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Shane could see in the reflection of the glass his stupid, pouty expression but couldn’t help it.
It had been five days of the bullshit and Shane was losing his goddamn mind. What the fuck was Ilya doing?
“Hey, what’s going on?” said Shane, walking into the living room with less gusto than he’d hoped. Ilya had been on the couch, completely sprawled out, texting someone at great speed. Looked like regular text messages to Shane. Ilya looked up at him, dropping his phone face down on his chest.
“What?” asked Ilya, completely innocently.
“What do you mean, ‘what’?” repeated Shane in an exasperated tone.
Ilya’s eyes narrowed in confusion.
“Don’t give me that look,” said Shane.
“What are you talking about?”
“You! You’ve been all… weird,” said Shane, feeling his confidence that he’d caught Ilya in something begin to fade.
“I mean, I saw you,” said Shane, scooting Ilya’s legs out of the way so he could sit down on the couch. As soon as he had done so, Ilya stretched back out again, covering Shane with an Ilya leg blanket.
“Saw me what?” said Ilya, confusion still ever-present.
“Go through my phone!” spluttered Shane. “Like, two nights ago. You didn’t say anything.”
“Oh,” said Ilya, and Shane felt himself flinching at the conclusion his mind had leapt to. For a sick moment, he could see Ilya spill it all right here right now. He’d be telling Shane about the illicit affairs he’d been having and—
“I told you to text me that picture of us, like one thousand times to me. You did not notice I had sent it?”
Ilya brought his phone out and brandished their conversation from the other day. Sure enough, the message was timestamped from 10:23 PM, when Ilya had been in the kitchen. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t even noticed it when he’d gone to text Ilya again. Shane could have sworn he sent him that photo weeks ago, but maybe he forgot to actually hit send.
Shane rubbed his eyes. It seemed to check out.
—
At practice, Shane watched Ilya and his gaggle of Centaurs boys laughing just off the ice. Shane glanced over at them and they all quieted, an uncomfortable silence falling in the rink. Shane shook his head and focused back to the goal. But they were all staring at him, Ilya even more so, his eyes locked on Shane’s stick.
Shane ignored them. The sound of his stick scraping on the ice echoed in the arena. He dribbled the final puck before sending it at the net.
He fucking missed.
Shane stood stupefied on the ice. An empty net. He’d missed an empty net.
They were all still standing there, talking in low voices, when Shane huffed by them and back into the locker room. They quieted completely when he passed. He didn’t like being left out of the joke, and certainly didn’t like the idea of being the joke either.
He thought Ottawa was different. Hell, it even felt like Ilya was the ringleader of it all. What could he possibly be saying to them?
If it was capital-C Captain stuff, then Shane should be involved too, god damn it.
He went to the showers to cool off.
Someone else walked in after Shane had changed. Shane looked up from tying his shoes on the bench to see Haas’s unmistakable blonde hair.
“Hey,” Shane whispered pointedly at him.
Haas looked around for a second in his attempt to locate the noise.
“Yes?” said Haas, whispering back.
“What, uh… what were you guys talking about there?” Shane had begun this conversation as a whisper and found it difficult to stop.
Haas went wide-eyed, opening and closing his mouth a few times.
“Well, um—”
“What? You can tell me. It’s fine.”
The rest of the boys followed in talking loudly, and Haas looked like an angel from on high had just answered his prayer.
—
Shane groaned at his phone. Another fucking ad shoot starting at the ass crack of dawn scheduled for tomorrow. His mom had texted him in a rush telling him Reebok was doing him a big favor by squeezing him in. He’d agreed, but only to please his mother.
He had told Ilya who reacted with little less than surprise.
“I will have the house all to myself,” said Ilya, stretching his arms wide, showing off his arms and giant wingspan.
Shane squinted.
“Why, you need a break from me?” said Shane, less terse than he had been imagining in his head but more terse than he’d expected to come out of his mouth.
Ilya nodded.
“Sometimes a man needs to jerk off alone,” he said, matter-of-factly.
Shane didn’t like the sound of that. Not just the idea of Ilya doing something insanely hot without him, but just the inkling of the idea that maybe he was doing something without him, intrusive thought going to the worst or not.
“Don’t look at me like that,” said Ilya to Shane’s pouty face, the one that always prompted Ilya to kiss him.
He remained pouty even after that, but didn’t seem entitled to a second kiss. Shane didn’t think it’d make him feel any better anyway.
—
This ad shoot was grueling. He’d smiled for so long he started to worry if his mouth would lose the ability to upturn again. He looked behind the camera at his mom who was smiling encouragingly at him.
“Almost done, I promise,” she mouthed to him, animatedly pointing at her watch.
These were the worst days. He just wanted to get home and slump down on his own bed. The more insane the intrusive thoughts about Ilya got, the guiltier he felt.
Shoot finally over, Shane said goodbye to his mom and sat in the car for a long minute, finding the motivation to get back home.
Shane fumbled with his keys before finally inserting them into the lock. He had been so preoccupied with getting them out again that when he looked up—
“Surprise!”
The chorus was enough to make Shane jump.
Friends and family had popped up from behind furniture and began swarming him.
Ilya got to him first, grabbing his arm in that gentle way, knowing Shane would need something to calm him down.
“Sorry,” Ilya whispered in Shane’s ear. “I had to scare you just a little bit. For the surprise.”
Shane felt all the tension of the previous weeks release in one large exhale. Of course, he’d been overthinking it. No wonder Ilya had been all sneaky.
God, he hadn’t even noticed. Today was his birthday.
—
Ilya walked around the bed, tying his sweatpants, as Shane rubbed his eyes and checked the clock on his bedside table. Nearly 10 am. Yikes. He had never slept so late in his life. His head was pounding and he couldn’t figure out why, until he realized that the night had become hazy after his fifth shot of vodka.
Ilya didn’t seem fazed at all, even though he’d been drinking as fast as Shane, and probably snuck a few extra shots while he wasn’t looking.
“Water,” said Ilya, pointing to the bedside table. “Drink.”
Shane was staring at his husband, his body, thirsty for something other than a glass of water. Ilya threw the shirt over his head and delighted in Shane’s groans of annoyance.
“Drink,” he said again. Shane looked over at the bedside a second time, the water having appeared like magic.
“You partied pretty hard, yes?” asked Ilya, a stupid grin on his face. Shane brushed him off with an eye roll.
—
Shane came downstairs to what looked like partially the aftermath of a house party, partially the aftermath of the world’s coziest sleepover. Everywhere he looked bodies were strewn about, huddled under blankets, on the couches and on the floor. Shane rubbed his eyes to make sure he was seeing this right. Ilya, meanwhile, had been collecting cans and food wrappers in a garbage bag.
Some of the blankets stirred. Shane looked down at the family room floor at the king sized blanket with two tufts of brown hair sticking out. Shane squinted his eyes.
“Hayden?”
Hayden yawned and stretched, but still didn’t move from the comfort of the floor.
“Hey, buddy,” he said, his eyes closed, his voice still gravelly. “Happy birthday.”
The other mass had stirred.
That was not Jackie.
Hayden looked over. Wyatt Hayes was half-dead to the world.
Shane gave him an even more confused expression.
“It is not what you think,” said Ilya sadly, brushing by Shane as he grabbed dirty glasses from the coffee table.
“Gross, Ilya,” said Shane.
“Wyatt passed out on the floor. And then I thought the floor looked pretty comfy,” explained Hayden.
“And I tucked them in,” added Ilya.
“Meanwhile the wives are upstairs in the first guest bedroom,” said Wyatt, still attempting to ward off his pounding headache with fingers to his temple.
“Slept like an angel,” said Jackie, coming down the stairs, Wyatt’s wife Lisa following behind.
Shane had a lot of questions, and decided to keep his mouth shut.
Ryan and Fabian were stirring on the couches and Bood and his wife, Cassie, were making their way downstairs, taken the other bedroom. Everyone else had caught a rideshare home last night.
Ilya summed everyone over to the kitchen, passing out glasses of water, ibuprofen, and Gatorades. Everyone had the same, slightly pained, paled expression. Shane noticed that Ilya hadn’t pulled the curtains back. Thank God.
“I haven’t drank like that since I was eighteen,” said Hayden. “Man, I feel like shit.”
“You look like shit,” said Jackie, kissing his cheek.
“Meanwhile Rozy’s not broken a sweat,” said Bood. “How are you doing that?”
Ilya shrugged. “Russian. I am not lightweights like you guys.”
Shane rolled his eyes and glanced at all six-foot-seven of Ryan Price, who seemed amused by the comment.
“You know what? Let me show you real Russian hangover cure.”
Ilya opened the cabinet above the fridge where they stored the food liquor. He pulled out the vodka into a small measuring cup and took a shot.
Everyone groaned.
“That just made me feel sick,” said Ryan.
“Put that away, Roz,” said Wyatt, shielding his eyes and wincing. “I don’t even wanna smell a drop of alcohol right now.”
“That is not a Russian hangover cure,” said Shane, feeling the need to correct the record. Ilya winked at him.
Ilya put the bottle back.
“So,” said Ilya, clapping his hands together. The group collectively covered their ears and groaned again.
“Sorry, sorry,” he whispered quickly. “Pancakes or waffles?”
—
The pieces of the night before were starting to come together, but more than that, the pieces of the previous weeks. Shane tried squaring a lot of it in his own mind: the phone snooping, the whispers at practice, the early morning shoot his mom had dragged him to.
What he didn’t know was what Ilya had said to all these people to make them come to his party.
Shane and Ilya had gone for a trail run later that evening when the sun was cozying to the edge of the horizon and Shane was feeling slightly more human. Shane’s feet hit the dirt in a steady rhythm that didn’t ground him. He still felt like he was a terrible detective in his attempt to put the clues together. He wasn’t even sure what he was missing. Maybe it was obvious to everyone else.
At the end of their run, Shane had slowed, steadying himself on his knees.
“So,” he said through heavy breaths. “How did you—?”
Ilya’s chest was heaving, sweat dripping down his temples, his hair thoroughly damp. He had a huge grin on his face.
“I thought you would never ask.”
—
“Entertain yourself,” said Ilya, handing his phone to Shane in the passenger’s seat. The orange Porsche had always felt showy, embarrassing almost, daring everyone to stare, but Shane forgot about it as he dove into Ilya’s texts.
—--
A notification popped up on Ilya’s phone.
Rose.
Shane, unable to stop himself, clicked on it. It was a video.
Himself.
He played it, but the memory had slowly come back to him.
The sun had just begun to sink below the horizon and cast the edge of the lake in an ombre of pinks, oranges, and yellows. That was all well and good, but contrasted with the people, his parents included, that were getting wasted, dancing like maniacs in the backyard, swinging around cups of alcohol like they were at a frat house.
Scott and Kip were bouncing around with JJ, Marlow, and Svetlana on the makeshift dancefloor (his patio). Hayden, Jackie, Ryan and Fabian had set up beer pong on one of his picnic tables, and out of all of them, it had turned out that no one more than Jackie had been out for the kill. His parents had been watching the game like it was a professional sport.
Hayes, Haas, Dykstra, and Bood had inexplicably made a fire in May. They seemed happy with their work, though, so no one had said anything.
Rose had been the documentarian, though drunk as anyone else, her words slurring as she narrated who was who and what was happening.
The camera pointed towards the back door.
“Shaneee!” she said.
Shane stumbled out from the house, grinning wide, his cheeks flushed.
Shane watched as his past self declared boldly, “Watch me do a keg stand.”
Current Shane closed his eyes. Christ.
“Did Rose send me the—” said Ilya from the driver’s seat, attempting to peek over at his phone.
“Hey, watch where you’re going,” chided Shane, pointing back at the road.
“Keg stand video?” he grumbled.
Shane watched himself perform a beautiful keg stand, egged on by Ilya. Marlow and J.J. were holding his legs. Rose from the video was whooping quite loudly.
Shane’s cheeks flushed again at the memory.
“Thank God we never went to university together,” said Shane, slumping back in his seat, but unable to stop himself indulging in the thought.
“Why? You would never go to class? Going to house parties and doing keg stands?”
Shane smirked. He’d give Ilya this one, just once. But he was thinking about dirtier things. “Something like that,” he said.
Shane looked out the window as he watched the pines flit past him, a whirl of green and brown.
“I, um—” he began, unsure where he was going with this sentence. He looked down at his feet, then over at Ilya who was already smiling.
“Thank you,” Shane said. “For the party, Mr. Party Planner.”
Ilya reached a hand over and gave Shane’s a squeeze.
—--
Epilogue
“Wait,” said Shane. “You were texting Rose in April. I realized you were probably grabbing her number because I remember now I already sent you that picture.”
“Oh, that,” said Ilya with a laugh, his hand gripped on the wheel. “I had been trying to drop hints about your birthday.”
Shane closed his eyes. “You already sent the picture. And you already had Rose’s number.”
Shane looked at him through one opened eye.
“And?” Shane prompted.
“And, well, I heard you were coming downstairs. And I wanted to fuck with you.”
“The being sneaky and suspicious, all that was to—?”
Ilya laughed. “Oh, yes. All fucking with you. Sorry,” he said. “Not sorry. You do not take hints well.”
Right. The sing-songy question of “What’s next month?” Ilya had asked him in April, to which he’d responded, “May?”. The balloons Ilya had drawn on the calendar in the kitchen. The incessant questions about whether he wanted or needed anything that had started around the end of March.
Shane let out a long exhale.
“I wanted to see what you would do. I figured you might ask me,” said Ilya.
“And you would’ve told me if I did?”
“No way.”