangerous, but because he thought it was funny. And that wasn’t Ilya. That wasn’t the man who had pulled Shane into his arms on a porch in the freezing dark and held him while he cried. That wasn’t the man who had stood at a press conference and told the world about his mother because he believed it might save someone else’s.
Shane pushed back from the desk. He rubbed his face with both hands and went to bed.
He lay in the dark beside Ilya, who was already asleep, and listened to his breathing, and tried to feel settled by the sound. He did love him. That was the scaffolding that held everything else up, and it was not in question. He loved the weight of Ilya’s arm when it found its way across Shane’s body in sleep. He loved Ilya’s tuneless humming while he cooked. He loved that Ilya had once driven forty-five minutes to a specialty pet bakery because Anya liked a flavour of biscuit that their local shop had stopped stocking.
Ilya would not lie to him. Not about this. Not for this long.
Shane turned onto his side and closed his eyes.
The pattern still didn’t fit.
* * *
Three days later, Shane came downstairs and found Ilya on the sofa in the living room, crocheting and watching a hockey highlights show. The pile of pucks on the coffee table had grown. Anya was asleep at the far end of the sofa with her head on one.
Shane stood in front of the TV.
“There is no NHLPA pilot programme,” he said. “There is no Dr. Pat Engström. I checked everywhere.”
Ilya blinked up at him, unperturbed, and crocheted around Shane’s silhouette as though he were a slightly inconvenient lamppost.
“Shane,” he said. “I did not want to say anything until is all done. But since you are asking…again.” He paused. Took a breath. Set the hook down with the ceremonial care of someone about to deliver significant news. “I have been approached by Maison Beaumont.”
Shane waited.
“Is a luxury fashion house,” Ilya continued. “Based in Paris. Their creative director, Cécile Marchand, flew to Ottawa a month ago to meet with me. They want to collaborate on a capsule collection. Handcrafted pieces. Each one unique. The collection is called ‘Cinquante.’ They will be displayed in the flagship store in Paris, and then Tokyo, and then their pop-up in New York during Fashion Week.” He picked up the hook again and resumed stitching. “Cécile says my tension is exceptional.”
Shane did not move.
“Cécile,” he said.
“Marchand. Yes. Very respected in the industry.”
“A luxury fashion house wants to sell your crocheted hockey pucks?”
“Display. Not sell. Is art, Shane. They do not sell the art.”
“In Paris.”
“And Tokyo.”
Shane looked at his husband. His husband looked back, his brow smooth, his mouth neutral, his eyes offering nothing but open sincerity. He had just, to Shane’s face, invented a French fashion executive, an international art tour, and the word “cinquante” as a brand name. He felt fine about it.
Shane stepped out of the way of the TV and went to his study.
He typed: “Maison Beaumont fashion house Paris.”
Nothing.
He typed: “Cécile Marchand creative director.”
Nothing.
He closed the laptop and stared at the ceiling for a long time.
Then he opened his phone’s notes app and started planning.
* * *
Shane’s alarm was set for 4:47 a.m., but he didn’t need it. He’d been awake since four, lying still in the dark, breathing steadily so as not to disturb the man beside him. Downstairs, the fridge hummed. In the corner of the bedroom, Anya sighed in her sleep and shifted on her dog bed.
Ilya slept like the dead. One arm flung across Shane’s stomach, his face mashed sideways into the pillow, his breathing heavy and slow. His hair was pushed in six directions and there was a faint crease from the pillowcase stamped across his cheekbone. At rest, with his jaw slack and his brow smooth, he looked younger. Softer. Annoyingly beautiful, if Shane was being honest, which he tried not to be at 4:46 in the morning because it compromised his tactical focus.
Shane reached over and turned off the alarm before it could sound. Then he shifted onto his side, brought his mouth close to Ilya’s ear, and shook his shoulder.
“Ilya.”
A noise. Not a word. A low, guttural protest from somewhere deep in Ilya’s chest, muffled by the pillow.
“Hey.” Shane kept his voice soft. Casual. Warm. Nothing about it suggested a plan. “Ilya, wake up a second.”
Ilya’s eyelids flickered. His brow creased. He made another sound, this one closer to a groan, and dragged the arm off Shane’s stomach to cover his own face.
“What,” he mumbled. The word was thick with sleep, barely English.
“I was just thinking,” Shane said, quiet and easy, like a thought had drifted into his head through no effort of his own. “Why are you crocheting all those pucks?”
Ilya’s face was still pressed into the pillow. His brain was in a different timezone altogether and no closer to consciousness. The question arrived and met no resistance, no filter, no rehearsed answer.
“Проиграл пари,” he muttered. “Mmn. Lost bet. To Hazy. Пиздец. Have to make fifty. S’horrible.” Lost a bet. ... Fuck.
The room was silent except for Ilya’s breathing and the hum of the fridge downstairs.
Shane lay still and did not move a single muscle in his face.
He counted in his head. Slowly. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine.
On ten, Ilya’s eyes opened.
It happened in stages. First the left eye, squinting against the dark. Then the right. Then both, widening, as the past several seconds replayed at full speed through a brain that was only now arriving in the correct time zone.
The colour started at his neck. It climbed in a slow, gorgeous wave, flooding his jaw, his cheeks, the bridge of his nose, the tips of his ears. Beetroot. Unmistakable, even in the blue-grey dark of their bedroom.
“You,” Ilya said.
Shane smiled. He reached over and brushed his thumb across Ilya’s scorching cheekbone.
“Your cheeks are gorgeous right now,” he said. “I love it when you blush.”
Ilya’s jaw set. His chin lifted. His eyes narrowed into two slits of dark, mortified fury. He had crocheted an entire pile of hockey pucks for a fake French fashion house, a fictional Swedish bureaucrat, and an invented Vologda folk tradition rather than admit he’d lost a bet to their goalie, and he was not sorry.
“Russians,” Ilya said, “do not blush.”
Shane huffed a laugh.
“Maybe not,” he said. “But you're Canadian now.”
He shuffled closer and draped himself across Ilya’s body, wrapping his arms around him as well as the angle allowed. Ilya let him. His warm hand came to rest on Shane’s side, broad and steady, and Shane angled his face up and pressed a kiss to Ilya’s mouth.
“You know, Rozanov,” Shane said, “you could have just told me you were making toys for Anya. I’d have rolled my eyes and said nothing more.”