THE MORNING AFTER THE Screaming Match in the Stairwell

Portland, OR

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BEFORE BRENDAN LEFT his room for breakfast a knock sounded on the door. Justin had already gone, and, unless he had forgotten his key, this was unlikely to be anything good. Brendan hoped it wasn’t Katie. If they were going to engage in yet another round of bullshit, he wanted some coffee first. He was tired, his face hurt, and he looked like crap.

He padded over and glanced through the peephole. Leo was standing in the hallway. Brendan’s heart sank. Between Leo and Katie, Leo was probably the worse option.

“Come with me,” Leo said unceremoniously when Brendan opened the door.

“Uh, sure.” Brendan fumbled his shoes on awkwardly while holding the door open with one hand.

Leo led him down the hall to another hotel room whose door was propped open. Inside was Dr. Meyer, her first aid kit sitting on one of the beds.

“First, we’re getting you checked out,” Leo said. He steered Brendan into the room with a hand on his back, like Brendan might bolt. But Brendan was not about to do anything that was going to make this day worse. “Then, we’re going to talk.”

Brendan had been through a lot of bad mornings: Mornings after he’d lost competitions, after uncomfortable red-eye flights, after fights with Katie, after girlfriends had broken up with him because of Katie. But this morning was quickly on its way to qualifying as one of the worst. On top of everything else, it looked like Brendan was going to have to face the very reasonable consequences of his actions not only on his partnership, but on his job. He had no idea how bad those consequences were going to be.

He took the chair Dr. Meyer waved him into and sat still while she examined his face, pressing gently on the side of his nose.

“Any headache?” she asked, checking his eyes and nose with an otoscope.

“I mean, it hurts, but no.” How had Brendan let his feelings run away with him — first with Tyler and then with Katie? He never let things get out of hand like that. “How bad is it?” he asked, giving Dr. Meyer his best pathetic expression. He couldn’t undo anything that had happened, but he could at least try to win some charm points back. It wasn’t like he had anything else going for him at the moment.

Dr. Meyer tutted and leaned back in her chair, stripping off her gloves. “You’re fine. Nothing’s broken. You’ll have that shiner for a while, though.”

“I gathered.” Brendan poked the skin under his eye tentatively. “Ow.”

“Stop doing that,” she said.

“Yeah, okay.”

Leo, who had been sitting back letting the doctor do her work, sat up in his own chair. “Now, care to tell me how that happened?”

“To be honest, no.” Nothing Brendan could say was going to make this any better for himself.

“Brendan.”

Brendan took a breath. “A group of us went out to a bar last night. It doesn’t really matter who else was there, they weren’t involved. Except Tyler. He started saying stuff about the women on the tour. You know ... sexually suggestive stuff.” Brendan couldn’t bring himself to repeat any of it. “I told him to stop, we got into it a little bit, verbally, but then he said something about Katie. I lost my temper and tried to punch him. I missed, but he didn’t.” Brendan touched his cheek gingerly. “I know I fucked up, and for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“Well, I suppose that could have been worse,” Leo said. “At least no civilians were involved — if you’re telling me the truth, and I’m assuming you are. I think you know this already, but I do need to say it.”

Brendan braced himself. Were he and Katie about to get kicked off the tour? Brendan didn’t think so — their box-office draw was too powerful and people had probably done worse than this in the past — but having to consider the possibility was unnerving. He’d never forgive himself if he did anything to screw up Katie’s career.

“You can’t do things like this and expect more tours — with a group or with Katie — to be an option.” Leo went on. “Pissing off the hotel is bad enough on its own, but fighting on top of that? No.”

“There was a noise complaint?”

“You were shouting in a concrete stairwell. You’re lucky I found you before there was more than one noise complaint.”

Brendan nodded rapidly, more ashamed now.

“But now that I’ve said all that.” Leo looked even more serious. “I’m going to have a word with Tyler. Fisticuffs in a bar is a terrible choice, but I’m not going to tolerate anyone talking about the ladies — any ladies — like that.”

“Thank you,” Brendan said. He meant it too.

Leo nodded and stood up. “Now, ice that eye of yours. And don’t do anything like this again.”

“Yes, sir.”

Once Leo had left, Dr. Meyer turned to Brendan. “Is there anything else I can help you with?” Her tone suggested she wanted to chase him away, and a large part of Brendan would have been happy to flee. But help he did need. Why not ask someone who was as sick of his and Katie’s shit as he was?

“Actually, uh. Yeah. I’ve got a question. Not about medical stuff. More about the car crash of my life. If you don’t mind me asking?”

“At least you’re interesting.” Dr. Meyer dropped into the chair Leo had vacated.

“You’ve known Katie and me for like, a long time,” Brendan said.

Dr. Meyer nodded. “More’s the damn pity.”

“Yeah, well. I don’t disagree. We’re a mess. I mean, more than usual.”

“Brendan, we’re clear I’m not a therapist, right?”

“Uh-huh. I’m just desperate.”

“Then can you please cut to the chase?”

“Right. So.” Brendan was grateful for Dr. Meyer’s acerbity. It helped him focus, which he desperately needed to do. “Since Harbin we don’t know where we stand with each other or ourselves or anything, and I know it’s because we’re retiring and neither of us really knows what to do without competitive skating. But we’re miserable, and I don’t know how to fix it.” Brendan looked down at his hands on his knees and clasped them together. He could do so many things with his hands: perfect the lines of a spin, hold Katie in a death spiral, catch her in a throw lift. But he couldn’t fix Katie’s knee or banish her anxiety or repair whatever it was between them that was cracking apart.

“You don’t fix it,” Dr. Meyer said bluntly. “You don’t get to go backwards, you know? You have to do what’s next. Which is preferably not getting into another bar fight.” She looked at Brendan intently. “What do you want?”

“I don’t know,” Brendan said reflexively.

“Bullshit,” Dr. Meyer said, all gruff kindness again. “No one has very public screaming matches with the person they’ve been officially not dating for years unless they want to be dating them. So, I’ll say it again, what do you want?”

“Katie,” Brendan blurted before thinking the better of it. “If Katie wants that, of course. But she thinks we’re cursed if we try to date and skate at the same time. And now we’re not even friends because we’ve both been so awful. We’re not sharing a room anymore. We never used to need space from each other.”

Dr. Meyer narrowed her eyes at him. “You want my advice?”

“That is why I’m here humiliating myself. I mean, other than the black eye.”

“Well, I wanted to make sure. Because I think your first mistake is in thinking you and Katie were ever friends.”

Brendan frowned. “What do you mean? She’s my best friend.”

“Sure,” Doc said. “But not like go-to-the-movies-once-in-a-while friends. You’re big, messy, epic, people-write-classical-tragedies-about-you friends. Anyone can see that.”

That was a whole new grim way for someone to put it, but Brendan didn’t see any point in arguing. Dr. Meyer was right. “We don’t really try to hide it. We use it on the ice all the time. Although I hope it’s not that bad in person.”

“It is that bad. You’ve spent most of your lives together, in whatever way you are, since you were children. Now you’re approaching a major career change. This is where you have to stop thinking like a competitive figure skating pair.”

“What do you mean?”

“Every program you’ve ever skated with Katie has been about a boy and a girl in love. That’s what the sport requires. That’s the story you’ve spent your entire lives telling. So of course you want that kind of happy ending for you and Katie too.”

Brendan nodded.

“But maybe that’s not the ending meant for you. Maybe you’re supposed to be figuring out how to be apart. Not together.”

Brendan was shaking his head before he realized he was doing it. Every part of him rejected the idea that he and Katie weren’t two halves of a single whole.

Dr. Meyer didn’t press the point, just gave Brendan a few moments with his thoughts while she stood and rearranged some gauze pads and sterile wipes in her first aid kit. Her activity reminded Brendan that he couldn’t linger. The group would be on the road again soon; he needed to pack and hopefully find something to eat from the hotel’s breakfast spread. Regardless of what was going on in his head.

He took a deep breath and stood up. “Hey, thanks for the,” he said, gesturing generally at his face. “And for the words of wisdom.”

“Anytime. But please figure this out, you’re killing me here.”

Brendan hardly heard her as he shuffled out of the room and back down the hall to his own. He had too much to think about as he threw his things together quickly. At this point he barely needed to be conscious to find his phone, unplug his chargers, zip his costumes back in their bag, and kneel on the floor beside the bed to make sure nothing had gotten misplaced underneath it. As he went through the familiar motions a cold, unpleasant knot settled in the pit of his stomach. Figure out how to be without Katie? Impossible. It would be like figuring out how to be without half of his soul.

By the time he hauled his bags down to breakfast, the majority of the tour was already there. Lena and David were sharing a newspaper and a plate of scrambled eggs. Justin and Haruka were poking at the waffle maker. Shane was gracefully navigating the closely-packed tables and chairs, three paper cups of coffee held precariously in his hands.

Most of them glanced up when Brendan shuffled in, but he didn’t care about whatever interest they were taking in his black eye and the rest of last night’s drama. He only had eyes for Katie as his gaze instinctively landed on her.

She was sitting in a corner at a table by herself, her headphones on, and a mostly empty plate in front of her. She had pulled her sleeves over her hands as if already anticipating the chill of the rink, and her damp hair hung around her shoulders. Brendan couldn’t help remembering last night; he could almost feel her hands in his hair again, her mouth against his own. There was so much potential between them. Why was it so hard to make things work?

As if feeling his eyes on her, Katie glanced up. She didn’t smile or nod in greeting, but the gesture wasn’t necessary; Brendan could read the recognition in her eyes, along with sadness, unease, and a cautious hesitation. For so long words had been unnecessary between them. Years had seemingly passed without him ever needing to ask her how she was. He knew by the angle of an eyebrow, the pressure of her hand in his, the tension in her back when he grabbed her for a lift.

But maybe that was part of the problem. Certainly, if Brendan wanted something between them to change, he was going to have to start communicating differently. He crossed the room to her.

“D’you mind if I sit here?” he asked, reaching for, but not touching, the back of the chair opposite Katie. He knew he sounded awkward, but this was an awkward situation.

“No. Of course not.” She took off her headphones and tucked them into her bag, but then moved her bag off the chair beside her. That unspoken invitation was louder than her spoken one had been.

Brendan circled around the table and dropped into the seat, Dr. Meyer’s words ringing in his head. The worst part was that he couldn’t dismiss them completely. He wanted to, desperately. But maybe she was right. Maybe he and Katie weren’t destined for the happily ever he had always assumed they would, somehow, achieve.

He’d known for years that his and Katie’s relationship was not typical or, by other people’s standards, healthy. They sublimated anything they might have wanted from each other and left it all out on the ice. That relationship had worked for them, gloriously, but it had done so in a context that no longer existed. With the Olympic gold medal behind them, it was entirely possible that he and Katie had already been as close as they ever would be.

But Brendan was as capable of wanting things and working for them as she was. He was just better at it when he was with her. If they ended up falling apart — for whatever reason in whatever way — it wasn’t going to be because he hadn’t tried.

“I’m sorry about last night,” he said, his mouth tucked low to Katie’s ear so no one else could hear.

Katie gave him a sideways sort of smile. “I imagine you are. Did Leo yell at you?”

“A little. Probably less than I deserved. He said he’s also going to tell Tyler off for being a skeevebucket.”

Katie grinned more broadly at that. “Good.” But then her smile faded, and she looked away from Brendan and stared at the juice machine instead. “What you said last night ....”

“I said a lot of things last night.”

“When you said you wished you could hate me. If it would make things easier.”

Brendan bit his lip. Of course Katie had latched onto that line.

“Did you mean it?” Katie asked. Her voice was small.

“Honestly?”

Katie folded her arms across herself. “I sure don’t want anything but honesty from you.”

“Yeah. I meant it.” Brendan reached a hand out and closed it around one of hers. Gently, he peeled her arm away from her body so that he could fold their fingers together under the cover of the table. “But I don’t hate you. God. Far from it. I really hope you know that.”

Katie nodded but didn’t say anything.

Brendan swallowed and made himself go on. “There are a lot of things we have to talk about. Probably sooner rather than later. Because I think Leo’s going to throw us off the tour if we do what we did last night again.”

Katie scoffed, her shoulders straightening and her tone lightening. “No way. Our box office draw is too good.”

“That’s kind of what I think too, but I didn’t want to say it.”

Katie jabbed her elbow lightly into his side. “You’re a jerk.”

“You started it.”

“Okay, we’re both jerks.” Katie gave him a small, tentative smile.

They were both so good at deflecting and running from this thing. On any other day, Brendan would have let the conversation go at that. Katie was smiling at him. Their tension had, for the moment, dissipated, and they would be able to get the work done. For so long that had been all that mattered.

But not anymore. Brendan squeezed her fingers. “I want us to have a conversation about what we’re doing and what we both want and what we’re going to do about it. But I also don’t want to have it in a hotel lobby with half our friends watching us.”

The smile faded slowly from Katie’s face, but in its place she fixed Brendan with an intent look. “Okay. Yeah. Of course.”

“Good. Okay. Now.” Brendan pulled out his phone. “We’ve got half an hour before the bus leaves and an episode of that makeover show to finish. If you want?”

“Absolutely.” Katie sounded relieved, though whether that was because she felt reassured that Brendan didn’t hate her or because they had postponed more drama, Brendan wasn’t sure.

Katie offered her headphones, and Brendan plugged them into his phone, taking the right while she took the left. As the opening credits of the show started, he felt Katie breathe deeply beside him. Then she nestled her head onto his shoulder.

From a few tables away, Natalya glanced at them angrily. “You two are not even going to talk? You are so boring.”

Brendan felt the exhale of Katie’s breath when she laughed. He really hoped they could fix this. Life without Katie was incomprehensible