Chapter 1

When he first got the Reebok deal, Shane had thrown a fit. Well, ‘fit’ is perhaps an ungenerous word, and Yuna feels bad for even thinking it. Shane had been upset. “I like my shoes,” he’d kept saying, over and over, and Yuna felt helplessness bubble up inside her. It hadn’t been this bad in years.

“Shane, honey, you said you wanted this,” she said, trying not to let the sentence curl up into a question. Uncertainty wasn’t what Shane needed.

But Shane was stuck. “I like my shoes,” he said, and then he didn’t say anything, disappearing into their home gym. Yuna could hear the hum of the exercise bike for what felt like hours. She felt horrible: she resented Shane for acting like a child and she hated herself for her resentment. Mostly, she hated that she hadn’t seen this coming. She should have; Shane likes to stick to routine. Yuna knows this. It’s just, she hadn’t expected… Well, they are just shoes, after all, and Shane had been so excited about his first endorsement deal, and if he’d had an issue with it, he could’ve just said.

Eventually, Shane stumbled into the living room, where Yuna and David were sitting on the couch, watching TV. “Okay,” Shane said, very quietly. “I’ll wear the Reeboks.”

“Come here, honey,” Yuna said, and pulled Shane onto the couch between her and David. She piled a big heavy blanket onto Shane: the heavy fleece one printed with the Metros logo, the one he likes.

Years later, they are sitting on the same couch. Shane is snuggled under the same blanket, pulling it up to his chin with his good arm. They are watching Scott Hunter win it all.

“What did I say?” Yuna asks the room. Beside her, David laughs.

“You’re definitely a witch.”

“That’s not what I said.”

Shane isn’t watching Scott Hunter lift the Cup. He’s texting someone. Yuna frowns at him. He’s not supposed to be on screens. But Shane smiles at his phone, and Yuna decides to let it go.

And then.

The three of them watch, transfixed, as Scott Hunter kisses a man live on national television. Yuna is stunned. She doesn’t know what to say. The announcers don’t, either. Pretty big night for hockey, one of them settles on, and that’s a fucking understatement if Yuna’s ever heard one. Good for Scott Hunter, the other says, and Yuna fucking prays that’s true.

Yuna turns to Shane to ask him something—what, if he knew, if he suspected?—but she doesn’t. It would be in poor taste, she thinks, and then she looks at Shane. The look on his face is one she’s never seen before.

She reaches for him. “Shane—”

And then his phone rings, and Shane is scrambling to his feet, kicking away the blanket he’s tangled up in, rushing down the hallway to take the call. “What the—” is all Yuna hears before he’s through the front door and out of earshot.

Yuna swallows hard. She feels sick in all the worst ways.

“Hey,” David says. “You okay?”

Yuna turns to look at him. She thinks she might start crying. “Do you remember Wimbledon?” she asks.

David frowns. “Wimbledon?”

“We sat next to a Swedish princess or something, do you remember that?”

“I’m not following,” David says, equal parts gentle and confused. “What does that have to do with anything?”

That lunch with Shane, when he tried to back out, when he said that Rolex only wanted him to make their box less white—it was still pretty white, even with Shane in attendance—and Yuna had felt… God, just this overwhelming sense of wrongness radiating off Shane. He’d shown up late and flustered, and Yuna knew he was irritated about being served sparkling water instead of ginger ale because Shane was comfortable in the predictable. But then again, isn’t everyone?

And then Shane had left to go to the bathroom, and David had looked at Yuna and said, “Swedish princess?” in that lighthearted, bemused voice of his, and Yuna sighed and said, “I don’t know,” because she really didn’t.

Shane had come back a few minutes later much more in control of himself, and they’d had a nice lunch. A few months later, they had a lovely trip to Wimbledon. Shane hadn’t talked to the Swedish princess. Yuna was surprised to find herself disappointed by that.

And now, Scott Hunter is kissing a man, and Shane is fleeing the room, and Yuna is sitting on the couch feeling like something colossal has shifted.

“David,” she says, like a question.

“Yes?”

“Do you think…?”

Yuna doesn’t know what she’s asking, except she does, and she thinks David does, too.

“I think Scott Hunter is being incredibly brave,” David says, very carefully. “I don’t know if I’d be.”

Chapter 2

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes Yuna knows her son. She knows because it’s her job to know. Ever since that pregnancy test came back positive, Yuna has devoted everything to being a mother. She was one of the unlucky few to have morning sickness all through her pregnancy. Smile, love, her mother said, stroking her hair as she wept on the bathroom floor. This pain is the beginning of so much.

“Mom,” Shane says, and his voice is thick with unshed tears, “I need you to know that I really did try. I tried really hard, but, um… I just can’t help it. And I’m sorry.”

Over the years, Yuna has wished that her son was different. She remembers those moments now, shamefully. Shane, age ten, having a meltdown because she’d replaced his skate laces. Shane, age thirteen, refusing to eat the food that Yuna’s mother-in-law cooked because it didn’t follow the requirements of his sports performance diet. Shane, age eighteen, tearing apart his hotel room searching for the tie he’d picked out specifically for draft day. David had packed an extra, but Shane wanted his tie, and nothing else would do. Shane, age twenty-six, telling his mother that he’s gay without making eye contact.

There are more moments. Moments where Yuna remembered her mother’s words and wondered what that morning sickness was the beginning of, exactly. This pain is the beginning of so much… what? So much exhaustion, since her son was a colicky baby. So much disappointment, as her son turned three without speaking. So much shame, as her son told her in kindergarten that he didn’t want to speak Japanese anymore.

In Yuna’s heart, she knows none of this is Shane’s fault. He is the way he is: colicky and reticent and afraid of his peers.

“You have nothing, nothing to apologize for,” Yuna tells Shane now, his head cradled in her hands. “Look at me,” she says, because she needs Shane to see the look in her eyes as she says her next words. He doesn’t want to look at her. Yuna says it again. “Look at me, Shane.”

He does. His eyes are big and wet.

“I'm sorry that I made you feel like you couldn't tell me.” The words are ash in her mouth. She means them. For the first time, Yuna finds herself wishing that she were different. “I am so, so proud of you,” she says, because that is true. Her son has done it. Proved everyone wrong: the bigoted parents and their bigoted kids on his bantam teams, his grade one teacher who wanted to put him in the special education program.

I think Shane might be autistic, she’d said, and then she’d started talking about things like support needs and creating structured, predictable environments and Yuna’s response was, Don’t tell me what my son is, which was leagues more diplomatic than Fuck you, no he’s not. Hockey was hard enough for Shane already as a half-Asian kid with a Western last name, and she couldn’t imagine how much crueller it would be on him if he was autistic. He couldn’t be autistic. She wouldn’t let him be.

Because sure, Shane didn’t speak until he was four, but then he was speaking in full, deliberate sentences, and it was like nothing out of the ordinary had taken place. No one would ever guess he was a late bloomer unless Yuna told them, and then it was all, Oh, I never would’ve thought.

David’s family always had a passive-aggressive remark for her. So-called friendly advice on how to raise her child. Suggestions. Maybe he just wants to eat normal food, when Yuna expressed frustration with Shane’s restrictive eating habits.

You don’t know my son, she’d seethed internally. No one knows him but me.

Even with David. You know, he’d said one day, after Shane had melted down for the third time that week, sometimes I think that Shane’s teacher might’ve been onto something.

Yuna snapped back something about David not being around enough to know, which she knew would hurt him. Hockey programs weren’t cheap, and David was picking up extra work to help swing it.

David dropped it, just like Yuna knew he would, and Yuna went back to her decades-long campaign of trying to mold her son into something he was not.

“Please forgive me,” Yuna begs, because she knows Shane knows that she wishes he was different.

“I forgive you, Mom,” Shane says, choked up, and Yuna shifts so she’s holding her son in her arms, the two of them crying for each other and for themselves. “I love you,” he says, or maybe she’s the one who says it first, but it doesn’t matter, because the two of them are connecting, really connecting, for the first time in years.

Chapter End Notes

This is maybe not the kindest portrayal of Yuna. To be clear: I think she's awesome. I just also think that people are complex and contain multitudes. Works inspired by this one [Restricted Work] by MelancholyMorningstar Please drop by the Archive and comment to let the creator know if you enjoyed their work!