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It was funny to still think of first class as a splurge when, hello, team private jet, but Shane couldn't help but feel a little thrill when he slipped into his pod, immediately toeing off his shoes for the slippers and pulling the plush blanket over his lap.
For better or for worse, one of his core memories was of being nine years old and sitting in 47E between his parents, slightly nauseous and bored out of his skull on hour four of eleven on the flight from Vancouver to Tokyo to visit his grandparents, who had moved back to Japan a few years prior to live out their retirement in a tidy, quiet two-story house in Saitama that was forever enshrined in Shane’s memory because that was where he had discovered that the only thing that made eating a convenience store egg salad sandwich followed by a grape popsicle better was eating them while sprawled on a bamboo tatami floor.
That was the first long haul flight Shane had ever been on. Montreal to Los Angeles wasn't nearly as bad in comparison. And, well, it turned out most flights are bearable once you had a lieback seat and all the ice cream you could theoretically want.
After the doors closed but before they played the safety video (which, yes, is when he shuts off his phone, Hayden, those are the rules), he took a quick selfie for Rose. On my way! he sent.
I’m so excited!!!, she texted back immediately. Sorry I can’t pick you up :( but my driver has all your info, let me know when you land!! Xxx
That was Rose, who was as good at being a famous actor as she was a famous actor. Shane had tried, he’d told her last week when they FaceTimed to talk about this trip that he didn’t need her to send a driver, he didn’t know if she knew but he was actually a pretty good NHL player who’d just signed one of the biggest contracts in league history, and he could afford—
“Oh my God,” Rose had said, cutting off the well-meaning speech he was delivering from, as far as he could tell, the cupholder in the vintage 1957 Chevy Bel Air she’d just had fully restored. “Shane, you’re being so Canadian right now. Shut up, just let me do this for you.”
Shane couldn’t fully see her face, but he could tell she was rolling her eyes at him from underneath her silk Armani headscarf and behind her giant Gucci sunglasses, both of which she had just been named a global ambassador for in recent months. He thought about how, on their second date in Montreal, they’d gone to a restaurant where, over the course of the night, he was on the receiving end of a hat trick of escalatingly embarrassing encounters: First, the maître d', who had clearly been tipped off by his name on the reservation, took their coats with a reverence that made him frankly uncomfortable. Then, before they even had a chance to crack the menu, the server brought over a bottle of wine older than Shane’s mother and then refused to take it back, demurring with, it’s from our owner’s private collection, we insist, it’s a gift. Finally, after dessert, just when Shane thought he was safe, the general manager came over to shake his hand and thank him, truly, for everything he’d done for the city.
By the end of it, Shane was emotionally wrung out from having to perform the modest sports hero of a one-sport town. This was why he hated going out in Montreal. But when he looked at Rose, instead of the awe or discomfort he was used to when he went out with friends or family and was recognized, she was leaning into him with a wicked grin spreading over her face, her $200 glass of Bordeaux untouched.
“Wow,” she had said, basically purred, all that gorgeous, expensive hair spilling over one shoulder. “So this is what it feels like. I could get used to this.”
Under the table, her fingers found his, and Shane took her hand, grateful in a new way that he’d gone out to Djon-Djon that godforsaken night, because it had led him here, to her. In that moment, faced with the easy and unapologetic way Rose wore her beauty, confidence, and fame, Shane was certain that he had a type, and relieved that it translated across genders after all.
The technical difficulties came later, but at least at the end of it he had an A-list movie star ex-girlfriend who had a driver she wanted to send to pick him up. Let’s be real, he was probably just going to call an Uber anyway. What was he even fighting her on?
“Okay, okay,” he said, giving in. “If you insist, I will let you send your fancy Hollywood driver to pick me up.”
“I do insist,” Rose said, so smug that she’d gotten her way, the California sun clearly a paid actor the way it was illuminating her through the drop top of her convertible, while Spanish-style houses and clear sky and palm trees zipped by in the screen of Shane’s iPhone. He couldn’t make this shit up, and he’s been to LA. It does not look like that from the JW Marriott near Staples Center, that’s for sure. “I’m merging onto the highway, so I’m going to hang up now. See you next week!” With a loud smack in the direction of the camera, she ended the call.
“See you,” Shane echoed into his empty Montreal apartment, fighting a smile.
That was last week. A flight attendant was walking up the aisle now, seatbelt in hand. Shane looked down at the selfie. For something off-the-cuff, he didn't look too bad. Relaxed, and not like he was trying too hard, which was good because he hadn't been. He hesitated, then opened his messages again and scrolled until he got to his chat with Lily.
He typed out, About to have a nice summer, and attached the selfie. He wavered for a second, last chance to chicken out, before hitting send, and turning on airplane mode.
-
Boston had been knocked out in the first round of the playoffs by Philadelphia of all teams, while the Voyageurs pulled out a win in five against New York. Shane could feel the palpable electricity in the locker room after that, the capricious winds of being the defending champions slowly shifting in their favor. Any epiphanies about Ilya or about himself Shane might’ve had in the aftermath of his breakup with Rose were obliterated by the bone-grinding effort of keeping his team together through the subsequent six games against Washington, seven games against Tampa Bay, and a final seven against San Jose.
By the time Shane emerged from the euphoria of Cup celebrations, Ilya had been in Moscow for weeks, probably slacking on his conditioning and having athletic sex with all kinds of women, while Shane had another ring and Conn Smythe to his name.
Well, a ring and a Conn Smythe and a text from Rozanov that said, Ugly win still win, which was as close to a congratulations as he was going to get.
But after the champagne showers, the photo ops with the commissioner, the prime minister, and the media dynasty that owned their team, the jubilant parade Montreal had thrown them, the rash of emails from brands from foundations from Asian Canadian organizations and youth hockey organizations and Asian Canadian youth hockey organizations. After all that, Shane had stared down the gaping maw of August stretched open before him and, for the first time, the thought of spending it fishing and birding at his cottage, alone, without anyone to make him a sandwich or press his head into the space beneath their chin, was unbearable.
Thus, Los Angeles. He wasn’t running away, of course not. He was taking a well-deserved break from being the most famous person in Montreal after back-to-back Cup wins for the city. Besides, Rose had been campaigning for Shane to spend a week of his summer with her in LA for months now, and though he knew his mother and his agent were bearing Olympic-level torches for the impossible resuscitation of their relationship, that was no reason not to go.
-
“So,” Rose said. “I have ideas.”
Shane turned to her where he was prone on what was the nicest poolside chair he had ever experienced. About an hour and a half ago, he’d met Rose’s driver at arrivals, a Slavic guy in his mid-fifties with a buzzed head, who really had nothing in common with Ilya besides a shared ancestral lineage and yet to whose accent Shane had embarrassingly, Pavlovian-ly responded. He’d palmed him a fifty after being dropped off, for no reason but his own misplaced guilt over having vaguely sexy thoughts about a man just doing his job; the driver had responded with raised eyebrows and a murmured, enjoy your time in Los Angeles, sir.
Rose had met Shane at the fairytale blue door of her impossibly charming bungalow, set high in the hills of Los Feliz and bordered by lush, stately trees. He’d been given a whirlwind tour, then shown to his room with a demand to change into swim trunks. His room was tucked away just off the living room, with a view bordered by the loveliest lemon trees, which explained the faint smell of citrus around the property. Roughly an hour after he’d touched down on LAX tarmac, he was floating on his back in perfectly temperate water, clutching a pool noodle shaped like a hockey stick, Rose’s idea of a funny joke. After a swim and subsequent lay out in the dry Los Angeles heat, Shane was feeling more relaxed than he had in years.
It helped that when he’d turned his phone back on after landing, there had been a message from Rozanov, who’d written, Finally! Not boring summer, and then followed it up three hours later with, I guess could still be boring, like he had been thinking through the possibilities for Shane’s not-boring summer and come up short.
“I love ideas,” he said, feeling a little loopy from jetlag. “Though I’m warning you, I could stay here all week. I won’t even need the room, I’ll just sleep in this chair.”
“No!” Rose cried, pushing her sunglasses up so she could meet Shane’s gaze. “I mean, yes, because I paid a lot of money for that chair specifically. But you can lay by a pool anywhere. This is my once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to show you LA. I’ve been planning for weeks.”
Shane laughed at the serious expression on Rose’s face, but he sat up, too. “Okay, take it away,” he said.
He was touched by how excited she was to have him here. He had thought Rose’s vow to stay friends after they broke up was just a pleasantry, the least she could say after her NHL boyfriend of two months had come out to her, but Shane had been surprised and then moved by Rose’s determination afterwards, even more so because of how effortless it was. Rose was an extrovert’s extrovert, fond of the impromptu FaceTime, whether it was during a pocket of time on set in Atlanta or Toronto or upstate New York, as she was stuck in traffic on her way to the gym, or while she was doing her skincare routine after a night out. Shane had a pickup rate of about forty percent, which he first felt guilty about but came to realize it didn’t bother Rose at all, she’d just move on to the next contact on her list.
It was true for a lot of hockey players, Shane included, that it was hard to make new friends the further they progressed in their careers, whether it was because they had schedules that didn’t really lend themselves to Thursday night trivia or because relative proximity to fame and money clouded even the best of intentions, which was why so many doubled down on family and friends from childhood, juniors, or college. But Rose, who lived in a world even more rarefied than his, was unlike any other friend Shane could have made in adulthood, and it turned out a friendship could be built on weekly-ish FaceTime calls and the substantial tax credits Canada offered on film productions.
Rose clapped her hands together. “Okay, this is kind of basic so stop me if you’ve done it already, but I was thinking we could do a hike at Griffith Park? Maybe tomorrow morning, before it’s too hot?”
“I don't think you understand how little I have seen of LA,” Shane said. It was true. Six years of coming to the LA area once or twice a year, and the most Shane had seen of it beyond arenas, practice rinks, and steakhouses was Santa Monica Pier. “That sounds amazing.”
“Really, nothing?” Rose said, sounding scandalized. “What about the beach? We could drive up to Montecito for the day.”
“Mmm, only if we have time. I’m more of a lake guy. And pool, specifically this pool.”
“Dodgers game? My friend has a box.”
Shane hesitated. “Maybe. I like baseball, but that sounds…public?”
Rose reached out to rest a hand on Shane’s forearm and said, solemnly, “Shane. Please know that I say this with love. But you’re not in Kansas anymore. You could walk outside and ask someone to name a single Kings player at gunpoint, and I guarantee you eight out of ten would ask you first, what sport they even play, and second, to just make it quick.”
“Fuck you,” Shane said, but he was laughing as he pulled his arm away from Rose. “You really know how to make a guy feel special.”
Rose was laughing, too, her sunglasses slipping back down to her nose. “Welcome to Hollywood, baby. What should we eat for lunch?”
-
The next few days passed in a haze. Shane made them espressos every morning from Rose’s state-of-the-art espresso machine that she had no idea how to use, and Rose made them green smoothies that she always ruined by throwing in an ingredient that she found in her fridge and needed to use up but that had no business being there, like frozen peas or bloody mary mix, and that Shane ruined further with protein powder, because maintenance was important even in the offseason.
Rose made good on every single one of her promises, and then some. After the hike, they went to a specialty grocery store where Shane felt like he was going to have a heart attack every time he checked the price of something he wanted; embarrassingly, he wanted half the things he saw. He had a wrap of turkey, kale, avocado, and pumpkin seeds rolled into a giant collard green leaf and a sip of Rose’s suspiciously magenta drink, which was surprisingly delicious, and felt a virtuousness close to godliness.
“Can we come back tomorrow?” Shane asked as they were pulling away, trying to sound casual.
“I should’ve known you’d be an Erewhon princess,” Rose said, shaking her head.
On his phone, a text: My god they make burrito for rabbit now.
At the beach, Shane conceded that there did exist better bodies of water in California than Rose’s pool, and walked into the ocean three, four times to surrender himself to the waves, the wide open sky, and the invisible shoreline, losing his sunglasses in the process. There was a moment when a preteen girl and a woman in her thirties, either young mother or nanny, came up to them and Shane tensed up, fingers tightening around his baseball cap, but they bypassed him entirely in favor of Rose, who happily signed the inside cover of a paperback book, pages thick with sea and salt.
After a round of hugs and photos in every permutation, they were gone, the only words exchanged with Shane a quick thank you! for offering to take a photo of the three of them. In the warm halo of Rose’s celebrity, he got the distinct feeling that they had not looked him in the face even once.
Afterwards, they stopped by a beach bar, where they shared buttery grilled oysters, a Cobb salad that Rose beat Shane to the punch of asking for the dressing on the side, chicken paillard with a lemon sauce so bright that Shane wanted to lick it off the plate, and a mountain of uniformly golden shoestring fries, for which Rose ignored everything else on the table in favor of eating them by the delicate fistful.
“My vice,” Rose said, when she caught Shane looking at her with a barely suppressed smile after she had demolished half the basket. “What can I say, I’m a Midwestern girl at heart.”
That night, they laid side by side on the oversized couch in Rose’s living room, which had a floor-to-ceiling bay window that looked into the backyard, where fairy lights winked among the trees surrounding the pool. Shane was bone-tired the way he always felt after a day spent in the water, and the skin on his shoulders and upper back were hot where he could tell he would need some aloe soon.
Moscow was ten hours ahead of Los Angeles, which Shane, once known, couldn’t un-know, and meant that around ten at night he would start feeling a light, buoyant sense of anticipation that a text from Rozanov might come in, just as he’d couldn’t un-know when he was still in Montreal that if he sent Rozanov, seven hours ahead, a text before bed, he would almost certainly wake up to a reply. People could power cities on the strength of Shane’s belief in the maybe-Rozanov text.
It was getting to that time of night when Rose looked up from where she was collapsed against her side of the couch, head pillowed on the arm as she scrolled. “Drink?” she asked.
Shane was famously a non-drinker during the season, but happily enjoyed a beer or a glass of extremely cold white wine during the offseason. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll take whatever you have.”
Whatever Rose had was a mysteriously open-but-untouched bottle of white wine, which left a whisper of vinegar on the back of Shane’s tongue, but was teeth-chatteringly cold, especially after Rose dropped three ice cubes into their glasses. It was sacrilege, but it was what they had.
“So,” Rose said, once they were resituated on the couch, Adele radio playing on her hidden speaker system.
“So,” Shane echoed.
“Soooo,” Rose said, just to be annoying. “You know all about my dating life. Don’t be withholding! Tell me about the boys.”
Shane flushed, and just resisted the urge to shush Rose, even though they were literally alone in a house on top of a hill, surrounded on all sides by tree and bush. “There aren’t really any boys,” he said, grimacing. “Occupational hazard.”
“Really?” Rose asked, sounding surprised. “I mean, NHL superstar, hot bod, big hands”—and here she had the gall to pause and waggle her eyebrows at him—“I’m not sure I’m seeing the problem?”
“Ugh,” Shane said. “I can’t exactly do…online. Or go to, like, a gay bar. And it’s not like I could just turn to a guy on the team and ask for an intro.”
“But surely there are other ways to meet people?” Rose asked, looking troubled. “You’re in a different city every other night. Just purely on a numbers basis, the odds of finding someone who is discreet and interested are in your favor.”
Shane knew what she meant. There were guys in the league who had reputations like that, Ilya included. A port in every storm, a girl in every city they played in, shit like that. It made Shane uncomfortable, and not just because of the disrespect that usually accompanied it. Shane used to pick up, back during his rookie season when he was still making an effort to go out whenever the team did, and though a big part of the problem then was that it was woman-shaped, it didn’t get much easier once he admitted to himself that he preferred men. There were just so many things to figure out: the social cues of how men who were attracted to men were supposed to find each other in public, the moment the chemistry sparked and if it was the same moment as it was for the other person, the first move and what that was supposed to look like.
“I don’t want to leave it up to—to statistics,” Shane said. “Besides, how are you supposed to, you know, get to know anyone that way?”
“Well, I think sometimes that’s the point,” Rose said. “But I forget you’re not really a one-night stand guy. You have, though, with other people? Or is it just that one guy still?”
It killed Shane that Rose, putting it so plainly, could make it sound like an arrow through the heart. Rose was the only person in Shane’s life besides Rozanov who knew about his sexuality, and so he had slipped to her on one of their FaceTimes that he had a regular but complicated thing with a guy for, well, years now. She was a consummate FaceTime multitasker, and it often lulled him into a sense of false security that she was only half-listening, leading him to confess things he wouldn’t otherwise. She had immediately honed in on six years and it’s complicated, though he refused to tell her any identifying details when she pressed, knowing all the while that his refusal itself was confirmation of something.
“No,” Shane said slowly. “There have been others.”
-
Last year, Shane and Hayden and a few of the other guys on the team had flown to a luxury resort in Cabo for a long, tequila-soaked weekend, because they were young, dumb, and had just won their white-knuckled, storied franchise’s first cup in two decades. Everyone was so fucked up that weekend that the one night they’d gone out to a club, Shane had stayed out later than any of them, even J.J., whose boisterous French had gotten him noticed by a group of heiresses from Monaco, who had pounced upon him and Comeau and whisked them away about an hour ago.
Shane had been left standing at the bar, nursing a tequila soda, keyed up by the energy of the night even when he knew the responsible thing would be to take himself back to his room. Just as he was asking himself what exactly he was waiting for, he looked up and caught the eye of a man standing by the column next to the bar.
He was tall, that was the first thing Shane noticed, probably six-three or six-four, and he was big, wearing a black tank top that showed off his shoulders. His dark hair was slicked back, one curl falling onto his forehead, and even if he wasn’t exactly beautiful in the face, he carried himself like he was, which unfortunately did it for Shane. With a burst of liquid courage and the strength that utter anonymity here lent him, Shane maintained eye contact until the man was slowly making his way towards him, stopping when they were a polite foot apart. He tapped his fingers on the bar in an act of waiting for the bartender, then turned his head the barest degree towards Shane.
“Hello,” was all he said, in neutral, accented English, and that word alone sent desire ricocheting through Shane’s body with the lightning bolt certainty of, I am going to sleep with this man tonight.
They barely spoke after that, just a few murmured pleasantries and then an invitation to get a drink somewhere else. Outside, Shane fell into step with the man from the club, who led him to a neat studio apartment about a ten-minute walk away. In the twenty four years Shane had been alive at that point, the only reckless thing he’d ever done was whatever it was he had with Rozanov. In fact, he was a famous overthinker and overplanner, cautious in all aspects of his life but on the ice, and yet as he followed this man up to his third floor walkup, it all fell away and he felt nothing but anticipation for what was about to come. He had gone to a club, and successfully picked up a person, a man, who he was attracted to for no reason other than he was. Not because he was the only man he’d ever been with, or because fate had a cruel sense of humor and thrust them together and then put them on rival hockey teams.
The man from the club used his big body to crowd Shane against the wall, put his big hands on Shane’s body to tug roughly at his clothes and hair, then sat on his bed and, with a flick of his chin, had Shane undress while he watched with dark eyes. When he breathed out ven aquí, Shane did. He laid down on his back, keeping up a stream of yes yes yes yes as he let the man from the club open him up with one heavy hand splayed over his chest, the fingers of his other hand twisting inside him until Shane was panting and desperate. The sex itself was hard and fast, the taste of beer in the man’s mouth bitter when they kissed, perfunctory, because it was the thing to do. It was exactly what Shane was looking for, and immediately afterwards he felt satisfied and wrung out the way he always did after he was fucked well, and then immediately after that, once the high wore off, he felt awkward and himself again, compounded this time by the stranger lying next to him.
He had forced himself to lie there for another two minutes so he didn’t seem, he didn’t know, rude? and then put himself back into his clothes again, nodding a quick goodbye before showing himself out and back down the three flights of stairs, having at least confirmed one thing for himself and not anything else.
“There was one other person,” Shane corrected.
“Oh, honey,” Rose said, because she had gone to performing arts high school and then theater school in New York. Because she had a French mother who had met her American ambassador father when he was stationed in Paris, and made the ultimate love sacrifice to move with him back to the Detroit suburbs. Because Rose was their later-in-life baby, the girl her mother had always wanted after bemusedly raising an all-American hockey player son, and thus Rose had stories upon stories about growing up spending summers in Paris with her laissez-faire maman, clubbing at fourteen with bisexual trust fund boys. Her comfort with sexuality—with Shane’s sexuality in particular—was completely foreign to him.
“Anyway,” Shane said, his face heating. “That’s how I found out one-night stands are not for me.”
Under his leg, his phone buzzed once with an incoming text, and even without looking Shane knew who it was from. Suddenly, the anticipation, which had ebbed during his and Rose’s conversation, flowed back, a full tide. He peeked at the screen, Rose’s keen eyes on him.
You see new jerseys? Should be fine for ugly. Shane had, in fact, seen the new jersey designs, and they were ugly as hell, and he couldn’t wait to say so once he was in bed and could text without being rude in front of Rose.
“Not that bad, right?” Rose asked suddenly, nodding towards the wine.
It was that bad, it really was, but he gave in to the smile fighting its way across his face, took another sip of his wine, and replied, “No, not at all.”
-
Shane was flying home on Saturday, tomorrow, because the West Coast to East Coast time zone jump was brutal, and Shane always liked to give himself a day to recover even if he was a hockey player in August and didn’t exactly have “work” to return to on Monday. But it was already mid-August, training camp starting in just a few weeks, and he could feel his body and his brain clicking back into gear, refreshed in a different way than he usually felt after a few weeks at the cottage.
“Noooo,” Rose moaned over the din of her Vitamix when reminded of his imminent departure. Today’s green smoothie featured two boiled eggs, which Rose had thrown in with the reasoning, it’s protein! Plus it’s kinda like a nicoise salad!, and which Shane was trying very hard not to think too deeply about having to drink later, which of course he would, out of consideration to his host. “Don’t leave, stay! Be my roommate! We could be like—like Will and Grace! Request a trade to the Kings!”
“So I can be irrelevant?”
“You would not be irrelevant, you would be my live-in best friend,” Rose scolded, and then looked down at what was happening inside her blender. “I think maybe the eggs were a bad idea,” she said solemnly, and then she and Shane were cracking up, leaning into each other against Rose’s farmhouse kitchen island, the sun streaming through the windows and warming the nook where Shane had eaten breakfast the past five days. When Shane felt the weight of Rose against his side, he let himself briefly indulge again in the old dream, the wistful fantasy of what if he was different and this was his life and who he loved. Maybe, but then again: hockey. Then again: Ilya.
-
Shane had agreed to go out after Rose had deployed a trifecta of irrefutable arguments: it was his last night in LA and who knows when he’d come back, it was a private club in a hotel owned by a reclusive former rock star, beloved by many of LA’s young celebrity crowd for its strict guest list and no cameras policy, and finally, most compellingly, please please please please—
“Jesus,” Shane said, laughing. “Okay, Rose, fine, I will come out with you.”
“Yay!” Rose said, not an ounce of dignity lost.
That was how Shane ended up here, in an outfit that both of them had vetted, which is to say an outfit that Shane had deemed acceptable from what Rose originally wanted him to wear. As it was, almost everything was from her closet: a well-worn white Hanes shirt, demurely cropped at the bottom so it skimmed the top of the wide-legged dark gray slacks he was wearing, held up by a thick black leather belt with a big silver buckle. Thank God she was several shoe sizes smaller than he was and he was permitted to wear his loafers; as it were, she still tried to get him into a pair of her cowboy boots. Rose was wearing an off-the-shoulder cropped black top over low-slung impractical dark denim pants laced up the front like a sneaker and a pair of lethal black stilettos. She looked like a million dollars—no, more than that, she looked like the dollar amount on her paycheck for the superhero franchise she was signed up to helm.
The club was more relaxed than what Shane had been imagining, really more of a French lounge by way of ’80s Hollywood, with velvet couches and antique light fixtures, opening up to a private courtyard where the effect of wicker furniture among the palm trees and manicured shrubbery made Shane feel like he needed a martini and a cigarette, in that order, stat.
It was a famous director’s daughter’s twenty-third birthday party tonight, and when they entered, Rose was immediately waylaid by a group of extremely beautiful women, who all turned their jewel-like eyes, in unison, upon him when Rose introduced him, and then promptly turned away when the woman closest to them went in for an air kiss and he stuck out his hand instead. Shane took the opportunity to put a hand on Rose’s lower back and say, “I’m going to get us drinks.”
At the bar, Shane decided to get Rose the signature cocktail, something pink and refreshing-looking, served in a tall glass over lots of crushed ice, and a beer for himself. The bartender waved away Shane’s wallet when he tried to pay, looking offended. “Open bar,” he barked, and chipped the beer bottle on the lip of the bar so the cap flew, showing off.
He brought the cocktail back to Rose, who shot him a look that managed to convey both gratitude and I swear to God I will be done in five. Shane didn’t mind, hanging back from the group and leaning against the ornate arm of one of the couches to take everything in. He didn’t like going out much as a general rule of thumb, felt frankly uncomfortable in enclosed places with flashing lights and loud music, and he appreciated that the city of LA had an absolute hard-on for its own geographical sprawl, with every structure and activity made to frame it.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket. No new texts. They didn’t text everyday or anything, so that wasn’t so strange, and Shane tried to never text first twice, though with the time difference it usually ended up being more of a rolling conversation. Rozanov had started the last conversation, so he could—
“Hey,” someone said, and Shane started, locking his screen and slipping his phone back into his pocket. When he looked up, he had a feeling of vague remembrance, like passing a childhood friend on the street, then realized it was because the man who was standing next to him was the breakout young star of the big zombie show that the team was always watching on the plane. There was an ongoing debate about which teams would fare the best in an apocalyptic situation (besides Montreal, obviously) and the consensus was split between Boston, because they were big and ruthless and fucking crazy, and Calgary, because the most dangerous enemy is one that no one fears, or something like that.
Shane realized he’d let the pause before answering go on longer than necessary. “Hey,” he said, trying to play it cool. “I’m, uh, I’m Shane.” And then, might as well rip the Band-Aid off, he added, “I love your show.”
The actor’s smile grew. He had a distinctive chin and very white, very straight teeth. “Thanks,” he said with the easy acceptance of someone who was used to it. “So, how do you know the birthday girl? Or, don’t tell me, you’re here with someone?”
“Oh, yeah,” Shane said. “I mean, no, don’t know the birthday girl. I’m here with Rose. Rose Landry.” He gestured in the direction of Rose with the neck of his bottle, feeling silly.
“I know Rose,” the actor said, somehow making it sound like an innuendo as he looked Shane up and down. “So are you here with her?”
He couldn’t possibly mean—unless he did. “No,” Shane said slowly. “It’s not like that. We’re just good friends.”
“Nothing just about that,” the actor said. He was very, very handsome. The torches around the courtyard had turned on as the sun set, lending the evening an air of sultry possibility that Shane was not immune to. “Let me buy you a drink.”
Shane, honest idiot that he was, opened his mouth and said, “It’s an open bar.”
“Let me get you a drink then,” the actor said, laughing. “Come with?”
Helpless, Shane cut his eyes at Rose, around whom the crowd had grown. From the inside of the circle, she caught his gaze and pulled her face down in an imitation of Pagliacci, mouthing I’m SO sorry.
Fingers brushed against the back of his hand, a touch so casual Shane might’ve thought he’d imagined it, had he not looked at the actor immediately after, who cocked an eyebrow at him. It was the self-assuredness of the gesture that got him, he’d swear later, the swaggering grace the actor exuded, as if he was indulging Shane in playing hard to get. Well, Shane was only as good as a man.
“Okay,” he said, turning again in the direction of the bar and feeling the actor fall in step behind him. “But only if you let me get yours.”
-
Rose’s driver was pulling up, summoned as if by magic, the backseat door already sliding open. Rose crawled in, ignoring Shane’s attempt to help her, and kicked off her heels, one of which landed in Shane’s lap as he sat down, reaching automatically for the seatbelt. It wasn’t that late, only eleven, but Rose pillowed her head on Shane’s shoulder and let out a long breath. The lingering smell of her perfume drifted up to Shane, and he brought a hand up to run through her hair, feeling the soft, thick strands tumble between his fingers.
“That feels nice,” she murmured, as her driver turned onto Sunset. “Did you have fun? I hope you had fun.”
Had Shane had fun? Shane and the actor had gotten each other drinks, as promised, and then had made inoffensive small talk—it turned out the actor had a Canadian stepmother, didn’t blink an eye when Shane mentioned what he did, just offered a “congrats on the win, man, two in a row, must’ve felt good,” which yeah, yeah actually, it had, and then leaned in for an abrupt, brazen kiss during a lull in the conversation. He was wiry, not nearly as broad as Shane, but when he pushed Shane back into the couch cushions, Shane went.
After a second, Shane pulled away. “Sorry,” he said, nervously. “Just—not here.”
To the actor’s credit, he didn’t say anything about how the party probably had a stricter guest list than some royal weddings, or the fame gap between them, or how they were in the most secluded area of the courtyard, hidden in a bend behind a particularly squat palm tree. “I’ve got a room upstairs,” he said, and settled a casual hand at the back of Shane’s neck that made it hard for him to make a proper risk assessment.
They had gone upstairs to the actor’s suite, Shane thrumming with nerves. Once they got inside the door, Shane’s mind registered the room as a collage of disparate images—king-sized bed, velvet couch, plush green carpet, light on in the bathroom, big balcony—rather than as a whole. The actor led him to the couch, purposefully avoiding the bed, for which Shane was grateful. He came back in for a kiss, and as it had been with the man in Mexico, Shane had a fumbling moment of unreality when he went in expecting one thing and getting something else. But no, it was good, it was hot, the actor clearly seemed to be into him or at least his body, with the way he pushed insistent hands under Shane’s shirt and gripped at Shane’s obliques. He ran his hands up Shane’s sides, rucking his shirt up, and Shane put his hands on him, too, feeling the straight line of his waist up to his slim chest. It was different, but it was good, and then the actor had bit Shane’s lip very hard, and was sliding off the couch to get on his knees between Shane’s legs.
He spit into a napkin when he was done, hair tousled where Shane had grabbed at it, then Shane was joining him on the carpet once he got his breath back, swallowing around the actor’s cock, which was certainly lovely, maybe the loveliest cock Shane had ever seen, until he came with a performative grunt.
“That was nice,” the actor said afterwards, beaming down at where Shane was sprawled on the carpet next to him. It had all the sexless indulgence of a head pat, and Shane fought the urge to break out into hysterical giggles.
They’d cleaned up, one after another in the bathroom, then walked back down to the party, where the actor gave Shane an impersonal, friendly thump on the back and faded away. Shane found Rose at the bar, freed of her crowd. It had only been about an hour since he last saw her, but he felt such relief at being next to her again, he wrapped an arm around her and pulled her into him, tucking her head under his chin. “Aw,” she said, then shoved a glass into his hand. “Remember to hydrate!”
Back in the car, Rose had curled up in the seat, the laces of her impractical pants unraveling. She was fully liquid against him, and when Shane looked out at the passing California landscape, he was grateful for the fantasy of a week he had spent in this strange desert city.
“And not just the party,” Rose added sleepily. “I mean the whole week. I wanted you to have fun.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly, his voice rough. “I had fun.”
-
Montreal’s first game of the season was at home, a cheeky 2-1 win against Boston. Shane felt good going into this season, properly refreshed, and it was always nice to start off the season with a win, even as he suspected that the grit and sheer determination that had propelled their team through playoffs and all the way to the Cup last season wouldn’t be sustainable.
He had only been at his apartment for half an hour, fucking around nervously on his phone, when it buzzed with an incoming text: Coming up. A minute later, there was a sharp rap on his door, followed by three short knocks.
Shane yanked the door open, and there he was—Rozanov in the flesh after months of living only in his head and his phone, hair curling and still a little damp, like he had come as soon as he could. He looked tired, he looked cranky, probably from the loss, and he looked good, wearing a leather jacket over a thin black shirt Shane wanted to rub his face in. They hadn’t seen each other in three, almost four months, and though Shane had spent his summer in uncharted waters and come out transformed in his own small way, with Rozanov standing in front of him, he could feel the shape of a familiar, old desire inside him, the one he couldn’t outrun or shake off, despite time zones, despite years.
Ilya was stepping in across the threshold, kicking off his shoes and shutting the door behind him, hands reaching for Shane’s hips in an echo of the way they’d shaken hands over the ice just hours earlier before a ceremonial puck drop. “Hollander,” he breathed, pulling him in to mouth at his neck. “You have good summer?”
Shane was already half-hard, lust making him slow and stupid, and all he wanted was to push and grapple at Rozanov, get his hands and mouth on as much golden skin as possible, drink his fill until the next time, already too far away. When Rozanov pulled back to look at him expectantly, Shane nodded forward, chasing his mouth, before he caught himself. “Huh?” he said, running the tape back. “Oh, I mean, yes. Yes, I had a good summer. Did you?”
Ilya hummed, turning Shane around and walking him in the direction of his bedroom, his body hot and hard behind him, one calloused hand slipping up Shane’s shirt to stroke at his stomach, the other reaching into his sweatpants to grab at his erection. “Was okay,” was the quiet answer. The hand in Shane’s pants squeezed again, then Rozanov’s voice turned sly. “You think about this during summer? About me?”
Shane was falling onto his bed, was twisting around to get his hands back on Rozanov and pull him down to cover Shane’s body with his. He was desperate, he felt frantic, he would’ve said anything, but he told the truth.
“I did,” he said. “I did.”