After the Gold

by Erin McRae

  Katie watched as Brendan worked to integrate her words into his reality. It was like criticism from a coach. You took it in and no matter how much it pissed you off, you did what you had to do. Brendan was nothing if not dutiful. Sometimes that made the way they cared for each other even harder.

  “Okay.” He seemed to gulp for air. Katie understood. She too felt like she was drowning in this conversation. “No making out. No propositions. And no thinking ahead of where we are right now.”

  “Thank you,” she said, but Brendan wasn’t done talking.

  “I’m going to assume that the next move, if and when there is one, will be yours. But I’m not going looking for it. So you’ll need to be clear. Small words, complete sentences, possibly hitting me with a two-by-four clear. Can you do that for me? If and when?”

  Katie nodded. She would do anything for him. She just hoped her feelings would ever be that clear about anything.

  Chapter 10

  THE LOCAL TV STATION

  Sacramento, CA

  GETTING UP AT THE CRACK of dawn because Katie wanted to practice was one thing. Getting up at the crack of dawn for a media appearance after a difficult conversation with her was another. Brendan didn’t want to perform for cameras; he wanted to be with her. He wanted to heal her body and her heart and all her fears. But no one could do that, for Katie or anyone else. All he could do was stand by her on her terms.

  The studio did have at least one major thing going for it: Coffee. Katie seemed cheerful. If last night’s conversation had left her feeling better, he was glad of it. He let himself bask in their easy banter.

  Makeup took a little longer than it usually did thanks to his eye. He’d covered the bruise with foundation before he left the hotel, but not well enough for TV cameras. He hoped no one asked about it on air. When Katie, seated in the chair next to his, reached out to take his hand — as she’d done hundreds of times for the endless appearances they’d done like this — it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. Brendan exhaled and let himself sink into it.

  By the time they were seated at the news desk with the hosts, he was enjoying himself. Brendan loved talking about their sport, loved sharing his passion with everyone watching at home, and loved doing anything at all with Katie. The hosts ate it up when he and Katie bantered back and forth on camera, teasing each other gently and finishing each other’s sentences. Brendan knew Katie struggled to be gregarious — she hated to be on camera unless she was skating — but no one watching her could ever tell.

  “So, now that the Olympics are over, can you give us any hint about what’s coming next for you?” one of the hosts, a woman with her blonde hair styled in a sleek bob, asked.

  Katie brushed a lock of her own hair behind her ear. “We’re really excited, there’s a lot of opportunities out there for us. But right now we’re focusing on the tour and taking things one day at a time.”

  The other host was a man in a suit with a checked tie and a pocket square that didn’t match. Brendan and Katie would have commented on that unfavorably had he been on one of the makeover shows they liked to watch.

  “Now that the Olympic pressure is off, you must have a little more time for fun,” he said. The question was conspicuously leading, but Brendan knew better than to give him what he was looking for.

  “A little,” Brendan said. “We’ve gotten to do some sightseeing while we’ve been on the road. And we get to sleep later than we used to.”

  “Brendan found a really cute bar in Portland,” Katie put in. “It had shuffleboard.”

  If she had meant for Brendan to be offended by that little dig, she had failed. He knew he deserved it. Also, it was funny.

  Undeterred by their dodge, the first host said, with an eager look on her face, “Since you’re America’s sweethearts, I have to ask. Are either of you seeing anyone right now?”

  Brendan held his breath. There was no great secret to keep, but it was such a mess of a question. For a moment he was angry at how intrusive it was, but then he looked over at Katie. He watched as she gave a broad, playful smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

  “I don’t think I understand the question,” she said, making it clear she meant exactly the opposite. “I see a lot of Brendan if that’s what you mean.” The hosts laughed and exchanged meaningful looks. “Other than that, no.”

  The interviewer gave a knowing smile and looked at Brendan. “And you?”

  If Katie thought playing this game was a good idea, who was he to ruin the fun? “A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell.”

  The words had seemed immensely clever in the moment before he said them, but once they were out of his mouth, Brendan wanted to bury his face in his hands. What he had said had far more specific implications than the way Katie had threaded the needle of that question.

  You, Reid, are a human disaster, he thought.

  Behind the desk, Katie gently kicked his ankle. Apparently she agreed.

  DESPITE THE EARLY-MORNING media horrors, the rest of the day went well enough. During rehearsal Katie didn’t seem on edge. She even suggested they try out more of the modifications to the Harbin program Brendan had been working on.

  Brendan was both surprised and relieved; those changes were usually anathema to her, which meant he rarely got the opportunity to test them out. Whatever shift their conversation last night had brought about, they were moving forward, together, as he always wanted to be.

  That good feeling continued through that night’s performance. They nailed their own routines and during the group numbers Katie was playful and energetic beyond what the performance required.

  That good mood faded — for them and everyone else — after the show when he and the rest of the tour gathered outside the venue to board their bus. This was an overnight drive, so it should have been a sleeper bus, with bunks. Except there were no bunks.

  “Why is it all seats?” Natalya asked.

  Leo looked somewhere between miserable and resigned. “The back axle of the bus we were supposed to get cracked in half. Due to a long series of screwups which are entirely out of my — or apparently the bus company’s control — there are no other buses with bunks.”

  Natalya folded her arms over her chest. “So we have this?”

  “’Fraid so,” Leo said.

  Justin looked around as he climbed on board. “How are we supposed to sleep?”

  “Badly,” Shane said.

  “Do we think the luggage rack could support my weight?” Yume mused. “Because that’s like a bunk.”

  Brendan looked at Katie. “Separate seats or joint seats?”

  “Joint,” she said immediately.

  Brendan sighed in relief, grateful for the logistical solution and their newfound equilibrium. That would make tonight marginally less unpleasant than it could be.

  Most the girls could lay down across two seats and possibly be intermittently comfortable. But he was tall and broad and wouldn’t fit. Even Katie likely wouldn’t have much luck. She was tall for a skater and the tallest woman on the tour. The best they could hope to do was lean on each other.

  “This sucks,” Katie grumbled as they got underway. She had her knees were tucked up to her chest and her shins pressed against the back of the seat in front of her.

  “I agree,” Brendan said. “Strenuously.”

  “I’m going to hurt all over tomorrow. Hell, I hurt all over now.”

  “Is that your knee, or just ... everything?”

  Katie side-eyed him. “Everything. Definitely everything.”

  Good. The last thing Katie needed was anything to aggravate her injury.

  For a few minutes she looked out the window in silence, the lights along the highway playing across her face. “I wish we were going to any other city but Denver.” She spoke so quietly Brendan could hardly hear her.

  “Why’s that?”

  “A hometown show and our official retirement announcement are going to be hard enough without a night like this.”

/>   AS UNCOMFORTABLE AS they were, at least he and Katie had each other. David and Lena were making do very much the same way, with David leaning against the window and Lena leaning against him. The rest of the tour was faring somewhat worse. Natalya and Haruka were doing competitive stretches in their seats and quickly verging into Cirque du Soleil territory. Natalya was multitasking that with facetiming her mom’s new puppy. Towards the back of the bus, an initially friendly argument between Tyler and Shane about video games was growing snappish and unpleasant.

  “Okay,” Katie finally said, pulling out her phone and unlocking it. “If nobody’s getting any sleep anyway ....”

  She put on one of their warm-up playlists, the one with European electropop they used when they were dragging and unhappy.

  “Really? This?” Brendan rolled his head sideways to look at her. “It’s one in the morning. What are you doing?”

  Katie grinned and nudged his knees. He had to stand so she could get out of their row, but she didn’t slip away. Instead, she stood right in front of him so they were toe-to-toe. “Come and dance with me.”

  “In the bus aisle,” Brendan said, amused.

  “We’ve danced in stranger places,” Katie offered.

  “I’m not sure that’s true.” They’d hardly danced at all since they’d broken up after Annecy. Pair skating was arguably a form of dancing, but on the ice there were rules to follow and a job to do, which kept their mutual desire within bounds. Moving together on a dancefloor involved skirting real danger. They’d tried to avoid it.

  “Amsterdam,” Katie said. “The night the canals froze.”

  “That was a good night.” That had been two years before Annecy, when all their mutual tension had still been entirely unspoken.

  “And not just ’cause we won Worlds the next day.” Katie gave him a coy smile that made his stomach flip.

  “David and Lena’s wedding,” he said. “In the kitchen at that cabin everyone was staying in.”

  “Oh God. That was a wild night. You know, I never did find the shoes I lost.”

  Brendan grinned and cast back in his memory for another time. Katie found it first.

  “In the —” She cut herself off.

  But Brendan’s brain had already completed the sentence for her. In the shower. They’d been dating then, if whatever crazed mess of sex and frenzied emotional confessions they’d been doing for those few brief weeks after Annecy counted as dating. They’d come back to Brendan’s apartment from practice, sweaty, exhausted, and keyed up and had taken their argument about some piece of choreography right into the shower. Katie had demonstrated exactly what kind of intimacy she wanted them to portray on the ice. The hickeys across his collarbone had taken a week to fade.

  Here and now, Brendan could see the look of horror on Katie’s face. Not at the past, but at the profound inconvenience of knowing both of them were picturing the same moment.

  “That tiny awful bar in Toronto, when our flight to Tokyo got cancelled,” Brendan offered. They hadn’t really danced, but there might have been some vague swaying and a lot of complaining. It did, however, serve to move the conversation along, which was the right thing to do.

  “I’d forgotten that,” Katie said. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Now come on!”

  Brendan watched as Katie turned from him and walked down the aisle, holding onto seatbacks to keep her balance, game face on. When bad situations didn’t freak her out completely this was what she did: make the best of it, without acknowledging that the situation was rotten to begin with. It made her a good team player, but, as Brendan had learned over and over again, could make her impossible to pin down when there was a problem that needed solving one-on-one.

  He watched, torn between amusement, concern, and a desire to pull her into his arms as she danced the rest of the way up the aisle, grabbed Shane’s hand, and pulled him out of his seat.

  “Hey, can we get some mood lighting back here?” Katie shouted.

  “Only if you can make sure we avoid a personal injury lawsuit!” Dr. Meyer called back.

  Despite that admonition, the lights overhead went out. Brendan waved his phone around in a pathetic attempt to simulate club lights.

  “Give me that. You’re doing it wrong,” Natalya said, hanging up her call with the puppy and snatching Brendan’s phone away from him.

  She held her own glowing phone in one hand and Brendan’s in the other as she waved her arms around rapidly, curling and twisting her wrists.

  “Like glow sticks, see?” she said as she continued the show.

  Katie laughed in delight and worked on getting everyone else onto their feet. David picked Lena up and twirled her around in the tiny space the bus aisle allowed. Tyler stood and offered his hand gallantly to Yume. Brendan watched in awe as Katie transformed the moment from a desperate attempt to keep people happy to one of genuine joy.

  “Is the plan to be so annoying they get us a better bus?” Justin asked as he got to his feet.

  “The plan,” Katie declared, “is to not be miserable.”

  All the other skaters were dancing around her now, but Katie was not satisfied. “That means everyone,” she called out.

  Brendan wanted to join in because it would make her happy, but the whole situation felt like a pile of bad decisions waiting to happen.

  She walked back down the aisle to him, weaving between the other skaters, and held out her hand. “Even you.”

  Brendan couldn’t refuse her. With a deep breath he took her hand and waded into the crowded mess at the center of the bus. He had to duck so as to not get hit in the face by his own phone which was still a very active part of Natalya’s dance routine.

  “Better,” Katie said with an approving nod.

  He stood there awkwardly, not sure how to take the next, obvious step. But she was right. This — the bus situation and everyone’s attitude, but also his own heart — was better. He loved Katie, and he didn’t have her, but they were still together. It wasn’t the world as he wanted it, but it was good, even if it never changed. She was miraculous.

  “We’re going to be exhausted by the time we get to Denver,” he said.

  “We were going to be exhausted anyway.” Katie shrugged.

  “That’s true,” he said. “That’s fair.” Sometimes it was hard not to repeat himself nervously in front of her, even after all these years. She was just so much. “I guess I’m supposed to dance, but ....”

  He trailed off. Her own dancing slowed as if in time to the words leaving him. So much remained that could not be healed by this moment. Not Katie’s knee, not his sadness, not the uncertainty of their future. Neither he nor Katie knew how to fix any of it. But they had, despite everything, each other. They could, he hoped, figure this out.

  Something on his face must have given away the roil of emotions within him, because suddenly Katie frowned, and stepped into his arms.

  “I know,” she said. “I know.”

  THE BUS REACHED THE outskirts of Denver as the sun was coming up. Most of the tour would get a chance to catch a couple hours’ sleep in an actual bed, but after a shower and a change of clothes Brendan and Katie were back at work.

  Brendan only briefly regretted that they’d elected to stay at the hotel with the rest of the tour rather than their own homes. He really would have liked a little time alone with Katie far, far away from skating, except, of course, his gold medal from Harbin hung on the wall in his living room with all his other medals.

  His apartment also had absolutely no food in it, and Katie had sublet her room while they were travelling. So however odd the choice, hotel it was. But the hotel was far from the most bizarre thing about being in Denver.

  No, the most bizarre thing was that their plan to officially announce their retirement from competitive skating had somehow turned into them being presented a key to the city by Denver’s mayor.

  “I can’t believe we had to give up breakfast at our dine
r for this,” Katie muttered, adjusting her sunglasses against the glare. The mayor was giving them a speech welcoming them back and congratulating them on their Olympic win.

  “You, as you so often remind me, are the one who wanted to win the most,” Brendan retorted. There was no bite in the words. It felt like old times, standing shoulder to shoulder with Katie against cameras and absurdity. “And since we won, the consequences of winning are that people like to take pictures of us. Smile and look grateful.”

  “I am grateful,” she insisted. “But I also really wanted pancakes. Everyone already knew we were retiring anyway.” Katie leaned against him, just for a moment.

  Brendan was glad she was able to make light of the event. Even he had mixed feelings about making their retirement official. One era of their life may have been coming to an end, but as absurd and exhausting as the bus ride — and Katie’s impromptu dance party — had been, it had loosened something between them.

  He tuned back in to the mayor’s speech in time to hear him thank them for the tourism boost they would provide the city. Brendan didn’t think that was true at all. People would come to Denver for the reasons they always came to Denver — skiing, corporate conferences, and legal weed.

  He chanced another glance over at Katie. She was smiling, but a muscle in her jaw twitched. She was definitely thinking the same things and, like Brendan, was also trying not to laugh. She turned towards him. Brendan had never been so happy for sunglasses; had he been able to see her eyes, he would have lost it right there.

  “Don’t make me laugh,” he whispered to her.

  “Why not?” she asked through her clenched teeth.

  “Because everyone’s going to think we’re high if we’re up here trying to stifle giggles.”

  “I hate you,” she hissed.

  “You don’t.”

  “I wish I did!”