After the Gold

by Erin McRae

  “Yep,” Rob added. “Had all the neighbors over. Got the projector up and everything.”

  “We had some questions about those lifts.” Jesse teased. “And not about the physics of them.”

  “Oh my God.” Katie put her elbows on the table and buried her face in her hands. “Please tell me you didn’t.”

  Is she blushing? The idea of video of the two of them playing out jumbotron-style over the living room wall was enough to make his cheeks go red too.

  “Of course we did.” Samantha was smiling broadly now. “Hometown girl and boy make good. Everybody wanted to see.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me about this before?” Katie demanded, her voice muffled by her hands.

  “You didn’t seem to want to talk about skating,” Samantha said.

  “And I do now?!”

  “Brendan’s here,” her mother said simply.

  Katie dropped her hands to the table and looked helplessly at him. He looked as helplessly back. She was feeling the same thing he was, Brendan was sure. Which was less embarrassment over their lifts than surprise that the world had continued spinning while they’d been lost in their drama. That their families had, somehow, at some point, returned to being on speaking terms with each other was even more confusing. How had he not known? How had he never thought to ask Katie or his own parents whether their families were in touch?

  “Okay. Brendan and I are going now.” Katie stood up from the table and tugged his shoulder.

  It was the first time she’d touched him since they’d held hands in New York the night before she left. And it was the first time she’d wanted to be alone with him since he’d arrived. Brendan’s heart sped up.

  She led him into the kitchen, where she turned her back on him to fidget with the coffeemaker. Brendan leaned against the counter, uncertain. What am I supposed to do?

  If they were on the ice, he would have known how to draw the answer out of her. But they weren’t in their shared world, they were in hers. Because Brendan had wanted to come here, and he wanted to make things work. Right now, that meant being in Katie’s world with her. Not just tolerating it, but being here. Like she’d asked him to in a hotel back in Sacramento, he needed to not focus on the future. With patience and contentment, he needed to stand with her in this kitchen with the worn countertop, the loudly whirring refrigerator, and the cheery yellow curtains that stirred in the summer breeze coming in the open windows.

  Katie grabbed the carafe from the coffeemaker, spun sharply as she turned to the sink, and winced. The movement was a tiny one, but Brendan was instantly on alert. He hadn’t asked for an update on her knee, hadn’t dared. But now he studied her leg carefully while she had her back to him and couldn’t see him do so. Would she ever tell him what was going on in any detail?

  “Not a word about skating,” she said as she rinsed out the carafe. “Not a word.”

  “They started it, not me.”

  “Did you know our parents still talk to each other? And that it’s still a mess?”

  Brendan shook his head. “No. I didn’t know either of those things.” At least if he’d been in the dark on that, he’d been in the dark with her.

  “Oh my God,” Katie said, shaking her head.

  “Are you embarrassed?” Brendan said, in lieu of knowing how to ask her anything useful.

  “I don’t have anything to be embarrassed about,” she grit out.

  “You’re right,” he said. “You don’t. Neither do I. I mean, other than the stuff with the lifts.”

  Katie groaned.

  “I think it’s sweet that they tease you about it,” Brendan said. “And that they care so much.”

  “Of course you would,” Katie said scornfully. She carried the carafe, now full of water, back to the coffeemaker and poured it in.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Brendan tried not to feel hurt. They had been on the same side for five whole minutes, and now they were back to wherever they’d been before.

  “It means you didn’t grow up where there had to be family meetings about who was going to drive me to skating practice and who was going to travel with me to competitions,” she hissed. “Any time off the farm meant more work for everyone else.”

  “Do you feel guilty?” Brendan was sure she did, but they’d never talked about it.

  Katie glanced at the clock over the stove. “It’s almost eight-thirty. What do you want to do next, chickens or baby cows?”

  She was changing the subject. As much as Brendan wanted the rest of this conversation to happen, he knew the kindest thing to do was to follow Katie’s lead. “Uh. Baby cows?” At least he was already familiar with cows after the morning. Chickens would likely be a whole new sort of horror.

  THE BABY COWS, BRENDAN had to admit, were pretty cute, and they were as excited to see Katie as particularly large and gangly puppies. But that was a brief respite in a day of otherwise overwhelming work. The chores didn’t even have the advantage of monotony yet, at least for him.

  Living creatures were unpredictable, and Brendan had no idea what he was doing. Katie or her uncles or her mom had to keep answering his questions. Katie might have said he was here to work, but he sure didn’t feel like he was being of much help or passing whatever tests she had set for him.

  And, as was becoming rampantly clear, those tests weren’t just about cows and farm work. He couldn’t stop churning over the conversation during breakfast. There was so much that he was finally starting to understand about Katie and the massive wounds she’d been carrying around — without him even noticing them — since they were children. About his city existence versus her farm life. About the coldness of his parents towards her. About her anxiety. About her need to be the best, always, which Brendan had thought was about the sport and now was realizing was maybe about everything but the sport. He was starting to see how all of that had collided in the most spectacular and disastrous way the morning she’d decided to leave him in New York.

  But understanding didn’t make him less hurt — or less furious — about that. Katie effectively trusted him with her health, not to mention her life, every time they got on the ice together. Why hadn’t she talked to him?

  By the end of the day Brendan was absolutely beat, physically and mentally. There was no way skating was harder than this. And skating was hard — falls, and bruises, and bleeding feet hard. But it came with music, and most days, one sort of victory or another. He couldn’t see that in farming. Not now, not yet, and, he suspected, maybe never. With all the data he was finally getting from Katie, he was starting to realize that might be the fatal deal breaker between them. At least when the end came, he would understand what had happened.

  He was climbing the stairs to go take a shower when he heard Rob ask Katie, “Aren’t you being too hard on him?”

  Brendan stopped with one hand on the railing. Eavesdropping was bad form, but after the day he’d had, he wasn’t in the mood to be scrupulously polite.

  He could imagine Katie shaking her head when he heard her reply. “He knew what he was getting into.”

  “I’m not sure that’s true.”

  “Give him a few days at least. He’ll come around or he’ll leave.”

  Katie, I love you, and I have fucked up more than once when it comes to you, Brendan thought as he resumed climbing the stairs. But I am not the only problem around here.

  THE NEXT THREE DAYS were more of the same: Chores, meals, sleep, repeat. Katie was no more forthcoming than she had been, and while Rob, Jesse, and Samantha were all friendly with him, he knew Katie still viewed him with suspicion and distrust. Which, as the days went on, Brendan was getting increasingly tired of. He wanted to work things out with her more than anything, but he wasn’t going to be able to do that if she never gave him a chance.

  After dinner on the fourth day Brendan wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed, sleep for twelve hours, and wake up somewhere else. But Katie asked, with that look of cool challenge in her eyes, i
f he wanted to have a beer and watch the sunset with her. Brendan couldn’t say no.

  For the first time since that brief conversation in the kitchen, they were alone. The entire situation felt too much like the first awkward months when they had started skating together again after their separation. Whatever he said, Katie would surely take it the wrong way. He couldn’t entirely blame her.

  The sunset was lovely, probably, but Brendan was too tired to appreciate it. His gaze kept wandering to Katie, sitting on the porch steps next to him, her legs stretched out, tendrils of her hair escaping its braid.

  Katie took a sip of beer. “It looks like trash, doesn’t it?” She didn’t turn to him as she spoke.

  “What?”

  “My hair. Growing out. Like I can’t afford to keep up the dye.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about that.” He hadn’t been at any rate, but he filed it away with the growing list of Katie’s hurts that maybe he had never noticed because they’d both been so focused on just one thing.

  “I tried to color correct it, so it wouldn’t be all chunky, but then it streaked and the ends didn’t take.” She shrugged. “I gave up worrying about it. But I’ve seen you looking at it.”

  Because I like looking at you. Because you’re always beautiful. “You want to know what I was thinking about?”

  “Enlighten me.” She was sharp for being the one who had offered to sit with him and share a drink.

  “I was thinking that you were the one who left me high and dry in New York. Yet, here I am, busting my ass, like I’m the one who fucked up.”

  “It’s only been four days.”

  “Well it’s been a really long four days. The question stands. What am I doing here?”

  “I don’t know, Bren. You’re the one who called me. We’ve both done an awful lot of fucking up over the years.”

  “I don’t disagree. But I was really, really pissed at you.”

  “I know. I said I was sorry.”

  “Jesus.” Brendan sank backwards to lean on his elbows.

  “If you came to try to talk me into anything, you can leave right now,” Katie said sharply.

  “Who says I came to talk you into anything?”

  Katie didn’t bother to respond, fixing him instead with a sharp gaze and an arched eyebrow.

  “The only thing I came for was closure, and I’m starting to feel like you won’t even give me that, on the phone or in person.” When she continued to say nothing, he went on. “I’m making a life. Without you, thanks very much.” A life he’d maybe been a fool to leave behind.

  “Then why did you bother coming?” Katie demanded.

  “I don’t think you want me to answer that right now.” He was tired. Physically. Mentally. Of Katie’s ongoing inability to say anything that mattered or give him the least chance.

  “Fine.” Katie tucked her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.

  “Fine,” Brendan echoed.

  Chapter 17

  AFTER KATIE AND BRENDAN’S Tiff on the Porch

  Star Prairie, WI

  KATIE DIDN’T EXPECT Brendan to be up at four again the next morning. She assumed he would finally balk at his rude introduction to farm life and would sleep in or, worse, split in the middle of the night. She would have deserved it, too. But there he was, standing in the kitchen, fully dressed and pouring coffee into two mugs when she came down the stairs.

  “You’re still here,” she blurted.

  “I am,” he said placidly.

  She was surprised and had no real idea what to make of it. “How’d you sleep?” she asked simply because the silence demanded filling.

  “We’re doing small talk now?” Brendan handed her one of the mugs.

  “We are at this hour, yeah.”

  Brendan shrugged. “Let’s say the work means I didn’t notice the springs in my back as much I could.”

  Katie bristled. But before she could snap at him, Brendan held out a placating hand.

  “Hey, no. Not like that. I appreciate the hospitality. I appreciate that we’re trying to figure this out. Maybe I shouldn’t talk at this hour either.”

  Katie’s anger, if it didn’t deflate, shifted from him to herself. She needed to stop thinking the worst of him. But she probably also needed to stop thinking the worst of herself.

  She doubted if what she’d done over the last few days counted as anything but testing behavior. But all the therapy terminology in the world wouldn’t make that knowledge useful. She either needed to give Brendan the benefit of the doubt, or she needed to tell him to leave.

  She didn’t want him to leave.

  Beside her, he glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. “We should get going, yeah?”

  Katie nodded mutely. She walked beside him as they made their way to the barn to start mixing the cows’ food. She kept being impressed. He’d floundered at first, but was undoubtedly finding his feet, with the work and with her.

  How did he keep doing this? Here he was, months after she’d abandoned him, worming his way into the parts of her life he had always hated, like an alchemist. Or a thief. And it was good having him here, better than she wanted it to be. Brendan right beside her, his body so familiar, so a part of her own imperfect one, was overwhelming.

  She felt immensely guilty for the secret she was still carrying about her knee.

  LATER THAT MORNING Katie updated some of the cows’ medical logs they kept in the small addition at the back of the house that they used for an office. As she left she found Brendan laughing in the yard with Rob. She had missed the joke, but she didn’t miss the way Brendan’s whole body lit up when he laughed. His hair was standing on end where he’d run his fingers through it, and there were streaks of mud and probably manure on his jeans. Katie had never expected to see him like this, so easy and happy, off the ice and unaware of her. She had to stop in the office doorway to stare.

  Suddenly she could picture the rest of her life looking exactly like this, dirty and happy and strong. But that was fantasy. Brendan would get tired of the animals eventually, if he wasn’t already; they could be difficult and strange and as full of heartbreak as they were of love. If it wasn’t the animals, it would be the dirt, or the work that never ended, or life out here, so far from a city. And if it wasn’t any of those things, it would be her knee.

  And then where would she be? Alone, in a way that would be impossible for anyone else to ever understand. Because his limbs were her limbs, and his victories were her victories. Which is why that damn seventeenth place in Stockholm had always made her so mad. He was better than that. He’d been better than that. Even apart, he was supposed to be better than that.

  But maybe, right here and right now, for this one moment, fifth or seventeenth or first ... none of it mattered anymore. Katie felt something unspool inside of her, as if a life in the world was somehow, suddenly possible.

  “What?” Brendan had caught her staring. Rob gave them both a knowing look — Katie hoped Brendan didn’t see it — and strolled away.

  She shook her head, but it was clear he wasn’t going to let it go. “You’re starting to look like you belong here instead of like you showed up for a photoshoot.”

  “I didn’t —”

  “You did.” Katie levered herself upright from the doorway and started to walk away. She needed space to process this.

  “Where are you going?” he called out to her.

  “We’re not the lone survivors of a zombie apocalypse. I need to drive into town. Meanwhile, chickens need feeding. Berries need picking. When you’re done making friends, make sure someone gives you some work to do.”

  THERE WAS SOMETHING about getting on I-94 and leaving the farm behind with Brendan in its care that Katie found exhilarating, assuming he was still there when she got back. But she couldn’t focus on that now. These hours in Minneapolis weren’t about their issues. They were about focusing on herself and getting stronger and happier, regardless of what Brendan did or did not do.
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  The physical therapy regimen for her knee was not as aggressive as it could have been, but she wasn’t getting ready for a competition or looking for a non-surgical fix. Rather, she wanted to keep the pain down and the functionality up, buying herself time until she could get her head around the necessary, but nerve-wracking, medical intervention. She was unsettled enough by her competitive career ending; the looming surgery only made her feel worse about it.

  Despite all that, Katie looked forward to her physical therapy appointments as much as her therapy-therapy appointments. Not because she was particularly sanguine about the more challenging parts of self-care, but because they gave her the opportunity to get on the ice without anyone in her family having to know about it.

  Like most days when she came in after a PT session, the rink was crowded. Public ice time in the summers meant the rink was often swarmed with people, many of whom were just trying to cool off in the mosquito-laden heat.

  Katie didn’t mind. Her leg wasn’t in any condition to do anything flashy, and she didn’t want to draw attention to herself. She was happy to skate a few laps around the rink before going into the center to practice her spins and do a few single and double jumps. It wasn’t the freedom of doing the impossible that she so loved in her Olympic career, but it was hers and hers alone. In these months of trying to accept the state of her life, body, and relationship with Brendan, being on the ice without her partner had been a real help.

  Physical therapy also enabled her to push through her obstacles and relinquish some of the constant worry she gave her body. Even for an hour a week, that was usually a blessing. But today, she struggled with handing that over.

  Brendan been sleeping in her family’s guest room for almost a week now. He got up in the dark and did every single task she set in front of him, almost entirely without complaint. Even when he knew, had to know, that she had half set them up to drive him away.