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Ilya thinks it might’ve been a mistake, finally going to Shane Hollander’s apartment. Finally taking him apart in his bed. Finally confirming what he’s suspected all along: that Shane hasn’t done this with anyone else, that Ilya is the only one. The thought stokes something possessive and needy within him. He likes being the only one who knows Shane like this, who has Shane like this. He doesn’t want anyone else to touch Shane, to taste him, to put their hands where Ilya’s hands were first.
Shane kisses his forehead when Ilya collapses into the bed after his shower, and Ilya wants to keep him. The thought startles him out of bed, even though he has another hour or two before anyone at the hotel would notice him missing. (Connors is used to Ilya missing curfew; he always covers for him because he’s a good roommate, even if his methods for covering aren’t always great. Half the team probably thinks Ilya has some kind of disease based on the number of times Connors has told someone Ilya is in the bathroom with an upset stomach when Ilya is actually out somewhere getting laid.)
Ilya should leave quickly—he needs to keep moving, like a shark, and maybe if he does the thoughts of staying here, keeping Shane, turning this thing between them into something real and serious and permanent can’t catch up with him—but he doesn’t. He lingers. He lets Shane kiss him slowly in the kitchen when they stop to pick up Ilya’s coat and shoes. He lets Shane walk him down the stairs. He lets Shane natter to him about the Olympics and takes his time tying his shoelaces.
He kisses Shane again in the stairwell, soft and sweet, like maybe he’s allowed this one good thing. It just makes him want to stay, want to chase Shane back up the stairs and rewind the whole night to start again.
He leaves, and every step into the alley and toward his waiting cab is like fighting against a riptide determined to pull him back to the door, back to the apartment, back to Shane. It will fade. It always does.
Except this time it doesn’t. Boston flies to Detroit (win), then to St. Louis (loss), then Nashville (a tie then a loss in overtime), then back home for two back-to-back games before the Olympic break starts, and the whole time Ilya feels the absence of Shane, as if Shane hasn’t been mostly an absence in his life the entire time they’ve known each other, as if this time is any different. (It is. It’s so different that Ilya is reeling from it.) He can count the hours they’ve spent together on one hand, probably, but somehow Ilya knows the exact shape of him in the empty space beside him in his bed, or in his kitchen, or in the seat next to him on the team plane. He knows the width of his shoulders where they would fit opposite Ilya’s in the shower. Sometimes as Ilya is falling asleep, he can feel the press of Shane’s lips on his forehead, the weight of his hand on Ilya’s hip. Ilya wants to be held by Shane just as much as he wants to hold him, wants to tuck up against Shane’s chest with his ear pressed to it and listen to the steady thumping of Shane’s heart. He wants to sit on the couch with Shane and hold his fucking hand and watch a movie. He wants to sit in a dark, moody restaurant across a table from Shane with his foot hooked around Shane’s ankle where no one can see. He wants to kiss Shane on center ice where everyone can see.
He wants to bring Shane back to Moscow and introduce him to his mother. Of all the things he wants, this is the most damning. There isn’t a single person in Ilya’s life anymore who knows what happened to his mother, except Svetlana, and he’s never once been tempted to tell anyone. But he sees Shane’s face and it’s like he’s biting the words back.
I can’t stop thinking about you, Jane texts him, one week after Montreal. Three days before Ilya leaves for Sochi. Ilya starts a reply, then deletes it. Then starts another, and deletes it. It’s a strange little role reversal in their usual texting back and forth. Shane texting, Ilya drafting and deleting and never sending.
He goes running. In Boston. In February. It’s minus ten degrees outside, and his lungs burn with the cold. His face is numb. He should’ve worn gloves. He’s halfway between the practice rink and home, and Coach is going to kill him if he gets frostbite. He ducks, without really paying attention, into one of the few businesses on the block that’s open. It’s a Sunday, he realizes a little belatedly. Regular people measure their weeks in work days and weekends but Ilya’s life is organized into game days and not game days, and today is not a game day (tomorrow is, the last one before the Olympics).
The little shop is crammed with uplit glass cases filled with jewelry and it’s probably the worst place to try to kill time to warm up. If it were a bakery or a bookstore he could get away with lingering, but there isn’t much to do in a jewelry store without buying something. Ilya supposes he could pretend to be interested in buying something, and then say he needs time to decide if anyone asks if they can help him.
He approaches one of the cases, just to sell the charade. Loitering by the door is probably more suspicious than browsing. He finds himself staring at the ugliest collection of earrings he’s ever seen and moves along to the next case. It’s a slight improvement; the top row is gold lockets, maybe he’s buying one for his niece. (She is too little now for a locket, and even if he does buy one for her to grow into, Andrei will sell it for coke money.)
The next case is bracelets and charms for them, maybe also for Ilya’s niece. Or Svetlana. She had a silver charm bracelet growing up. She never wore it, but her mother would get her a new charm every year on her birthday, something to remember the previous year by. Her favorite had been the tiny Eiffel Tower the year she turned ten, a reminder of a family trip to Paris over the summer.
The case in the center of the horseshoe is engagement rings: twinkling diamonds, sapphires that are so dark blue they almost look black, emeralds that look fake they are so green. Ilya’s mother had worn a ring with an alexandrite in it; he used to love to tilt his head to try to spot the red inside the green, to find the lighting where the color changed. It always worked best at the dinner table with candles lit.
There isn’t any alexandrite in the case. It isn’t as popular here, Ilya thinks.
The next case is filled with more wedding rings. Bands this time, wider and heavier than the delicate engagement rings. Ilya stands staring at them. They all look more or less the same. Gold rings are gold rings. He takes a step closer. Some of them, he realizes, look a little fussier than the others. That’s not right. Something simple, Ilya thinks. Nothing ornate or flashy. Something almost boring, at first glance.
He finds what he’s looking for in the third row. Shiny and gold, but flat on the surface rather than curved. He wonders about engraving. Something special, hidden, just for them.
Maybe not. Maybe that gives too much away. He doesn’t know how it works, who would do it. If they’d tell someone.
The woman who comes out of the back room a moment later startles when she sees him. She didn’t hear him come in. She asks if she can help him. She doesn’t blink when he says he needs two of the same ring, just asks if he knows the sizes. He doesn’t, so she measures his finger and he guesses that Shane would be about the same, maybe a little bigger. She says that he’s lucky, she has both in stock.
He spends two thousand dollars. He has no idea if that’s too much; it’s not like he’s done research. She puts them in the same oval box, side by side. Ilya brushes his finger across the top of them, feeling the smooth surface. The metal is cold to the touch, and it sends a little jolt through him. This is insane. But for the first time since getting into his cab in Montreal, he feels like he can take a full breath, like he isn’t aching just from missing Shane.
He puts the box in the safe in his closet when he gets home. He can return them after the Olympics.