THE SECOND TO LAST Day of the Tour

New York, NY

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NONE OF THE BUSES BROKE down again. Neither did Brendan and Katie, but Brendan suspected that was only a matter of time. What they had going now wasn’t quite a detente so much as it was an extended game of public edging. They hadn’t truly solved anything between them, but Katie seemed willing to be present and figure it out, which was enough for now.

They were in New York City, with only two performances left. Soon, the rest of the skaters would go their separate ways, but he and Katie would stay on here for a week. They had what felt like an overwhelming number of meetings scheduled to discuss opportunities from memoirs to product endorsements to licensing deals.

After the first performance, the entire group went out for a farewell dinner. Everyone was tired, wired, and ready to be done, yet somehow still up for one last bout of camaraderie before the final performance.

They took up the back room at a Chilean restaurant and ordered a ridiculous amount of food. Brendan sat next to Katie, as he usually did. While he began the night chatting and bantering with the rest of their tour mates, as the night went on, his focus narrowed to Katie.

He didn’t have his own inclinations to blame for that, either. At least not solely. Halfway through dinner Katie leaned over to say something to him and put her hand on his leg. Higher than was strictly appropriate, had they been just friends. Higher than she would have a few short months ago.

Brendan folded his hand over hers. To stop her? To question her? To welcome her? He wasn’t sure. She tensed slightly, and Brendan’s hopes were confirmed. Her gesture had neither been platonic, nor intended to be. Brendan had caught her out. He knew she was afraid, both of her own boldness and of Brendan making them talk about things again. But Brendan loved her boldness and felt no need to press a conversation tonight.

Before she could pull away, he shook his head and wove his fingers through hers. The normalcy of sitting there holding her hand like they were absolutely sure what they were to each other was somehow worth more than responding to her tease and flirtation.

After the restaurant everyone went out to a bar, where there was a lot of hugging and promises to stay in touch and absolutely no fist fights. Tyler and Brendan even shook hands, and Brendan wished him good luck next season. Most of the skaters on the tour would see each other back on the competition circuit, but Katie and Brendan would not be among their number.

Natalya found him and Katie where they were sitting side-by-side and too close at the bar.

“Katie. My surprise roommate. I have something for you.”

“You do?” Katie looked confused and flustered. Brendan grinned to himself. He wasn’t the only one she didn’t know how to accept affection from.

“Do you two want me to give you some girl time?” he asked, getting up out of his seat.

Natalya shook her head. “Oh no. You should see this too,” she said before turning back to Katie. “I will miss seeing you at competitions next year. So I got you this.”

She handed Katie a small tissue paper-wrapped package. Brendan watched as Katie, looking uncertain, carefully pulled off the tape and unrolled the paper from whatever was inside.

A Russian nesting doll fell into her palm.

Katie smiled. “Thank you, Natalya. It’s beautiful.”

Natalya scoffed. “That is not the whole thing. I customized it. See, open it.”

Katie did, opening each doll in turn and lining them up on the bar. There was something written on each one in gold ink. Katie read them out loud as she went, her cheeks reddening as she did so.

“Stupid boys ... bar fights ... knee problems ... kissing drama ... bus falling.”

“They are all your woes,” Natalya said. “So you can tuck them all up together and keep an eye on them.”

Katie threw her head back and laughed. “Thank you,” she said, sliding off her bar stool and hugging Natalya. “These are wonderful.”

“You’re very welcome.” Natalya looked pleased. After she let go of Katie, she turned and gave Brendan a hug too. “I will also miss seeing you at competition. But I know that you are one of Katie’s woes. So I hope you fix that.”

“Me too,” Brendan said fervently. “Me too.”

After that, Brendan tried to stay engaged in the conversations going on around him, but it was impossible. Katie was too captivating. She had turned on every bit of her charisma, and had focused it all on him.

Brendan was still stunned, twenty years and who knew how many programs later, how much meaning Katie could put into a look, a glance over her shoulder, a flick of her wrist. The chemistry that commentators loved to wax poetic about, the detail that elevated their programs from excellent to superb; none of it had ever been an act. It had always just been them.

God, Brendan wanted her. And tonight, Katie clearly wanted him. That much was crystal clear. She wasn’t hitting him with a two-by-four, but she might as well have been.

All right, then.

Back at the hotel, everyone poured into the lobby, exchanging more hugs and shouting goodnight’s and I-love-you’s to each other. It took a couple of elevators for everyone to get up to the floor their rooms were on. Brendan and Katie hung back by a mutual, unspoken agreement to be among the last upstairs. When they finally reached their floor, Katie started off down the hall towards her room, but Brendan caught her around the waist.

“Just a minute,” he said, ignoring Justin’s pointed eyeroll as he walked past them.

Katie looked up at him through her eyelashes. “Oh?”

“Wait ’til everyone’s gone,” he said.

Barely a minute passed before all the doors had banged closed up and down the hallway and they were alone again. It felt like eternity. Once the prying eyes were gone, Brendan took Katie’s hands and stepped backwards until he met the wall.

Katie, both bold and uncertain, followed his lead until she was nearly pressed against him. “Now what?” she asked. Her eyes were wide and there was a flush high on her cheeks.

Perhaps all the space between them was finally, permanently, going to disappear. Brendan watched the pulse leap under the skin of her throat. Oh, how he wanted to press his tongue there. His own breath caught in response.

“We said we’d talk about us after the tour,” he breathed. He kept his back against the wall. He needed it to stay standing. He needed Katie to come to him.

She put her hands on his shoulders and pressed herself against him. The warmth and feel of her was familiar from a hundred skates and yet was completely different in the here and now.

“The tour’s over,” he said, his mouth brushing the soft shell of her ear. He wouldn’t ask the question, but he needed her to answer it.

“Not yet it’s not,” she said.

“It might as well be.” Brendan ran a hand down her arm. “And we’re doing whatever this is.” He traced his fingers over her lips, which parted slightly in a small and gorgeous gasp. “But I need you to tell me what’s next.”

Katie tipped her head back as if she didn’t care that they were in public. Brendan ghosted the pad of his thumb over the pale column of her throat.

“Well, there’s us, this version of us, at any rate,” Katie said. “And there’s the next tour. Ours.”

“And then?” Brendan was nearly afraid to breathe. Katie, and everything they could be together, was so close.

Katie said, “I don’t know.”

Brendan pulled away from her slightly, as much as he could anyway with his back to a wall. How could she not know, standing here with him like this, breathing with him here like this? “You don’t know?!”

Katie shook her head. Her eyes widened, like that should have been obvious. “I told you before. We had a whole conversation about it.”

“Yeah, we talked, and you asked for time to figure things out. Since now we’re here, like this, I thought you had?” Did I misread her? The possibility was horrifying.

She shook her head again, this time more sharply. “I didn’t figure it out.”

“Like, you don’t have any idea what you want? With us? With skating? With anything?” Brendan knew he was repeating himself, but he was terrified of getting this wrong.

She fisted her hands in Brendan’s shirt and for a moment pressed her forehead to his chest. “How could I? I had one dream, and I got it.” She looked up at him beseechingly. “I don’t know how to have a second one. Or a third, or a fourth. You keep offering me such beautiful things, all of which I wish I had the courage for, but I don’t know how any of them could compare to what we’ve already done.”

Brendan covered her hands with his own, as gently and non-possessively as he could. She rubbed her cheek against the back of his wrists, like she was seeking comfort as much as anything else. Brendan wished he knew how to give it to her. “We got to the Olympics by making a choice. We won the gold by making a choice. All you have to do now is decide what you want your life to look like and make a choice.”

Katie pressed the most fleeting of kisses to the back of Brendan’s hand. “All I ever planned for was winning, Brendan. You know that. That was do or do not do. Now there are all these shades and possibilities and so many more things that could go wrong than losing. I don’t know how people do that. I don’t know how I’m supposed to do that.”

“By being scared and doing things anyway.” Brendan had no idea what was happening in Katie’s head. She’d always been so determined. So sure. He knew her anxiety made things hard, but he’d assumed — perhaps erroneously — that post-competitive life would be easier on her.

“That’s all great and abstract, but like ... I don’t even know how to get a job!”

“That is definitely your anxiety talking. Jobs are going to come to both of us. People are going to help us. We’ve got this week of meetings and a ton of opportunities. You have to know if we put the word out we wanted to coach or choreograph ....” Brendan tried.

“Don’t those meetings scare you? Because they terrify me.”

Brendan shook his head. “No. We’re good. We’re in demand. People who are experts in their work the way we’re experts in skating are going to do their best to make sure that benefits all of us.”

“But the things we’re talking about — it’s getting paid to be us. And live some sort of glamorous lifestyle which is the opposite of the reality of skating or the tour bus or the costs and —”

Is that what you think comes next? Brendan thought. Is that all that you think is left for us? A public life with no private joy? Oh, Katie ....

Brendan tightened his hands around hers. She was, he knew, close to having a panic attack. He didn’t have to understand why — hell, she didn’t have to understand why — for him to do what he could to help her through it. “Shhh. Shhhhhh. Breathe,” he said. “Just look at me and breathe.”

She bit her lip and nodded.

“We’ll find a way to do what’s right for us. We’ll figure it out. It will be okay, I promise.”

Katie pulled back and shook her head roughly. “You can’t promise that. No one can promise that. And it’s not fair or kind for you to try.”

Brendan stared at her, and finally, finally started to get it. She wasn’t being stubborn. She had no idea what the world looked like — or if it could even continue to exist — after this tour ended in less than twenty-four hours. Of course she was terrified. Who wouldn’t be?

“You’re not kidding,” he said in wonder and a growing horror. “You really have no idea what happens next.”

“No I’m not kidding! Why did you ever think I was kidding? Am I ever kidding about anything?”

She was growing frantic, and Brendan felt like the ground was slipping away underneath his feet. “No! Which is why I’m so puzzled. Did you forget how to do things?”

“No, Brendan,” Katie said slowly, as if she were speaking to a small child. “I can’t have forgotten how to do it, because I never knew how. We’re being asked to launch a business, by ourselves, by a bunch of people I don’t know or trust or know how to evaluate!”

Brendan gulped for air as his brain struggled to keep up. “I don’t get how this is any different than what we’ve been doing all along, but if you don’t know how, why haven’t you asked?”

“Who was I supposed to ask?”

“Me!”

Katie shoved away from him. “You don’t know anything more about the real world than I do! It’s not as if you’ve got your life figured out. A shrug and ‘oh yeah I guess I’ll coach’ isn’t a plan!”

“I’m pretty sure it is, and even if it isn’t, I’m still doing better than you!”

“Seventeenth,” she hissed.

Brendan rolled his eyes. Nothing could be less relevant right now. “Newsflash, the only one of us who cares about that is you.”

“You know what? I don’t need this. These whacked out arguments are why every time you’ve almost got me convinced we should be together, it becomes wildly apparent that we don’t know what we’re doing and are never going to figure it out!” She stormed off down the hallway.

Brendan willed himself not to reach after her. This wasn’t going to get better. Not tonight and maybe not ever. His hands were shaking slightly, and he pressed his palms against his thighs to stop them. “Where are you going?”

“To get my head together for our big finale tomorrow! That, I know how to do.”

Brendan sighed and slouched against the wall. He was a mess. Katie was a mess. And this situation was a disaster.