Chapter Text
Hayden Pike had been best friends with Shane Hollander since their rookie season. Possibly about as long as that, Shane had been hooking up with some girl called Lily. Well, probably not quite that long, but for several years now. And Hayden had yet to meet her. As Shane’s best friend and just overall a curious person, Hayden was kind of dying to meet her. Now of course, it wasn’t exactly unusual for hockey players to have a regular hookup in any given city, but what was extremely unusual was that Hayden had never known Shane to hook up with anyone else on a regular basis. In fact, Shane very rarely hooked up with anyone at all.
On top of all that, things had been…different this year. Shane had been texting this girl more or less constantly since coming back from his cottage, which was not how things had gone in previous years. Before, Hayden had only seen notifications from her on Shane’s phone when they were in Boston and occasionally when they played Boston at home. He’d more or less guessed she must’ve been a Boston fan, which really? but she seemed to make Shane happy, so he was willing to overlook it.
“So when am I going to meet Lily?” Hayden asks as his best friend’s phone pings with yet another incoming text. They’re in Buffalo right now, but they’re playing in Boston next week.
Shane nearly drops his phone, “oh, uh.”
“And don’t say it’s not like that because clearly it is like that. You text all the time.”
Shane blushes and stammers.
“C’mon,” Hayden tries again, “you’ve been seeing this girl for what? Three or four years? And I don’t even know what color hair she has.”
“You want to know what color hair Lily has?” Shane checks.
“I dunno man, I’m your best friend. Shouldn’t I know if you’re more into blondes or brunettes? Wait. Let me guess. Brunettes. Rose Landry has dark hair.”
“That’s not-”
“Listen, man, I know you’re private about this stuff, or whatever, but it’s been years. And we play Boston next week so I just figured maybe we could all get dinner, or something?”
Shane sends Hayden a look. “Hayd. Lily and I don’t usually…get dinner.”
Hayden blinks at him a second before the realization hits. “Oh. Oh!”
Shane blushes furiously and turns back to his phone.
“I thought maybe you were dating now? Officially? You’re texting her like all the time, bro.”
“It’s complicated,” Shane says tiredly.
Well, that probably wasn’t an understatement. Hayden found himself wondering, for like the hundredth time, what made it complicated. Because Shane Hollander was about as uncomplicated as a person you could come by. He liked hockey and weird food and was earnest in just about everything he did. Hayden was sure Shane harbored deeper feelings for Lily, so whatever the complications were were probably on her side. Maybe it was because she lived in Boston and they thought it would be too hard to have a real relationship living in two different countries.
“Is it because she lives in Boston? Because almost any job you can get in Boston you can get in Montreal,” Hayden suggests, “I mean we know plenty of players whose families have had to move for them because of trades and stuff.”
Shane stands abruptly, “I’m going for a run,” he tells Hayden.
The message is pretty clear. Drop it. Hayden wants to, really, he feels kind of bad, being so pushy, but he’s also worried. Like maybe there’s a reason Shane is so secretive about this and it’s not just because he’s private. Like, maybe Lily is in witness protection, or something? No, that’s ridiculous. Maybe she’s married? It would make some sense but Hayden doesn’t really believe Shane would do that. Unless maybe she was only married because she needed citizenship. One of the guys on the team had gotten married three years ago for that reason. His girlfriend was from Portugal and her visa was expiring so they’d gotten married right before Christmas. The whole team had gone. They’d broken up over the summer, but agreed to stay married until she could become a citizen.
Hayden thought about it some more. Lily and Shane had been a thing for a while. Maybe that didn’t make sense. Unless Lily had only gotten married for the citizenship and was never romantically involved with her husband. And maybe she’d gotten her citizenship now, which was why she and Shane were texting more. But then why not be together? That stumped Hayden for a moment before he came up with the answer: because she’d only just gotten American citizenship and Shane was Canadian. He frowns. The theory is very convoluted.
Something else then. She could be famous. Maybe that's Shane's type: famous girls with flower names. He thinks for a second, trying to decide if he knows of any celebrities named Lily. He can’t think of any, and he’s not sure any celebrities live in Boston anyway. Maybe she’s a lot older. That makes kind of a lot of sense, actually. It would explain the secrecy and embarrassment. And also honestly, he kind of sees that for Shane. He’ll have to talk through this new theory with Jackie.