After the Gold

Chapter 4-3

IN THE DRESSING ROOM Brendan leaned his head against his locker. Then he picked it up and thunked it back against the metal. Repeatedly.

Shane patted Brendan on the shoulder as he walked past. “Hey man. How’s it going?”

“Situation absolutely normal.” Brendan looked sideways at Shane, not bothering to hide how tired and annoyed he was. “Thanks for asking.” Complaining out loud made everything feel marginally less shitty, though.

Shane shrugged. “Don’t worry. She’ll come around.”

“Keep dreaming,” Tyler, Brendan’s least favorite person on the tour, said. Brendan decided to ignore him.

“Well, she hasn’t yet,” he said to Shane. “And she’s had twenty years. Or four years. Or ten hours. Depending how we’re counting.” His relationship with Katie was so long and so complex, sometimes it exhausted even him.

“You need to be clear about what you want,” Shane said unhelpfully, pulling open his bag and rifling through it. A few feet away Justin, two-time men’s world champion, was putting the finishing touches on his hair. They’d gotten off the ice less than ten minutes ago, and already he was showered, dressed, and perfectly styled. Brendan didn’t know how he did it.

“Oh, I’ve been clear.” Brendan straightened up and reached for his towel, scrubbing it through the sweaty mess of his own hair. He never tried to hide the torch he carried for Katie. Skaters were the most gossipy people in the world, and Brendan had no poker face, so why waste the energy?

David gave Brendan a sympathetic look from where he was sitting on a bench unlacing his skates. He and his wife Lena were a Canadian ice dancing pair from Vancouver and had taken silver in Harbin. They’d been skating together almost as long as Katie and Brendan, but their off-ice relationship was much more functional: They’d gotten married four years ago, the summer after Stockholm. Brendan and Katie had gone to their wedding. Not as dates. Technically.

“Have you talked to her?” David asked quietly.

More than I talk to any of you. That was half the problem wasn’t it? The only person Brendan wanted to go to for advice about Katie was Katie, which was easier said than done.

“Sure. We talk all the time.” And that was the other half of the problem. They didn’t need to communicate more, they needed to communicate more relevantly.

“Actually talked. About your deal.”

“We haven’t had time since Harbin. Last night was the closest we’ve gotten, but we made out instead and now everything’s a mess. And when I tried to talk about that, it turned into an argument.”

“It turns into an argument every time you two talk about anything,” Justin muttered.

“That’s because they’re not f*****g,” Shane pointed out helpfully.

“Thanks, both of you, so much.” Brendan turned back to David and lowered his voice, not that that would stop anyone from eavesdropping. “We were fine as long as we channeled whatever feelings we had for each other into skating and ignored them everywhere else. At least, that’s Katie’s theory, so when we went and made out last night everything got broken, and here we are. Oops.”

David’s eyes widened. “Wait. Was that seriously the first time you two have been macking on each other?”

“In like eight years, yeah.”

“Jesus.” David blew out a breath.

“Tell me about it.”

***