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1
December 2015
“Oh c’mon, it was funny!” the veteran Holmes said as half the room groaned at the world’s stupidest joke.
“No it wasn’t, Holmsey, you dork,” Marleau said, giving his shoulder a light shove. A group of players were sitting together eating lunch after morning skate but before their night game in Montreal on a Tuesday in February. Most of Marleau’s best friends were there, including, of course, Ilya Rozanov.
“I’m funny. Roz’ll back me up, eh Roz?” Holmes asked.
“Sorry, was not listening but probably not,” Rozanov said without looking up from his phone.
The whole table laughed.
“Who are you texting, Roz?” the rookie Connors asked. Marleau shook his head. The kid had a lot to learn.
Rozanov looked up at them deadpan.
“My boyfriend Shane Hollander,” he said flatly.
Everyone laughed again. It was just like Rozanov to crack a joke like that. He’d always been good at evasive answers and chirps to get out of answering any real questions about himself.
Marleau grinned.
“We’re in Montreal, I bet you $100 he’s texting Jane.”
“I’m not taking that bet!” a veteran said.
“Neither am I!” someone else added.
“Of course he is,” a third voice added.
Everyone who’d been around the team in the last few years knew that Rozanov had a girl named Jane back in Montreal. He had girls in every city, sure, but Marleau was pretty sure that the girl in Montreal was special to him, even if he refused to admit it. But it wasn’t like it was a secret among the players on the team; everyone knew.
“Are you calling me a liar?” Rozanov asked, with a cheeky lopsided grin.
“I said you’re texting your girlfriend. Not Shane Hollander,” Marleau said.
“Fine, believe what you want to believe,” Rozanov said, shrugging one shoulder nonchalantly before turning his eyes back down to his phone, which very clearly said “Jane.” But Marleau let it go. He’d tell them when he was ready.
-
2
January 2016
“Where are you?” Marleau texted. He and four guys were ready to go out clubbing to celebrate after the game, and Rozanov was nowhere to be found.
“Out, I left, sorry,” Rozanov replied.
“With a girl? Nice.”
Marleau expected him to leave it at that, but Rozanov could never be satisfied unless he had the last word.
“With Shane Hollander, at my house, where we will make sweet, sweet love all night.”
Marleau laughed out loud at that. He’d forgotten about that joke.
“Gross, go have fun with your girl,” he texted Rozanov.
“Goodnight.”
“Fucking Rozanov,” Marleau said out loud, before showing Connors and Virtanen his phone.
They all got a good laugh at it before heading out to the club. It would have been more fun with Rozanov, but none of them were thinking about him anymore once they were under the lights with drinks in their hands.
-
3
October 2016
“Roz, bring your Montreal girl to the club to hang out with us next week after the game against the Metros, we want to meet her,” Marleau said. They were at the airport in Vegas waiting for their flight to San Francisco. They had commandeered an entire section of the gate area, but Marleau and his friends were by the wall of windows. They were three rows from the nearest person unrelated to the team, which was good because otherwise they would be swarmed with fans.
Okay, maybe that wasn’t true. Maybe it would just be Rozanov who would be swarmed with fans. But since Marleau was sitting next to him, he was glad no one was close enough to consider approaching.
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Rozanov said flatly, one eyebrow raised. “I have a boyfriend.” The players around him laughed. “Do you remember this? His name is Shane Hollander. You have met him, I think. Once or twice.”
Marleau frowned slightly as everyone else laughed. His friends just wanted him to open up for once. He never talked about his family, or his friends, or his girlfriends. Marleau had never met a hockey player he knew less about than Ilya Rozanov, and this was one of his best friends. He closed the door and kept them out of every detail of his personal life. He asked questions of them and sometimes even acted like he cared about the answers, but he never answered questions about himself. He always deflected. Always. Like now.
“You don’t have to hide her Roz, just bring her out to meet us,” Connors said, “I’ll make Casey come up for the weekend, she can sit with her at the game.”
Virtanen perked up from nearby. Even he had settled down recently.
“Ally would love to join too! They can make it a girls’ trip.”
“I think Anna will-“ Sokolov began in his thick Russian accent, but Rozanov cut all of them off.
“I have no secret girlfriend in Montreal,” he said, eyes serious. Then his expression lightened and Marleau knew a joke was coming. “I only have Shane Hollander. What, you do not believe me?”
“No, we don’t believe you, you weirdo,” Connors said, but everyone appeared primed and ready to let it go.
“Whatever, keep it a secret if you want,” Marleau said with a shake of his head.
-
4
February 2018
“Where’d Rozanov go?” Marleau asked the new winger Isotalo, “Grab him for drinks.”
“He left right after the postgame presser,” Isotalo said. Marleau could see his breath in the cold night air. His hulking figure had shrunk a few inches hunched over in the cold.
Marleau saw Connors walking out of the rink into the parking lot and waved him over too.
“To a bar?” Marleau asked.
“He said Shane Hollander, his ‘boyfriend,’ was coming over,” Isotalo said, making a face.
Marleau laughed, despite himself. Trust Rozanov to return to that to get out of anything he didn’t want to do. There’s no way the young Finnish kid was going to argue that he should come out with them for the evening.
“Weirdest joke ever, right? I bet it’s a girl,” Connors said when he reached them. Even though he’d missed the start of the conversation, it’s not like those words could be confused as being from anyone else.
Isotalo got into his car and they waved him off, telling him they’d meet him there.
“I can’t believe Rozanov would rather tell us he’s banging Shane Hollander than admit he has a serious girlfriend,” Marleau said with a shake of his head. There was no one else outside the rink, but he still spoke quietly.
“Do you think Jane’s in town?” Connors asked.
Marleau nodded.
“He’s weird about her, right?” he asked.
“He’s in love with her,” Connors replied. Marleau knew instinctively he was right. He just wasn’t sure why Rozanov wouldn’t admit to it. It wasn’t something to be ashamed of.
“Definitely. Someone should tell him he doesn’t have to keep sleeping around if he’s in love. Make Jane move to Boston and problem solved!”
“We just have to make sure he doesn’t up and leave for Montreal if she won’t leave the city.”
“No way he’d play in Montreal, he fuckin’ hates Shane Hollander so much he’s the butt of his favorite joke.”
“Right, no way he’d want to share ice time with him.”
“No way he’d want to share anything with him.”
They laughed together, but it was an odd sort of laugh with a weight to it. They were both a little sad for their friend that he couldn’t just talk to them and let them be happy for him that he was in love.
-
5
January 2021
“Good to see you man!” Marleau said, shaking Rozanov’s hand in the tunnels under the arena in Boston. He hadn’t seen his former teammate in a while. No matter how stoic they had to be on the ice during the game, they could smile and shake hands downstairs.
“I miss you playing in Boston!” Connors said.
“It’s not the same without you,” Marleau agreed.
“I miss you guys too,” Rozanov said with a grin. He gave them each a hug with a slap on the back.
“Those were the days,” Virtanen said with a grin. He’d left Boston too, but he was on his second contract with the team. He was probably hoping that someday Rozanov would come back around to Boston too, but it seemed unlikely with that contract Ottawa had given him.
“Wait, are you wearing a ring?” Marleau asked in shock, he held up his hands towards the mostly empty tunnel, “Everybody come quick, Rozy’s wearing a ring! Are you finally settling down?”
“It’s on his necklace, not his finger, relax,” Virtanen said with a laugh.
“This is Rozy we’re talking about and it’s a gold ring, you know this means something,” Connors disagreed with a grin.
“You and your girl take the next step finally?” Marleau asked, confident that he knew which girl this was. There was only one girl that Ilya Rozanov had ever loved.
“You’ve gotta let us meet this Jane now!” Connors said excitedly, evidently in agreement.
“Oh, she lived in Montreal, right? That’s super close to Ottawa,” Virtanen said as he thought back on Rozanov’s time with the team.
“I told you he’d leave us to be close to his Montreal girl,” Connors said, words directed to Marleau specifically. Marleau had never thought that Rozanov would leave at the time, so it had seemed like a joke, but Connors was right.
“Maybe she was in Ottawa the whole time,” Virtanen said slowly, thinking it over. “Maybe we were wrong about Montreal!”
Marleau was confident that Rozanov had met up with her after their Montreal games, but he wondered if he’d missed the fact that they’d met up after the Ottawa games too. Those cities weren’t that far apart, he could have seen her when playing both teams, Montreal was just more noticeable because Boston played them more often.
“Woah, woah, woah, slow down,” Rozanov said to laughter. He hadn’t actually said a word yet, he’d just let their conversation wash over them. “I never said it was about Jane.”
Everyone stared blankly at him. Marleau couldn’t process that it could be anyone other than Jane, but he had to admit that it had been a few years and anything could have happened since then.
“Who is it then, someone new?” Connors eventually asked.
“My boyfriend, Shane Hollander, obviously. I’ve been telling you that the entire time,” Rozanov said. He said it straight, but his lips turned up at one corner giving away his amusement. He was having fun, as he always did.
“C’mon Roz, be for real for once in your life!” Marleau said.
“I am being very real,” Rozanov said stoically, “Shane Hollander is the love of my life. And is my fiancé!”
They all collectively rolled their eyes and laughed, but fondly.
“Yeah, yeah, same old Rozy,” Marleau said, slapping his back playfully.
“You can take the boy outta Boston, eh?” Connors asked.
Rozanov winked in reply.
“Someday you’ll have to let us meet your girlfriend, you know that right? You can’t hide forever,” Marleau told him.
“We could stake out outside his house!” Virtanen said excitedly.
Rozanov’s lips were a flat line.
“I’m sure you will be very happy to say hi to Shane Hollander there.”
Everyone laughed again.
“Good old Rozy.”
-
+1
March 2021
“Oh, fuck me. You are never going to believe this,” Marleau said, jaw dropped, staring at his phone screen in complete and utter disbelief.
There, on the screen, was a photo that was making the edges of Marleau’s vision hazy and the thoughts that normally ran in a straight line stop entirely.
Ilya Rozanov kissing Shane Hollander.
“What?” Connors said, paying half attention while he pulled his shoes on after practice.
“No, you won’t believe it, like….he was telling the truth the whole time,” Marleau went on, too shellshocked to remember how to properly relay a story with a subject of a sentence included.
“What do you mean?” Connors asked, finally looking up.
“Remember Roz’s whole ‘I’m dating Shane Hollander’ joke?” Marleau asked. He was mid-Google search trying to figure out if the photo was faked, but there were a lot of articles that seemed to confirm that it was real.
“Of course,” Connors said, smiling rather fondly. It had been an inside joke with the whole team for the last several years Rozanov had played for Boston. Everyone knew it, even the players who’d joined the team after Rozanov had left.
“It was fucking true,” Marleau said, shaking his head. There was only the one photo, but it was pretty hard to miss that it was them.
“What do you mean it’s true? How could it be true?”
Marleau held out his phone eventually, giving up on the idea that it was fake.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Connors said. He didn’t say anything else, so he’d been struck pretty dumb by it too.
“I can’t fucking believe this,” Marleau said. “I can’t believe he just straight up told us over and over. For years. And we didn’t realize it was true.”
He shook his head. Other pockets in the locker room seemed to have similarly stopped what they were doing, with groups of players huddled over phones.
“He fucking trolled us for so many years,” Connors said. “I can’t believe he was laughing at us and we didn’t realize it.”
“That’s Rozy though,” Marleau said, just a hint of a smile crossing his face as he thought of his old friend. That had always been the way with him. Nothing had ever been an easy, straight answer. Everything was a joke or a chirp.
“Yeah, it definitely is,” Connors agreed.
“But is this Rozy?” Marleau asked finally, tapping the phone a little.
“I mean…he told us it was,” Connors said, “Like a hundred times. So I guess it is.”
“Fucking hell. His girl in Montreal was named Jane,” Marleau said, putting the heels of his hands up to his temples. “No fucking way. It was Shane Hollander the whole fucking time?”
Connors burst out laughing. And then so did Marleau.
It was too ridiculous to believe.
And there would be players in this same locker room who would be homophobic about it, but Marleau and Connors had always thought of Ilya as their friend, and still would.
“We were the butt of the joke about him being gay,” Connors said. “Or bi or whatever he is. That’s fucking amazing.”
“That’s Rozy, dude,” Marleau agreed with a grin, “Ego of the century. His confidence is fucking rock solid.”
Connors lowered his voice slightly.
“When did he start texting Jane?”
“Even before that fucking joke started,” Marleau said, shaking his head at himself, at all of them really, for not believing it. “We knew he was in love, and he told us who he was in love with, and we just didn’t fucking believe it. Wow.”
“Gotta love Rozy.”
“Yeah, I hope he never changes.”