by Erin McRae
That wasn’t a metaphor; there was a discussion of a doll. Little girls would carry it around like a good luck charm, dirty and dangling from their skate bags. It wouldn’t even have knees that could bend.
NOW THAT SHE AND BRENDAN were being courted by managers and agents and entertainment companies, shared rooms and overnight buses were a thing of the past. They had moved from the hotel they’d been in with the rest of the tour to another fancier than anything they’d had on the road. Here, in New York City, that was saying something. Katie knew each of their rooms could pay for a ridiculous amount of ice time. Instead, she got huge windows splattered with rain and a view of a sea of concrete that paid tribute to the types of ambitions she had never possessed.
Between her appointment and all the meetings, she and Brendan didn’t get a moment to themselves all day. Even their meals were business meetings. Their one break, which only happened because a representative from a sportswear company had been running late, had been interrupted by a call from the doctor. The news was what she dreaded: Her knee was definitely damaged in a way that couldn’t be corrected with rest and therapy. Given her medical history surgery, followed by months of recovery and physical therapy, was inevitable. Would she skate again at a level worthy of a post-Olympic athlete? Possibly. With hard work, time, and no small amount of luck.
I can work hard. But I can’t control the clock.
She needed to tell Brendan. But after dinner, their meetings finally done for the day, he went to make one of his regular but infrequent calls to his parents. Katie retreated to her room alone. She showered, changed into pajamas and sat on the bed, her bad knee stretched out in front of her. The solitude, for a second night in a row, was alien. Her whole life had been roommates to ignore or Brendan, too close and holding her hand.
Brendan. She needed to tell him about her knee. Before they went any farther in these negotiations, he needed to know everything so they could be a united front. She glanced at the clock; he’d be off the phone by now. He never talked to his family for long.
She slid on her flip-flops, grabbed her room key, and padded down the hall.
Brendan answered her knock wearing sweatpants, a T-shirt, and a puzzled smile. “What’s up?”
“Can I come in?”
“Sure.” He looked skeptical. With good reason, her mind suggested traitorously. Still, he stepped back to let her in. “What’s going on?”
She opened her mouth to tell him about her knee, but couldn’t get the words out. To buy herself time, she gestured at the room and his own massive bank of windows. “All of this. New York. These meetings. I just ... I wanted to talk to you somewhere that’s not a boardroom or an office or some business dinner. I’m not used to this.”
“Neither am I,” he said.
“I’m not made for it,” she clarified.
“And I am?”
Yes. No. Maybe. “I’m really freaked out about the doll.” The doll was far from the only problem, but it sure summed it all up.
“You can say no to the doll.”
Katie frowned and sat down on one of the room’s beds. She assumed it was the one Bredan wasn’t sleeping in because his stuff was piled all over it.
“Are you jealous?” she asked.
Brendan laughed. “Nah. You’re the prettier one. People don’t turn up at things to look at me.”
“They do, actually,” Katie said. Brendan was gorgeous, and she knew there were plenty of fans who shared her opinion on that. His green eyes that looked so soulful in pictures were even more striking in person. His thick dark hair, that she loved to run her fingers through in choreography, was every bit as soft as it looked. And she was far from the only one who appreciated the lean, muscled lines of his body that his simple costumes only accentuated. There weren’t many men in the world strong enough to lift a grown woman over their heads with grace and a smile. Brendan could. That feat alone would have made him attractive.
“Maybe.” Brendan sat down on the other bed facing her. “But I always knew I wasn’t getting a doll.”
Katie frowned. “What does that mean?” She was genuinely curious. Brendan didn’t often talk about what was going on in his head if it didn’t relate to whatever task was directly in front of them.
Brendan turned his face to the side a little and didn’t quite meet her eyes. He seemed ... small, somehow. “Did it ever occur to you I keep talking about coaching and about the tour because that’s all I get?”
Katie shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
Brendan gave a small, almost imperceptible sigh. “This is where our paths diverge in so many ways,” he said quietly.
“But —”
“Make-up contracts. A line of workout clothes. The doll. Books about self-esteem for young women. Little girls dream of being ballerinas or skaters. You can work this for the rest of your life and turn it into anything you want. I can do exhibitions, and I can coach.”
“I thought you wanted to coach,” Katie said, her voice softening to match his.
“It’s the option I like most of the ones open to me,” Brendan said.
Katie felt absolutely ashamed. For so long she’d been focusing on her own pain and panic and grief at leaving competitive skating behind. Brendan was always so calm and together — at least, he seemed to be — that it hadn’t occurred to her that he might be as heartbroken at this transition as she was.
If only they could be as good at communicating with each other off the ice as they were on it. But they weren’t, and here at what felt like the end of everything, maybe they never would be.
“A lot of athletes go into politics,” she offered. She hated herself that she didn’t have anything more useful to say.
“Yeah. Football players.” Brendan grinned ruefully. “I’m a figure skater who got a black eye in a bar because I attempted to prove my masculinity by defending your honor. When I tried to hit the guy, I missed.”
Katie laughed. That night had been awful, and she knew she’d only made it worse. She couldn’t fix anything else, but maybe she could make up for that a little. “I love that you missed. And as mad as I was at you, I kind of love that you tried. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
She smiled fiercely. “I wouldn’t have missed.”
“I know.”
“What do you want to do?” she asked, even as she realized it was far too late for such a question. And she still hadn’t told him about her knee.
“See what our options are — all our options — and choose the ones we can stomach. Do them, save money, and then do whatever we want after that I guess. You’ve always steered us, you’ve always set our goals and made sure we met them. I guess I took that for granted. I know I kept yelling at you for not having a plan, but I guess I’ve been pissed at you for not having a plan with me.”
“Because you love me?” she asked. Brendan admitting to weakness and uncertainty was very nearly breaking her heart. He was half of her being, and she hadn’t known.
“Because you’re getting a doll and I’m not.”
Now was her moment to confess. But she couldn’t. Brendan’s words left her feeling raw, like a scab she hadn’t known she had scraped open. She didn’t know how to move forward from here. She also didn’t know how to move away.
“Can I stay here tonight?” she asked.
Brendan raised an eyebrow.
Katie pointed at the bed she was sitting on. “I sleep here. You sleep there.”
“Why?”
He didn’t usually challenge her when she asked for things like that. But the question, like his skepticism when he let her into his room in the first place, was entirely fair. Katie knew she’d been, at best, mercurial over the last few days. Weeks. Months. Years.
But Brendan was home; he was where she felt safe. None of the words she needed were coming to her, so she said the only thing she could.
“Because I can’t think when you aren’t breathing next to me.”
KATI
E LAY ON HER BACK in the dark, watching the lights of New York play on the ceiling. Brendan couldn’t sleep either — she could hear his quiet breathing from the bed next to hers, and the occasional rustle of the sheets as he turned over.
“This is terrible,” she said, flinging an arm out from under the blankets to reach for him.
Across the gap between the beds his fingers found hers, just like they had in so many hotel rooms after so many competitions all over the world.
“What is?”
“The lights,” she said. “How does anyone sleep?”
“I’m pretty sure they draw the curtains.” He was judging her. She could hear it in his voice.
“Even if you draw the curtains, it’s still there.”
“Do you want me to respond to that?” Brendan asked.
“I’m not lying here because I want you to be quiet.”
Brendan shrugged. “Maybe you want to talk. I want to give you space if you do.”
“What does it feel like for you? Here?” she asked. What else didn’t she know about the person who had been her whole world for so long?
“Where?” Brendan sounded uncertain.
“New York City,” she said.
“That I’d rather be seeing it than being stuck in all these meetings. Why? What does it feel like for you?”
“Like a TV show that I’m trapped in. Like it knows I don’t belong here. Aside from everything else, I miss home.”
Finally, cautiously, Brendan spoke. “So you do want to come back to Denver ...?”
Katie made a noise that she hoped didn’t entirely sound like disgust. “Home home. Wisconsin home. The middle of goddamn nowhere home. Home where you only get out by being good at something impossible. Home where you eventually have to go back because that’s what it costs and that’s who you are.”
Brendan squeezed her fingers lightly, like he did when she had too much sharp energy going into a skate and he was encouraging her to gentle herself. “That doesn’t sound like missing a place.”
“It wouldn’t, to you.” Of course Brendan wouldn’t understand. He never could.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Katie shifted under the covers. “You’re from Minneapolis.”
“... Yeah?”
“No. I mean like, you’re from a city. I grew up on a farm,” Katie said.
“I know. I’ve been there.”
“A farm doesn’t work if you don’t work. There’s no vacations or days off. I had to work really hard, all the time. Not just for skating, but so I could skate. So the barns didn’t flood. So the cows didn’t, you know, shrivel up and die.”
“You’re not painting a more appealing picture, there.”
She felt crushed by his lack of understanding. “Home needed me, Brendan. Needs me. I miss that.”
KATIE WOKE TO SUNLIGHT reflected into Brendan’s room by the building across the street. She felt like an ant set up to burn under a magnifying glass.
She looked over at him in the other bed. She’d woken up with him so many times in the last two decades. All the times they’d shared a room on the road, all the times they’d shared a bed just to be close, all the times they’d crashed at each other’s apartments. Despite her attempts to date over the years, she’d never been able to make sense of everyone else’s expectations about relationships. But she could imagine waking up next to Brendan every day.
That wasn’t going to happen in this life, though. She hadn’t managed to tell him about everything that needed to happen surrounding her knee. Shame settled as a cold, uncomfortable weight in her stomach. Their shared space should have been lovely, but she needed not to be here.
Katie slipped out from between the covers, put her flip-flops back on and padded to the hotel room door. Brendan stirred as she opened it. She hovered there for a moment, as if between one life and the next.
“Wha ...?” he asked, turning towards her and less than half awake.
“I’ve got to get ready for whatever is happening today,” she said softly. “I’ll see you at breakfast.”
He made a noise of agreement and flopped back down.
Katie left. She was glad that no one was around to see her wandering in pajamas from her partner’s hotel room back to her own at five in the morning.
Inside, she stared at her half-packed bags, her skates in the corner, the Russian nesting dolls Natalya had given her, and the notes she had taken at the doctor’s office. The problem hadn’t been waking up in Brendan’s room this morning. It was being in New York at all. While she was here, she certainly wasn’t going to get over her concerns about the unappealing marketing options in front of her, about her knee, or about her terror of letting Brendan down. She needed to make some choices instead of only fretting about them.
She felt a stab of doubt as she threw the rest of her things in her bags. She was leaving Brendan to the wolves and without his partner in crime and in business. The tour was probably going to be a non-starter without her there to be part of the conversation. As for the rest of it ... it was like what Brendan had said about the doll. From here, their paths diverged regardless of what either of them wanted.
It was time to leave him to it.
KATIE DIDN’T START trembling until she was in the cab on the way to the airport. Any minute now, Brendan would make his way downstairs for breakfast and she wouldn’t be there. A little while after that he would realize something was wrong.
Except Brendan knew her better than she knew herself. He might realize what she had done immediately. And then he might panic. Wouldn’t that be a change of pace, she thought bitterly. Sometimes she really hated her brain. But whatever else she was doing, she didn’t want to scare him. She pulled out her phone and opened their text thread.
Hi. I need you to cover for me one last time. Yes, it’s my knee again. And my head and everything else. I’m going to turn off my phone after this, so don’t worry if you can’t get ahold of me. I’m okay; I just need to go home. For whatever it’s worth, I’m sorry.
She didn’t know when the next flight to Minneapolis-Saint Paul was. And wasn’t that ironic? She had to go through Brendan’s home to get to hers.
PART 2
Chapter 14
THREE MONTHS AFTER Katie Left Brendan in New York City
Denver, CO
BRENDAN WAS JOLTED out of a very pleasant dream by the sound of an air raid siren. He rolled over and slapped awkwardly at his alarm clock, stuffing his head under his pillow once he’d finally managed to turn it off. He wished he could close his eyes for five more minutes without running the risk of falling asleep and being late for his first session of the day.
Get up, Reid, he told himself. He shoved off the covers and dragged himself out of bed.
He’d never been a morning person, and he’d never had Katie’s built-in alarm clock, though he had certainly benefited from it whenever they’d been on the road together. At least so far as getting woken up at the crack of dawn by the sound of Katie getting dressed counted as a benefit.
One day, I’m going to wake up and not have my very first thought be about Katie.
Today was clearly not that day.
Brendan wasn’t angry with her all the time anymore. He had been, those first hours in New York City after he’d gotten her message. He’d thought about following her to yell at her for leaving or to plead with her to stay, but he hadn’t known which airline or which airport. Besides, getting to any of New York’s airports was a nightmare. Most importantly, even if Katie was an asshole for standing him up at a series of important business meetings, she of course had the right to leave.
So he’d lied and dissembled for her, signed his own deals where he could, and watched as the entertainment machine that had wanted them crumbled before his eyes.
Brendan had slunk back to Denver, to the apartment that had been a gift from his parents when he’d first moved out there. Katie had always hated not the apartment itself, but the fact that he’d had it. As Kat
ie’s radio silence drew on, he’d grown to hate everything about it too.
He drove to the rink without any music on. All his playlists were filled with songs they had practiced or competed to, and he didn’t have the heart to listen to any of them. Making new mixes felt a little too much like defeat, an acknowledgment that Katie really was gone from his life for good.
“You are pathetic,” he told himself aloud as he parked at the rink. Why break his newfound morning routine now?
Working at the same rink he and Katie had trained at for so many years was surreal. Everything looked familiar but felt different. And not in a good way. If he’d been smarter, he’d have gone somewhere else. But he had a community here, the town knew him, and packing up his life and moving somewhere else for the sake of something new held zero appeal.
Plus, he liked the kids he was working with. He wasn’t a fully-fledged coach yet or even close. He was working with a coaching staff for two different junior-level figure skating pairs, assisting with choreography and the artistic aspects of their programs. As much as he’d planned on coaching after his retirement from competition, he was surprised by how much he enjoyed the work. He was in love with skating and always had been. Watching his skaters strive and improve meant as much to him as if their progress had been his own.
Tomorrow, one of the pairs — Shelby and Miguel — was leaving for a competition in South Bend, and the stakes were about to get higher. If they placed high enough there, they would advance to the next round of competitions. At that point this would get a lot more serious for all of them. He really needed to get his head in the game and give his kids the best he had in him.
