THE MORNING AFTER BRENDAN Called Katie and Katie Finally Called Him Back

Star Prairie, WI

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KATIE WOKE UP AT THREE-forty-five, rolled over, turned the alarm on her phone off, and flopped back down on her pillows. As always, she’d woken up automatically fifteen minutes before she’d actually had to. She’d spent years travelling the world for competition and glory, but this — a few extra minutes in bed in her room at her family’s farmhouse — was what felt like luxury.

Her room didn’t look much different from how it had when she was a teenager. The walls were the same eggshell white, the carpet the same dark green. The trim had been newly scraped and re-stained in another improvement made by her uncle Jesse. It was now a deep brown that showed off the grain of the wood. The curtains, made years ago by Katie’s mom out of worn bedsheets, were light blue. The furniture — the bed, the dresser, and the little vanity under the dormer window — had been in the family for generations. Jesse had offered to re-finish those too, but Katie had turned him down. She liked the worn edges and the pale rings on the wood from where she’d left water glasses as a child.

Here in this room with the sky still dark outside the windows, the call with Brendan last night felt like a missive from another world, tenuous and perhaps frightening. But whether that was good or bad, she didn’t know. Her heart had leapt to see Brendan’s name flashing across her phone screen, but just as quickly it had clenched and sagged in misery. He’d called so many times the first week or two after she’d left him in New York. She’d never picked up and never listened to any of his voicemails. Eventually, he had stopped calling. Why on earth he would be reaching out now, except to make one more attempt to yell at her for her disastrous choices, she didn’t know.

But he hadn’t yelled. He’d been sad and uncertain and, as he so often was, so damn earnest. Now he was coming to visit. After twenty years of friendship and whatever else they were to each other, Brendan was still something she did not understand — ferocious, feral, patient, and too kind. She was finally going to have to deal with him off the ice, in the real world. That was new. And terrifying.

What would Brendan think of the farm? Of who she was now? What about her knee? Or how she’d abandoned him? Katie wanted things to be okay between them, but if they couldn’t get there, that would probably be her fault — for running away, for ignoring his attempts at communication for so long, and for not being honest.

Her knee was, unsurprisingly, no better than it had been when she left New York City. In some ways, also unsurprisingly, it was worse. Her local doctor had confirmed that surgery was unavoidable, and every day was a day closer to absolutely needing to have that done. She just couldn’t quite bring herself to pull the trigger. In the meanwhile, she was doing physical therapy in hopes of buying herself time.

Katie glanced at her phone; her moment of laziness was up. She climbed out of bed, straightened the covers, and arranged her pillows. Her mind churned as she pulled on a pair of jeans with the knees almost worn out and a sweatshirt that had been washed so many times the original color was in doubt. It might have been Brendan’s; she couldn’t remember. It had been here, in her dresser, waiting for her when she’d come home.

What are we going to talk about? Katie wondered as she jogged down the stairs to find Rob in the kitchen making coffee. She and Brendan didn’t have skating in common anymore. He was working with his skaters. She was milking cows. There was a lot to be said for the monotonous, peaceful rhythm of life on the farm. It was about as far from life on the competition circuit as it could be, and Katie loved it. Brendan didn’t; he’d shown that before.

But still he was coming to visit.

***

SHE COULDN’T SHAKE her distraction as she went through the usually soothing routine of the morning chores. Her mood must have shown. Halfway through milking, Jesse glanced over at her from where they were disinfecting the cows with iodine.

“What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing.” Katie knew she sounded like an incompetent teen trying to avoid trouble, but what could she possibly say? Jesse had often been less judgmental of her and Brendan’s tumultuous relationship than the rest of her family, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to roll his eyes at the latest installment in the drama. Katie did, however, suppose she should warn her family about an incoming house guest.

“Mhmmm.” Jesse looked suspicious and unlikely to let his inquiry drop. He could be as determined as Katie and as ambitious in his chosen profession. Which was probably one of the reasons they got along so well. “You’re not as good an actress as all those skating commentators say. So ’fess up before I ask again in front of Rob and your mother.”

Katie reassessed how much she liked Jesse. He would absolutely carry through on that threat. She pulled a handful of freshly laundered cloths out of their bin to wipe down the cows with. “Brendan called.”

“How did that go?” he asked mildly.

“He’s coming to visit.”

“Is he now?” Jesse looked surprised at that. “Not that we don’t have room, but ....”

Katie turned towards the cows so she didn’t have to look at Jesse. “He said we needed to deal with our mess once and for all.”

“And you said?”

“That he wasn’t allowed to break up with me on the phone.”

“Wait.” She could feel Jesse staring at her. “Were you —”

“No,” Katie said sharply. “We were dancing around it. Or I was. Or something. I don’t know.” She took a shuddering breath. “I also don’t know what I want or why he’s coming or where we stand. I just know this is it. If we can’t make things work now, I’ll never have him in my life again. And I don’t want you to give me any advice, please, because then I’ll be pissed and confused about you too.”

“Okay. That’s fine.” Katie finally dared to look over at him, but he was studiously attaching a milker to a cow. “We’ll keep pretending like your life is normal.”

“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.