LATER THAT DAY

Somewhere on the Road Between Portland, OR and Sacramento, CA

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KATIE SAT AND STARED out the window at the landscape as the bus rolled down the highway. Today was a travel day, not a performance one, for which she was grateful. She couldn’t stretch on the bus as much as she wanted, but at least her knee got a break. With some time before she had to be on the ice with Brendan again, she could work on regaining her equilibrium.

Not that she was avoiding Brendan. If she had wanted to, such a thing wasn’t possible on a bus with a dozen other people. He was sitting next to her right now, his laptop open on his knees as he worked on yet more modifications to their Harbin free skate.

He was quieter than usual. Much quieter. Normally when he was working he wouldn’t shut up about his ideas, but today he sat with his headphones on, his shoulders a little slumped, listening to the same twenty seconds of music over and over again and writing and deleting the same block of choreography. Even Katie’s anxiety couldn’t interpret that as anger towards herself; she knew Brendan too well. He wasn’t upset. He was sad.

If Brendan were another man Katie might interpret that as a subtle sort of guilt-tripping, indirect puppy eyes to make her feel bad for kissing him and then running away ... again. But Brendan was sweet, and he was decent. Whatever was bothering him was surely rooted in the larger complexity of their situation.

So she didn’t ask. Any conversation he hadn’t wanted to have at breakfast, he wouldn’t want to have here. Besides, she wasn’t ready. She wasn’t sure she would ever be ready. To put words to this thing between them — words that were planned and not shouted in the heat of the moment — was terrifying. Katie hated uncertainty, and she had no idea where such a conversation would lead them. Her life didn’t make sense without competitive skating or without Brendan. Competitive skating was already gone. What would happen without him?

Katie closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of her seat. Those questions had kept her up all last night, spinning through her mind while her exhausted body had refused to sleep. If only she could catch up on shut-eye now, but the seats were too uncomfortable, her leg twinged intermittently, and Andrej and David were watching a hockey game in the row behind her.

She shifted restlessly in her seat. The sound of Brendan’s typing stopped, and she felt his hand come to rest gently on her leg. She could hear the sound of his breathing, soft but distinct over the chatter of the bus, as his thumb traced soft circles over her knee.

***

KATIE WOKE UP TO THE lurch of the bus pulling into the hotel parking lot.

“Are we here already?”

Brendan was standing in the aisle, sliding his laptop into his bag on the luggage rack. “If by ‘already’ you mean ‘six hours later,’ yes.” He smiled, but there was anxiety in his eyes.

Katie didn’t want to deal with what needed dealing with, but she also wished they could rip the band-aid off before the tension in her chest ratcheted up any higher. But there was too much to be done for the tour first. They barely had an hour at the hotel to drop off luggage and change clothes before they had to get back on the bus for the venue. They needed to get a feel for the ice and to run through the group numbers.

At practice Katie was, for once, relieved they didn’t have anything particularly difficult to work on. As they skated through the pairs number with David and Lena, Brendan was quiet and distant, leading her to wonder whether he was upset with her after all. How much had he meant it, when he said she treated him like a prop to her own career? Did she do that? When it came to skating they needed to be together. That was a fact. Everything else was just logistics. And if Katie had ever pushed Brendan brutally — and she knew she had — he had always pushed her just as much.

She only snapped out of her own head when she and Brendan were both so distracted they nearly ran into David and Lena on a simple footwork sequence. Get it together, Nowacki. She scolded herself as Brendan apologized for them both.

***

THANKS TO THE VAGARIES of scheduling, dinner that night was a group event. Everyone from the tour gathered around one long table in the hotel restaurant. Brendan slid into the seat next to hers, as he always did. Being left handed brought all sorts of minor annoyances into her life, and bumping elbows with righties while eating was one of them. At least she and Brendan were in sync enough they didn’t have repeated collisions with each other.

“All right, team meeting time,” Leo announced once everyone had ordered, only to be greeted by a chorus of groans. “Look, it’s a dinner meeting or a four a.m. meeting, and I’m happy to get up at four.”

The table, mostly, fell silent.

“That’s what I thought,” Leo said with a smile. “Okay. First. Yume’s birthday is next Tuesday, so everyone, be nicer to her than usual. If you all want to celebrate, by all means, but please, no dramatics,” he said with pointed glances at Brendan and Tyler.

Both of them looked embarrassed.

Good. They should be, Katie thought. The bruise under Brendan’s eye was a little better today, but still definitely a dark purple.

“You should all have the updated practice schedule in your inboxes, and I’ve got copies here,” Leo went on, brandishing a sheaf of papers before handing them to David, who sat next to him, to hand around. “Points of note. Tyler and Natalya, you’re now at eight-thirty with the other singles skaters. Lena and David, you’re at eleven so you can do media first thing in the morning. Van will be here to pick you and Katie and Brendan up at five.”

“I thought we didn’t have to do media ’til the day after?” Lena made a face. Katie could sympathize. She’d much rather spend tomorrow morning in the gym until it was time for their practice slot.

“I did too, but the local outlets changed their mind. And a reminder that we’re on the road again tomorrow after the show, it’s a long damn way to Denver.”

Katie tuned the rest of the announcements out as she became aware that Brendan was staring at her with an odd, distracted look on his face.

“What?” Katie whispered.

Brendan shook his head. “Nothing. Just a thought.”

She caught him staring several more times during dinner. Every time she looked at him he would smile, a little guiltily, and look away. Which wasn’t like him at all.

When the meal was winding down and people were beginning to stand up and leave, Brendan touched the back of her hand lightly. As soon as she turned to him, he withdrew his fingers.

“Come back to my room?” he asked.

“What for?” Her voice was tight.

“To talk. We agreed we should, and after tonight I don’t think we’re going to have much time for a couple of days.”

Katie nodded. So they were doing this now. She stood up, grabbed her sweatshirt off the back of her chair, and followed Brendan.

She knew it was absurd to be nervous about a conversation. Here she was, walking down the hallway with Brendan like it was any other trip they had taken and they were going back to their shared room ... except for the utter uncertainty. She had no idea what happened next. And Katie always knew.

“What about Justin?” she asked as they approached Brendan’s door. He paused to fish his keycard out of his wallet.

“He’s hanging out with Natalya and Yume, I think. I asked him if I could have the room this evening, anyway. So we’re good.”

“You asked to have the room?” Katie was somewhere between impressed and appalled. “He, and everyone he tells, is going to think we’re fucking.”

Brendan scoffed. “They know we’re not. Really. I promise.” He unlocked the door and held it open for her. In Denver, Katie had a key to his apartment; on the road, they usually shared a room. There had never been a need for one of them to let the other in before. Yet here they were.

“Do you want anything to drink?” Brendan asked. “I have water. And uh, whatever came with the coffeemaker.”

“We literally just had dinner,” Katie said.

“I know. I was trying to be nice.”

“Stop. You’re making this feel like a first date.” Not that Katie had been on many of those. But this — the awkwardness, the not knowing where to sit or where to look — had been a part of all of them, whether with boys or girls.

Brendan shrugged and toed off his shoes. He dropped into a stretch on the floor by the window, working out the kinks of the day, leaving the bed between them.

How many times had they done this? How many times had they come back from a performance or competition or dinner and been helpless to know what to do next? How many times had they busied their bodies with innocent activities — stretching, brushing their teeth, organizing their suitcases — so that they didn’t touch each other? Because Brendan was right. They’d been millimeters from fucking for years. The moment on the bus right before they kissed had been singular only because one of them had finally followed through on the sweet, teasing promise they’d been playing with for so long.

Brendan had one leg tucked in, the other stretched out, and he looped his hand easily around that foot. He wore a short-sleeved V-neck shirt. Stretching like this, Katie could see a good deal of the smooth lines of his muscular chest. She swallowed down the desire to run her fingers across his skin there, to pull aside the collar of his shirt and leave bruising bites where no one could see.

Instead, she circled around the end of the bed and sat on the floor opposite him, just out of reach. If touching was an option, she would sooner or later take it. And she couldn’t. Not now. Not tonight. Not before they talked.

For a long time, too long probably, neither of them said anything. But Katie wasn’t going to break the silence first. Brendan had asked her here. Let him start.

Brendan switched legs. “It’s been a rough couple of days,” he finally said.

Understatement. “I know. And to the extent that’s my fault, I’m sorry. Especially for kissing you.”

“Jesus, don’t apologize for that.”

“What I mean is, I’m not apologizing for not having sex with you after I kissed you.” Because Katie was not ever going to apologize for that to anyone.

“I didn’t expect you to.”

“Good.” Katie nodded.

“Okay. Fine.” Brendan matched her impatient tone. “Do you want me to come out and say you’ve been unbearable and I’m confused? Because I can do that too.”

“I think I’ve been pretty clear.”

“Yeah, no,” Brendan said. “You’ve been upset at me and having anxiety about your knee and convinced we’re cursed. Which has left me feeling like I’m supposed to guess at — or worse tell you — what you really want.”

If I knew what I wanted, this would all be a lot easier. “We are cursed.”

“You’re giving me nothing to go on here, Kate.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I want —” Brendan sighed. “I want you to tell me what you want. If you think there are obstacles to that, then I want us to discuss them.”

Katie pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged her arms around them. “I don’t know.”

“You must know. All you do is know.”

Katie laughed bitterly. “I really don’t.”

Brendan was looking at her earnestly, his chin tucked a little and his green eyes earnest. He was gorgeous, and he was perfect, and he had far too much confidence in her. Someday, probably soon, she would let him down. Which would definitely break her heart. She didn’t want to break his, too.

Brendan smiled, disbelieving. “You’re Katie Nowacki. You decided when you were nine that we were going to skate together and that we were going to win a gold medal. We did, because you are brilliant and committed and the most ambitious, hard-working, passionate person I have ever had the privilege of knowing.”

Katie felt her cheeks heat a little at the praise. Something warm stirred in her stomach. “We’re not doing press, you don’t have to say nice things for the audience.”

“Everything good I have ever said about you is completely, totally, one hundred percent true.”

She looked up to see Brendan sitting up too, his posture mirroring hers, his eyes fixed on her face. “God, can you not do that?” she said.

“Do what?”

She turned her face away, resting her cheek on her knees. “Just ... look. I don’t know.”

“Katie.” Brendan said her name so softly and with such exasperation she had to look at him again.

“What?”

“It’s me.” Brendan reached across the space between them, offering her his hand.

She took it, twining their fingers together. “Sometimes you do this thing and looking at you is like looking at a part of myself. It messes me up.”

“I can’t help that,” Brendan said, his voice soft. “And, if I’m being honest, I wouldn’t if I could. Though if it helps, that’s how I feel every time I look at you. I always have.”

“That just messes me up more.”

“Okay.” Brendan squeezed her fingers. “There’s one thing I need to know.”

Katie focused on their hands again. It was easier than looking at his face. “Okay?”

“Do you not want to be with me. Like ... do you not want me to chase you? Because if you don’t, if that’s not interesting or comfortable or whatever. I swear, I will stop this right now and you will never have to deal with anything of that sort from me again.”

“No.” Katie shook her head.

“No, you want me to stop, or no, you don’t want me to stop?” Brendan pressed.

“Don’t stop,” Katie blurted, then bit her lip. She hadn’t planned to say that. But it was true.

“Okay. But you don’t want to be with me?”

“No, I don’t.” Katie pulled her hand out of his. “Not now. Not ... yet.”

“Okay,” Brendan said again, infinitely patient. “Now, you can be mad at me about this if you want. But when Dr. Meyer was looking at my face, I talked to her about some of this mess. A little. I doubt any of it was news. I mean she’s known us for ages.”

“You did?” Katie asked suspiciously. They so rarely went outside each other when trying to solve their problems. Which maybe wasn’t the best conflict management system, but it was what it was.

“I did. She told me that maybe — just, that maybe — that what we’re meant to be doing is learning how to be apart. Not together. That made me wonder if all this drama we’ve had since Harbin, which you think is the universe jinxing us .... Maybe that’s all because we’re not meant to be together off the ice at all. Regardless of what either of us want.”

“Is that what you think?” Katie couldn’t keep the hint of panic out of her voice.

“No. But I also don’t want to think that’s what’s going on, so I’m not trusting my own judgment. In fairness, I needed to put it out there so you could think about it too. That advice wasn’t just meant for me.”

Katie nodded in acknowledgment. The notion took her breath away, and not in any fashion that was pleasant. While she didn’t entirely know how to be with Brendan, the idea of being without him was incomprehensible.

“What do you think?” Brendan asked, almost desperately.

That I don’t know how to breathe without you.

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I wanted to be Nowacki and Reid forever. When the only thing we could possibly have was skating, nothing else mattered. And truthfully, I liked the world that way.” She looked down and tugged at the short pile of the carpet. “I know that’s not the answer you were looking for, but —”

Brendan leaned forward and put a hand to her wrist again. Every cell in her body turned its attention towards him, and whatever she was about to say died on her lips.

“I want the answer that’s true, no matter what it is.” Brendan’s thumb circled her pulse. “Tell me what you want, and I will do everything in my power give it to you.”

There were so many things that Katie wanted that were not within Brendan’s power to provide. She wanted the noise in her heard to be quieter. She wanted her knee to be more reliable. She wanted never to age, and she wanted to go back to Wisconsin. Mostly, she wanted everything she felt for him to be a solution instead of the massive, ongoing problem it was.

“I want time,” she said. It was true, in so many ways. “I also want you to stop thinking about what’s possible, or what happens next, instead of what’s right here. I know desire has always been the thread that holds us together on the ice and right now, I need you not to do anything or ask anything of me that puts that in peril.”

Katie watched as Brendan worked to integrate her words into his reality. It was like criticism from a coach. You took it in and no matter how much it pissed you off, you did what you had to do. Brendan was nothing if not dutiful. Sometimes that made the way they cared for each other even harder.

“Okay.” He seemed to gulp for air. Katie understood. She too felt like she was drowning in this conversation. “No making out. No propositions. And no thinking ahead of where we are right now.”

“Thank you,” she said, but Brendan wasn’t done talking.

“I’m going to assume that the next move, if and when there is one, will be yours. But I’m not going looking for it. So you’ll need to be clear. Small words, complete sentences, possibly hitting me with a two-by-four clear. Can you do that for me? If and when?”

Katie nodded. She would do anything for him. She just hoped her feelings would ever be that clear about anything.