Archive of Our Own ^beta

When Shane was born an ocean away from her homeland, Yuna Hollander, who did not pray, whispered into the world: Let every door open for him, my son.

Their cottage has a patio overlooking the backyard, which Yuna steps out onto after dinner. It’s not as insanely spectacular as Shane’s place, but still a gorgeous view.

“You must think I am bad for him,” Ilya says, lounging on a deck chair, looking at that gorgeous view, one week after he came to her house standing behind her son like a little shadow. Last week, he had been nervous and quiet and not very Rozanov-like. Not that Yuna is an expert on what being Ilya Rozanov is like.

She considers his statement carefully. She’s always respected Rozanov, the way you can’t help but respect players who are very good at what they do even if they’re assholes about it. For example, Yuna is extremely good at negotiating multi-million dollar advertising deals for her son, and she is not very nice about it when she meets other hockey moms whose sons have two years of hockey left in them and no plan for retirement.

And, he looks at her son like— well, like that.

“No,” she says, “I don’t think that.” When she takes him in, she remembers Shane, somehow. Shane at twelve, all teeth and arms and just growing into a face that wasn’t defined by his chubby little cheeks. He’d been fast on the ice then, had an affinity for it that was promising to hockey coaches who were experts in this sort of thing. 

Rozanov—Ilya—must have looked like that at some point. She knew from Wikipedia that his mother was deceased. Maybe his father had found coaches for him. Maybe Ilya had also once been a gangly yet still-chubby tween in gear that was somehow always too big or too small for him, no matter how often they bought something new.

He hasn’t said anything yet. She sips her wine. “You’re well suited to each other, I think,” she says, looking at the lake so she doesn’t have to look at him. “You’re both very good at hockey.”

“Ha!” Ilya laughs. She turns around, surprised, and he grins. “Shane told me this would be the first thing you say. That we are a good match in hockey.”

At first, Yuna’s embarrassed. She feels a little like Shane and Ilya have set her up. But she tries to instead appreciate the genuine joy in Ilya’s face and the fact that her son knows her enough to poke a little fun.

“Fair enough,” she says, chuckling a little. “But I think you also love each other. As a parent, you don’t want anything other than that for your kid. Someone who loves them to the end.” 

Someone who will love them after you’re gone, she doesn’t say. She’s young, still, they’re all young, her and David and Shane, but sometimes she wakes in the middle of the night with the anxiety of it, of missing time with her Shane. She won’t know what Shane looks like as an old man, she won’t see him through to his last breath—and so she has to trust that someone in this world will carry him the way she did.

“Yes,” Ilya says, voice hoarse. He is gripping the crucifix around his neck, Yuna notices. “I hope I get the chance to love him forever.”

Yuna clicks through her inbox. A new billboard campaign from Rolex. A group shoot for Reebok featuring the diversity hires. Shane isn’t new or famous enough to get the solo shoots anymore.

She shouldn’t call them diversity hires. The email is laughably vague. We’re proud to have four ambassadors representing minority communities, the email reads. There’s a tennis player, two sprinters, and Shane. For a second she thinks about emailing back to ask what counts as a minority community. She’s pretty sure there are more Asians than redheads in Canada. Oh, one of them’s ginger? she thinks about saying. That’s so brave.

The funny part, when Yuna thinks about it, is that they talk as if Shane is the only Asian one. They talk about how they respect Shane’s contributions to his field and recognize the hurdles he must face. They ask Yuna to ask him if this phrasing or that is appropriate. As if Yuna wouldn’t have anything to say on the matter. As if Yuna is white.

Still, she says yes out of loyalty. When Shane was first drafted to the MLH, Reebok was the first brand on board. They liked Shane’s “boy next door” vibe, liked the attention that the Hollander-Rozanov rivalry brought, especially because Rozanov wasn’t signing with any shoe brands. No competition. After that was Rolex, for the same reason. Clean cut, affable, friendly, North American, not like the Russian daredevil getting photographed doing shots at downtown parties every other week the second he turned twenty-one. And drinking champagne and chugging beers when he was in Canada before that. She remembers pitying Rozanov, who clearly didn’t have a publicist managing his image. She thought the Raiders were unprofessional as hell for letting that slide.

She thinks about that now. Ilya Rozanov is a tamer package these days, and still charmingly European. He’d do well in other markets—cologne, alcohol, luxury designers. Versace, Balenciaga, Stolichnaya, maybe. Especially Stoli, with the Russian thing, if Ilya can stoop to promoting a vodka made in Latvia.

Ilya probably doesn’t have a publicity agent. They’d talked about it briefly alongside the move to Ottawa, but it seems he has a guy for hockey and not much else. She contemplates doing the groundwork all over again, the way she did when Shane was only 18 and getting his first million-dollar salary. She thinks about the contact-building, the initial consultative meetings, the networking required to get new brand deals, and feels a little exhausted.

It’s a different world now, though. And Ilya is marketable. She can admit that he’s more marketable than Shane in some respects. He’s not a progressive ambassador. He’s a handsome guy who can smile at a camera.

And now, whether she likes it or not, his future is tied to Shane’s. So the least she can do is set him up with an investment portfolio and an ironclad five-year marketing contract.

Two months after Shane and Ilya came to their home to tell them about their nine-year relationship, David seems totally unbothered. She can’t really believe it. Her husband, who is neurotic and uptight about the stupidest shit ever—a benign skin tag on his back and whether the Uber will leave without them and being on time for reservations (they hold them for fifteen minutes! You don’t have to be there on the minute!)—doesn’t seem to give a shit that their son lied to them about sleeping with his hockey rival for a decade.

It’s not the gay thing. It’s not. Or, she hopes it’s not. It’s that her whole world got upended, and she kind of thought her husband might be on the same page about that.

He says, “He came to us in his own time. I think it’s brave.”

Just to cover up the sound of his voice and her own thoughts, she vacuums the stairs. She hates vacuuming the stairs because you have to do each stair individually, and you have to lift the vacuum between stairs, and you have to use the special attachment to get into the corners. But David hates it more, because of the noise, and he always does the laundry and the car maintenance, so it’s Yuna’s job to vacuum the house, including the fucking stairs.

The problem, Yuna thinks as she sucks up the dust of three weeks into her special vacuum attachment, is that she doesn’t know her son anymore.

According to Google, this is pretty much the worst thing you can say when your kid comes out. Parents should accept that their kids are gay and were gay the whole time and are exactly the same as they were before they told you. Your child is still the same child they were before, the PFLAG website says. They didn’t tell you before now because of the homophobia in broader society, not because they wanted to lie to you. Their willingness to trust you with their truth shows that they appreciate your relationship and want to share their life experience with you, just the same as they have in other circumstances.

A sub-problem of the bigger problem is that Shane didn’t actually trust them with his life experience. David walked in on Shane and Ilya and blasted through whatever walls Shane kept up, walls which Yuna has now realized encompass more than just the gay thing. Shane had walls around everything. Walls around touch, food, music. Walls around—and this is the worst one of all—hockey.

Yuna has vacuumed half the stairs. She looks up and catches sight of a photo of Shane at 12, smiling close-lipped in front of the outdoor rink near their house, the one that becomes a tennis court in the summer when the ice melts. When Shane was that age it was always Shane-and-Yuna against David. David didn’t get it. David knew hockey but he didn’t know hockey like they did. And Shane got older, and the things David didn’t understand grew exponentially. David didn’t know Reebok or “We’re thrilled Shane is Asian” or major league discipline or 5am Rolex meetings to accommodate the Swiss timezone. David thought Yuna was “a little hard on him” as if that wasn’t the push Shane needed to get to the fucking MLH.

When Shane was 19, Yuna knew what he did to chill out after big games, or she thought she did. Yuna knew Shane’s pregame ritual, or she thought she did. Yuna knew every injury he had before he even knew it, because she watched his games and studied the way his body moved and because she had carried him inside her for nine months and so she knew him. Or she thought she did.

Somewhere along the line—and she wanted to blame Ilya Rozanov for it, but their thing apparently started before their rookie season, which means Ilya was there in the background the whole entire time—it became David-and-Yuna on the outside looking for glimpses of Shane through the hedges. Maybe we’ll see him next week. Maybe he’ll tell us what he had for dinner. Maybe we’ll have Hayden over at our place someday. Maybe we’ll go to fucking Wimbledon.

Yuna thinks about the Swedish princess thing and wants to actually drown in a bathtub.

She finishes vacuuming the stairs, and puts the vacuum away, and does not feel any better than she did before.

“Did you get it out of your system?” David asks, like a bitch. He’s sitting on the couch doing his little Sudoku puzzles.

“Shut up,” she says, less fondly than usual. She knows she’s being irritable. She’s being a crazy hysterical woman. She’s just like all the married women at spin class who are insane about always being the ones to do the dishes even though they’ve never asked their husbands to do the dishes. “We need to help them. I have ideas.”

David doesn’t bother to ask who needs help. “They’re adults, Yuna.”

“They’re in the fucking closet and Shane picked him up from the airport,” Yuna says, because that’s the one thing she can criticize without picking the whole thing apart. “In his personal car. That closet is one Instagram story away from being blown wide open. And you don’t care?”

David twists around and meets her eyes over the back of the couch. He looks genuinely upset. Yuna likes that. She loves that. She loves that he’s upset because now he can feel the same way she does whenever she thinks for more than two seconds about the impossible situation her son has decided to live in.

“I never said I don’t care,” David says, sharp.

“Oh, okay,” Yuna says, “you just don’t want to make a plan for what happens when it falls apart. That’s my job. It’s always Yuna picking up the pieces and cleaning up after everyone.”

“Do you need something, or are you just bitching?” David asks. 

This is her last chance to call it. She can say, I just want to bitch, and then David won’t take it personally and he’ll half-listen while he does his puzzles and she’ll rant to him and then it’ll be over.

Or she can say, “So you don’t have anything valuable to contribute to a discussion about your son’s life.” Thus starts the worst fight they’ve had since before Shane was drafted to the MLH.

Five hours later, over dinner, Ilya notices. Yuna thought they’d done a good job of covering it up for the kids. She’s pretty sure Shane doesn’t notice. When he was a kid Yuna worried he could sense the fights over the cost of his hockey equipment and training and the blow to his grades, but Shane never seemed to care. Sometimes she thought he was hiding how it made him feel, and maybe he was, but as far as she can tell he genuinely just misses a lot of the unspoken stuff. Yuna loves that about him. She can ask him if he wants to do an ad campaign and he says yes or no and there’s nothing secret about it, nothing she has to dig into. And by the same token, she tells him the truth, bluntly, and he accepts it. She loves that about her family, that they all tell each other things and take their words at face value.

Except for this. Except for Ilya Rozanov.

Yuna sends Shane out to rake the leaves in the backyard. David does the dishes with a little more vitriol than usual. Ilya pulls her aside into the living room where David will have to strain to overhear them. Quietly, he asks, “Are you…” and then he tries again. “Is David upset?”

Oh, jeez. “You’re so thoughtful,” Yuna says, to cover up the panic. She thought they wouldn’t notice. “No, it’s all right.”

“You can tell me,” Ilya says, very earnestly.

And then, maybe because she hasn’t had anyone to tell anything for so long except for her little 3-person family unit, she tells him too much. 

“You know we worry about you and Shane,” she says. “We just had a little disagreement about it, that’s all. Nothing serious.” She’s not sure what they’re going to do about sleeping arrangements tonight. So it is, actually, serious.

Ilya pales. “You had a disagreement about me.”

Yuna looks at him and finally clocks that he’s nervous. “No, no, honey,” she says, trying to backpedal, “we love you. It’s just that your situation is so hard. We want you boys to have it a little easier. We want to know how we can help you.”

Ilya scratches the back of his neck. Even with that, he looks out of place and dangerous in her living room, a hulking man looming over her couch. It’s hard for her to remember that Shane is the same size as him. He might even be half an inch taller than Ilya. Shane is also a hulking man now, but when Yuna looks at him she sees a little boy. She doesn’t know how to see him and Ilya as the same kind of thing.

Eventually, hesitantly, Ilya asks, “Do you want me to talk to him?”

Yuna thinks that might be nice, actually. Ilya might be able to get through to David about the reality of their situation. Or, maybe David will tell him about Yuna’s plans and worries and Ilya will tell him that Yuna’s being a little too overbearing, and that Shane doesn’t need her handholding anymore, and then she’ll know, and that will be good, too. She tells herself, it would be good to know. So she says, “If you want to, yeah. I think he’d love to hear your thoughts.”

Ilya nods. He steels himself, and that— that worries Yuna. “Oh,” she says, “you don’t have to—”

“No, no, no trouble.” He smiles at her, all teeth. “No trouble at all, Yuna. I will go talk to him. No trouble.”

“Okay,” she says, “I hope you guys have a good talk.” 

Ilya walks out of the living room and into the kitchen.

Yuna wanders a little. She fidgets with coasters and trophies, the little ones from before Shane made it into the big leagues. She goes outside and watches Shane rake, and holds open the brown Home Depot bag on the ground so he can push the leaves in. She listens to an episode of Man in the Crease while scrolling through the Reebok website, trying to see if they have any other gay ambassadors. She ends up on the Major Women’s Hockey League Wikipedia page, noting down the names of every pair of married players. There are almost a dozen. There’s a player who came out as a transgender man last year. He’s still allowed to play, even on testosterone.

She’d never even considered the MWHL before. This could be a precedent. She drafts a letter to the MLH commissioner, an “in case we get outed” statement for Shane and Ilya, and a small publicity campaign plan to introduce Shane and Ilya to a gay audience outside of the hockey world, to give them a different kind of safety net.

“Where’s Ilya?” Shane asks, scraping the mud off his boots onto the carpet. Yuna always tells him to do it outside and he never listens.

“Talking to your dad,” she says. It’s been… Christ, it’s been an hour. She hasn’t heard anything, but then again, she’s had her headphones on through a whole podcast episode at least. 

“Okay.” Shane looks into the kitchen worriedly, but sits down on the couch, pulling out his phone.

Yuna clicks around aimlessly, but without another task, she figures she might as well head off the bedroom issue at the pass. “I’m gonna go to bed,” she says. “Are you sleeping over?”

“I guess it depends on when Ilya’s done with Dad,” Shane says, looking upset about it. He wants to be in the room. He really is her son.

“I’m sure they’re having a good talk,” she says, even though she’s not really sure about that at all. Shane nods grumpily. “Well, you know where everything is.” Yuna leans over to kiss him on the forehead. “Good night, honey.”

“Night, Mom.”

Yuna goes upstairs to look at the bed. If she sleeps in the guest room, that’s a statement. That means the fight will continue in the morning. If she sleeps in here, that’s a statement, too. She’s saying, you’re not kicking me out of my bed even if we’re fighting. This is my space. If you want your own space you better move to the guest room and don’t bother me about it.

And maybe, a little, it’s saying, this is still our bed even if we fight.

That’s enough overthinking for the day, so she showers and brushes her teeth and puts on her pajamas and gets into bed and waits for her husband to come upstairs.

Another twenty minutes passes. She looks at her phone. She’s not supposed to look at blue light right before bed. She reads a little. She doesn’t feel strongly about this book, but David’s coworker recommended it to her, so she reads. Either she’ll love it, or she’ll hate it and then she can make fun of his coworker for having terrible taste, so it’s a win-win situation.

David walks into their room. She looks up at him, meets his eyes. He looks— oh, Jesus. David lies down, and buries his head in her stomach.

“Oh, hey,” she murmurs, putting her book away. “Hi, baby. What’s wrong?”

She feels him shake his head, arms tightening around her waist. Softly, he asks, “Did you… did you talk to Ilya tonight?”

Yuna swallows. Maybe she’s in trouble. “Yeah,” she says carefully. “He noticed we had a disagreement. I told him we loved the two of them but we just had some different ideas about how to support them. Did he talk to you?”

David exhales. HIs breath is warm even through her shirt. She looks at the top of his head, the wrinkles in the back of his neck, the tag peeking out of his T-shirt. At the end of the day, that’s her man. “I don’t think that boy had a very good dad,” David says.

Yuna recasts the evening in that light. Ilya noticing the tension between them. Pulling Yuna aside, asking what’s wrong. Maybe, maybe, asking if she’s okay, asking if her husband— and then Yuna told him the fight was about him. And then he braved the kitchen where David, her sweet and soft David, loomed like the ghost of Ilya’s father. “Oh, no.”

“I didn’t know at first,” David confesses, as if he has committed a sin. Yuna listens, scraping her fingers through his hair, trying to settle the nervous thing in him that is adjacent to guilt. “I told him, y’know, you boys are your own men and you can do what you want. Yuna likes to meddle but you don’t have to let her if you don’t want to.”

Yuna bites her tongue. They do have to let her meddle if they want to get through this unscathed, but of course, there’s a time and a place.

“He said,” David continues, “he said, she doesn’t meddle, she’s very thoughtful. He said he really appreciated how much you care about him.”

Yuna didn’t know Ilya thought that way. Frankly, she thought he might find her irritating, an annoyance to be put up with for Shane. “That’s very kind of him to say.”

“And then he said, Shane and I should figure out our own problems. You know I can be lazy. Can you believe he said that? He told me he can be lazy. And then he said— oh jeez. It was heavy.”

“Tell me,” Yuna says, thumbing over his shoulder, feeling him relax into her.

“He was so scared, the way he said it. He said,” and then David recites it, as if he remembers it word-for-word, as if he’s turned the words over a dozen times, “Yuna has many responsibilities, so you shouldn’t be angry with her. It’s my fault Shane is in this situation. You should blame me, not Yuna.” In his regular voice, he adds, “He was so scared of me.”

“What did you say to him?”

“I said— I think I got too agitated. I told him, no one’s allowed to blame anybody for homophobia in my house, but maybe I said it too loud, and he flinched. I made him flinch.”

Yuna rubs her palm against his upper back, wide circles to settle him. “You could never scare me,” she says quietly. “You’re my sweetheart. You’re not scary at all. Ilya knows that.”

“I know. I know.” But still he kisses her stomach, the way he did all through her pregnancy, as if in apology.

Yuna takes a breath. And then, “So what happened after that?”

“I apologized to him for scaring him and told him we were here for them. Whatever they need. He seemed all right, but I figure he’ll be more likely to talk to Shane about it than me. I said you had some ideas about backup plans in case they got outed, or alternative timelines for coming out.”

Yuna smiles. “I thought you said they could handle it.”

“Well, I didn’t want to choose for them.” Finally, David levers himself up to meet her eyes, and says, “Have I told you yet today that I love you?”

Yuna rolls her eyes. She knows this script. “Not yet.”

“Well, I love you.”

“I love you too.” And she lets him kiss her cheek. “Gross.”

“You are so mean,” he says, all love, and goes to get ready for bed while Yuna settles into her pillows, thinking of those boys. They deserve better than this. Ilya afraid of her husband, Shane coming over every 2 weeks or less, the two of them deathly afraid of being seen in public together and then uncomfortable in her home— she has to do better. For Shane, she’s going to do better.

Shane makes time to see his parents one evening, between a game in Montreal and one in Toronto. His left shoulder is pulling a little forward, the kind of injury that someone who isn’t a professional athlete probably wouldn’t even notice. But Yuna notices.

“What are you making?” her son asks, watching over her shoulder. “Is that curry?”

“Yes, and I made the seasoning myself so you don’t have to worry about your diet,” she says, and Shane grins. He’s never looked happy about food before, not since he was old enough to eat things that weren’t pureed.

“When’s Dad back from work?” he asks, and Yuna puts Shane’s food out of her mind.

She cuts the chicken into bite-sized chunks. “I think around five forty-five, six maybe, depends on traffic.”

Shane nods. He’s never asked about David’s schedule before either. Not that he didn’t care. It was just… he’d know David’s schedule, because he lived with them, or it would be so secondary to the next game, the next deal, the next meeting. Yuna would have laughed if he’d asked about David’s work schedule last year, probably. She would’ve said, whenever the office is done with him, honey, and the two of them would have shared a look that meant, David is our sweetheart and his job isn’t worth knowing anything about.

In reality, last year Shane probably would never have made time to go to their house between games. They only ever saw Shane at restaurants or cafes during the season, and then when it was holiday time that was a different Shane entirely.

So Yuna slices and boils and stirs while Shane watches comfortably, talking about what music Ilya has gotten into recently, and Hayden’s complaints about the cost of strollers nowadays compared to when Jade and Ruby were born, and the plan for next week’s training schedule.

“Your dad will probably be home in about twenty minutes,” Yuna says eventually. “This can just stay on the stove.”

“Okay.” 

Yuna looks at him. He doesn’t look in pain, but that shoulder, the curve of it. It’s not natural.

“Come here,” she says, not making it a question so Shane can’t say no. He comes over, and she turns him around. “Let me massage your shoulder.”

“Oh—” and Shane pulls over the footstool she uses to get the steamer from the top shelf when she needs to, and sits right down on it. “Okay.”

Yuna looks down at her son. Her baby. She swallows, and sets her hands on him, letting her palms warm his muscles a little before she starts kneading.

Maybe two or three years into Shane’s time with the Metros, until very recently, he would barely let her touch him. He’d flinch away from hugs, never let her hand rest for more than a second on his neck. After Ilya, she wondered how much of that had to do with being a young man embarrassed of his mom, how much came from Shane’s usual quirks, and how much of it had to do with being in the closet.

Whatever it was, it’s changed now. Maybe he’s just older, more confident and settled, a little more generous with his helicopter parents. But she’s sure at least a little is because of Ilya. So that’s another thing she owes him.

“A little lower,” Shane says, and she digs her thumbs in lower. He makes a little noise, and she circles the knot with two knuckles.

Yuna knows her son’s body in a way that would make most people blanch. She knows his body fat percentage, his height, his weight fluctuations throughout the year, every injury he’s sustained, his protein and fibre intake. Most moms don’t know that kind of thing. Most moms who do know that kind of thing aren’t normal about it, the way that Yuna, teeth clenched through the worry about Shane’s safety and scoring stats and advertising performance, is aggressively, assertively normal about it.

Eventually, Shane relaxes. She lets him go and he rolls out his shoulder. “Thanks Mom,” he says. And then, in a fit of honesty, he says, “Ilya’s like, allergic to letting me massage him. He was gonna give me one last night but we got distracted.” And then Shane flushes—she can see it on the back of his neck, the redness—and he says, “Uh, anyway, let me go— set the table.”

“Thanks, honey,” she says, ruffling his hair while he stands up and hurries over to the cutlery drawer.

She thinks he probably tells her these things because he doesn’t have anyone else to talk to about his relationship. And, because now she’s thinking about it, that makes her worry. She knows Shane’s body, what he eats and how much he can lift and if she thought about it for more than a minute, she could probably figure out how often he goes to the bathroom. But she doesn’t know about this.

She never had The Talk with him. White moms had things like The Talk. They sat their children down to have The Talk about sex. This was a completely foreign idea to her. It had simply never occurred to her or David that this was something they ought to have done. Did her son know about condoms? Was he aware of STDs? When she was growing up, no one had explained what menstruation was or what was an appropriate way to interact with boys. Her stomach clenches. Maybe Shane didn’t know either. How would he know what was all right in a relationship?

Does Ilya treat him well? Ilya’s been around the block. She never paid attention to gossip but she’d looked up his online presence obsessively after she found out about them. Of course he knows—she hopes he knows—about condoms, consent, the whole nine yards. He was appropriately disgusted when the Dallas Kent thing came out. He said that kind of thing, date rape drugs and too-drunk hookups and inappropriate language towards women, the whole thing wasn’t tolerated on his team. Shane had blushed, and Yuna had figured it was because the whole topic was a little awful.

But maybe he’d blushed because of something Ilya had done. Maybe Ilya had treated him nicely in a— in a sexual context, and he’d remembered that. Oh Jesus.

She opens her mouth to ask him, and then closes it. Shane is bobbing his head happily like he did as a kid, just moving for the sake of feeling it. Maybe she’s a coward. The thing is, he looks so happy. She doesn’t want to ruin it by asking a question she’s pretty sure she knows the answer to.

Yuna listened to Mozart when she was pregnant with Shane. At first, she did it because it was the thing to do if you wanted your kid to be a genius, which she did. But then she started actually getting into classical music. From Mozart she went to Bach, who became her favorite composer. He wrote a kind of precision that she could appreciate. And then all the big names, Chopin and Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, and then other composers too.

Shane never had an appreciation for music. She couldn’t fault him for that, really. The only music he ever listened to, as far as she could tell, were whatever cassettes David played in the car on the way to practice and Yuna’s classical CDs. Of course he wouldn’t really develop a taste for it. He became a genius anyway.

So Yuna is listening to the Rachmaninov piano preludes while she does the dishes when Ilya walks in. “Ah,” he says, “Rachmaninov! Very nice.”

She blinks at him, bemused.

He raises an eyebrow. “You think I would not recognize Rachmaninov? He is very Russian.”

“Shane wouldn’t,” she says before she can think about it. But, well, it’s true. He really wouldn’t.

Ilya laughs at that, leaning on the doorframe into the kitchen. “Do you need any help?”

“No, no, I’m pretty much done.” Ilya watches her quietly while she scrubs the bottom of their soup pot, getting soap suds everywhere.

He asks her, “Have you listened to Shostakovich?”

It’s obvious, when Ilya says the name, that his first language is Russian. She feels out of place just hearing him name a composer. But Yuna keeps her head down, determined not to show any more surprise. Ilya is not the same as her son. It’s perfectly normal for him to have an interest in music. He might even be offended if she implies that it’s surprising. She says, “Sometimes, when it comes up on my playlist. I don’t have a CD, though.”

“I liked his work. String quartets, especially. Very dramatic.” And then, probably because Yuna is being obvious as all hell about it, he says, “It surprises you that I like old music.”

Yuna smiles despite herself. Old music, he’d said, not classical music. She wonders what the term for it is in Russian, if there is one. “Yeah, a little,” she admits, and Ilya’s mouth turns up in a little half-smile. “It’s just that Shane never expressed any interest in music. I don’t really know what would be the normal music taste of a— well, a man your age.” She’d been about to say boy, but she thought that might really offend him.

“I don’t know. My teammates all have terrible music taste. So many songs about trucks.” The piece in the background changes, and Ilya straightens. “Ah, I know this one. Listen.”

Yuna couldn’t name it, but she knows this piece, too. It’s not one of her favourites, but of course it is very beautiful. Soft and melancholy, and then dramatic, all chords and layered melodies and things she doesn’t really have the vocabulary to describe.

When she finishes with her pot, she watches Ilya. He has his eyes closed, temple pressed against the doorframe. She’s never seen that expression on his face before.

Many years ago, Yuna started going to the symphony with David. At first, she liked it because it was a fashionable thing to do and gave her an excuse to dress up nice. All the men would flirt with her which hurt David’s feelings at first, until she reminded him that he was the only one she planned to go home with, and then it kind of became an ego thing for the both of them. Probably this is where Shane gets all his neuroses about being the best, she thinks, only a little regretfully.

Anyway, aside from the glamour of it, Yuna started to just enjoy the music for its own sake. She liked the way the wall of sound pulsed through her. It was amazing how sounds with no words could make you feel such grief, such tenderness, such joy. It was like going to therapy or doing a polar dip or running a marathon or getting anesthetized or something else she couldn’t explain. It was a whole body experience.

She listens to Horowitz play through the cadenza, and the coda, and the quiet, almost silent chord that concludes the piece. 

Ilya exhales, and opens his eyes.

“Where did you first hear that one?” she asks, also quiet. The next prelude starts, and she turns down the volume a little. She wants to hear what Ilya has to say.

He shrugs. “Where else?” he says. “My mother.” He stretches out his fingers, his thick knuckles creasing with it. “She wished she could play piano, but she never learned. Listened to many tapes.”

Yuna looks at his hands, too. “Did you ever play?”

“No, no, of course not,” he laughs. “My friend from childhood. Sasha. He played a little when we went to his house. Not like this recording, but almost as good, maybe. At least, it was impressive to me.”

“Is that— is it one of your favourite pieces?”

“Prelude, H moll— ah, I do not know in English,” Ilya says, probably guessing that Yuna doesn’t know it by name. He says, picking out his words carefully, “It is very sad. But there is a little… what is the word. A little glitter. There is drama, and then it is shiny in the middle. And the ending is so quiet, but not so sad. Only a little sad. Like an old, soft couch.”

She wants to ask again, so does that mean you like it? but she figures that might be a little trite.

But Ilya knows her, or maybe knows her son well enough to know what she wants to hear. “Not my most favourite, but yes, I like it,” he says. “I think it is hopeful.”

He takes a paper towel and the Lysol spray and cleans the counter next to him. It’s not how she would do it, but it’s a fine way to clean. Yuna watches him, thinking of his mother who never learned, his childhood friend who played. Shane, her Shane, is an open book. He plays hockey and he is very good at it. Ilya is an enigma, full of unexpected things and hidden grief, abrasive on camera and brutish on the ice and quietly devastated at home, landmines everywhere.

She almost wants to tell her son to find someone a little easier. But then she sees Ilya wiping the counter, trying to make a new home while remembering his mother’s classical piano tapes, and all she can think is that Shane must be a special man to have found a way through to Ilya Rozanov. The pride feels like it’s too big to fit inside her chest. Her son knows how to love.

In the end, it’s the fucking airport pickup. She knew it would be. Shane picks up Ilya at the airport, and holds his hand over the gearshift, and four hours later pictures taken through the passenger side window are all over Twitter.

It’s probably the best possible option other than coming out on their own terms. There is plausible deniability—the charity has been underway for almost a year, Shane and Ilya have had public meetings before, and a handhold over a gearshift isn’t the same as being caught having sex in a hotel room. Yuna honestly has nightmares about a peephole sex tape.

Still. She calls Shane twice, three times, and then finally gets through to Ilya, who tells her that Shane’s phone is off and he is hiding in his bedroom until he can manage to look at a screen without throwing up.

Yuna sits down at her laptop. The least she can do is this.

In another world, her first call would be to one of the other moms. She knows they have their own communication networks, knows they’re probably gossiping about her son right now. Ten years ago she’d decided that it wasn’t worth fighting her way into that world. She’d never understand them, the executives were more valuable contacts, and anyway they were all vapid boy-moms with personality problems a million dollars couldn’t solve.

Now she regrets it. Christ, she regrets it. She could’ve had them on her side. She could’ve had every single one of those mama’s boys on the Metros leaping to Shane’s defense if she’d put any effort into it, but she let her pride get in the way. Now she has nothing. None of them have even texted her.

So instead, she starts at three o’clock with a call to the Metros GM, Lars Anders. When Shane first started playing for the Metros the executives all looked at Yuna with a combination of pity and derision. Aww, so cute, Shane’s mommy wants to manage her son’s professional hockey career. She’ll grow out of it soon.

Now, ten years in, they barely remember that she’s related to Shane. She’s his manager. Anders takes her call and lets her tell him about the personal considerations, the ramifications of outing, the fact that it’s only been two years since from Scott Hunter. Surely he can understand why Shane wouldn’t disclose earlier. Surely he can see from Shane’s record that there’s been no inappropriate impact on his game performance. Surely he can understand the importance of discretion and support from the organization, which Shane has led to two Cups.

The Cup wins are saving him, she knows. The Cup is the holy grail. Anders exhales when she mentions it, as if she has invoked the name of God. “He’s good at winning, no doubt about that,” Anders says, and Yuna relaxes, finally. “We’re not releasing any statement on this until Hollander’s ready. Anything he wants to put out he runs by us first.”

“Of course,” Yuna says.

“You want me to handle Theriault?” Anders asks.

Frankly, Yuna doesn’t trust him to do it. She’s half-convinced he’s going to call her son a slur if she leaves him to his own devices. “It’s all right, he’s next on my list,” Yuna says, which is true. Call 2 of 8. She says goodbye to Anders and moves on to Head Coach Patrick Theriault.

“Theriault speaking.”

“Hi Patrick. It’s Yuna Hollander.”

“Yuna, hi.” Theriault’s voice softens. He liked Yuna from minute one. He could tell she knew her hockey, and knew how make her son play his best. “I’m assuming you’re calling about what’s all over Twitter?”

“I’m not going to bullshit you. It’s true. I just called Anders.” She taps her pen against her notebook. She’s prepared the basics. “They’ve been in a committed romantic relationship since just before 2017 All-Stars. You can see from their record that it’s not impacting Shane’s game.”

“So that’s why Rozanov took that Ottawa trade,” Theriault says. Technically, that’s speculation, but neither of them bother to hedge it. “Look, Yuna. The optics are bad here. Sleeping with the captain of a rival team?”

“You know Ottawa’s hardly competition for the Metros.”

“You know Rozanov didn’t play for Ottawa when the relationship started.”

Yuna lets that hit. She can’t fight it. She thought it herself, even if only for a second. Now, on the other side of it, she can feel how much it must have hurt Shane for her to even ask. Another thing she didn’t understand about him. Of course he never threw a game. Of course his relationship has no bearing on his professional performance. It would shame him.

“You know Montreal and Boston have been neck and neck since those two started in the league, and that never stopped,” Yuna says. When Theriault inhales, quick and sharp, she wonders if she’s said too much. “I’m just saying. If they were secretly friends, if they were dating, whatever it is, their play has always been good. They have three cups between them.”

“It’s gonna be a hard sell to the guys,” Theriault says.

“Don’t tell me the gay thing is a problem in 2019,” Yuna snaps. Obviously it is. She’s not fucking stupid. Still, she says it, maybe to shake some sense into Theriault. She goes to her other list. “You know there are at least three pairs of rival teams in the MWHL whose captains are married to each other?”

Theriault scoffs before he can keep it in, and Yuna freezes.

“The Metros organization has a strong equity, diversity, and inclusion policy,” Theriault recites robotically.

She thought they had him. She hadn’t made a plan for this because she was so convinced Theriault would be easier than Anders. She thought he was— she doesn’t know. Decent, at least. He’d been firm with her about the race thing. Said to her, he’s never going to face harassment about being Japanese-Canadian on this team, not in the Metros. If Shane ever comes to me with a problem, I’ll handle it.

She’d asked Shane about it, three years in. I don’t have any problems with the guys, Shane had said. Theriault doesn’t need to do anything.

But he has your back? she’d pushed, and Shane had shrunk a little, chest caving in.

Yeah, Shane had said. Of course.

She knew it was an uncomfortable conversation for him, knew that probably there was stuff happening that he didn’t want to tell her about. She knew he was lying in some way, but didn’t know the shape of it. Most importantly, she didn’t know how to fix it, and so she’d let it slide, hoping he would tell her if it got worse. She’d comforted herself with the fact that if it got really bad, Theriault would be there.

“Does he have your support?” Yuna asks carefully.

After a long, too long moment, Theriault says, “If this doesn’t affect his performance on the ice and in the locker room, of course we’re with him. Hollander is our star centre.”

On the ice is bad enough. In the locker room is even worse.

She tries again. “Are you willing to throw away the captain who brought Montreal two back-to-back wins?”

“I never said that,” Theriault says, and Yuna blows out a breath. She pushed too hard. “If Hollander decides to let us know what his plans are, then we’ll work with him.”

Shit. “The two of them will be releasing a statement soon,” Yuna says tightly. “We’ll run it by Anders first.” 

“Hollander should talk to his team before it comes out,” Theriault replies, just as precisely. “Would hate for his teammates to find out through Instagram.”

Yuna rests her forehead against the heel of her palm. “Of course,” she says, conceding. Losing. “I’ll follow up with him.”

“Very good,” Theriault says, all business. Yuna can’t fucking believe it. She lost him. She fucking lost him. “I’ll see you, Ms. Hollander.”

“Of course, Coach,” she says, and hangs up.

Yuna covers her mouth and screams into it, a little, taking a moment. She feels so fucking stupid. Of course she knows the truth of it now. Of course she knows that Theriault played her, right from the start. You know hockey better than the other moms. You’re smarter than the other moms. You know adversity better than the other moms. I’ll give you enough airtime for you to think I’ll listen, but don’t think for a second you have any influence here, Yuna Hollander. You’re nothing but a woman in the men’s league.

David is at work. He’ll be back in about an hour.

Six names left on her list. She calls the MLH press manager, some twenty-eight year old named Cris-without-an-H, who agrees to let the Metros and the Centaurs handle it after some convincing. She pulls the MWHL card on him and he’s happy enough to have it off his plate. “Maybe you can release a statement of support once this all dies down,” she suggests. “Something about the women’s league setting a precedent. You know it’ll be good for the league’s image if you’re seen supporting women.” She doesn’t need to mention the Dallas Kent PR shitshow haunting the MLH social media pages.

“Ah,” Cris says. “Sure. We’ll consider that.”

“It’s your engagement statistics, not mine,” Yuna says mildly. Mostly she’s just relishing her one win butting up against the hockey world. It’s almost unfair to gloat. Cris never stood a chance. “Have a good day, Cris.”

“Same to you, Ms. Hollander.”

Click. The rest of the names on her list are sponsors, except for the very last one. She calls Reebok, Rolex, Speedo, and PureEnergy. Her main concern is Reebok, given the boy-next-door thing, but their consultant is shockingly nice. It’s no problem, we’re not concerned, at the end of the day it’s about numbers, and Shane’s always been an ambassador who does well with the 18-24 demographic. Unspoken: When he comes out, we’ll be in on the ground floor supporting the second out gay hockey player in the league. We want that cash.

Click click click. The Rolex office is too staunchly European to have any kind of opinion, only assuring her that they don’t plan to break Shane’s contract early, seemingly more out of honour than allyship. Speedo obviously isn’t a problem. The PureEnergy guy doesn’t even seem to know what’s happened, which is par for the course for a Canadian sports drink company but still shockingly unprofessional. After the third “well, that’s, wow,” she almost wants to ask if everyone in Vancouver is this dumb, which is not a recipe for success.

David comes home at some point and puts a mug of green tea in front of her, teabag removed since she always forgets and then oversteeps her tea. He putters around quietly, putting dishes away and straightening couch cushions, and Yuna reaches the last name on her list.

At six-thirty, she calls Scott Hunter.

“Hello?” he says.

“Hi, Mr. Hunter. This is Yuna Hollander. I’m Shane Hollander’s mom.” Hunter doesn’t say anything. Nervously, Yuna continues, “We met briefly at the opening for the Irina Foundation. Shane gave me your number—I have the numbers of all the coaches, just in case.”

“That’s... right, that makes sense,” Hunter says hesitantly. He says something away from the mic, maybe to his— boyfriend? husband? — and comes back. “What can I do for you, Ms. Hollander?”

“Yuna, please,” Yuna says, and then she stalls.

She didn’t make a plan for this. She has no idea what she wants to say, suddenly. She’d been convinced that she should call him for some reason, but now that she’s here, she has no fucking clue.

Hunter clears his throat. “And... are you calling me about Shane?”

Maybe he doesn’t even know. “I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures online,” Yuna says.

“Yes, I have.” 

Jesus Christ this is so awkward. Yuna looks up and catches David’s eye over her laptop screen. She closes her laptop, keeps looking at David. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hunter. I’m not really sure why I’m calling you.”

“I guess I can understand the position Shane’s in,” Hunter says. “I’m sure you... well, I’m not sure, actually. How are you feeling about it?”

“How did your coach handle it?” Yuna asks.

Hunter makes a surprised noise. “He was surprised, of course. I mean, everyone was. But Coach Legault’s been great. Super supportive. Him and Vaughn have done a lot of work to change the culture in the locker room.”

“And what was the culture like in the locker room before?”

Hunter doesn’t say anything. And then he says, gently, “Yuna, I want you to know... whatever your son faces, whatever he goes through, that’s part of life. He can’t opt out of being gay even if it’s a more challenging path. The best way you can support him is by accepting him, not by telling him horror stories about being gay in hockey. He already knows.”

Yuna thinks that over. What does that mean? And then she realizes, Oh my God. Scott Hunter thinks I’m homophobic.

“Oh my God,” she says. “No. Okay. I already knew. I’m totally fine with Shane being gay and being with Rozanov. I’m trying to figure out how to support him right now. His coach is a fucking asshole.”

“Oh,” Hunter says, wrongfooted. “Oh, I see. Well, uh... you think he has allies on the team?”

“Pike, probably,” she says.

“Write it down. Everyone you think might be on his side. He’s gonna need that.” So Yuna dutifully writes down Hayden Pike’s name, and then after thinking about who Shane has mentioned over the last decade, JJ Boiziau. “You gotta get him to socialize outside of hockey, too. He can come visit us in New York if he needs a break, we have a guest room. My partner’s friend works at a gay bar, it’s called the Kingfisher. It’s low key. He could meet some other queer guys, get out of the hockey vortex.”

“I’ll suggest it to him,” Yuna says, writing it down. The Kingfisher, New York. Scott Hunter offered for them to stay with him. She underlines it, mostly just to have something to do with her hands. “You’ve been around the hockey world for a long time. What does Shane have to do to keep the room here?”

After a thoughtful pause, Hunter says, “Let me— I’ve got to think on that one. But let me ask you. Do the Centaurs know?”

She probably shouldn’t be telling him this. Frankly, if anyone got a hold of this phone call, it might be more of a scandal than the airport photos. Shane Hollander’s manager calls Admirals captain to expose tension in the Metros locker room. Shane Hollander’s manager reveals Rozanov-Ottawa trade details. Nasty headlines.

But, she tells herself, some things are more important than hockey. “Yes,” she says. “Or, well, not exactly. The team knows Rozanov has a male partner. His coach knows it’s Shane. He’s on side.”

“That’s good,” Hunter says. “That’s great. So you don’t need to worry about Rozanov?”

I don’t need to worry about Rozanov because I’m not his mom, Yuna thinks, but that’s ungenerous. Rozanov is probably her future son-in-law. And really, she hasn’t thought about him because she was so confident that Ottawa had his back. “I should probably worry about him more,” she says. “But as far as I can tell, Rozanov’s team will take care of him. Montreal is the problem.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Hunter mutters derisively.

After Theriault that shouldn’t shock her, but it does. “What do you mean?"

“I mean—” Hunter cuts himself off. “They’re just a traditional kind of team.”

Traditional. “What does that mean?” Yuna presses.

“You should ask your son about that,” Hunter says firmly. “To be honest with you, I think the best thing you can do is just be there for him. Either Shane keeps the room or he doesn’t. That’s not up to him. It’s up to whether the guys on his team are assholes. He’ll do better if he knows you’re in his corner no matter what.”

“He knows that.”

“Are you sure?”

For the first time since she started her one-woman phone bank, she pauses. She thinks about that. That summer afternoon in 2017 when Shane had said, I need you to know that I tried. I tried really hard. I just can’t help it.

Probably she never recovered from that. Probably that will always live inside her like a sliver, always aching when it’s pressed. Too deep to be removed. Like the first time Shane got hurt on the ice, like the first time Shane cried about bullies at camp, like the joy-turned-grief when she first looked into his precious newborn face and knew he would experience hardship one day, the inevitability of life. All motherhood is this: the certainty that upon birth, you cannot stand between your child and the air anymore.

“I’ll find a way to make him sure,” she says, hoarsely, and Scott Hunter doesn’t push her on it. Small mercies.

Yuna looks at her notebook. The list is pathetic. Hayden Pike, JJ Boiziau. Scott Hunter. The Kingfisher. “Can I ask, when you came out… is there anything you needed? Something we won’t think of, something I can do for him?”

“I didn’t have anyone in my corner when I came out,” Hunter says carefully. While he talks, David comes over to Yuna’s side, scribbles on her notebook: Can I say sth to Hunter? “Not from my side. I had my partner, and his dad, and his friends. So I don’t really know how to answer your question.” Yuna gives David a thumbs up. “I think you just need to tell him you’re on his side. That no matter what, you’re still going to love him.”

“Of course I will,” Yuna says. She thinks about that, too. I didn’t have anyone in my corner when I came out. Yuna is not really very maternal—sometimes feels like she spent it all on Shane, all those instincts, can’t imagine what it would have been like to have any more kids—but she thinks she knows what David wants to say to Scott Hunter, and she’s all for it. Maybe Hunter needs to hear something like that—something nice about his coming out—from a parent in the hockey world.

And regardless, David wants to say it, so Yuna will make it happen.

She says, “I’ll get out of your hair soon, but do you mind if I put my husband on the line for a second?”

“No problem, go ahead,” Hunter says.

“Hi, Mr. Hunter—”

“Scott, please.”

“Scott, then,” David says. He looks at her, and she nods. “Now, pretty much all I know about you is that you play some damn good hockey. But I wanted to let you know—” and he pauses, and Yuna knows exactly why. She felt it too when she realized. Scott Hunter changed everything for her son. 

No matter what, no matter her worries about Ilya and coming out and their flimsy charity plan and the fact that Ilya plays on a team that is guaranteed to lose, Shane has something bright and shining in his life that will last beyond hockey. It’s a weight off her chest knowing he has a place to just be himself, a person to be himself with.

David clears his throat. “I thought what you did was very honest and brave,” David says. “I don’t mean to get overly personal here. But sometimes Yuna and I worried that Shane didn’t have much else other than hockey. And then we found out that he’d had someone he couldn’t talk about for years, someone he could never imagine a future with, and then suddenly— suddenly he had some hope in him. I remember when you and your partner kissed on the ice. We were watching it on TV. Shane got a phone call the second they cut to commercial. He never looked so happy in his life. So if those boys never get around to thanking you, I just wanted to take my chance to say it. I think I owe you my son’s life, Scott.”

For a long, long time, Scott doesn’t say anything. Yuna worries. She checks the screen—the call is still going. There’s no background noise. She wonders if maybe Scott has muted his microphone. After thirty seconds, she asks, “Scott?”

“Hi,” says another voice. The partner, then. Fuck, Yuna has no idea what his name is. “I’m assuming you said something nice and not like, unbelievably awful—yup, Scott just gave me a thumbs up—but he’s, uh. Well. You moved him.”

“Oh, we didn’t mean—” Yuna tries, and then cuts herself off. She can hear sniffling in the background, ragged breaths. Oh Scott. “I’m sorry. My husband was just telling Scott how much his coming out meant to our family.”

“Yeah, that’ll do it,” the man says fondly. “I’ll— okay, Scott wants to talk to you. I’m sure you guys are great. Have a good evening.”

“You too,” Yuna says.

Scott comes back on the line. “Sorry,” he says, voice rough and wet. She can still hear his breathing, nose clogged. Jesus they did a number on him. “I just. Wasn’t expecting that.”

“David has a way of coming in with some unexpected knockouts,” Yuna says, locking eyes with her husband, thumbing over his cheek. “Look, we won’t take more of your evening. Thanks so much for talking with me.”

“Thank you,” Scott says heavily. “I’m so glad he has you. Thank you.”

“You take care now, Scott,” David says, ever the dad.

“Yeah, all right. You too,” Scott says, and that’s the end of the call.

“Jeez,” David murmurs, kissing her temple. Yuna closes her eyes and slumps. Four hours of phone calls, and Scott Hunter’s wretched loneliness curdling in her stomach.

That was the loneliness her son felt. That could have been her son.

“Did you hear from Shane?” she asks, leaning into him.

“Ilya texted me. They’re spending the night in, and they’re gonna come over tomorrow.”

“Okay.” And then, humiliatingly, Yuna feels— her chest tightens. She might cry. Her son. Her only son, her baby, too thin-skinned for this world. She tried to take it for him, the brand deals, the social media analytics, the slurs in the Twitter replies, the way men in suits looked her up and down like they couldn’t see how she could have produced a hockey player. You just focus on your game, honey, she’d always say to him. Lots of other Asian kids are looking up to you. So just play your best game out there. She didn’t know it was in the locker room. She didn’t know that was the worst of it. She didn’t know how scared he was. She didn’t know how lonely he was.

“Hey,” David says, shushing her, rocking her, warm and big and gentle like they’re in their twenties again, “hey, baby, it’s all right, they’re gonna be all right.”

“Okay,” she chokes out again, burying her head in his chest. And then she whispers, “That’s our baby. That’s our baby.”

“I know,” David murmurs, and he gets on the ground and she collapses into his lap, her man. Shane’s father. Steady and unworried, a soft place for them all to land. She realizes all over again how lucky she is to have him as her partner in this. “Those two have a good head on their shoulders. And the best manager in the league.”

She laughs at that, holding him tight.

“It’s up to them now,” he says, soothing her, hand down her back. “We just have to wait. You’ll see.”

Into his shoulder, she says, “You’re a good dad.”

“Well, I have to be if I wanna keep up,” he replies, voice warm. “You’re a good mom.”

Ilya asks if he can help make lunch while Shane and David mow the lawn. Of course, Yuna says yes.

The two of them move around each other in the kitchen easily enough. Yuna feels better in the daytime, after a full night’s sleep and a big hug from her son. She teaches Ilya how to measure the water in the rice cooker with the knuckles on his index finger so he doesn’t need to use a measuring cup.

“I finally heard from Pike’s mother,” Yuna says. “She just said, heard about the news, hope you and Shane are taking care. That’s it! No updates, nothing concrete. Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

Ilya laughs. “Very Canadian,” he says, “so many feelings, always being nice for no reason. In Russia you will never get a text like this.”

“Maybe I should move there,” she mutters, and then winces as Ilya sobers. “I mean. I’m just joking.”

“Of course,” Ilya says, smiling at her a little. “Besides, we have both chosen Canada anyway, yes? Even with all their niceness.”

“I guess those boring Canadian men have their appeal,” Yuna sighs, and Ilya laughs.

The two of them make their lunch, chicken and asparagus and rice, Ilya snapping the ends off the asparagus easily. Hunched over the frying pan, watching the asparagus brown, Ilya says, “Thank you for your phone calls last night.”

Yuna blinks. She hasn’t told them yet about her damage control campaign. “How did you find out about those?”

“Scott Hunter told me.” Ilya shrugs. He is very determinedly not looking at her. “He says you were very nice to him. Wanted me to say thank you again.”

Yuna looks at him. Ilya Rozanov and Scott Hunter talk. Not just at the MLH awards, not just at press conferences. They talk regularly enough that Scott Hunter would ask Ilya to pass on a message to Yuna. That Scott Hunter would tell Ilya the night he got a phone call from Shane Hollander’s mother.

“Did you know he was gay before he came out?” she asks, and Ilya’s gaze snaps to hers. “Or, I mean. Well. I’m not sure what I mean, actually. Did he know about you?”

Ilya’s mouth twists, and then he goes back to his asparagus, using the spatula to gently roll each one individually to get browned on the other side. “A little,” he says. “We guessed about each other. But there is no gay hockey player group chat, if this is what you imagine.”

“Oh. That makes sense.”

“Still. Since Hunter came out, it is much less lonely. He is very old, boring hockey player, terrible defense. But he changed all of hockey.”

“So have you,” Yuna says, and she notices the way Ilya is blinking, too fast, and her heart lurches. All of a sudden she says, “take that pan off the heat, honey.” He does, and she barrels into him, hugging him tight. “I’m proud of you. You’re so brave.”

Ilya holds her, and she holds him tight until his shoulders stop shaking.

“I’m so happy Shane has you,” she says, and Ilya crushes her, even as the asparagus softens behind them. She doesn’t give a fuck. “I’m so glad you were with him yesterday. Thank you, honey.”

Ilya sniffles. “I am lucky,” he says. He clears his throat, and releases her. She squeezes him one more time before she lets him go. He rubs his face, red and splotchy. “I am so lucky,” he says, voice cracking.

Yuna gets a paper towel and dabs gently at the tear tracks on his cheeks, gives him the towel so he can blow his nose. She loves him. Somehow, without Yuna really noticing it, he transformed from Shane’s Ilya to just Ilya, a kid who belongs in her house. A kid she’s responsible for, too.

“The asparagus,” he notices, horrified, and Yuna laughs. “It is soggy now—”

“It’s fixable,” she says, still laughing, as Ilya rushes to turn the stove back on. “Don’t worry about it.”

There are things that are still unknown to her, but she can see clearly the shape of it. Ilya brought her son back to her. Her Shane, lonely and scared, putting on the same brave face for her that he did for his coaches, his teammates, the press. Even her Shane, her brave boy, needed someone in his corner. Needed Ilya.

When the oven beeps, Ilya carries the heavy pan of roast chicken out to the table. It’s easy, almost nothing for him to carry with his hockey player strength.

The front door opens. Her boys come in, Shane first, leaning against the door frame while David puts away their jackets. He sees Ilya and softens, that look in his eyes she saw when they first came over. I have only ever loved one person. 

The rest of their lives. Yuna looks at the table, flooded with sunlight. “Thank you for helping, Ilya,” she says, almost moved by how easy it all is.

“Is nothing,” Ilya says, bewildered, looking back at her. “No problem.”

Yes, she thinks, watching Ilya pour a glass of water for Shane, their shoulders nudging against each other. Ilya is strong, and so is Shane. Finally, finally, she knows something David probably figured out a long time ago. She can trust them with the weight of their lives.