After the Gold

by Erin McRae

  The words were eerily similar the ones they’d exchanged after their stairwell fight in Portland, but the mood couldn’t have been more different. The giggles were starting to slip out of both of them now, despite their best efforts. For a moment Brendan wondered how to cover this — kissing Katie quiet was absolutely out of the question — but she, always media savvy, faked a coughing fit.

  Brendan patted her hard on the back, like he was trying to be helpful and wasn’t in as bad shape as she was.

  “You’re a mess,” he said.

  Katie quieted herself and stood straight again. “Yeah,” she said, slipping her hand into his. “But I’m your mess.”

  Chapter 11

  BEFORE THE SHOW KATIE Is Even More Nervous About Than Usual

  Denver, CO

  PERFORMING ON HOME ice was hard for Katie. The show wasn’t at their rink of course, but they were back in their chosen city, performing for a crowd that had rooted for them since she was sixteen. These people had shown up to watch her and Brendan at gala events and tour performances for more than a decade, including through defeat, while they were with other partners, when they were attempting their comeback, and now, finally, in victory. Katie would be grateful to them forever and desperately wanted not to let them down. She changed into her first costume, did her makeup and sat while Brendan did her hair with more nerves than usual.

  To her relief, that nervous energy sharpened her skating rather than caused mistakes. Being under the spotlights with the audience cheering wildly for them felt good. After their heart-to-heart and that absurd yet strangely lovely dance party on the bus, everything was working. There was enough unspoken desire between them to make everything flow beautifully, but not enough brittle anger to make their edges shallow or throw their timing off.

  “I don’t know how you guys do it,” David said as he, Lena, Katie, and Brendan stepped back into the tunnel after the joint pairs number. “You two skate so close, I always think you’re going to crash. But you’re always perfect.”

  “We are, aren’t we?” Brendan winked at Katie, ruining the moment entirely.

  She was glad. Otherwise, she would have been tempted to step closer to him, wrap her arm low around his waist, and lean her head on his shoulder. While that would have felt wonderful, it wouldn’t have been helpful.

  Katie had asked Brendan for time, and he had granted it so graciously. But she wasn’t a fraction of the way closer to knowing what to do when this whole thing was over.

  AFTER THE CLOSING NUMBER Katie rushed back to the dressing rooms, put on a short-sleeved black dress Brendan had helped her pick out and touched up her makeup. Transitioning from performance mode to social mode was a challenge no matter how many times Katie had done it.

  Brendan met her again in the hallway outside the dressing rooms. He looked model-perfect, as he always did for these things. His dress shirt was open at the collar with one more button unfastened than strictly necessary, his jeans showed off his backside to excellent advantage, and his hair looked artfully tousled instead of what it really was: sweaty and standing on end because he kept running his hands through it.

  “Hey,” he said. “How are you doing?”

  “Honestly? Pretty jumpy.” Meet and greets made her nervous. These were people who needed things from her. While those things were theoretically small and easy to give, there were often vitally important to receive. Katie didn’t want to screw it up.

  “Why? We’ve done this a million times before.”

  “True. But it’s Denver.”

  “Yeah,” Brendan said, nodding thoughtfully. “I get that.”

  “I don’t understand why people come to these things,” she said as they walked to the room that had been set up for the meet and greets.

  “Why not?” Brendan asked curiously. “People like watching us on the ice, and they like meeting people who do stuff they like.”

  “I get why people pay to watch us skate. I get why people want to meet us too, but autographs? A handshake? Awkwardly posed photos?” She always felt like her understanding of this particular part of her job was just out of reach.

  “You never wanted to meet your heroes when you were a kid?”

  Katie shook her head. “Not like this. I wanted to meet them on the ice. As competitors.”

  When she was little there had barely been money for ice time and lessons and coaching. There certainly hadn’t been money to shake anyone’s hand. She would do that when she arrived. And eventually she had.

  Now, she and Brendan had to spend the next hour standing together, smiling and shaking hands and saying thank you for the endless gifts of stuffed animals that would get donated to a children’s hospital at the end of the evening. Katie asked little girls about their best jumps, their fastest spins, and the rabbit fur jackets — some synthetic, but too many not — that were de rigueur for the under-twelve skating set.

  Most of them would do something interesting and satisfying with their lives, but likely none of them would ever do this. They’d never get the kind of adventures Katie had enjoyed — but they also would get to escape the terrible days, the injuries, the obsessing over scores, and the brutal insecurity.

  At least Brendan was having fun. Katie smiled to herself as he signed a young boy’s skates, chatting with him about the struggle of choosing figure skating when his friends had all chosen hockey. Brendan would make a good coach. He was personable and charming; of the two of them, he reliably knew what to say to people.

  Like when a girl and a boy — Katie thought they might have been thirteen — asked him what his and Katie’s secret to success was. Katie never knew how to answer that question without sounding smug or defensive. But Brendan looked between them and smiled.

  “You guys a pair?”

  The two nodded.

  “Do the work, every day. Don’t hate yourself if you screw up, because you will. Out there, on the ice, you’re your own worst enemy.” He glanced over at Katie as he said it.

  “A little on the nose there, yeah?” She smiled to take out the sting. She had no desire to fight with Brendan right now, but his words had, she knew, been meant for her as much as for the kids.

  “I’m not wrong,” he said.

  I know you’re not. But easier said than done.

  “He forgot the most important thing, though,” Katie told the kids, with a sidelong glance at Brendan to make sure he was listening. “Find a partner you trust with your life. Even when it’s hard. Even when you’re not getting along. Find someone you can’t imagine skating without. And keep them.”

  The kids exchanged glances at that, startled and shy. Katie wondered if she should look away; the light bulbs going off over their heads weren’t meant for anyone else to see.

  They all made small talk for a few more moments, but Katie continued to watch as they walked away. When they reached the doors, their hands slipped into each other’s.

  “Remind you of anyone?” Brendan asked.

  They did, painfully so. She remembered being that age, angry and ambitious and so insecure. She’d been sure of only two things: Brendan and that they were going to win everything together.

  “We did not have our shit that much together at that age.”

  “That’s for sure.” Brendan slung his arm around Katie’s shoulders and squeezed her into his side. “But we figured it out.”

  We figured out how to win, yes. The rest of it? I’m not so sure.

  STAYING AT THE HOTEL instead of their own homes had been a perfectly reasonable logistical choice, but a less reasonable emotional one. They were in Denver. They should have been hanging out in Brendan’s living room, eating cookies from their favorite bakery and gossiping about everyone on the tour. Instead, after the show, they took the van with everyone else back to the hotel. The group stood around the lobby talking until Leo reminded them how early the bus was leaving in the morning. People startled to trickle upstairs to their rooms. Brendan and Katie took the elevator up to their floor but then
kept talking outside of the elevator bank.

  Katie didn’t want to leave him yet. Brendan didn’t seem to want to go either.

  But eventually, he checked the time on his phone and looked at her. “It’s almost one in the morning.”

  Twenty-four hours ago they’d had their dance party on the bus. It felt like a year ago. A very good year, after a string of bad ones.

  “So much for getting a decent night’s sleep in a real bed,” Katie said ruefully.

  Neither of them made a move to leave. Which wasn’t good. They were either going to have to say goodnight and go their separate ways, or accept that they couldn’t. Which would mean crashing together in one bed. Which would be a terrible choice.

  Probably.

  Before Katie could talk herself further out of — or into — a bad decision, Brendan took a step forward. Katie’s heart pounded loudly in her chest. Adrenaline made her limbs feel suddenly cold. Were they going to do this?

  “Goodnight, Katie,” Brendan said, his voice warm in her ear. He gave her a hug.

  Katie could only barely return it. “Goodnight,” she replied automatically. Disappointment and embarrassment made her face burn. Of course they weren’t going to go to bed together — platonically or otherwise. She’d asked for space and time to think, and Brendan was giving it to her.

  She felt him press a kiss to the top of her head before he turned and walked down the hallway to his room. Katie dug in her jacket pocket for her room key so she didn’t have to watch him go. God, what is wrong with me?

  Natalya was already asleep, or at least lying in bed with an eye mask on and her headphones in, when Katie slipped into their room. She was glad. She couldn’t have faced her right now.

  She toed off her shoes and dug pajamas out of her suitcase, then shut herself in the bathroom. She was too wired to sleep and desperately needed a shower.

  Under the spray, Katie tipped her head back, letting the hot water massage her scalp and pound over her aching muscles. The bathroom was pristine white tile, stocked with anonymous shampoo and soap. The whole room was anonymous, with no history and no future. Katie wanted to be somewhere she had both. She wanted to be at Brendan’s apartment, taking a shower there because they had dinner plans after practice and it was easier than going to her own place. She wanted the familiar gray and green tile and the little details that made the place a home. His bathrobe on the back of the door. Her spare hairdryer on the counter.

  Brendan had asked her if she wanted to move in once, a year after they’d started skating together again. Not, he had hastened to say, as any kind of romantic gesture, but because he had the room and it would be less unpleasant for her than staying in a house with a bunch of other skaters. Besides, she slept on his couch half the time anyway.

  All of which was true. But Katie had flatly — and in retrospect, not very kindly — refused. She was still sure that had been the right decision. But she sometimes wished it hadn’t been and that she had chosen differently. Like this moment, right now.

  Katie gasped and shuddered. Her eyes stung, and it wasn’t because she’d gotten shampoo in them. She was crying.

  She wrapped her arms around herself and turned to face the spray so that it poured over the front of her body, across her chest and down her thighs. She was tired, and lonely, and homesick in the middle of the only city she’d ever come close to loving. She wanted Brendan to be here, his arms wrapped around her instead of her own.

  You’re just tired, she told herself. Being on the road sucks. Touring is exhausting. Your knee hurts. Of course you’re miserable.

  All of that was true. But none of it was the point.

  THE NEXT FEW DAYS WERE uneventful, at least by touring standards. Off the ice she and Brendan were what they’d always been: Best friends. Seatmates. Dinner companions. But they sat too close. Held hands. Traced each other’s fingers when they were lying side by side on a bed in Shane and Andrej’s room, watching a movie with everyone. It was maddening, confusing, and absolutely delicious.

  They weren’t sublimating everything anymore. Somehow, that made the desire that they brought to their performances burn even brighter.

  Maybe being together wouldn’t be the end of skating, she thought one day at rehearsal, watching Brendan goof around on the ice with Natalya. Maybe we could still make it work. It wasn’t like she would stop wanting Brendan once she’d slept with him. Desire didn’t go away; it transformed.

  SOMEWHERE ON THE ROAD between Chicago and Philadelphia, Brendan and Katie were the only two people awake, lying in bunks across the aisle from each other. They’d started taking advantage of these quiet moments when everyone else was asleep to be together. Now that they weren’t road roommates, they had so little time that was just the two of them.

  “What would you think of me doing more of our choreography?” Brendan asked.

  Katie shifted to get more comfortable on her side. These bunks were terrible. “You’re already doing it. It’s not like we’re adding new numbers to the tour at this point.”

  “I don’t mean for the tour. Not this tour, at least. I was thinking for ours. Or just ... whatever else we do.” Brendan tucked his knees up closer to his chest. He was wearing basketball shorts and an old T-shirt. Katie wished she could press her forehead against the soft cotton, warm with the heat from his body.

  “You feel ready to do that?” she asked in lieu of being able to touch him.

  “Honestly? Yeah. I mean, it seems terrifying. But if this is something I want to do, I have to actually do it.”

  “But what would you do it for? We don’t have another season coming up.”

  “We don’t,” Brendan said slowly, like he thought she was being dense. “But we have our tour coming up. And then ... whatever happens after that. Before we know it we’re going to be in New York dealing with all those meetings. So I want to be prepared. Or at least have some idea about what our next programs might look like.”

  Our next programs. The words were thrilling. Katie had loved this point in all their other seasons. The anxiety about competing hadn’t kicked in yet, and for a few weeks she could simply enjoy working and planning with Brendan. Except they weren’t going to compete again. Ever.

  “Can I show you what I have in mind?” Brendan asked, when Katie didn’t say anything else.

  “Sure.”

  Brendan handed her his phone open to the music app. “First two tracks.”

  Katie glanced at the screen. “These are good songs.”

  “I know. Listen to them.” When Katie put one of the earbuds in, he went on. “Okay, so here’s what I’m thinking ....”

  He’s being so incredibly kind, Katie thought. So generous. For her, tour programs could never match the excitement and satisfaction of competition programs. But while she struggled to be more than her dodgy knee and her anxiety, Brendan was trying so very hard to remind her that they could still do so much together. Even if it wasn’t what they most wanted.

  That thought, as much as her enjoyment of the songs and Brendan’s ideas, made her smile. Brendan’s mood seemed to lift as she did so. They always were so in sync with each other.

  “Do you ever wish,” Brendan asked, taking back his phone and scrolling through it to find the song he wanted her to listen to next, “that we had one more season in us?”

  Katie squinted at Brendan. “I don’t know how to answer that question.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean ... of course I want another season. I love this. I don’t know what else I could possibly do with my life.” Katie paused to try to gather her thoughts. “But also ... we won. Once, and gloriously. For a whole five minutes we were the best in the world. We can’t replicate that. And it would break my heart to compete again, on Olympic ice, and lose.”

  “Second place isn’t losing, Katie,” Brendan said, as if silver or gold were the only possible outcomes for them.

  “It would feel like it.” No matter how many times she’d put on a game
face for the cameras and talked about how pleased she was with their work and their performance, any time they’d come in anything but first she’d felt like a failure, unworthy of anything.

  “Seventeenth place didn’t feel like losing.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Katie asked. She remembered her own devastation, watching his short skate and seeing his scores. She reached her hand across the aisle that separated them, as if she could reach through the years and hold his hand on that miserable day too. “You didn’t even make it to the free skate.”

  Brendan closed his hand around hers. “I mean, that part sucked. But we were so far down the list, it hardly hurt. If we’d been closer, like you, I think .... No, I know. It definitely would have felt worse. As it was, I got to go to the Olympics. It’s what we dreamed of since we were kids. It was incredible.”

  “We’d already been to the Olympics,” Katie reminded him.

  Brendan gave her a scornful look. “It’s not the kind of thing that gets old.”

  “I was so nervous, that first time, I thought I was going to die.” The memory of that anxiety — it had bordered on terror — could still stop her as she walked down the street.

  He smiled fondly. “I know. I remember.”

  Of course he did. Brendan was well-acquainted with her anxiety. After all, he’d grown up right alongside it. In many ways, he accepted it as part of who she was better than she did herself.

  Katie looked down at their hands, twined in the dark over the gulf between their bunks. “For what it’s worth, you did make it better.”

  Brendan’s fingers twitched in hers, almost as if he were embarrassed. “You just needed to let off some steam. Anybody could have done that for you.”

  “I wasn’t talking about the sex.” Katie was relieved they could talk about this, that they could joke about it. “Or, well, not only the sex.”

  “I’m flattered, I think?”

  “I mean,” Katie said, keeping the tone light and teasing though her stomach churned with nerves at the words. “I didn’t sleep with anyone at Stockholm. You slept with everyone.”