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When Shane Hollander was seven years old, he plugged the bathtub drain, filled the tub until the water nearly overflowed, and prepared to die. His mother, who wondered why the water had been running for so long, came into the bathroom just as his nose touched the water.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Drowning myself,” he replied, and he tipped himself forward.

His mom screamed and dragged him away by the shirt collar and tumbled back against the wall with her arms and legs locked around his little body. When his dad came home from work, he found them still like that — Shane’s mother sitting on the bathroom floor and rocking him, crying, her snot and tears dripping onto the top of his head. 

When Shane opened his phone and saw the hundreds and hundreds of notifications and all the missed calls, he heard tap water lapping gently at the rim of the tub. 

At first he entertained the delusional hope that maybe you couldn’t tell it was him. When the video started you could only see dick in ass, and the ass could really be anyone’s ass. But then the camera panned up a little and you could see the knotty silver scar on his shoulder, and then it drifted up a little higher and you could see Shane’s face shoved into the pillow. Every makeup artist and photographer Shane ever worked with told him he had a perfect nose and now that allegedly great nose came back to bite him in the ass. The straight line of it couldn’t belong to anyone else. 

He didn’t have the courage to turn the sound on. He could imagine what he probably sounded like, throaty and moaning like a girl.

In the video his eyes were screwed shut, probably because he’d been trying and failing not to picture Ilya Rozanov. This also bit him in the ass because it meant he hadn’t seen his hookup pull out the phone camera.

For nearly a year after he tried to drown himself, Shane’s mother would stand outside the bathroom while he showered. He wasn’t allowed to lock doors. Every other Tuesday, an office assistant would come to his class with a note and he would get to leave early so that his mother could take him to the clinic for therapy. He remembered nothing at all about those sessions, except that the walls were Pepto-Bismol pink, and that afterward his mom would let him choose a treat from the convenience store at the front. He always picked the French Onion SunChips. The first time, the cashier asked if Shane wouldn’t like some Cheetos or a candy bar, but he only ever chose the whole grain chips.

Years later, his dad reminisced about it.

“I remember your therapist was a young guy. Sensitive type of fella. Sometimes you would make him cry.”

Shane wondered what the hell a seven year old could say to make a grown man cry.

When the news dropped his parents were out shopping, which meant there was no one there to stop him when he got the keys to his car and started driving nowhere in particular.

The thing Shane didn’t understand was the timing. He was out of the fucking playoffs. Everyone had seen Marlow turn his brains to scrambled eggs on live television. He’d only just graduated from wearing a sling. A smart person would have banked that video and saved it for another season to use during a tied up playoff series, or maybe a rivalry game, and then drop it at the right time to get him benched. 

Ilya Rozanov was in the playoffs right now. Oh god, Ilya. He could never be seen near Shane again.

Shane found himself parked in the lot of a strip mall, unsure of how long he’d been there. The sun had set. A riot of birds descended on the power lines overhead, chirping and rustling and shitting onto the cars below.

Thump thump thump 

A dull pounding at the driver side window. He turned and saw his mother. She was wild eyed. Shane unlocked the door and she wrenched it open.

“Shane, honey, oh my god,” she said, and she tugged him out of the driver’s seat and into her arms. “We came home and couldn’t find you and I thought-“ she cut herself off. He let her pet his hair while she spoke.

She led him like a child to the backseat of their car, where his dad was waiting.

“How’d you find me?”

“You have your location shared on your phone,” his dad said, looking at him through the rear view mirror.

“Oh. I’m sorry. Wait, my car-“

“I’ll come pick it up tomorrow,” his dad said.

They drove home in silence. When they were back, Shane said: “I’m going to the bathroom.” At the nervousness in his parents’ eyes, he said: “I’ll be fast. You can wait outside.”

In the bathroom, he dropped his phone in the toilet and then washed his hands.

After, his parents steered his body to the couch, like he was a doll or an invalid, and pressed a mug of tea into his hands.

“Shane, I’m so sorry, but we have to talk about it,” his mom began.

“Did you see it?” He put the tea aside.

His mom pressed a hand over her mouth and nodded. 

Shane had a vision then of himself holding hands with all the ones in his family who’d come before him, linked together like a daisy chain. His mother, who devoted her every waking moment to nurturing a life that wasn’t hers, and his mother’s mother, who as a little girl ran away from the ashes of her hometown on bare and burned feet, and her mother before her, who gave birth alone behind a barn, cut her own umbilical cord, and then tied the baby across her back and returned to work in the fields that very same afternoon. It all came to an end here because Shane really wanted a dick in his ass. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, woefully inadequate. His apologies were the only thing he had left. “I’m so sorry, mom, dad, I really tried. I just couldn’t help it.”

“Shane, honey, no,” his mom said. She was stricken and Shane had somehow fucked up this part too. “You have nothing to apologize for, nothing.”

His dad was crying a little now.

Shane put his head in his hands. He wished he couldn’t see. 

Shane’s parents wanted him to sleep on the couch that night, but he couldn’t do it, couldn’t even do that small favor to soothe their worries. The open air of the living room made his skin crawl. They let him sleep in his bedroom. As he stared at the pockmarked ceiling and watched the fan blades turn he wondered if his mom had chosen to sleep on the floor outside his closed door like a guard dog.

Halfway through the night, he dragged his blankets to the closet and made himself a nest there to sleep cocooned in the dark.

The next morning his mother was drowning in a sea of phone calls and e-mails. A good son, a proper adult, would stand up and handle his own mess. Shane didn’t. His phone sat in a bowl of rice on the counter, back in his life like a bad penny.

The night before, sometime while Shane slept in the closet, Boston had been knocked out of the playoffs.

On that bathroom floor, Shane’s mother cried into his hair “why, why, why?” and that was how he learned people weren’t supposed to kill themselves.

He hadn’t meant anything by it. He was just tired, was the thing. 

Everything that was supposed to be fun for kids, like parties or school dances or pizza, made him miserable. No matter how hard he tried, he didn’t know how to act. He made no friends. His teachers didn’t like him. He embarrassed his parents. If being around other people was bad, being alone was somehow worse, because it gave him infinite time to think about how he was ugly and deficient and deeply annoying. Time had done nothing to fix these issues. Shane grew taller but never better. So he very sensibly looked down the barrel of the rest of his life and decided it would be best for everyone if he pulled the trigger.

A little time passed. The trade deadline waited just beyond the horizon. Shane’s whole career life was onboard a ship without a rudder, carried ever onward by the current, and he had no choice but to close his eyes and let the wind take him.

Hayden and JJ showed up on his parents’ doorstep sometime during the week after, Hayden with stubborn cheer and JJ declaring his undying loyalty with the force of one thousand suns. They did him the favor of not mentioning what the other guys were saying in the team group chat. 

Scott Hunter won the Stanley Cup and kissed his boyfriend in front of everybody.

“Wow,” his mom said.

“That’s brave,” his dad said.

Shane could spew black bile all over the television screen. In his whole life he’d never hated anyone more than Scott Hunter, because he knew this was how it would be written in the history books: groundbreaking Captain Scott Hunter bravely kissed his cute little boyfriend on center ice and everybody clapped; stupid Japanese slut Shane Hollander got caught with a cock up his ass. 

Shane’s parents eventually got brave enough again to leave him at home alone for a while. They went out, so Shane took out a notebook and watched old game tape on the living room television. It was probably a futile exercise, but in the wildly unlikely case some team would still want him next season, he would need to be better than the best. He would need to be hockey God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit all in one.

There was a polite, timid knock at the door. Shane ignored it. At best it was the postman, at worst it was a legal courier come to serve him papers from the team or maybe even the league itself that would nuke his whole life’s work. 

The knocks persisted, tap tap tap tap tap. So Shane gave up and opened the door and found himself face to face with Ilya Rozanov.

“You’re here,” Shane said, in place of anything useful or polite.

“Yes,” Ilya said. He looked so good. Shane had nearly forgotten how full and pretty his lips were.

(That was a lie. He was always thinking about Ilya Rozanov).

Ilya held in his hands a carton of perfect summer peaches.

“Can I come in?”

Shane let him in. Ilya toed off his shoes without being asked.

“How did you get this address?”

“I asked Marley and he asked around for me. He knows everybody.”

“And what are the peaches for?”

“Um. Your parents. They live here, yes?”

“They’re out,” Shane said. “But we can put them on the table.”

Ilya trailed Shane to the dining room and placed the fruit carefully at the center of the table. They made the whole room smell of an orchard.

“What are you doing here?” Shane asked.

“I texted. I called so many times. You did not answer.”

“I’m sorry. My phone,” Shane said. He gestured at the counter where the corpse of his phone lay buried in the bowl of rice.

“I worried, Shane,” Ilya said, his voice rising. “I worried so much. I checked the news every hour, I was afraid you would…”

“I would what? Kill myself?” 

Ilya flinched.

“I didn’t,” Shane said. He didn’t say wouldn’t, because that was kind of a lie.

Ilya turned his face away a little. Shane realized with deep horror that Ilya’s eyes were shiny.

“Ilya,” he said. “Ilya, I’m so sorry,” but Ilya only jerked his head as hot tears gathered up on his lashline, so Shane took Ilya in his arms and pressed his face into his shoulder. Ilya shook as Shane repeated: “I’m here, I’m here, I’m sorry.”

“This was not my plan,” Ilya said, sniffing a bit. “You were supposed to be the one crying and I was supposed to hold you like a baby.”

“We can do both,” Shane said.

“Do you know who posted it?” Ilya asked him, after a while. 

Shane nodded.

“You will press charges?”

“No,” Shane said.

Ilya pulled his head back, jaw tense. “What he did was a crime-“

“I know,” Shane said. “But I don’t think I can handle like…an investigation,” he said, because there was a large stone in his private life that he could not afford to have turned over.

Ilya ran his fingers through Shane’s hair and breathed out a frustrated huff. Then slowly, carefully, giving Shane more than enough time to pull away, he guided Shane forward and into a kiss. Ilya’s mouth was warm and tasted like summertime.

“Wow,” Ilya said, when Shane immediately began to harden against him.

Shane’s face burned. “Sorry. I just haven't been with anyone since Tampa. And I haven’t been able to…you know….”

“Jerk off?”

Shane made a face. “Yeah. I just, I don’t know,” he said. “I try to touch myself and I get so embarrassed. I remember that fucking video and how stupid I looked in front of everyone.”

“You didn’t look stupid,” Ilya said, suddenly fierce. “Never stupid. Nobody deserved to see you like that, the way I like.”

“You like seeing me like that?”

“I love seeing you like that,” Ilya said. “And every other way too. I love you.”

“Holy shit,” Shane whispered. They were so close he could count every one of Ilya’s wet eyelashes. “I love you too.”

They went upstairs to Shane’s room. The twin bed didn’t seem to be big enough for two large grown men, so Ilya took Shane against the wall. He gathered Shane’s wrists in his large hands and pinned them to wall on either side of Shane’s head and fucked him there in his childhood bedroom, nearly every inch of his sweaty body pressed against Shane’s back. If Shane could turn himself into a butterfly pinned to this wall he would, caught and preserved in one of his favorite moments. He always marveled at the way his body somehow made space for Ilya’s cock. When Ilya came inside of him, he covered the back of Shane’s neck in wet fluttery kisses.

Outside, a car pulled up on the driveway. The front door opened.

“Shane?” his mom’s voice called. “Are you home? Whose car is that up front? I’ve never seen it before.”

Shane sighed. Ilya let his hands go and wrapped his arms around his waist, pulling him into a hug. He tucked his chin against Shane’s shoulder.

“Okay,” Shane said. “Put your clothes on. Let’s go talk to them.”

What was one more dramatic revelation, anyway?

In Shane’s dreams a giant peach floated down the river. His mother and father waited at the shore to fish it out. When they opened it up it was rotten to the core, but they cried with joy over the peach pit anyway and they swaddled it like a baby.

6/1 update- line edits; and also wanted to drop this bit for anyone who might care: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momotar%C5%8D

There was a song I learned about this in school when I was like three and the image stuck in my head forever.