“Not even for me?” Katya bit her bottom lip.
I knew I couldn’t stay friends with Katya. She was so attached to Luka. They’re inseparable. It was like asking Luka to be friends with my brother and avoid me—it’d never work.
I ripped off a Band-Aid by blurting out, “I can’t be friends with you either. Your whole family is a bad influence…” I couldn’t finish. Tears leaked out of her eyes, and I broke my heart and hers.
Later that day, I found our stuffed dinosaur at my door with a note that said, you can have Marvin. I’m a bad influence anyway.
I couldn’t even bear to look at that dinosaur, but I also couldn’t bear to throw him away. I crammed Marvin in a cardboard box, and he’s now collecting dust in our shared closet.
I try to let our last interaction from the past drift away, and my aunt’s voice draws my attention to the computer.
“What happened to ‘putting yourself out there’ and not being pessimistic about love?” she asks.
I clutch my journal tight and think, that’s exactly what I’m about to do. “Is that how you met Devon?” I wonder. “You just sat at a bar and waited for him?” It seems like a one-in-a-million likelihood.
“Yes,” my aunt says into a growing grin, an awful liar.
“You’re terrible.”
“She is.” Devon pops his head into the frame, his smile brighter than hers. He’s tall, black, a New York attorney, and Lucy’s doting husband of three years. “We met in the line of Superheroes & Scones, and she approached me.”
“Get out of here.” Laughing, she elbows him out of the frame. “And I only talked to you first because I wanted to know why a man your age was holding three Storm plushies.”
“For my nieces!” I hear him off-screen.
Aunt Lucy rolls her eyes but sets them back on me. “You’re deflecting again.”
“I’m not,” I say seriously. “I like hearing about you.” More than I like talking about myself. And I’d rather not stress my aunt out with my life. She’s pregnant. Unloading any kind of grief onto her shoulders won’t do any good. “How long will you get for maternity leave?”
I feel her assessing me. “A lot longer than most. A perk of working for a company owned by a feminist.” Barely pausing, she asks, “What’ve you been writing?”
I go still. In the video screen, she can see my pen but not the journal. “Just…a list of things I need to fix and work on.”
“Like…?”
“I can’t really say.” I peek at Katya again. She’s slumped forward, face in her hand. She looks upset at something.
My aunt takes the hint about the list, but she’s not finished prying. “And Luka?”
I jolt. “What?” My neck instantly heats. “What about him?”
Severity shrouds her usually sweet-natured face. “I talked to Brenden yesterday. He said you’re working with him.”
“Who’s Luka?” Devon asks from off-screen.
Her eyes flicker to him. “No one, baby.” To me, she adds, “No one, right?”
A lump lodges in my throat. “Yeah…yeah, he’s just a co-worker.” I understand her concern. Like Nikolai and Dimitri, she sees him as a youthful fling—someone I dated and got into trouble with. He’s a kid that used to make me happy. A long-ago memory.
No one worth risking a career over.
No one worth risking the dreams of other children.
He’s no one.
I open my mouth, and I ache to shake my head. To say, he’s so much more than no one. How can I explain this to my aunt? She’ll say that I’m in love with the idea. The fantasy.
Not reality.
But she’s not here. She has no idea how much I trust Luka with my body, my heart—my life.
Katya suddenly sniffles. She’s crying? I’m staring at the back of her head, so I can’t tell for certain.
“I have to go,” I say to my aunt.
With casual goodbyes, we log off, and I pop out my earbuds. Swinging my legs off the bed, I sit on the very edge. I hate that I hesitate to approach or even call out her name, but I do.
I shouldn’t tear open a friendship that we closed poorly and painfully. I should leave her alone.
Marc’s email must’ve shattered more than one fortification in my mind—because I stand up. When before, I would’ve never even chanced nearing Kat.
I set my journal on my bed and reach our desk.
She startles at my presence and quickly shields her face with her long straight hair.
A YouTube makeup tutorial plays from her laptop. I watch a vlogger showcase a compact of highlighter or blush. I can’t really discern which.
“What do you want?” she asks uneasily.
To rewind time and never have to hurt you. I examine her spread of cosmetics, which must’ve cost a ton of money. She may’ve even tapped into her savings.
“What?” she asks just as cautiously.
I pick up a tube of lipstick. “I always thought you’d stay sporty with me.” I try to smile, but it won’t form. We both believed intense makeup was a hassle. All I use: eyeliner, lipstick, and concealer, just to hide zits.
“People change.” Her tone is soft and morose.
People change. I didn’t just miss Luka’s life. I missed my friend grow older.
And it’s not like I collect a million friends either. The tiny handful that I made from the past few years have all transferred to touring shows. I’m left with my brother and Zhen.
I miss having girls around me, but really, I miss Katya.
I set the lipstick down. “You really want to wear all of this?”
Katya takes a breath. “Yes,” she combats.
My defenses don’t skyrocket. I lean against the desk. “Nikolai?” I’m guessing he’s already been on her case. “Did he tell you to return it all?”
“Yeah.” Katya slumps forward. “I thought if I’d buy the best stuff it’d make me look less like a clown, but then I figured out that, no, I just paint on makeup like a literal clown.”
I get it.
We all have to do our own costume makeup, and we can’t choose the design either. AE gives us a detailed picture of the colors, strokes, blends, shapes—all around our neck, eyes, and lips. Those Aerial Ethereal classes teaching us how to shade and shadow were my least favorite.
I was awful at first. Plus costume makeup is so much different than one coat of lipstick. It’s drastic and extreme lines that pop your features. All so the person in the very back row can see some facial detail.
Katya tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “I suck at everything the first thousand times I do it, and I swear Nik would be great at cat-eyeliner on his first go-around. He’s better than average at everything.”
It’s why we never let her brothers try to win Marvin for us. They would’ve succeeded in less than half the time, and the point wasn’t just to get the stuffed dinosaur. It was to prove that we didn’t need a boy to validate what we always believed: that we had the power to do anything we wanted ourselves.
I hope she never lost that after she lost me.
I bend to the laptop and click into another makeup tutorial. “Yeah, well, we don’t need Nik.”
“We?” She’s skeptical.
I glance over my shoulder at Kat.
Thick, blocky eyeliner shrinks her usually big eyes, doing the inverse of what she probably wants. Dark-red, blunt lip-liner makes her mouth look cartoonish, and pink blush streaks her cheekbones, very over-drawn like stage makeup.
I can’t tell if I’d be able to do any better. “I’m still Sporty Spice,” I say, noting how we used to both be the same Spice Girl together. We liked sharing the title. We liked sharing a lot of our things, actually. “But if you want to be Posh, I can try to help.”
“Why?” she asks, eyes watering.
I shrug, searching for words that I’m allowed to say. “Because I…” miss you. “…because we’re suitemates and roommates.”
“Right…” She nods to herself and tucks another piece of hair behind her ear.
I click into a smoky eye and bold lip tutorial. We watch the video together, not all of the tension has been expunged. Our past still stretches uncomfortably between us.
“You can sit down,” Katya offers a minute later. She scoots and gives me room on the same chair.