by Erin McRae
He deserved better from her, and that was going to have to start with the truth. About her leg and about everything she was afraid of. She wasn’t sure she was ready yet. But she knew, for the first time, that she would be soon.
THE DINNER HOUR WAS long past when Katie returned to the farm. She might have been stiff and sweaty, but she was also ravenous and was looking forward to devouring leftovers while standing over the stove. She had one last round of work with the cows before she was done for the day, but food had to happen first.
Katie did not expect her access to leftovers and the stove to be blocked by empty glass jars scattered over every surface and Brendan wrestling with a multi-quart pot of jam. The eastern sky outside the window was velvety blue with twilight, and the old glass-shaded lamp over the kitchen table glowed warmly.
“Oh no,” Katie said, dropping her bag and keys by the kitchen door. “Who let you do this?”
“What?” Brendan tried to blow his bangs out of his eyes. “Your mom showed me.’
“You’re going to give everyone botulism.”
“I have been informed, presumably reliably, that the natural acids in berries are enough to ward it off. And your recipe has lemon. So it should be fine.” Brendan was right, of course, but he didn’t sound particularly convinced.
Katie sighed loudly. Brendan was charming. This bullshit situation wasn’t, however. “All right. You’re approaching this as a hobbyist. But this is part of our business, which means this kitchen shouldn’t look like a third grade cooking class exploded in it. I’m going to get this organized, you’re going to not burn that jam, and later we’re going to find a way to get back at my mom for inflicting this on both of us.”
Brendan, she realized when she stopped talking, was staring at her slightly starry-eyed.
“What?” she asked defensively.
“I missed this.”
“Do you have some culinary past you never told me about?” she asked as she pushed past him to rearrange the jars waiting for jam into neat rows. She could hear the sound of the TV drifting in from the living room and felt like she was a teenager again with a boy over, her family keeping a quiet eye on them from a distance. Not that she ever had anyone other than Brendan over to begin with.
“No. I meant me trying to figure out something new and you trying to make it perfect.”
Katie was glad she had work to do. She couldn’t face his kindness or affection right now, wouldn’t be able to until she told him about her knee. She promised herself she would get there. But first both she and the cows needed to eat. “You know what would make this actually perfect?” she asked.
“What?” Despite her brusqueness Brendan was still smiling at her.
“You getting out of my way enough that I can stuff some food in my mouth before I have to go visit those cows.”
BEER AT SUNSET ON THE days Katie didn’t have to go into the city became a ritual. Her mother, Jesse, and Rob left them alone for it, and Katie was grateful. Especially after the jam incident. She was relieved not to have to deal with knowing looks or sidelong glances every time she sat down next to Brendan on the old steps, close enough to touch. They didn’t, though. No matter how much time they spent in proximity with all the easy, casual physical interactions necessary to the chores, they kept space between them here. But it was charged, electric, and growing more so every day.
Sometimes they talked about small things: The little events of the day. The weather. What to make for dinner the next time it was their turn to cook — her family had shamelessly added Brendan to her roster in that regard. One day, when a cow lost a calf after a particularly hard birth, Brendan sat in silent commiseration next to her, both of them sniffing occasionally before splitting one more beer.
Brendan never questioned her absences from the farm when she went to her therapy appointments. Katie had overheard him talking to his skaters on the phone or over Skype, offering advice and what assistance he could from a distance. But he never talked to her about those calls, never volunteered any details about the life he’d temporarily left behind in Denver. Eventually, Katie realized he wasn’t going to do either of those things, not unless she let him in and gave him permission.
She found, almost to her own surprise, that she wanted to know. Brendan may have wormed his way into her life here, but she missed skating with him and the world she’d left behind.
“Do you like it?” she asked one evening a week and a half after Brendan’s arrival. The sun had sunk below the horizon and the sky in the west was a vivid red, fading to the purple of an old bruise.
“What’s that?” Brendan looked sideways at her.
“Whatever you’ve been doing the last three months. Choreography, I guess.”
“Oh!” He smiled. “Yeah. I like it a lot, actually. I only don’t talk about it because I thought you wouldn’t want to hear.”
“I’m sorry. About that. It’s ... been hard. But you’re also just saying that because your kids won,” Katie said, cautiously teasing.
Brendan shook his head. “No. I’d love it if we didn’t win. Or if they didn’t even compete at all.”
“What’s it like?” Katie asked the next evening. The clouds were spectacular, streaked with gold and amber. She wished she could have a costume that looked that vivid.
Beside her, Brendan stared out at the view with at least as much awe. “You know how you knew exactly what the judges wanted?”
Katie nodded. He was right. She always had.
“It’s like that,” he said. “But knowing what other skaters need.”
“How do you know what you’re doing?” Katie asked the evening after that.
Brendan shrugged. “I don’t.”
The following night a storm came in, low and slow from the northwest. Lightning was visible for miles, and Katie and Brendan sat at the table in the kitchen, watching the thunderheads roll their way across the sky. It had been a hard day, and her knee was a dull ache that pulsed in time with the thunder.
“Do you think I would like it?” Katie asked between strikes.
Brendan shook his head. “Choreography? Probably not. But I think you might like working on the technical elements.”
He answered her questions, and he never answered anything but her questions. He didn’t push or assume or give her more information than she asked for. That didn’t feel like fear. That felt like respect. He wasn’t here to convince her of anything.
Katie stood abruptly. If she was going to ask Brendan about his work, if she was going to dig deep and finally see the appeal of his post-competition life on the ice, she owed him the truth about her own circumstances.
“I need to tell you something.” She tugged Brendan out of his chair and towards the door.
“Rain’s coming,” he protested.
“We won’t go far,” Katie said, even though she knew he was probably afraid of getting caught in a serious squall in the big emptiness of the farm. Especially with lightning on the horizon. Which was reasonable. “I just ... I just need some air and actual darkness. Or I’m never going to get the words out.”
She dragged him across the grass in the dark towards the main barn. She could hear the cows stirring. At this hour, they should have been quiet, but the impending storm and the sound of people who might be bringing more food must have had them on alert.
“I can’t see anything,” Brendan said, stumbling behind her in the dark.
“Good.”
Brendan stopped walking. Katie felt him twist his hand in her grip right before he grabbed her wrist in turn and tugged. She stumbled into him and caught herself with her hands on his chest.
“You said we wouldn’t go far. What’s going on?” Brendan demanded. The horizon flashed with lightning again and a cold wind blew up around them.
“You’re messing up my moment.” Katie didn’t feel ready. She had planned to keep walking until she felt ready.
Brendan drew in a breath that sounded like a hiss. “And you’re messing
up my life. This wasn’t where I planned to spend my summer vacation. What is going on?”
And that was it, the rejection she’d known was coming from the moment he’d arrived. “I thought you were starting to enjoy it here.” She curled her hands in the fabric of his shirt, as if by hanging on tightly enough, he would always be with her. “I hate you sometimes, did you know that?”
“Crystal, goddamn clear, Katie. Now are you going to tell me why we’re out here, or are we going to get struck by lightning?”
Lightning, for a moment, seemed preferable, but then her anger kicked in, and it was beyond useful. If he really was going to leave, she had nothing to lose. Suddenly she was no longer worried about disappointing him with the failures of her body. Not when she could hurt him with them.
“I need surgery,” she said loudly so he could hear her over the sound of the wind. “On my knee. Probably before the end of the year. I don’t want to. And I’m scared. I don’t know how things will be after. Maybe good, or maybe not. And until you got me so furious with you, I was worried about letting you down because of it, even when we weren’t talking. But here we are.” She threw her hands up in the air in frustrated disgust.
She couldn’t read Brendan’s face in the dark, which gave her one more thing to be angry about — her own pointless plan for this confession.
Lightning flashed too close, and the hair on her arms stood up. The thunder came, too fast. The rain, gentle in a way that wouldn’t last, started falling.
Brendan looked up at the sky and then at her. “Can you run?” he asked. “Because I think we need to run.”
ROB WAS STANDING AT the door when they returned to the house, soaking wet and shaking with the exertion of their sudden sprint.
“Goodness, you two. Are you all right?” he asked, frowning and pulling the door closed behind them against the now-raging storm.
Katie nodded mutely; Brendan did the same. She wasn’t okay, far from it, but she really did not want to talk about it. With anyone.
“Did you find them?” she heard Jesse’s voice call from the direction of the office.
“Yeah, I’ve got ’em. Still in one piece.”
Are we, though? Before her family could fuss over them any more, Katie escaped upstairs.
SHE WAS SURPRISED TO find Brendan still there in the morning. Apparently he was sticking out this ruined summer vacation, though God knew why.
The next few days were quiet. They didn’t talk much, just kept their heads down and did the work. It reminded Katie of those fragile, awful, hopeful days after the disaster of Stockholm when they had reunited on the ice but hadn’t settled into their natural rhythm yet. Brendan wasn’t leaving. She wasn’t chasing him away. Something was about to happen. She just didn’t know what.
“I’m going into the city this afternoon,” she told him at lunch.
“Yeah?”
“I have a physical therapy appointment. I — thought you should know.”
Brendan didn’t blanch at the reminder that she was injured, and Katie no longer felt the need to hurt him with everything she couldn’t do anymore.
KATIE GOT BACK HOME from her physical therapy appointment — and another secret hour of skating — after sunset. This time, there was no Brendan making a disaster of the kitchen with his jam-making. As she covered a bowl of leftovers so they wouldn’t spatter and slid it into the microwave, she heard his voice call from the living room.
“Is that you?”
She didn’t need to ask who he meant. Having him here was so comfortable. But how to make that comfort last? “Yeah, just a minute.”
She walked into the living room a few moments later, holding her bowl of chili with her fingertips so it didn’t burn her hands. The sky beyond windows was a riot of gold and orange, but inside the room was dark, lit only by a lamp in the corner. Brendan was in the armchair next to it, his laptop open on his knees.
“What are you working on?” Katie sat down on the couch, adjacent to his chair. “Stuff for your kids?”
Brendan shook his head. “Um. Not exactly.”
He sounded — not guilty, but wary. Of her. She’d caught him out at something.
“Are you watching porn?” Katie was sure he wasn’t, but it was fun to watch the tips of his ears go red.
“In your mom’s house?! No.”
“Then why are you being weird?” Katie dug into her chili.
Brendan seemed to consider something for a moment. Then he stood up, laptop in hand. “D’you mind if I ...?” he gestured at the couch.
“Sure.” Definitely curious now, Katie set her bowl on the end table as Brendan sat next to her, the screen of his laptop angled so she couldn’t see it.
He took a breath, like the ones he took before they were about to attempt something new and potentially dangerous on the ice. He turned the laptop around so she could read the screen.
Katie squinted at the document he had open. It was full of the notations Brendan used when he was choreographing, a mixture of ISU notation and his own shorthand. It was definitely a figure skating program. But if it wasn’t for the kids he was helping coach ....
“I started working on a program. For us.”
Katie stared at him. Goosebumps broke out up and down her arms. Something in her soul thrilled. She never thought she’d hear Brendan say those words again.
Brendan squirmed a little in her silence. “Look, don’t get mad. This is mostly fantasy anyway. I don’t have any expectations. Of you or us or your knee. This isn’t me asking for anything. But we always were my favorite pair to choreograph for.”
Katie wasn’t mad. Not at all. But she definitely had questions, and she desperately wanted to see what Brendan was imagining for them.
“What song is it?”
“Oh. Right.” Brendan clicked a couple of keys, and music started to play.
Katie smiled. “This is one of the ones you were listening to on the bus that one time.”
Brendan looked cautiously pleased. “You remember that?”
“Of course I do. I ran away; I didn’t suffer a memory lapse.” Katie’s voice was sharp, but there was a teasing edge to it. Brendan’s smile grew wider in response. So she wouldn’t have to face that smile and the way it made her stomach flip, she turned back to the laptop.
She was expecting something pretty, but easy. Something that would coddle her knee. And she was prepared to be upset about that. At best, maybe there would be some single and double jumps. But what was actually on the screen....
She knew Brendan was good at choreography. But either his three months helping with the junior teams had polished his skills, or he’d never let them fully loose before. This program was — or at least it had the potential to be — art. And it didn’t even lack for jumps.
Katie looked up at Brendan. “You put in triples. There’s even a quad.”
He nodded.
“How is this possible?”
Brendan pointed to some of his notations. “To be honest, I’m not sure it will be. But if you do surgery and rehab ... who knows what’s possible. I was thinking too we could switch our takeoff and landing feet, change our direction of rotation.”
“That won’t be easy,” she said in what was possibly the understatement of the century. For a skater, switching jumping directions was approximately like trying to learn to write with their other hand.
“No, and we never had time to think about working on anything like this while we were on tour, or I would have tried it. But now, the circumstances ... if nothing else, they give us time.”
The jumps weren’t the only challenge in this program. There were lifts, lots of them, all longer and more intricate than what was allowed in competition.
Brendan pointed at one. “Also, for these ... they won’t be easy. For either of us. I know I’m not in good enough shape for some them right now. But they’ll keep your feet off the ice. I know they’d look amazing.”
Katie, picturing the lines their bodies could make tog
ether, could only nod in agreement. “We’re not skating together anymore,” she said sadly. Katie felt an uncomfortable stab of guilt. First she’d lied — or at least omitted — to Brendan about her knee. Although she’d finally come clean, he had no idea she was still skating on the sly.
“Yeah, I know.” Brendan nodded. “Like I said. This was just for fun. But ....”
“I knew there was going to be a but.”
“If we ever did skate together again. For any reason. And this is not me asking,” Brendan said firmly. “But if we did ... I know you never loved tours. I know you miss the challenge of competition, the judging and the scores. But just because we’re getting too old to compete doesn’t mean we can’t still do incredible things. If someone says tour, you see an easy skate to a pop song you don’t care about. Lots and lots of big jumps probably aren’t in our future, at least not the way we used to do them. But once you get surgery, with the work you’re doing on your knee ... I know how driven you are. When I think about a tour now, I think of four a.m. ice times and going back to the gym and being absolutely brutal together with you, the way we were when we were at our best. Not to win. But because we want to and because we can. Although. Like I said,” Brendan took the laptop back, “this is academic. I’m really not asking for something.”
Good, Katie thought. Because if you did right now, I’d say yes.
Which was only a problem because she was happy here on the farm. Her family needed her. She could never go back to skating full-time, and Brendan would never want to share his time, or her, with the cows.
IN BED THAT NIGHT, Katie couldn’t sleep. She was tired from chores, from her therapy appointments, and from skating, but her mind wouldn’t stop racing. That, on its own, was familiar enough. She’d spent plenty of sleepless nights worrying over competitions, scores, music choices, a lift they couldn’t get right in practice. More recently, she’d worried over Brendan, the cows, the rest of her life, and her inability to stop worrying. But this wasn’t her anxiety plaguing her.
