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When Rozanov takes off her baseball cap and tucks it under her arm Jane is surprised to see how long her hair is. It’s so long she goes from looking like a surly bear to a Sort-of Pretty Russian girl. Maybe a part of her thought that Rozanov would keep her hair short, buzzed maybe. It would be practical and she had the bone structure to make it work. Goddamn European genes.
So yeah, she kind of thought Lily Rozanov was pretty the first time they met. She was raised Canadian, on an all-girls hockey team, not blind. It’s also because she was raised Canadian that she tells Rozanov to smoke in a pathetic square of asphalt the first time they meet. When Rozanov doesn’t move, she leans on the wall right next to her, staring at her cigarette. This is awkward enough that she feels compelled to say something.
“I didn’t know you smoked.”
Rozanov gives her what can only be described as a look. Jane is used to looks. Again, all-girls hockey team, right? She sticks out a hand. Rozanov leaves the cigarette in her mouth and reaches to take it. It’s so cold Jane has to resist the slight urge to flex her fingers into the warmth of her palm. To her credit, the handshake only lasts a little longer than normal.
“I’m Jane. Jane Hollander.”
Rozanov shrugs. She knows Jane’s name. Jane knows hers. They play hockey, sometimes against each other, and one of them will win. Jane thinks it is very simple, really, to think like Rozanov. She nods and jogs back to her parents’ car, but politely remembers to say bye before she goes.
Rozanov stuffs her hand into a pocket like it brushed against something dirty; takes the cigarette with her other hand and puts it out against the cracked cement.
—
The baseball cap makes a reappearance in Toronto, when they’re shooting those ads for the CCM campaign (Hollander-Rozanov endorsed). When Rozanov skates over to join her on the bench, she doesn’t have her helmet on yet. Her hair is already twisted up, though, under the same Yankees cap. Jane watches as she sits down and scoots over so that their knees are almost touching. Rozanov smiles under her mouthguard and says, “Very pretty.”
Jane returns the compliment out of habit. She is used to teammates telling her things like Nice pass and You were great on the power play. Most of the time, they don’t bother to tell her she looks pretty. It’s noticeably hard to look pretty when your hair is slicked with grease and just stuck to your face under all your gear. She wasn’t like Romanov, who she discovered looked the same whether on or off rink. Her initial wariness had faded somewhat; the surly bear thing never resurfaced in her mind. If anything, Rozanov was more of a sleek hunting hound with ridiculously long eyelashes.
Rozanov shakes her head. “No, different. They put load of concealer on me for my eyebags. Bet they did not do anything to you.”
Jane doesn’t know if this is a joke or if maybe Rozanov really stood in the dressing room surrounded by all those stylists, thinking I wish I looked more like Jane Hollander. Still, she complains a bit about her eyeliner just to, you know, diffuse the situation. Rozanov says, “Yes, what I meant. Pretty.” Jane dips her head because she doesn’t know what to say this time.
After that the CCM photographers finish setting up and wave them over to the centre of the rink. They collect their sticks and stand around looking awkwardly (menacingly!) into each other's eyes for the better part of an hour. The director assures them they’re doing very well, compared to the last time they shot with hockey players from IIHF Men’s and they couldn’t stop laughing through the shoot.
Jane wrinkles her nose. “Guys.”
Rozanov bursts out laughing, too, after a startled second. This is fine, though, because they’ve almost got all the pictures they want and she looks even better now. Fine for the CCM team, she means. She doesn’t care whether Rozanov laughs or not. It’s weird.
When they’re done with the first half of the shoot they skate out to take a break. Jane does a couple of stretches to pass the time. Just warm-ups; calves, hamstrings, hips. They’re going to have to skate a lot for the next half to get the dynamic shots. Rozanov lounges around with a can of Seven-Up she got from the vending machine outside and Jane wonders what she even does when she’s working out. She’s lean and built in a frankly beautiful proportion.
Rozanov catches her eye and sloshes her drink around noisily. She grins. “You want? Better than your, what, ginger ale?”
Jane turns red, just slightly. She didn’t know Rozanov watched her commercials, much less the one with Canada Dry. “I can’t. I’m on a macrobiotic diet.”
Rozanov rolls her eyes and gulps the rest of the soda down. She flattens the can. “My name is Hollander and I am on diet. I won’t even drink dumb American soda.” Bait. Jane ignores her and goes back to her stretches. She holds every one for exactly eleven seconds, until her tendons start to hurt just enough. It’s a little kickstart to her brain. If Rozanov really stood in that dressing room thinking about eyebags and concealer, then she’s thinking whether Rozanov ever had to eat a healthy blend of whole cereal grains and white fish twice a day for six months straight, and how that can would make her feel insanely good for about five seconds before she threw up all over her skates. Whether -
“Aww, you look sad. I did not mean it, come on.” Obviously Rozanov hadn’t ever done any of that, because she has the guts to grab Jane’s arm and drag her along into the rink. Jane looks at her smile, the arch of her perfect canines, and she thinks, What a bitch. She follows her anyway.
—
The first time they kiss in public, Jane’s mouth hurts for days. This is half because Rozanov slammed into her, and half because she bit till it bled. It aches a ton to kiss with teeth and tongue, and Rozanov did it enthusiastically.
They were in Vegas, backstage. Everything good happened in Vegas. You could gamble, drink, kiss a girl and dip her like you’re on TV. All of the above. Jane did not gamble, because it was irresponsible, and she did not drink, because it messed with her cardiovascular health. She did not kiss and dip a girl; the girl kissed and dipped her. This was both irresponsible and messed with her cardiovascular health. If Jane wrote down Rozanov’s name on the reminder list stuck to her fridge, she would have to go in a separate column. One that said, Do not touch. Do not kiss. Do not engage. Jane wanted to crawl into her mouth, dirty with spit and vodka. She was going to find a way to compress her consciousness so that she only existed in flashes of time. Rozanov could wake her up when she came to Montreal and they could do whatever they wanted for twelve hours. Then Jane could get Arby’s with her for once, because she was pretty sure diets did nothing for people in stasis. Then they could play in the indoor rink and then Rozanov would pull the plug and she would go back to dreaming in solitude. Waiting for a sign, anything. Just waiting to wake up and let Rozanov touch her again.
This is in her own solitary flash of consciousness. When Rozanov pulls back, the feeling rises, swells, and evaporates. Her heart starts up again.
—
The first time Rozanov calls her Jane she gets up and leaves. It sounds so wrong like this. She wants to hear it for the rest of her life. She hates Rozanov’s post-sex voice. She wants to grab her by the nape and never let go, bite down and shake till she goes limp, wrung out.
She jams every button in the lift, then just gets out on one of the floors and stalks all the way down sixteen flights of stairs. She still has Rozanov’s shirt. It’s goddamn freezing at night in Boston; otherwise she’d - she doesn’t know - tear it off.
Outside, Jane cuts across an intersection and catches a bus that she rides till the end of the line. She regrets getting on as soon as it pulls into the terminal, cold and steel-fixtured. Suddenly, looking at the building. she wishes she had snatched Rozanov’s stupid jean jacket before she left. Denim didn’t have any right to be as warm as it was on that. She tries to remember what the jacket looks like, but finds that she can’t remember anymore. The last time she saw it was three years ago.
—
Jane feels stupid texting her stylist over a date, but it’s a date with Androse Landry. Vogue cover Androse Landry, who has dimples and has been a hockey fan since he was eight. Jane doesn’t mean to phrase this in a way that sounds like these are the only things she knows about him; these are just the most notable. Beyond the fact that he has half of the female population thirsting over, hating on, and devoting themselves to him in equal proportion.
So because she’s going out with an actual, literal movie star, she texts her stylist to come over and help her pick an outfit. Yes, she has a stylist now. She’s very loud and very young and Jane pays her way too much. But she tells Jane all the hot stuff, so.
While she waits she takes out her blender and makes herself a smoothie with green pineapple instead of kale since this is a Monumental step forward for her. She turns on her TV as she drinks her smoothie and watches some reality show for a minute. What she does not do is switch to TSN to watch playbacks of last night’s game. She already knows Rozanov scored a hat trick in what was almost record-breaking time, big deal. She could probably score a hat trick in actually record-breaking time.
Thankfully, Sasha rings the doorbell before she can go down the I’ve been hooking up with Lily Rozanov for ten years but freaked the fuck out when she said my name, period route again. Jane gets up to let her in and almost gets run over by a collapsible clothes rack.
“Wow, this is, like, a lot.” Jane says as Sasha dumps everything she brought on the rack. She thinks she even spots something that vaguely resembles snorkeling gear in the mix.
“It’s literally not! Have you seen Androse Landry? I know fifty girls who would cut an arm off just to talk to him.” Sasha fishes out a dressy blouse, holds it up for inspection, and frowns. She replaces it with a dark silk shirt and frowns even more. “I can’t figure out your season.” She supplies eventually.
“It’s NHL season.”
“No, your colour season.” Pause. “Wait, did you say that on purpose? Hey!”
Jane looks away, trying and failing to control her face.
—
They don’t text anymore, but sometimes when she stays up way past her fixed bedtime Jane will scroll all the way down her contact list to someone saved under Ilya. If you clicked on this, you’d find some unbelievably boring trash-talk about hockey players. And if you scroll all the way up, past the sexting and bad gossip, you’d probably start to put two and two together. That Ilya wasn’t really an Ilya. That Jane maybe likes not-Ilya a whole lot. That they’ve known each other for ten-odd years, but I love you or I miss you never crops up.
But you’ll never know, because Jane will never show you. Because after she looks at this Ilya for no more than five minutes she goes back to sleep in her Montreal apartment. Somewhere else in the world, in LA or Vancouver or Boston, someone else scrolls to a contact named Shane. And though they’ll be thinking the same thing, they’ll never tell.
—
Androse breaks up with her in true straight ally fashion, gently at first, then with a little more prodding. He never says anything outright - they’re still in public - but has a way of telling her what he means anyway. Jane thinks she should be a little more offended, but the feeling clawing up her gullet has nothing to do with offence. She smiles and nods and tells him, sure, maybe she likes girls. Maybe she would do better dating one.
After a carefully extracted promise by Androse to stay in touch, she steps outside and sits at a taxi stand for incredibly long. An insignificant part of her wants to go home and maybe drink five cans of ginger ale, then beat herself up on the treadmill for drinking said five cans. The other, significantly more vocal part wants to drive all the way to Boston and pull up by Rozanov’s driveway. She wants to see her ugly house and take her little tuna melt stacks out of their ziploc containers. She wants to go to the indoor gym with the ridiculous mood lighting. She wants, she wants, she wants. It’s all she ever does now.
—
They both get invited to 2017 All-Stars. Jane doesn’t scan the list for Rozanov’s name, she really doesn’t. But, well, if she smiles when she sees Captain next to her name and not Rozanov’s, you’d have to cut her some slack.
—
In the beachside bar in Tampa, Rozanov probably spots her before Jane spots Rozanov. She sweeps her gaze over Jane for one glorious moment, then turns back to the bartender. Like this, with her hair tossed over her shoulder and her long legs stretched out, she looks like the cover of a beach vacation ad. Jane doesn’t know what comes over her, but she stands up and pushes through the crowd to slide into the seat right next to Rozanov.
”Hey, teammate.” She says. Rozanov gives her another look, but she doesn’t shift away. The bartender comes over to hand Rozanov her drink and she downs half of it in one go. Finally, she tells Jane stiffly, “Nice shirt.”
“You too,” Jane stops, because her chest isn’t, like, exploding and the world is still spinning. “Lily.” Lily Rozanov looks up and she doesn’t smile, but Jane can see her, really see her. It’s kind of the best thing ever.
—
Rozanov finds her on the sand embarrassing quickly that evening. She creeps up from behind like some sort of jungle cat and pounces as soon as Jane turns.
”Wow, you’re fast.” Jane says. She can feel the heat from Rozanov slipping through the thin layers of linen and cotton on her. It’s very distracting. Rozanov bares her teeth.
”Yes, very. They give me prize for it.”
”Everyone knows I’m faster, Rozanov. It’s the facts of the game.”
“You are fast only when you - ” Jane digs her palm into Rozanov’s mouth because what is she even thinking. Anyone could see them right now; Jane with her face red and Rozanov with strands of hair plastered to her mouth, smiling even under the hand. The sun is doing something to her curls that makes them coppery at the tips and brown further up. Abruptly, Jane realises she should probably let go. She moves her hand. Rozanov leans back and crosses her legs at her ankles.
”The Metros is doing well, yes?”
Jane tries not to look hopelessly happy. “You keep up?”
”What can I say? There is this girl on Metros and she is my biggest enemy. I hate her so, so much I watch all the games.”
“I, uh, I watch some of the Raiders’ games too. You’re very good in them.”
“Yes? I am their star player.” Rozanov leans over so her leg nudges Jane’s slightly. They sit there like that for a while, calves not-touching, before Jane asks in one breath, “What room are you in?”
Rozanov smirks. She says, “Fourteen ten.” Jane glares at her.
”You’re not serious.”
“No, very serious. I ask handsome counter man for fourteen ten.”
Jane sniffs and refuses to think about what this means. “Well”, she starts, “I could drop by later. And we could talk.” Rozanov rolls her eyes and gets up, hauling Jane up by the wrist.
“You’re still so boring. I’m Jane Hollander and I’m going to sneak to your room to have serious talk.”
Jane is about to say something boring about the importance of communication between fuckbuddies-slash-in an actual relationship, but she sees the glint in Rozanov’s eye and knows she understands, really. She’s just trying to wind Jane up (as per normal).
”Eight?” Rozanov calls out as she walks away.
Jane watches her retreating form. “Eight.” She agrees, and doesn’t even have to turn to hide her smile.