I extend my arms. “I’m not Timofei.” Spinning on my heels, I leave John behind and head to the bathroom.
Timo has John. To turn to. To share his lousy day and news about his failed pay raise. Other than my siblings, I have no one.
(Again, don’t pity me, please.)
I’m happy for Timo. I’m happy that Nikolai has Thora James. Instead of resenting them, I choose to nod and be grateful that people I care about can find their happily-ever-after.
Even if I know it’ll never be me.
Seeing their love is the closest that I’ll ever come to feeling it again. So I don’t need to hide myself and pout. My stomach doesn’t curdle, and my heart doesn’t drop.
In the bathroom, I peek beneath the four blue stalls. No one is at the urinals or sink. The place is unoccupied, and so I slip into a stall.
I squat by the toilet and check my watch. About forty minutes until practice. I take one deep breath, and then I stick my finger down my throat.
I puke.
Everything appears in the toilet bowl. My throat scalds, the rising acid all familiar. I make sure that I vomit all the shit I’ve eaten. A minute later, I pause and try to poke at my esophagus, but nothing more comes out.
I spit a few times. And I suppress any guilt from this action. I’m fine.
Blowing out a breath, I stand, grab my water bottle, and chug. Hydrating.
Starting new.
Act Eight
Luka Kotova
Passing many sets of blue double doors—right outside of Aerial Ethereal’s performance gym—I aim for the end of the long hallway. I always enter the last door.
It’s as much superstition as it is procrastination.
I feel invisible.
No one notices me; no one really cares, not even as my torso and shoulders move to the beat of a song, blasting in my earbuds. My head bobs, and I lock eyes on the dead-end ahead of me, double doors to the left.
I see the wall and my lips lift. Quickly, I toss my gym bag aside and then I sprint. Straight at the ivory-painted concrete wall.
I run up it. Two huge steps, I gain height, and then I backflip.
Midair, I sense the double doors opening beside me, someone exiting the gym into the hallway. I land on my feet. Startled, I stagger backwards into the incomer.
Our shoulders collide.
“Fuck, sorry,” I immediately apologize and stabilize my balance. I hold out my hands towards a guy I’ve never met, afraid I hurt him.
He fixes his gray blazer, his beady brown eyes narrowing at me. I sweep his features quickly: slicked-back ash-blond hair, goatee and slight mustache. Yeah, I’ve definitely never met this guy before. He can’t be any older than thirty.
His mouth moves, and I realize that I can’t hear him.
I pop out my earbuds. “Sorry. I didn’t get that.”
“Your name,” he snaps.
I stiffen and eye his shirt beneath the blazer. No Aerial Ethereal paraphernalia. No sign that he’s with Corporate. My guards still skyrocket. “Kotova,” I answer.
“First name.”
I shift my weight. “Luka.”
“Luka,” he repeats like he’s filing this moment for life. “What does that say?” He points at a sign above the blue double doors behind him.
I don’t have to look to read it. “No running, tumbling, or acrobatics in the hallway.” My face is stone. “Sorry.” (I’m not sorry.)
His pinpointed gaze drops to my right leg. I wear white gym shorts over black compression shorts, but I’m positive he’s not staring at my clothes.
“Problem?” I ask, my voice easygoing.
“Your tattoos.” The dude gestures to the black ink that runs up my right leg, more designs beneath my shorts. Decorating my thigh.
My whole right leg is completely covered.
Most of the time, I forget I have tattoos. Especially since almost all of my cousins and siblings have them somewhere on their bodies.
Timo even has a tattoo on his ribs. Small script from the film The Red Shoes:
“Why do you want to dance?”
“Why do you want to live?”
“Well, I don’t know why, er, but I must.”
“That’s my answer too.”
My tattoos aren’t as poetic. Since I was fourteen (young, but not to me, not in my world), I literally walked into the same shop and told the same artist, “Do what you want.” He added more and more to my right leg, until I had to find a new artist in Vegas, and by eighteen, there was no room for more to be added. It’s not really about what designs I have.
It’s the moment. The time I went there. What I was feeling.
Who I was with.
A Cheshire Cat is inked on the back of my calf and I’ve never been a diehard Alice in Wonderland fan, but Bay was with me when I got it. Sat right beside me, cross-legged on a stool. She ate a beef patty from her favorite Jamaican restaurant, and she smiled when I looked over at her.
“Stop looking at me like that,” she said, trying to stifle her smile. “You’re hurting my face.”
Lying on my side, I sat up more and kissed Baylee.
Her lips pulled beneath the kiss. “You’re making it worse,” she whispered.
I held her cheeks. “I wasn’t trying to make it better.”
She groaned into a wider smile. “You’re awful.”
My nose flares in the present. Here.
Now.
The memory gnaws at my gut, and I swallow hard and plant my gaze back on the goatee guy.
“What about my tattoos?” I ask as gently as I can.
“The last show you were in, did you cover them?”
(He has to be with Corporate.)
I shake my head. “Viva was fine with them.” Though I was given multiple warnings to stop adding more, but I didn’t listen. One of my cousins was suspended for filling out two sleeves, and now Aerial Ethereal tries to relegate him to the background.
“Buy flesh-toned makeup as soon as possible. You’ll need to cover them for every live performance.”
I have no reaction. It is what it is, so I just nod.
“And Luka? This will be the last time you break the rules.” He motions towards the double doors. “After you.”
Tensely, I grab my gym bag, my phone buzzing, and I look stone-cold ahead, not at him. Pushing into the noisy gym, I unbury my cellphone from protein bars, extra clothes, IcyHot, and my water bottle.
As I head to the locker room, my gaze remains plastered on my phone. What.
Dazedly, I cram my bag into my assigned blue locker. One of my cousins says a greeting in Russian, and I just nod at him.
The email notification is from Marc Duval.
I click into it.
Date: February 15th
Subject: keep it professional
From: Marc Duval, Creative Director of Aerial Ethereal
Bcc: Luka Kotova, Baylee Wright
Luka & Baylee,
Because of certain underlying circumstances that we could not work around (i.e. casting you both in the same show), the company recognizes that you will be sharing space & time together.
Do not misinterpret this action. You are still to uphold the contracts to the best of your ability. Do not take this small amount of leash and run wild. You can speak to one another but only about professional matters.
Anything else is strictly forbidden. Remember there are two company members watching you. Remember what is at stake if you break the contracts.
Keep it professional.
Marc Duval
Creative Director of Aerial Ethereal
[email protected]
I can speak to Baylee.
I rest my palm on the cold locker, blown over.
I can speak to Baylee.
Like I care that there’s a stipulation attached. Professionalism. It doesn’t matter. The thought of being allowed to say hi knocks me forward. I can have a work friendship with Baylee.
I can look at her and not
fear the “no minors policy”—I sit down. I have to sit down.
(Holy fuck.)
I put my hand to my mouth, overcome with too much at once.
And then Dimitri lets out a long groan, making sure his presence is known. I watch him slip around the corner into my row of lockers.
Drenched in sweat, he puts his foot on the bench and leans his weight on his knee.
I raise my brows. “What happened to you?”
“The motherfucking fart-face.” He groans as he stretches his arms towards the ceiling. “New choreographer made the four OGs do burpees for twenty minutes.” OGs—he means the original cast: Zhen, Dimitri, Brenden, and Baylee. “If we slowed down past his ‘required tempo’—which was butt-ass impossible—we had to sprint the length of the gym twenty times.”
It’s not a small gym. It resides in the back lot of the Masquerade with eighty-foot ceilings, big enough to house all the apparatuses for each act.
I start imagining Baylee being pushed by the choreographer, and I tense up. I can’t ask Dimitri how Baylee is. I can’t even ask if she’s okay.
I comb a hand through my hair. Trying not to picturing some new guy screaming at her to “run faster” or “push harder” while she’s already giving her all. I know Baylee. I know that she hates being called out in front of people, for any reason: negative or positive.
“He also told me to bulk down.” Dimitri glares. “I can do what I need to do at this size. I’ve done it for twenty-six years.”
“Did you hear that?” Zhen quips from one row over. “Dimitri Kotova was six-foot-five in the womb.”
Nikolai comes around the bend, rolled bandana wrapped around his forehead. “Did he have enough room in there for a double layout too?” he banters.
The rare time that I see my brother loosen up—it’s with Dimitri or his girlfriend, Thora.
Dimitri hooks an arm around Nikolai’s neck and purposefully wipes his sweat all over him.
I hate to ruin my brother’s good mood. I normally wouldn’t intentionally try, but I have to show him this. “Hey.” I approach both of them.
They break apart. Towering over me.
Nik’s face instantly becomes serious, tapping into his stern big brother side.
I flash them my email. “Okay?” I need them to not intervene if I talk to Baylee.
Dimitri just looks to my brother for how to react.
Nik hardly relaxes. “It’s safer if you try not to talk to her.” His gray eyes never soften.
I knew he’d tell me to stay responsible and be serious about what this means, but I’m not floating in some fantasy. I understand my fucked-up reality better than him. I’m the one living it.
“I just wanted you to know,” I say easily and return to my locker, zipping my phone in my bag. When I pass them to leave the room, Nik clasps my shoulder.
I wait for him to say something.
He struggles to speak. To say what he feels. Lowly, almost beneath his breath, he tells me, “Don’t hang yourself with the slack you’ve been given.”
“I won’t.”
“I know you, Luk.” He pauses. “I know that if someone gives you an inch, you’ll go five feet.”
“I won’t.” It’s all I can tell him. If he doesn’t believe me, then he doesn’t believe me. There’s not much else I can do. So I add, “I’m not a kid.”
“I know that.” He releases his clutch on me.
I don’t let Nikolai trounce the fraction of good news. I pocket it. I carry it, and what should be happiness transforms into apprehension. Concern.
What do I even say?
Will she even want to speak to me?
Does she even like me anymore?
Act Nine
Luka Kotova
The gym is crammed, and it’s not a typical gymnastics gymnasium. In the middle, Amour artists practice on a giant, intricate metal cube, teeterboard placed precariously beneath.
Timo effortlessly sprints across the metal rung that looks like adult jungle-gym bars. With a magnetic grin that ropes my gaze, he drops straight down.
And he grabs hold of a lower rung before hoisting his body into a handstand.
As I pass, it takes me a while to tear my attention off my brother. Other artists definitely have that issue, too. Staring. Gawking.
Wondering how the hell Timofei Kotova is so enthralling.
I pass another aerial apparatus. Scarlet silk is attached to the eighty-foot ceiling, and Nikolai clutches the fabric. His much shorter girlfriend already slices through the air, the silk intricately wound around her ankle.
Over in the far left, a trapeze is set up for Viva artists, mesh net secured underneath, and then I spot Kat towards one of the walls.
The Russian bar sits off to the side with our cousin Vitaly and a new guy who replaced my role in Viva. I used to be one of Katya’s porters. I held one end of a bar similar to a balance beam while she performed a difficult routine on top.
What I love and miss most is working with my sister.
I notice that she hasn’t started practicing yet. I don’t have time to chat, but I call out, “Kat!” I already begin to wave before she turns her head.
I frown.
Is she wearing…? She is.
Kat wears pink lipstick, bright and overdrawn, and her black mascara and thick eyeliner darkens her eyes. I almost question whether it’s stage makeup since it looks cartoonish, but no one else is wearing any. It has to be her choice. Still, she’s never worn makeup at practice before.
That’s not all.
She’s dressed in a tiny sports bra and spandex. No shirt. My frown deepens. There’s no way Nik saw her leave the suite.
Katya waves back like nothing’s different.
“Fuck—” I walk straight into Brenden’s drenched back, his shirt soaked through with sweat.
He shoots me a glare but says, “Zhen’s leading the cast in stretching.”
I nod, as tense as him. I try to push Katya out of my mind and take a seat on the blue mats. All fifty of us are situated in a jagged circle. A few cousins are between me and Sergei.
Zhen spreads his legs open and reaches forward.
We all follow suit, but I lift my head up.
Baylee.
She’s directly across from me, only the empty middle of the circle separating us. I sweep her features more rapidly than I want or intend. More used to dodging her than staring.
Black spandex pants and a lime-green tank suction the slight curves of her body. Four thick but tight braids swoop down her head and are tied into a bun at her warm brown neck. Pretty and sporty. I remember she always used to wear this hairstyle for practices.
She tries to rub her damp forehead with her shoulder. Looking fatigued but still upright, she uses the short break to take it easy.
She’s okay.
She’s not hurt from being run-hard by the choreographer. I relax some, and as she leans into the stretch, her eyes slowly close in rest.
My lips begin to lift.
Baylee is confident and reserved. Quiet and passionate. I see all of what I remember.
She has an oval face that I loved holding between my hands. Rosewood-pink lips that I loved kissing. Thin yet strong arms that I used to intertwine with my brawn—and wide, curved hips that used to be beneath my straight.
She’s undeniably beautiful. The kind of beauty that chokes me up, and I don’t know how the whole world doesn’t see what I see—how I’m not fighting every fucking person on the planet for the chance to even speak to her.
Way back when, I’d hold her tight in bed and tuck her firmly against my chest—she’d fall asleep in my clutch. And I’d stare out the window, right into the New York City landscape, and I thought this is what I want forever.
I want this and her.
Dreams.
They’re fucking cruel.
Zhen reaches for his right leg. We all follow.
I keep staring. More than I would ever dare—all because of the email. Granting
me extra room to move in a prison cell without windows. Without a door.
I notice Brenden sitting protectively next to Baylee, and just as he changes stretching positions, he catches me ogling his sister.
I absorb the threat in his eyes. He keeps glaring. Waiting for me to look away. But detaching is harder than I thought.
We all press our legs together, touching our toes, and Baylee turns her head a fraction. Enough to spy her brother’s contempt. She follows the path of his piercing glare.
To me.
Her collarbones jut out in a strained breath, and she shakes her head at me like, what are you doing?
She hasn’t read the email.
Or maybe she really doesn’t want to risk anything concerning me. Maybe she’s in agreement with Nik. My chest caves—no.
No, I’m not ready to accept it. I clutch tightly to what may be lost already, but I’ve always been unable to release my grip. Marc Duval made me believe that a future with Bay was hopeless, but he could never convince me that she didn’t love me. That she didn’t hurt just as badly when we were torn apart.
Brenden cranes his neck towards Zhen, giving me a moment to speak to Baylee. I mouth, email.
Her face scrunches, confused.
I lick my lips and mouth better, email.
Realization washes over her features, and she begins to stand, to retrieve her phone probably, but then a new voice pulls our gazes to the left.
“Infini artists.”
(Fuck my life.)
Baylee sits back down, and my muscles constrict as the ash-blond goatee guy steps into the middle of the circle. The guy that I literally ran into. The one that chastised me.
The one that clearly disliked me.
I figure out who he has to be before he even introduces himself.
“Four of you have just met me, but to the rest,” he tells us, clipboard tucked beneath his armpit, “I’m Geoffrey Lesage. Your new choreographer. For the entire season, you will listen to me. You will respect me. All without question or backtalk. No exceptions.”
He purposefully hones in on me.
The cast definitely notices, some people whispering to each other. I bet Brenden is telling Baylee, see, don’t associate yourself with that.
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