After the Gold

by Erin McRae

  “Can you not be obnoxious about this?” All Katie needed to make this situation more fraught was for her family to start meddling.

  “I’m not,” Jesse said placidly. “I am, however, saying that in order for me to support you in dealing with your incredibly complicated life, you can’t keep pretending it’s not happening.”

  “If I were pretending it wasn’t happening, would I be back in therapy and seeing a physical therapist about my knee?” Katie asked sharply.

  “No. You wouldn’t. But you also haven’t scheduled your surgery. Or told me when Brendan’s getting here. If I hadn’t asked what was bothering you, you wouldn’t have warned any of us he was coming.”

  “A couple of days. I think.” It was a fifteen hour drive, to be sure, but more than that, Brendan didn’t have a life he could just pack up and leave.

  Like I did.

  She thought about it as she and Jesse finished the rest of the milking. Brendan would have to post-mortem the competition with his skaters and the rest of their coaching team. That meant going over their scores looking for places to improve and finding changes to make in the program that would give them more points or feel more right. She’d done it with him hundreds of times.

  He’d also have to find someone to take over his responsibilities while he was gone. For however long he was gone. Skaters, like cows, weren’t just something you could abandon. And if Brendan did leave without making whatever arrangements they needed, Katie would think the worse of him. It would be days, at the least, before he arrived.

  Chapter 16

  ONE WEEK AFTER THE Phone Call

  Denver, CO

  BRENDAN SAT IN HIS car in the parking lot of his apartment building and texted Katie to let her know he was on his way. He’d sent her identical texts countless times over the years, but never when the stakes were as high as they were now. He considered the possibility that he was out of his mind.

  Of course I’m out of my mind. Sane people don’t win Olympic medals.

  He put the car in gear and pulled out onto the street.

  BRENDAN HAD DONE THIS drive many times, most of them with Katie. Their routes home were basically the same, and carpooling had made the most sense. Together they’d drive down from the mountains and across the endless plain of Nebraska, spend the night in Omaha, and cut northward home through Iowa the next day.

  They’d had grown up within spitting distance of each other, at least as far as the great wide parts of the Midwest were concerned. But he’d been a city kid in Minneapolis, and she’d been living a farm life on the other side of the state border. They’d been lucky to find each other. Or rather, he’d been lucky that they’d gone to the same rink and that Katie had decided he was going to be her partner before they’d ever spoken two words to each other.

  He wasn’t sure he’d been ambitious before meeting Katie, but he’d never admit that to her. Largely, because she’d shown up, aged nine, and told him how the world was going to be. He’d thought she was hilarious, shrugged, and done as she said. Until he started having ideas of his own.

  Denver had been one of them. They’d needed whatever edge they could get once their first Olympics had started to seem possible. Katie was the absolute last of anyone involved to get on board — principally, because she hadn’t trusted his motives in dragging her away from the farm.

  At the time Brendan had cared about winning, not about distancing himself from the cows. Yes, the farm had freaked him out whenever he’d visited as a kid. But why Katie thought that was his motive regarding Denver, he’d never understood. But she’d eventually said yes, so he hadn’t needed to.

  And then this miserable drive had become a routine.

  FOR BRENDAN, OMAHA was a place of eternal nothingness and vague dread. Which wasn’t Omaha’s fault in the least.

  He had passed through it at least a hundred times over the last decade and a half. Yet he had never stayed in it for longer than twenty-four hours, if he stopped at all. Usually he’d had Katie with him, and it was always where they’d broken the tiniest of rules — sleeping late, eating wildly unhealthy food, skipping workouts. After their failure in Annecy, the stop in Omaha had been the last time they slept together before Katie announced their relationship and their partnership was over.

  Once they’d reunited as platonic skating partners, Katie had advocated trading off at the wheel and driving through the night whenever they made the trip home. Brendan hadn’t minded, not really. At least Katie preferred night driving.

  STAYING AT HIS AND Katie’s usual hotel — or at least, what had been their usual hotel eight years ago — would have been the easiest option. But that was also where they had broken up. It had been a long time ago, but Brendan didn’t want to deal with the place. The memories of being with Katie were more vivid than those of every other relationship attempt he had ever made. Whatever was going to happen at the farm would be hard and confusing enough without muddying his head more.

  He kept going on I-80 and found a motel a few exits past the city. Alone in his room, he thought about texting Katie to update her on his progress but decided against it. He didn’t have anything specific to say, and until or unless he did, he didn’t want to risk rupturing whatever fragile peace had allowed her to invite him in the first place.

  He found it nearly impossible to sleep. He kept tossing and turning, expecting to open his eyes and see Katie’s dark hair spread over the pillows. When he did finally fall asleep, he slept so soundly the first three alarms he had set, just in case, completely failed to wake him.

  He finally jolted awake when a car horn blared outside.

  Shit. I wanted to be on the road earlier than this. He pushed back the blackout curtains and looked out at the sun already peeping up above the horizon, bathing the grubby parking lot in warm, golden light. Katie was certainly already awake and would have nothing but judgment for him sleeping in.

  He threw what little he’d unpacked back in his bag, grabbed a bagel and a cup of coffee from the lobby, and got in his car. Holding the bagel in his teeth, his coffee in one hand, and his phone in the other, he texted Katie. Leaving Omaha now. See you tonight.

  Katie finally replied when he was close to the Nebraska border. Fucking Omaha.

  He laughed aloud, feeling strangely unencumbered. They could still say so much to each other with so few words. Maybe that was a bug in their relationship, but it felt delightful.

  OMAHA SHOULD HAVE BEEN the halfway mark, but stops, traffic jams, construction, and maybe his own nerves meant that what should have been a seven-hour drive turned into twelve hours on the road.

  The sun was low in the sky, tinting the green fields with amber as it sank towards the horizon. The land was flat, startlingly so after the mountains of Colorado. Hours of driving across it hadn’t been enough to get used to such an open horizon. As such, Brendan could see the house long before he reached it. It had white siding and a red roof, with gable windows looking east and west across the fields above a wraparound screen porch. Beyond it were the barns and outbuildings.

  There were lights on, beckoning warm and inviting. At least, Brendan hoped they were inviting.

  He parked his car next to another sedan and two mud-spattered pickup trucks and turned it off. The music he’d been listening to fell suddenly silent. There was only the ticking of his cooling engine, the soft whirr of insects in the grass, and the sound of his own breath.

  As he got out of the car, Brendan felt immensely self-conscious. Stepping out onto the ice in front of thousands of spectators was not as bad as walking across the drive with, as far as he knew, no one watching.

  He had to open the door to the porch, which screeched horribly on its hinges, to get to the front door. Brendan winced at the sound, convinced anyone within a half mile of the house had heard it. But when he knocked there was no response. He rocked on the balls of his feet, his stomach squirming unpleasantly. Should he knock again? Was he being pointedly ignored?

  He had just pulled
out his phone to text Katie when he heard footsteps. A moment later the door was yanked opened by Katie’s uncle Rob. He was as sturdily built as ever, his greying hair and faded overalls threatening to converge into a single steely non-color.

  “Brendan Reid,” he said in a low, perfectly terrifying voice.

  “Mr. Petersen. Hi.”

  “I expect you’re here for Katie.” Behind him, Brendan could hear the clatter of dishes

  “Um.” Get it together, Reid. Brendan had never, in all his years of competing and performing, experienced what other people called stage fright. But he was pretty sure he was now. His tongue was tied, and his mind was blank. He could think of nothing to say to justify or explain his presence.

  Suddenly he heard Katie’s voice from inside the house. “Is that him?”

  A second later she was walking towards him down the front hall that led from the kitchen, and then she was standing there in the doorway behind her uncle. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt with fraying cuffs. Her hair, hanging over her shoulder in a messy braid, was longer than Brendan remembered. It was also more noticeably two different colors than when he had last seen her. She must have decided to grow out the dark, almost black color she dyed it once and for all.

  Brendan reminded himself to breathe. He’d worked beside her all day, every day, for nearly two decades. He’d always thought she was beautiful. But three months had passed without seeing her at all, and now she was standing right in front of him. She was even more lovely than he remembered.

  “Hi,” Brendan said again, because apparently his vocabulary had been reduced to monosyllables.

  “You’re staring,” Katie said unhelpfully.

  Of course I’m staring. You left me three months ago. That’s the longest I’ve gone without seeing you since I first met you.

  “Do you want me to chase him off?” Rob asked Katie.

  Brendan was almost sure he was joking. Mostly because if Katie had wanted him chased off, she would have done it herself. Rob knew that as well as anyone.

  Brendan really, really hoped he wasn’t about to get chased off. Katie lifted her chin and looked him up and down, clearly evaluating. She wasn’t doing anything to put him at ease, which he knew was deliberate. He found it infuriating, but what could he do? He was on her doorstep and at her mercy.

  “Did you bring a bag?” she finally asked.

  “Yeah,” Brendan said uneasily.

  “Go get it.”

  Katie and Rob looked at him expectantly when he hesitated. Since there was nothing else for it, he slunk back to his car and got his suitcase out of the trunk, feeling their eyes on him the entire time. When he was standing on the porch again, Katie nodded at her uncle and they stepped back to let him in.

  “He’s here to work.” Katie said, not to Brendan, but to Rob. “As long as he does, he’s fine. He’ll be up at four with everybody else.” Her eyes might have flickered to Brendan, but he couldn’t be sure. “He can stay in the guest room.”

  With a twirl of that two-tone braid, she vanished deeper into the house. As far as Brendan was concerned, she took his heart with her. He’d spent the last week and the whole drive trying to figure out what he wanted to happen once he got here. And now he knew. He didn’t care what it took: He was going to figure out what he had to do to have Katie by his side always — on or off the ice.

  Brendan was startled out of his new-found clarity by Rob making an exasperated noise after Katie. Apparently, she was as much of a handful here as she could be on the ice.

  “Sorry about that,” Rob said as he picked Brendan’s suitcase up. “Follow me.”

  “I can get that,” Brendan protested.

  “I know you can, but you’re a guest regardless of whatever Katie’s decided.” Rob smiled at Brendan. “Let’s get you settled and fed.”

  KATIE’S UNCLE’S KINDNESS had assuaged Brendan’s most significant concerns about this adventure until he was jolted out of sleep the next morning by the unholy blare of his alarm.

  He fumbled for his phone to silence it. Four a.m. Dear God. He was used to early mornings with skating, but this was next-level. For a moment he reassessed how much he wanted Katie.

  He stumbled around in the dark getting dressed; he didn’t think his retinas could take the glare of a lamp this early. Even the muted glow of the very charming hurricane lamp on the bedside table was too much. He tried to guess what would be useful to wear for farmwork. At least he didn’t have to worry about whether his clothes matched. Katie had seen him in far worse shape.

  She was in the kitchen when he arrived downstairs, holding two coffee mugs. “You’re up,” she said.

  “You sound surprised.”

  “It’s really early.” She gave him the hint of a grin. Brendan’s sour mood evaporated faster than he would have thought possible. He would have gotten up a lot earlier than this for that smile.

  “Here,” she said, pushing one of the mugs at him. “Coffee. Now come on, we’ve got work to do.”

  The morning passed in a semi-delirium of cold, caffeine, and cows. Brendan was relieved that Katie’s mom, Samantha, and her other uncle, Jesse, were as unphased by his presence as Rob seemed to be. Not that it made the work easier. First, they had to prepare the cows’ food, although they wouldn’t get that until later. Then milking happened and was a process which involved a great deal of science fiction technology and way more cow interaction than Brendan was strictly comfortable with. And, despite Katie’s warning, Brendan somehow managed to get iodine all over his hands.

  “That’ll stain,” Katie said from where she was crouched next to him, showing him how to disinfect a cow’s udder.

  Brendan did his level best not to give away how worried he was about being stepped on. “Can’t be worse than a black eye, yeah?” he said.

  Katie cracked a faint smile. “Just don’t get it on me.”

  Which was as close to a dare as anything he’d heard from her in ages, but he wasn’t about to start roughhousing around farm animals.

  There were so many cows. Every time Brendan thought they had definitely milked every cow on the planet by now, another group would appear, lined up by Katie’s mom, ready to go. Outside it was slowly growing light, the landscape turning from black to grey to pale green and bright gold.

  There was something to be said for glancing up and seeing the sunrise in between tasks. The experience of morning here was different from being at their home rink — aside from the cows, of course. There you never knew what time of day it was; everything was lit with ghastly overhead lights and windows were few and far between. But here, Brendan could never forget that a world beyond what was right in front of him existed.

  After the milking was done, it was finally feeding time. Once that was finished, Brendan was ready to collapse in a heap in any corner of the barn. He was more than a little relieved when Katie tilted her head at him and asked if he was ready for breakfast.

  “You mean it’s not noon already?” He was joking. Mostly.

  “Seven-thirty. Come on. Once the cows eat, we eat. Rob makes some killer pancakes.”

  They walked side-by-side back to the house, not touching or speaking. Brendan was exhausted, sore, and more freaked out by cows than he had been yesterday. But he’d survived the morning, and he was always proud of himself when there was work to do and he could do it.

  That said, he had no idea when he’d finally have a chance to talk to Katie about the issues that loomed between them. The chores were obviously intense and continuous. And Katie’s mother and uncles were always around. Brendan liked them fine, but he wasn’t prepared to have any sort of conversation that might turn into a shouting match in front of them.

  “How are your folks, Brendan?” Samantha asked, startling him out of his reverie as they all sat around the dining room table for breakfast.

  “They’re good.” He knew he should say more, but he was no more able to speak fluidly this morning than he had been last night.

  “Did you see
them on your way here?”

  Brendan was sure it wasn’t appropriate to say no, I almost drove all night just to see your daughter, I didn’t want to stop and see my parents. “I didn’t get a chance, yet. On my way back, maybe.”

  “We talked to them the night you and Katie won,” Samantha said, with a smile for both him and Katie. “They’re very proud of you, you know.”

  Brendan glanced sideways at Katie, who looked as surprised as he felt. He hadn’t known that, actually. His parents had talked about coming to Harbin to watch them, but had never followed through. They’d congratulated him on the win in a series of enthusiastic voicemails, but Brendan always felt uneasy about the way they sometimes ignored everyone else who helped make it possible — very much including Katie.

  He hadn’t known that their families were on any kind of current speaking terms. His parents had been cordial with Katie’s family when they were children. But after their breakup a gulf had opened he’d assumed would never close for so many reasons, matters of class and culture among them.

  For the last year Brendan had been so wrapped up in skating, and in the all-consuming issue of him and Katie, that he’d never thought about how the two of them would navigate existence in the world outside the ice. For the first time, he began to understand a fraction of what had terrified Katie so badly back on the tour.

  “We’re very proud of you, too,” Samantha said. “Both of you.”

  “Thank you.” Brendan was too touched to be any more articulate than that.

  “I’m sorry we couldn’t make it out for one of your tour stops,” Samantha went on. “We tried, but none of the cities were close enough — taking days off is hard around here.”

  “We watched all the videos we could find online, though,” Jesse put in.