Chapter Text
Shane Hollander plays the last NHL game of his career on a Tuesday in Tampa.
He doesn’t know, going in, that it’s his last. Not exactly.
But look, he’s nearly 39. He’s been playing professional hockey for more than half his life. His body is held together with tape and hope and lots and lots of fish oil. His career feels a little like every visit to his grandmother felt from about 1998 onward, always tangentially aware that this visit might be the last.
Every day he laces his skates feels like that now.
It’s a Tuesday in Tampa. The Voyageurs are nearing the end of a rebuilding season. The rookies are starting to deliver consistently, and the second line center they’d gotten just before the All-Star game is settling into the room pretty well. They’re playing good hockey. Not great hockey — they probably won’t make playoffs unless both Pittsburgh and Boston shit the bed in the next month, and with the way Rozanov’s been playing this season —
Shane shakes his head as he shrugs his jersey on. He hates missing the playoffs, but it can’t happen every year. He’s got five cups. Six would feel greedy. Even Rozanov only has four. Gretzky, too, for that matter.
Shane would never say it out loud, but it actually sounds like a bit of a relief, to finish out the regular season and not push his body through two to eight extra weeks of hockey against every fucking infant defenseman who’s trying to prove something to himself by stopping the great Shane Hollander. He can put this season to bed and head to the cottage early, have ten solid weeks up north before he has to head to upstate New York to coach at Scott Hunter’s summer camp.
(Be careful what you wish for.)
He waits for the stragglers to finish lacing their skates before standing and letting the room settle. He doesn’t dwell on the fact that he’s been doing this part, too, for nearly as long as his rookies have been alive.
“We may be in their barn, but we play our game. You all know what to do?”
“Yeah!”
“You all know what to do.”
That's it, that’s the speech.
He grabs his mouthguard and his helmet and waits by the door until every man has filed past, giving a handshake or high five or dap or helmet tap, depending on preference. He misses Hayden and the contactless nod they used to share as his hand grows damper and damper with other people’s hand sweat. There’s no hand sanitizer installed by the door here like there is in the dressing room at home, because most other people are normal about bodily fluids, probably, but also because Florida doesn’t seem to believe in the general concept of public health.
The ice, the anthems, the face-off. The first two periods are scoreless. Shane chugs electrolytes and gives pointers during the second intermission: the goalie is favoring the right side of the net, their big, mean defenseman telegraphs with his shoulders before he hits, trust your speed and stop being so quick to dump the puck, for fuck’s sake, Johannsen.
Midway through the third period, Shane goes over the boards just in time to collect a sweet pass from Matty. He sprints down the ice, spins away from a Tampa defenseman who’s on course to intercept him, dekes, and shoots the puck toward the top left corner just as someone runs into him from the right.
The horn sounds, but all Shane hears is the snap in his knee. There’s an awful, slithery unraveling feeling and immediate, ugly, deep orange pain. He grabs someone around the shoulders as they skate in for the celly and there’s a second awful crunching tear as he gets jostled by an overenthusiastic teammate.
Everything goes a little fuzzy after that. He keeps himself upright by sheer strength of will because he suddenly has the deeply rooted animal conviction that if he falls down, he’ll never get up again. They’ll have to shoot him like a horse right there on the ice in front of nineteen thousand people. Some of those people are children, and that’d probably traumatize them for life. So he stays upright, his fingers clenched in the sleeve of Matty’s sweater, and someone finally realises something’s wrong, and he stands on his left leg while Matty and Shep carefully help him off the ice.
Shane shakes his head at Theriault’s raised eyebrow.
“Tabernac,” Theriault spits and starts rearranging the lines.
Shane sits on the bench and will not let the medics move him down the tunnel for a full eval.
“It’s fucked,” he tells them, blunt and mean. “Sitting here for nine minutes won’t make it worse. I want — I need —”
He bites the words back along with the tears and watches his team. Nineteen years of hockey. He balls up the pain and tucks it away in a dark corner in his mind, and lets himself notice everything else. The sound of blades on ice, the inescapable scent of twelve guys sweating into their pads, the electric hum that starts under the ice and becomes amplified a thousandfold by the crowd. There’s a little girl in a Hollander sweater a few rows back watching the game like she needs it. Maybe that will be his legacy. Maybe that will be enough. Shane has a house full of trophies and empty spaces where Claire’s things used to be. Shane has a house that was too big for two people and is obscene for one person. There are three empty bedrooms that Claire had hoped to fill, but Shane kept kicking that can down the road. One more season. Just one more season. I can’t end my career losing to Boston like that. One more season, babe. I have to help rebuild. One more season.
Claire is remarried with a baby on the way. Shane picked the most expensive thing on the registry and sent it with no card. Shane will call his mom after this game because he’s almost 39 and she’s back to being his emergency contact. The little girl in the Hollander sweater catches him looking and waves, huge and animated. Shane waves back. Nineteen years of hockey. They probably won’t even be selling Hollander sweaters next season.
The buzzer sounds, and the team files off the ice. Shane goes somewhere else in his mind for the trip down the tunnel and into the medical room. They have to cut him out of his pants. There’s an unnecessary ambulance and antiseptic-scented air conditioning and a long wait with loud fluorescent lights. There is imaging, and more imaging, and Shane knows that when he gets back to Montreal, they will want their own imaging. There is a kind, tired orthopaedist who tells him in kind, professional terms what Shane already knows: his knee is fucked in several different and interesting ways. There are arrangements for travel back to Montreal and a measurement for crutches and at some point the pain medication kicks in and Shane goes all floaty and loose. His phone will not stop buzzing. The Voyageurs group chat is sending well wishes and making plans for drinks at a bayside bar with a roof deck despite it only being February. Mom is being very Mom about him being injured and has a fifty-step plan for the next three days and has deputized Dad to make some freezer meals. Dad has simply texted “love you, kiddo.”
Later, after Shane chokes down a dry turkey sandwich and miniature can of hospital-brand ginger ale, after the doctor prints out instructions for the next eighteen hours, after Shane is wheeled to a car and makes his way slowly up to his hotel room, after his phone goes quiet because he turns off notifications for the Voyageurs group chat and assures his parents that he’s back at the hotel to get a few hours’ sleep before flying home, after he brushes his teeth and unwraps his knee and takes the worst shower of his life and rewraps his knee and settles himself in bed with a pillow under his knee and a pain pill on the night stand, after he blinks at the ceiling and waits for the tears to come, his phone buzzes again.
Ilya Rozanov: saw you sat the last 10 minutes against Tampa. If you are saving your energy for Boston next week, this is flattering but will not work, Hollander.
Shane puts the phone down. He picks it up again. He puts it down again. He picks it – oh for Christ’s sake.
me: I won’t be in Boston.
Ilya Rozanov, faster than Shane thought a person could type on a phone: You are injured?
me: Yeah.
Ilya Rozanov: I’m sorry to hear it.
Ilya Rozanov: Your season was going to be over soon enough, anyway
Ilya Rozanov: Full offense 😂
Shane laughs, and before he can stop himself, he presses Call. No one has said the words yet, but Shane knows, and the only other person on the planet who could possibly understand what Shane is feeling right now is Ilya fucking Rozanov.
It rings enough times for Shane to realize this is objectively weird. They have never talked on the phone. They’re friendly now, sure – between every single All-Star game since 2009 and Hunter’s camps and ad campaigns and the Olympics and NHL awards ceremonies, they’ve become something like friends over the years. They text a fair bit, actually, all things considered. Rozanov is funny and mean and really fucking smart, and he was the only person who didn’t treat Shane like he was fragile during the divorce. He’d said, you must be very stupid to make such a beautiful woman leave you, and Shane had said, yeah, probably, and then Rozanov had let a few days elapse before he sent a photo of his dog with her head stuck in a peanut butter jar and that had been that until Valentine’s Day when Rozanov couriered him an extremely scary-looking bottle of Russian vodka with no note and when Shane had asked him about it, he’d said this is how sad divorced bastards celebrate in Russia. They have never once spoken on the phone, and it’s ringing enough times for Shane to realize this is objectively weird, except Rozanov picks up just before it goes to voicemail and says,
“Fuck. Hollander. It is bad?”
Shane nods at the ceiling because his voice is suddenly gone along with his MCL and his meniscus and most of his synovial fluid.
“Yeah,” he croaks, and Rozanov says something in Russian.
Shane looks at the ceiling and wonders, not for the first time, how they get the tiles to look like Play-Doh spaghetti. He wonders what Rozanov’s ceiling looks like. Boston is in Vancouver. Rozanov is probably getting ready to go out. Shane shouldn’t have called.
“How bad?” Rozanov asks, his voice softer than Shane has ever heard.
“Bad,” Shane says. “I don’t think –”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
“You are OK?”
“I mean, no.”
“But you are safe, yes? You will not do anything stupid?”
“I’m okay. I won’t – God, no, nothing like that, no. I’m just…I’m just really fucking sad, you know?”
“Yes,” Rozanov says, so warm it makes Shane shiver. “Yes, I know.”
They’re both quiet for a long time, and it should be weird. It should be weird. It should be. It should –
“I would be sad, too,” Rozanov finally says, “if my career ended in fucking Tampa. Blyat.”
Shane barks a laugh, puts his arm over his eyes. Fucking Tampa. He laughs again, and then he cannot stop laughing, and Rozanov is laughing with him, and for the first time in seven years, there’s a brief break in the fog of loneliness that has settled in his chest.
***
Shane flies home. The team flies to Nashville. Shane sees a surgeon. The team wins their game. Shane schedules surgery. The team flies to Ottawa. Shane is choking down a cup of tea and a second dinner before he’s not allowed anything by mouth starting at midnight when the doorbell rings. Matty and Walt are at the door. Mom lets them in, and Shane is grateful to not have to get up to do it.
“You’d better not be breaking curfew for me,” he tells them, but also, “There are a couple beers in the fridge.”
“Coach knows,” Matty says, already halfway to the kitchen. “We’ll crash here and drive back in time for morning practice. The game’s not til –”
“Evening, I know.”
“Do you boys want anything to eat?” Mom asks. “I could make —”
“No, no thank you, Mrs. Hollander. We ate on the road.”
“Yuna, please.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Walt was born in Alabama and Matty is German and when Shane is with the two of them, he gets to be the rude one. It’s hilarious, and weird, and oddly freeing. Mom says goodnight and heads upstairs. Matty and Walt sit on either side of him on the couch. Shane feels a hundred years old under the weight of their combined earnestness.
“We wanted to talk about the room,” Matty starts. “Since you’ll be out for a while.”
“Matty,” Shane says gently.
“Since you will be out for a while,” he insists, and Shane bows his head.
“How do you want us to run it?” Walt asks.
“Have there been problems?”
“No.”
“Then you know how to run it,” Shane tells both of them, forcing himself to meet their eyes in turn. “Nothing I say will be news.”
“Say it anyway,” Walt says, and swings his feet up onto the coffee table. Shane sighs.
“There’s no team without trust, and no trust where there’s toxicity. Everyone is different or loves someone who’s different, and if your teammate is dunking on that difference, you’re not going to trust them. You know things were bad about ten years ago, right?”
Walt nods. He billeted his rookie year with Müller, who was himself a rookie during the 2017-2018 season, and people talk. Matty, though, cocks his head.
“When Hunter came out in 2018, some of the guys had something to say about it. They said some really ugly stuff both in the room and on the ice, and I should’ve — Well. I should have stopped it sooner. It took a couple years to undo that damage, and we played some spectacularly shitty hockey in the interim. Coach wasn’t with us – he’s still not with us. He’s old fashioned, and kind of a dick, and he’s never going to be the sort of, I don’t know, moral leader that he should be. Setting the tone is on you, and enforcing it is on you. It shouldn’t have to be, but it is.”
Shane takes a deep breath, looks at his hands. He feels stupid. He feels old. He thinks about legacy and that little girl in the Hollander sweater in Tampa, about two empty bedrooms and his mom upstairs.
“You’ve heard me say it a hundred times, but it boils down to this: we don’t chirp what we can’t change. Someone comes in with a stupid hat or a bad haircut or makes sloppy passes all day because he’s hungover? Fair game. I can’t tell you the number of times Rozanov has chirped me about my weak backhand, you know? But he’s never said a single word about me being Asian, and I know he’s never said a word to Hunter about being gay. I asked Scott,” he adds, because Walt is looking skeptical.
“So, I don’t know, I guess I figured if the most notorious asshole in hockey doesn’t stoop to that level, we shouldn’t either. That’s all. That’s the ground truth. Everything just builds on that.”
“You are telling us,” Matty says in his clipped, brusque accent, “That the Voyageurs’ famously upstanding dressing room culture is inspired by Ilya Rozanov?”
Shane shrugs. “I think you’ll find that a lot of my career was inspired in one way or another by Ilya Rozanov. It’s easy to be good when you’ve got someone great pushing you for twenty years.”
Walt necks his beer. Matty looks disgruntled. Shane has learned something about himself just now. He hadn’t realised the truth of it until he felt the words in his mouth.
“Paulson needs to focus on his footwork,” he says, as much to break the tension as anything, “And Richard will need to see the sports psychologist in a couple weeks if he can’t shake the yips. Don’t let Jensen overdo it at the bar, and don’t let Benji and Hoskins share a room, they keep each other up way too late. Text me if you need anything, I’m just going to be sitting around doing physio for the next couple weeks. I’ll come to practice as soon as I’m weight bearing. Now will you put a game on and let me finish my sandwich, or do you need me to talk you through anything else you already know?”
“Nah, man, we’re good,” Walt tells him, and chugs the rest of his beer. Matty slings an arm over his shoulder and gives him a shake. They turn the game on – Philly at Boston – and settle into a more familiar groove. Matty falls asleep on Walt’s shoulder halfway through the second period. Walt falls asleep ten minutes later, his head resting on top of Matty’s. Shane snaps a photo and texts Hayden.
me: It’s impossible that we were ever this young. It should be illegal to be this fucking young.
Then because he has his phone in his hand and Rozanov’s face keeps appearing in his living room, he texts him, too.
8:15 pm. me: Surgery tomorrow. You bruise your hip? You’re favoring your right.
8:23 pm. me: And stop taunting D’Aulaire, he’s got four inches and seventy pounds on you.
8:26 pm. me: Told you.
He throws a blanket over his alternate captains and makes his way awkwardly upstairs. He takes a long and thorough shower, because he won’t be allowed to for three days, and brushes his teeth with the lights off. He climbs into bed and waits.
9:37 pm. Ilya Rozanov: Good luck with surgery. Maybe they will give you whole new bionic knee and you will come out like Hockey Terminator, good for ten more seasons. This is unfair advantage, Hollander.
9:38 pm. Ilya Rozanov: My eye is fine, by the way, thank you so much for your concern.
9:39 pm. Ilya Rozanov: But OK, yes
9:39 pm. Ilya Rozanov: Maybe next time I do not poke the giant.
9:39 pm. Ilya Rozanov: I am amazed they have jersey big enough for him.
9:39 pm. Ilya Rozanov: Do you think they recruited the guy who played Gritty as defenseman?
Shane smiles.
9:40 pm. me: No, I think they recruited the first Newfoundlander they met and he’s got six younger brothers who are bigger and faster than him, so you should probably apologise now.
9:41 pm. me: The guy who plays Gritty can skate, though. Last time we were in Philly he did a whole ice dance routine that was pretty decent.
9:41 pm. me: No bionic knee. They offered me a cadaver ligament or an autograft, where they take a ligament from my quad. The recovery is longer for the autograft but long-term performance tends to be better so I’m going with that one.
9:42 pm. me: Sorry, you probably didn’t need to know all that.
9:44 pm. Ilya Rozanov: No, this is very important to me that second best hockey player in the league does not have ghosts in his leg.
9:46 pm. me: 👻🦿
11:04 pm. Ilya Rozanov: You were joking about six younger brothers, yes?
Shane texts back when he wakes the next morning.
4:51 am. me: Was I? Hmm.
Teeth brushed, bag packed, Mom in the kitchen with a big cup of coffee for herself and a hug for him. A quiet car ride through dark Montreal streets, a long elevator ride to the surgical suite. Noise cancelling headphones on, wait professionally. Shane flies – flew – two to four times a week for nineteen years. He is used to waiting. Still, he jiggles his good leg until Mom puts her hand on his knee.
Forms, questions. No, I didn’t have breakfast. Yes, I’m sure I didn’t have breakfast. An IV, first saline and then Dilaudid. He goes loose and silly for a few minutes before they wheel him away. Shane’s glad his phone is in Mom’s purse. He goes under quickly and wakes up feeling like no time at all has passed. The morphine makes him nauseated and itchy. Mom brings him a popsicle and he lets himself cry for a minute, because he misses being six and having a popsicle on the back porch with his parents, because he misses when a popsicle could cure most hurts. It’s still really fucking good. It takes the edge off the nausea. Maybe it still works, a little.
When he’s settled in his little room in the inpatient rehab the Voyageurs are paying for despite the tacit understanding they may never get another minute of ice time out of him, Shane finally turns his phone on. Hayden, Jacki, JJ, and half the current team have texted, but also:
9:34 am. Ilya Rozanov: how was surgery?
10:29 am. Ilya Rozanov: you are alive, yes?
11:11 am. Ilya Rozanov: Hollander it will be very rude of you to die before I win fifth Cup. It is only fun if I tie you while you are still living.
2:19 pm. Ilya Rozanov: please do not make me text Hayden Pike, i will never live this down
Shane looks at the clock. The last message is only a few minutes old. He considers, for a moment, letting Rozanov embarrass himself, but then he considers the fog of loneliness and the threatening emptiness of his entire future bearing down on him, and he types.
2:26 pm. me: I’m alive.
2:26 pm. me: Nice to know you care 😉
2:27 pm. me: Also cute that you think you’re getting past Chicago for the Cup this year
2:27 pm. me: You’re all like 100 years old and Chicago is hungry for it.
2:27 pm. Ilya Rozanov: RUDE
2:27 pm. Ilya Rozanov: RUDE
2:28 pm. Ilya Rozanov: EVERYBODY SHANE HOLLANDER IS BULLYING ME
2:29 pm. Ilya Rozanov: A MAN WITH THE KNEES OF METHUSELAH IS CALLING ME OLD
2:30 pm. me: Methuselah, huh? Your English has gotten pretty good over the years.
2:31 pm. Ilya Rozanov: Do not be silly, Shane Hollander. Is, how you say, cognition.
2:31 pm. me: you know it’s cognate. I know you know it’s cognate. You know I know you know it’s cognate.
2:32 pm. Ilya Rozanov: ah so they have you on the good drugs.
2:32 pm. me: shut up, asshole. I’m just saying.
2:34 pm. me: but yes.
2:40 pm. Ilya Rozanov: Good. I do not like the thought of you in pain.
And what the hell is Shane supposed to say to that? He throws his phone on the bedside table and turns the television on. Maybe he can catch up on Golden Girls reruns.
***
Shane is discharged from rehab after eight days, with biweekly home physio appointments and daily sessions with the team physio and trainer. He’d ditched the crutches on day 5, but he’s still in a brace that locks his leg into full extension whenever he’s not doing his PT. When he arrives at practice, he gets hugs or back slaps from every guy except Müller, who’s even weirder than Shane about physical contact. Shane spends the next two hours doing his little exercises, watching drills, and texting Rozanov. He goes home, and spends the next six hours doing his little exercises, watching hockey on TV, and texting Rozanov.
It goes like this for several days, and one miserable, damp Thursday evening, Rozanov says,
Ilya Rozanov: Montreal tomorrow.
Ilya Rozanov: Drinks after game?
Shane blinks at his phone for a while. Drinks with… Boston? With both of their teams? Just the two of them? Which would be the worse one to get caught assuming, only to have it be the other one? Which would be the most likely for Rozanov to mean? Which would be the worst for Rozanov to mean?
At some point, Shane remembers he’s pushing forty and can use his words like a grown-up.
me: Just us, or with the teams? It’s fine either way, but my recommendations would be different depending.
Ilya Rozanov: Just us. I am so tired of hockey bars and drunken children and their shenanigans.
me: Let me guess, shenanigans is also a cognate?
Ilya Rozanov: No, but is very accurate
Ilya Rozanov: Tell me where to meet you after game
me: I still can’t drive, so meet me by the player’s entrance and we’ll get an Uber.
Ilya Rozanov: OK. See you tomorrow.
me: looking forward to it.
Ilya Rozanov: yes
Shane is midway through typing asshole when another text comes through.
Ilya Rozanov: me too. Very much so
Well. What the fuck is that supposed to mean.
Shane doesn’t dress for the game, of course, but he gets pulled into a conversation with Walt and two of the rookies in the dressing room after the game is over and ends up spending 30 minutes talking the rookies down from the sting of a 5-1 loss.
“I hate losing to Boston as much as the next guy, but sometimes the score doesn’t reflect our game. You played well, you executed the strategy. They just did it better tonight. Go home, get some rest, don’t worry about it, okay? You guys did good tonight.”
“Yeah, okay. Thanks, cap.”
The hallway to the player’s entrance is long, and Shane’s only on day two without crutches and regretting it a little by the time he makes it to the door. Rozanov’s not there yet, so Shane lowers himself to the floor to wait. He’s in jeans, not his game day suit, and he knows that René in facilities does a thorough job on game days. It’s fine. It’s all fine. Knees were an evolutionary mistake, though, he’s pretty sure. Evidence against intelligent design.
“Hollander. The floor? Really? Montreal is so strapped for cash paying your enormous salary they cannot afford chairs?”
“Yeah, make fun of the guy with the bum leg, huh?”
Ilya Rozanov looks taller from the ground. Shane takes him in in pieces – polished, lethal dress shoes, a fitted charcoal suit, no tie, pale blue shirt, collar open three buttons. Gold chain, hair damp, eyes crinkled in amusement.
“We are having picnic here?”
“No. No, I’ll call the Uber.”
“OK.”
A hand comes into his field of view as he’s shoving his phone back into his jeans pocket, and he takes it. Rozanov’s hand is dry and warm, and he heaves him up from the floor and onto his good leg like Shane’s a sack of groceries and not 210 pounds of neuroses in a skin suit.
“Thanks.”
“You’re OK? Still good to go out?”
“Yeah, no, I’m good. Uber to the restaurant, no steps, Uber home, it’ll be fine.
“You’ve been to this place before?”
“Yeah, my –”
He nearly says, “My mom and I go there all the time,” but then he remembers who he’s talking to, and then he remembers who he’s been talking to for the past ten days, and reconsiders. Re-reconsiders.
“I mean, it’s nice. My mom and I go a lot. It has a good wine list, if you’re into that — she is — and the food is great. It’s my favorite place in Montreal when the weather’s bad.”
“And when the weather is not bad?”
“There’s a little bistro in Verdun that has this secret courtyard in the back. Mocktails, fairy lights, I don’t know. It’s quiet.”
“Mm. You do not drink?”
“What?”
“You said your mom likes the wine list, and your favorite bar had mocktails. You are, what is this word, toteetle?”
“Teetotaler? No, not exactly. I don’t tend to drink during the season, is all. I’ll have a couple drinks if it’s summer.”
“And now?”
Shane swings his leg like a clock pendulum. Rozanov follows the movement with his eyes.
“Now? I think I deserve a goddamn drink.”
Shane thought he knew all of Rozanov’s smirks, but this one is darker, somehow. Shane can’t decide if it’s threatening him with a good time or promising him trouble. Probably both, considering its source.
“Davai,” is all Rozanov says, and then the cab is there.
They sit at the bar, a bottle of wine between them. The lights are low, and the music is sultry, and Shane’s only ever been here for lunch with his mother. The vibes are considerably different tonight. Shane chooses to blame the bar for this.
Rozanov looks at the menu of small plates and asks what’s good.
“Everything.”
“OK. One of everything, please,” he tells the bartender, who is either exquisitely professional or a hockey fan. Either way, he doesn’t blink, and goes to the computer and starts keying in their order.
They talk and eat and talk and drink and talk and talk and talk. Shane, who can count on one hand the people in his life he finds easy to be around, finds he needs to add another hand.
1) Mom
2) Dad
3) Hayden
4) Jackie
5) JJ and his therapist splitting the pinkie depending on the day
And now, 6) Ilya Rozanov.
Shane has to put his foot up on the footrest of Rozanov's stool, and knees bump enough that at some point they stop trying to hold their own space. After that, Shane keeps getting distracted by the firm warmth against his thigh, and by the candle on the bar, and by Rozanov’s thick fingers delicate against his glass.
It’s late, now, and there has been some wine. There has been quite a bit of wine, because Rozanov does not let his glass stand empty. It is the fifth or sixth or ninth such time, Rozanov’s arm reaching into Shane’s space, Rozanov’s arm brushing his chest, that Shane blurts,
“So are we friends now?” and then immediately blushes down to his toes.
“Nope, never mind. Fuck, that was such a grade six thing to ask. In my defense, I’m pretty drunk.”
Rozanov raises an eyebrow.
“I thought we were already friends.”
“No, I mean yeah, but like. Friends-friends.”
“Friends-friends.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do not. My teachers told me English is not reduplicative language. I must email them and tell them it is lie.”
Rozanov enunciates reduplicative with a level of exaggerated precision accessible only to kindergarten teachers and the intoxicated. Shane wants to pluck the word out of Rozanov’s mouth and feel it burst, berry-ripe, under his own teeth.
Rozanov’s lips quirk in a half-question, and Shane realizes it’s his turn to conversate. Converse? Say words.
“Friends-friends. Like, friends, but –”
“More?”
It has to be against the laws of physics and phonology for one syllable to be so laden.
“Uh. I mean, not. That’s – Yes? Yes. More than regular friends is – what friends-friends could mean.”
“Mm,” Rozanov says, and tips the last of the wine down his throat. Shane looks steadfastly at a spot over Rozanov’s left ear, for safety.
“This was good,” Rozanov announces. “But I have early flight, and you need to go to bed, Hollander. We will stop for Gatorade on the way.”
“I don’t need –”
“You do,” Rozanov tells him with a wide, delighted grin. It’s one Shane has seen only a few times before, and he thinks (hopes?) that maybe it’s the real one. “No, shh. Shane Hollander, drunk on four glasses of wine. This is a special gift, just for me. I buy you Gatorade to say thank you, yes? What flavor?”
“Light blue. And it was way more than four.”
They bicker all the way back to Shane’s house, including a Gatorade interlude at the dépanneur. When the Uber pulls up to the curb, Ilya gets out, too.
“Wait for a moment, please,” he tells the driver, and walks beside Shane as he makes his way slowly, slowly to the front door. He doesn’t do anything as overt as offer his arm, but he’s within reach, and between the wine, last night’s sleet, and tonight’s chill, Shane is grateful to have him, solid and steady, beside him. Shane manages the stairs without incident, and they stand under the porch light for a moment, just looking.
“Thank you. This was really —”
“It was really. Yes.”
Rozanov’s lips are winestained red. Shane has been noticing Rozanov’s winestained red lips all evening, and the fog of loneliness has burned off entirely under the warmth that Rozanov seems to emit, like some sort of propane-powered camp stove, or maybe a dying star. Rozanov’s lips are red and the night is dark and cold and Shane is exhausted from the day, the week, the life. He wants, suddenly and acutely, to curl up in Ilya Rozanov’s shirt pocket like a Borrower or a little mouse. He wants —
The Uber driver honks, and Rozanov smiles again, slow and golden.
“Goodnight, Shane Hollander,” he murmurs, then claps him on the shoulder, squeezes his hand, and is off down the stairs before Shane can formulate a response.