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“You look pretty.” Across from her, Sai Hollander turns pink. “Handsome! You look pretty handsome.”
They’re standing at the side of the rink, waiting for the director to tell them to get to their marks, near centre ice, where bright lights look to be melting the rink. Across from her, Hollander is wearing her new Montreal uniform, the Voyageurs logo large on her chest, and her number stitched onto the sleeve. She’s not wearing a helmet; neither of them is. Liliya is pretty sure that the director wants their faces visible, maybe to draw more attention to the discrepancies between them.
“Is okay. You can call me pretty.” In fact, Liliya hopes that Hollander will call her pretty again. “You look pretty too.”
She does. Her hair has changed since Juniors. She first saw it at the draft, a little shorter, her hair tapering at the end instead of finishing in a harsh single line. It’s subtle. She wants to ask about it, but she doesn’t think it’s the type of thing Hollander expects Ilya Rozanov to notice. In some ways, that only makes her want to point it out more.
“You’re making fun of me.” Hollander says this like it is a fact, and her eyebrows squish themselves together a little bit, forming a cute little wrinkle in between them.
“No, no,” Liliya says. “They put make-up on me too. Pretty… Is the word people use when there is make-up, yes?”
“It’s not really about make-up,” Hollander says, her face shifting from the disgruntled look into something more explanatory. “Pretty is normally used for girls. Boys are supposed to be handsome. They get… angry, sometimes, if you call them pretty.”
“I am not mad,” Liliya assures her. “I am… progressive? I do not know the word in English. Progressive, but for women.”
“Are you trying to tell me you’re a feminist?” Hollander looks oddly upset by this, the furrow in her eyebrows returning with a vengeance. It’s making her a little hard in her cup. “You don’t need to make fun of me. I’m a girl. So what? I still play better hockey than you.”
“Mhm. No. Wrong. You do not play better hockey than me,” Liliya says, a shit-eating grin on her face. “But is not because you are girl. Is because you have a weak backhand.”
“Oh, fuck you,” Hollander says, rolling her eyes, but losing a bit of tension in her shoulders as she does. “I do not have a weak backhand.”
“Is why you lost Juniors,” Liliya continues, enjoying the way Hollander’s face gets a little more red with every second she spends riling her up. Her rosy cheeks make the freckles look more obvious, even through the thin layer of concealer they’ve put there.
“At Juniors, where I scored a hat-trick?” Hollander’s voice is flat, not nearly as angry as it might have been if she wasn’t secretly enjoying this, just a little bit.
“Where you lost to me.”
“You’re unbelievable, Rozanov.” The sound of her father’s name drops her mood all at once, any playfulness escaping her in seconds.
“We’re ready for you two!” calls the PA. “Can we get you at centre ice?”
The pair of them skate over. Hollander’s expression shutters into a kind of professionalism, going blank in the eyes with her mouth folding into something of a smile. It’s a pity, she thinks. Hollander looks so much more beautiful when she looks alive, even if that means her mouth is set in a bit of a frown.
“We want you two to have some tension between each other,” says a new man. Liliya thinks he might be the creative director. “You’re opposites, you know. Fire and ice, Bear and Voyageur, man and woman. You shouldn’t get along, but there’s still chemistry there.”
“Chemistry?” Liliya asks, unfamiliar with the word.
“He wants us to look like we… um.” Hollander is the colour of a tomato. It makes her freckles stand out more obviously. “Like we might kiss.”
“Oh!” Liliya feels herself smirking. “Is easy for you, then. I am very kissable.”
“You—” Hollander cuts herself off. The creative director smiles a little wildly, and a camera flashes.
“Perfect! Just like that!”
When the shoot finishes, the pair of them step off the ice together. Absent-mindedly, she follows Hollander as she walks towards her locker room, almost following her inside when Hollander turns around awkwardly.
“Um, this is the woman’s locker room, Rozanov.”
Liliya blinks, and her stomach twists itself in a knot. Across from her, Hollander’s knuckles are white from the way she is gripping the door. Her stance has gone wide, and her jaw is clenched. Does she think—?
“Ah. Yes. Sorry.” Liliya says. “Is just habit. Other hockey players I play with, they are boys, yes? So normally we go to same locker room. Was just not thinking, promise.”
“Right,” Hollander replies, her voice shaky. “Well, the men’s room is across the hall, so.” She swallows, then takes a step backwards and begins to close the door. “Bye. Nice working with you.”
“Hollander, wait, please.”
Hollander, thankfully, stops closing the door. Liliya swallows.
“I want you to know, I would not…” Liliya swallows. “I would not do that to you. To anyone. Is not right.”
“Oh. Um…”
“You do not need to say anything,” Liliya says, shaking her head. “Is okay. I will go. Was nice working with you too.”
Then, like a coward, she fled to the men's locker room. She refuses to acknowledge that terrible feeling in her stomach as she showers, instead blasting herself with water set to as cold as the public showers would let her. She tries not to think about how she had wanted this to be more, maybe. At least, she had wanted this to be a chance for something with her and Hollander. Instead, she had to stuff her foot in her mouth.
When she finishes cleaning herself up, she’s walking towards the arena’s exit when she hears Hollander calling her name.
“Hey, Rozanov?”
When Liliya turns around, Hollander is standing there with her mother. Staring at them together. It’s clear that most of the Golden Girl’s looks come from her mother. They have the same thick dark hair, though her mother’s has caramel coloured pieces of it, with equally dainty bones that Liliya is sure will continue to reveal themselves as Hollander ages.
“Hollander.” Liliya says. She extends her hand towards her mother and prays that it does not shake. “Mrs. Hollander. Is very good to meet. I am Ilya Rozanov.”
“Nice to meet you as well, Mr. Rozanov.” Her words grate on Liliya’s ears.
“I was wondering if you wanted to come to dinner with us,” says Hollander the Younger. “My dad was meant to come, but he got unexpectedly held up in Ottawa, and the reservation is for three.”
Liliya feels like she might stumble from the words alone.
“Hollander. You want me to come to dinner… with you?”
“You should probably call me Sai,” she says, though the words seem to make that pretty colour return to her cheeks. “Since my mom is also Hollander.”
“Sai.” Liliya says, trying the feel of it in her mouth. “Ilya, then.”
Her lips quirk upwards a little. “Il-ya.”
Her name, his name, whoever’s name it is, falls off her lips a little clumsily, but the pronunciation is close enough to its true Russian version that surprises her. When she pairs it with the cute half-smile that had preceded it, it’s the first time that hearing it doesn’t feel physically painful. It’s not nice. Just different.
“That’s not how the commentators say it,” says Sai. “They always call you Il-lee-ya.”
“They are stupid Americans,” She huffs. “But your pronunciation… is pretty good. For first time.”
“It sort of sounds like French,” she says, “Il y a. It means there is.”
Liliya can feel the way that Mrs Hollander is observing the conversation, the way her eyes narrow as she watches the pair of them laugh and blush at each other, like they are children. She wonders what she is thinking, if Sai had to drag her mother over here when all she wanted to do was keep her little girl safe from her male, Russian rival. She doesn’t think that Sai told her what she thought was happening in the locker rooms. Liliya was sure that there was nowhere they’d be standing anywhere near her if she had.
“Is very nice offer,” she starts. “But I would not want to… what is the word? Interrupt?”
“You wouldn’t be intruding,” Sai tries to reassure her. “Right, mom?”
“Right,” says Mrs. Hollander. “Besides, the pair of you are going to be playing a lot of hockey together for the foreseeable future. It might be good to get to know each other.”
“I, ah. Okay. Yes.” She nods, swallowing. “I will come. Where are we going?”
The Hollanders take her to a Japanese restaurant, looking out onto Lake Ontario. The mother-daughter pair seem familiar with the place, asking to be seated near a specific painting. As they are guided to their seats, Liliya begins to realize that it is in the most private corner of the restaurant, which, she’s realizing, was good foresight from them. As they pass the tables, nearly all of them seem to start whispering as they, particularly Sai, walk past.
“Is always like this?” she asks Sai. “The pointing and whispering?”
Sai grimaces a little bit, her pink lips pressing together into a thin line.
“Basically.”
“I thought they maybe exaggerate when they say Canada is hockey-crazy,” Liliya admits. “I see now that they’re not.”
“It’s not about the hockey,” says Mrs. Hollander. On the drive over, Liliya learned that she is named Yuna, though she has not been given permission to call her that. “It’s about Sai. I mean, yes, Canada is hockey crazy, but most players still aren’t going to get hounded in the streets. Sai has been getting a lot more attention. For obvious reasons.”
The corner of Sai’s mouth twists downwards. Mrs. Hollander spots it too.
“You’re in public, honey.”
Sai’s pretty, bland, media smile appears on her face.
When they are seated, Mrs. Hollander orders for them in Japanese. While Liliya has had sushi before, she figures that the two Hollander women are probably more well-versed in it than she is.
“Do you speak?” she asks Sai.
“Ah, no,” Sai says, avoiding eye contact a little bit. “Mom never really spoke to me in Japanese very much. I understand a little bit? Mostly phrases that my, um, grandparents would say to me, but they spoke English too, so there was never any reason to speak it.” She shrugs. “So all I’ve got is English and French.”
“Still, bilingual.”
“So are you,” she points out. “And I would say that Russian and English are far more different than English and French, so I’d say that is probably more impressive.”
“Not quite bilingual,” Liliya says. “Maybe one and one half?”
“Are you kidding?” Sai asks. “You’re definitely bilingual. Two languages is two languages.”
“I still need help sometimes,” she admits. “Especially with media. They talk very fast.”
“Oh God, yeah, I hate the media,” Sai commiserates. “It’s always the same question for me.” She glances at her mother, but it happens so quickly that Liliya might have imagined it. “Anyway.”
“I ordered us some sashimi for you, Sai, and wakame,” says Mrs. Hollander, finally finishing with their meal. “I wasn’t sure how comfortable you were with raw fish, Rozanov, so I got you some Japanese style fried chicken. I thought it might be the most familiar of the options.”
“Thank you,” Liliya says. “Is very nice of you, to think of me.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” she waves her off. “Now, how are you feeling about Boston?”
“Well, Sai was telling me is a nice city,” she says hesitantly. “People like it there.”
“Are you billeting?” she asks, sipping on a glass of an alcohol she doesn't recognize by smell, from a small clay-looking cup.
“Yes, with Marleau,” she nods, then turns to Sai. “Are you?”
“No.” She shakes her head sharply. “I got an apartment.”
Her face takes on the same expression it made when she had steeled herself at the locker room door. Liliya understands immediately what she is not saying, almost feeling silly for not thinking about that on her own. Her mother places her hand on her thigh reflexively, squeezing it once. It does something painful to Liliya’s heart, simultaneously something she has lost and something she never had in the first place. The pain compounds, folding over itself into something new and terrible.
“Ah. Is good idea, probably,” she admits. “I do not know what other Voyageurs are like.” She pauses. “Is… Is it hard for you, being only girl with many boys? For team bonding.”
Sai grimaces.
“Sometimes,” she admits. “There’s not really anything I can do about it. Mostly I just try to get them to think about me as a hockey player, instead of a woman. I show up early so I can get in my base layers in my locker room and put my equipment on with the rest of the guys, so I don’t miss out on that part.” She frowns. “At least, that’s what we worked out with my old team. I would have to ask the Voyageurs about their plan. I don’t want to see anyone’s dicks if it makes them uncomfortable, or something.”
Saying this makes that pretty blush return to Sai’s face. Liliya barks out a laugh.
“They would be very lucky to have attention of pretty woman like you,” she says genuinely. “Most of Montreal looks like they have met bad side of hockey stick.”
Sai lets her own laughter escape her in return, while Mrs. Hollander makes a disapproving tutting sound, with a smile of her own betraying her.
“You can’t say that!” Sai admonishes her lightly. “Those are my teammates you’re talking about!”
“Is just practice for ice,” Liliya says, her grin turning mischievous. “Lots of chirping in future.”
As they laugh, their food arrives. Liliya’s fried chicken is stark in contrast to Sai’s raw fish and salad, another measure of difference between them. Liliya tries not to let it bother her as they eat and talk for the rest of dinner. Mrs. Hollander asks if she has any other sponsorships lined up (Yes, in Russia with some drink company. Not sure about others yet) and if she is using a Russian or American agent (Russian, of course). They also speak about other, more personal matters, and Liliya learns that the Hollanders put Sai on skates almost as soon as she could walk. Conversely, they learn that Liliya was brought into the sport through her mother’s love of figure skating.
“Was your mother not able to make the draft?”
A deep inhale. Two.
“Ah, no. My mother, she died when I was twelve.”
Immediately, both Hollanders go through their own set of facial expressions. Sai’s seem to shutter into deep sadness, while Yuna reaches for the pity she is more familiar with.
“I’m so sorry, Ilya,” Sai starts, but Liliya waves her off.
“It was long time ago,” she says, like a liar. She can see the next question before it comes, so she says, “It was an accident.”
The Hollanders gracefully change the subject after that.
The rest of dinner proceeds as normal. Liliya maybe laughs more than she thought she would, and Sai smiles more than her critics would probably believe. When they finally make it back to the hotel, Liliya watches from the corner of her eye as Sai steels herself about something.
“I was thinking that maybe we could text?” Sai asks. “If we’re going to be friends?”
“Are we going to be friends, Hollander?” Liliya says, her voice deepening involuntarily. “Just friends?”
“Definitely just friends,” Sai replies. “I don’t date other hockey players.”
Liliya blinks. “What?”
“There’s too much professional and personal overlap,” Sai says, shaking her head. “I’ll never be taken seriously in the League if I’m dating another player. There will always be these questions about whether I’m playing as hard as I can against them, if I let them win, or worse, if they let me win. I would be a laughing stock.” Her face settles into this determined little frown. It would be so cute if the news she was delivering wasn’t so devastating. “So I don’t date hockey players.”
“What about AHL player?” Liliya asks, trying to distract Hollander from seeing the disappointment she is sure is on her face.
Sai scrunches her nose. “If I were to date a player, they would have to be as good as I am, someone who could challenge me,” she says. “Other players always love to give their opinions on my hockey, and they always think that they’re better than me, even if my stats are objectively destroying theirs. At least if they gave me a challenge, some of that would be meaningful.”
She then immediately turns the colour of a tomato. God, she is so cute. Liliya wants to kiss her. To bite her, maybe.
“So, if I was in different league,” Liliya starts, “You would date me?”
“Don’t flatter yourself Rozanov,” Sai looks like she is trying to huff, but she is smiling again, and that blush only gets redder.
In the end, they exchange phone numbers.
“I will give you fake name, yes?” Liliya asks. “For contact?”
“Why would I need a fake name?” Sai asks.
“You want everyone to know that Sai Hollander and Ilya Rozanov text?” Liliya raises a single eyebrow. Sai huffs in response. “I will have fake one too. Call me Lily.”
“Why are you giving yourself a girl name?” Sai asks.
“You want whole team to think you have boyfriend?”
“No.”
Liliya makes a gesture with her hands, as if to say, well…
“Well, what will my name be then, Lily?”
Her heart does something that she didn’t think it was really capable of, fluttering in her chest, while simultaneously screaming and begging for more of it, to hear it again and again.
“You have middle name?”
“A middle name?” Sai asks. “Jane, why?”
“You will be Jane,” she declares.
“Why don’t I get a boy name?” she asks, frowning.
“Will not be so weird for teammates to see me texting a woman all the time,” She shrugs. “I sext pretty women all the time. Would be harder to explain random man.”
“We will not be sexting,” Sai hisses.
“Da. Yes, obviously.” Liliya waves her off. “We are friends. I remember.” She winks at Hollander.
“Friends, yes,” Hollander agrees verbally, but there is a disagreement buried in the pretty brown colour of her eyes; Liliya can see it. “Just friends.”
Maybe Sai Hollander doesn’t date hockey players, but Liliya thinks that there still might be a chance for her to make an exception.