After the Gold

Chapter 5-3

THIRTY MINUTES AND one Dunkin Donuts stop later they were at the rink. This early, it was empty of even the most dedicated of their tour mates. Katie dropped her bags and began to work through her stretch routine, loosening ankles and knees and hips. Beside her, Brendan did the same, albeit much more slowly.

Katie considered giving him grief for that. After all, she was the one who was injured and yet here he was moving like an old man. But she didn’t want to disturb their peace, hard-won with exhaustion and coffee.

In the first year that they had come back together after Stockholm, sometimes their coach had forbidden them from speaking on the ice. In the immediacy of it, Katie had felt that was a punishment for all their bickering, but it had been a trick that worked. If they couldn’t speak, they had to listen — not just to their coach, but to each other’s bodies and breathing and facial expressions.

She sat down on the floor, folded herself over her knees and grabbed her feet, massaging the tendons as she pointed and flexed. She was aware of Brendan watching her, but he remained silent as he focused on his arms and shoulders

Good. He won’t drop me again.

Katie lay back on the floor and kicked one leg up. She pulled it towards her, creeping into a split. By the end of the day, this would be almost easy, but for the moment, her body was reluctant. She huffed in annoyance, and Brendan, ridiculously, was instantly by her side.

“I’m fine,” she said, feeling shame, somehow, at breaking the silence.

“I know. Do you want help?”

She gave a little acquiescent tilt of her head. Brendan put a hand to her thigh and another to her calf and pushed her leg back slowly, until her flexed toes touched the floor.

“All right?” he asked.

She nodded, breathing through it. She pointed her foot, and Brendan pushed again, leaning against her leg until the top of her foot hit the floor. Katie sighed in relief at the feel of him and at the stretch successfully completed without agenda, but with so much wanting.

With their warmup finished and their skates on, Katie leaned on the wall at the edge of the rink, took off her skate guards, and glided out onto the ice. Beside her, Brendan did the same.

She’d been doing this for more than two decades, but this moment had never ceased to thrill her: The rest of the world home, warm and asleep; the ice a smooth blank canvas in front of them. It was far from bliss: It was cold; adrenaline and endorphins had yet to kick in, and she could feel every bruise and blister on her feet. But Brendan would reach out — she knew, without having to look at him — their hands would meet, and suddenly everything was possible.

When their skating worked, Katie didn’t have to think about what she was doing. Her mind could drift, a highly kinetic kind of meditation. But this morning, there was too much to do to let her mind wander.

They ran through the first minute or so of their Harbin routine, or at least their modified Harbin routine. The changes they were making so Katie could skate it relatively safely were far from a lock. Katie knew she wasn’t making that process any easier, but after a year of developing the original program any change felt like sacrilege and defeat. No matter how long she and Brendan worked together on tours and exhibitions, they’d never skate at the level that won them gold again. Everything had been on the line at the Games. Replicating that without the pressure of competition was impossible.

Katie wanted to get as close to it as she could, though. If she couldn’t have her favorite jumps, she could make other things harder. As they assessed what they could make work she did progressively harder jumps that she could land on her good knee.

The third time she landed a quad salchow throw, though, Brendan found her hand and pulled her to a stop in front of him. “I get you’re pissed about falling yesterday, but now you’re doing quads?”

Katie brushed a loose strand of hair out of her face with her free hand. “You throw, I spin. Don’t worry about it.”

Brendan frowned and gave a minute shake of his head. “This doesn’t work that way.”

“I can land them,” Katie insisted. The warm, intimate feel of the morning was draining quickly away, leaving them where they so often ended up: On the ice and upset with each other. She knew that was inevitable, but it still felt a little like heartbreak.

“I know you can.” Brendan pulled her closer and dropped his voice, not that there was anyone around to hear. “But your knee is one bad landing away from being out of commission for the rest of the tour and possibly the rest of your life.”

“I wasn’t landing on that leg,” Katie protested.

“And you can’t guarantee you won’t stumble or fall and hurt yourself anyway. You want to take risks with your health, fine, whatever, it’s your body. But you’re my partner and it’s damn irresponsible for you to take risks with my job.”

Brendan was absolutely, positively, one hundred percent correct. Which only made Katie angrier. “You don’t need to patronize me,” she snapped, skating backwards away from him and pulling her hand out of his grasp. “I know my own limits.”

Brendan followed her. “I’m not trying to be patronizing. Really. Just, Kate, you’re my partner. I will always worry about you.”

“And don’t say you’re my partner!” She spun away from Brendan, not able to look at him. He only ever called her Kate when he was very serious about something.

“Why? I am. And you’re mine.”

Brendan sounded hurt. Which only made Katie more frustrated. She loved him, more than she would ever be able to express in any kind of language. Why did she have to find a way to make that a bug and not a feature?

“On the ice. Nowhere else.” Which was also neither fair nor accurate. But Brendan saying things like partner so easily terrified her. Nothing about what they did together was easy or simple. And she couldn’t afford to give in to her desire for him again.

“Did I say otherwise?” Brendan swept around in front of her, cutting off her forward motion.

Katie’s breath caught in her throat. He was magnificent when he was angry. “You implied it.”

”I did not. Stop treating me like I’m your enemy. Or that this is something I did to you. I am not the bad guy. Your anxiety is real, but this is not my fault. We used to date, we’ve spent years being a millimeter away from f*****g, and you kissed me on that damn bus first.”

“That was a mistake.” Katie put out a hand to Brendan’s chest. She’d meant to push him away, but her fingers tightened in the fabric of his shirt instead. His heartbeat thudded against her fingertips.

Brendan closed his hand over her wrist, holding her there. “It sure didn’t feel like a mistake. Other than the fact we were on a bus. I will concede that part was a bad idea.”

Hah ha. Very funny. Brendan could make her laugh so easily when she didn’t want to strangle him. “We do not skate well when we’re together. I know this. You know this. We’ve been over this before, and the only thing either of us have to show for it is a four-year detour.”

Brendan shook his head, his hair falling over his forehead. “One, that is superstitious crap, and also it disgusts me that you view that as wasted time.”

“It was wasted! We could have been winning.”

Brendan pulled her closer, so close she could make out the flecks of gold in his green eyes. “We also could have been together, but neither of those things matter anymore. Three — I think we’re up to three? — if you don’t want to do this at all, that’s cool. I will drop it. But if you don’t want to do it because you’re having a freakout about the end of our competitive skating career — and I think that’s exactly what you’re doing — I am going to keep being right here wanting you.”

The offer, or the promise, whatever it was, was far too tempting. Katie did a crossover and shifted out of his grip. “The Harbin program, two minutes in. We should make the jump an axel.”

Brendan threw his hands up in the air. “Or we could change the damn topic again. The jump stays a flip,” he said firmly. “Neither of us need to get hurt for the sake of your mid-life crisis.”

***