Nik wouldn’t wait until the last minute for any Aerial Ethereal deadline, and Timo has probably been working just as long to clean up our place.
My little brother is one of the most professional artists here. Always on-time for rehearsals, stagings, and meetings. Goes above and beyond at practice, and would never send Marc Duval an email that called his decision bullshit.
As soon as Katya shuts the door on her way out, Timo says, “You said you wouldn’t start hoarding.”
“Dude.” I sigh heavily. “I’m not hoarding. I have no attachment to most of this stuff. You can throw out a ton of it.”
(Just not anything that reminds me of her—it’s all I have left.) I ache to say it, to plead, to tell him all that’s weighed on me for years.
But I do what I have to do.
I push her aside. I try to forget.
Yet, I’m still clinging.
Timo balances the snow globe on his bent knee. In smooth Russian, he tells me, “I’m just worried.”
In the same language, I say, “You shouldn’t be.”
He rolls the Christmas globe into the trash bag. “Luka…”
“It’s just my shit to deal with, okay?” I’m upset because I don’t want them to see how much I’ve been stealing recently. I wish I threw out all that stuff ages ago, but I just put things off. Shove them aside and try not to look back.
That’s my life.
I cram my figurative drawers full of shit and more shit and pretend it’s all nonexistent. That it’s not bearing on my chest like a fifty-ton elephant.
Timo rests the back of his head against my dresser. “I like focusing on your Robin Hood tactics. It helps take my mind off our new room situation and the fact that my life is completely fucked.”
I kick the trash bag out of our way. “Your life isn’t completely fucked.”
Timo laughs once. “You, Luk, are the best roommate in the world. You don’t hound me when I stumble in late or blare music. You don’t care when I bring my boyfriend over and fuck loudly. Really, it takes extreme work to piss you off.” He pauses, as though saying, seeing you pissed today scares me.
I rotate my baseball cap, brim in front.
Lately, I just feel like I’m losing all of my control with Corporate. Not that I had much to begin with, but I was artfully fooling myself for a while there.
“Henceforth,” Timo continues, “my new roommate will never be as great as you.” (Likewise, Timo.) I give him a look. “Henceforth?”
“It annoys John when I say it.” He smiles wide, a magnetic grin that could make grown men and women bow in adoration.
I shake my head. Henceforth. “I don’t think you’re using that word right.” Maybe he is. I don’t really know.
“That’s the beauty of it,” Timo says easily. “Henceforth, I will say it however I want.”
I smile, my chest lighter just talking to him. He has that effect on most people.
As the quiet falls, we skim the emptied room and the trash bags. Half of my life is filled with garbage. The other half with necessities. The problem is trying to sort out which is which.
Nineteen years of living with Timo. Gone.
In one fucking email.
“Who are you rooming with anyway?” I ask him.
He scratches his temple, his face a little pained. “I’ll tell you later.”
Timo has no enemies. Where I’m the Least Favorite Kotova, he’s without a doubt the Most Beloved. Last year, Marc Duval said he was “life and youth personified”—and he’s never slept with anyone in Aerial Ethereal, so he’s pretty drama-free too.
“Okay,” I say, not pressuring my brother. I know he’ll open up in his own time.
Timo nods to me. “What about you?”
I dig in my pants pocket and pull out the crumpled letter from HR with my room assignment. I hand the paper to Timo. I’ve read it a hundred times already.
Artists Assigned to Room 4303
L. Kotova D. Kotova Z. Li
B. Wright That last name—B. Wright—skids my heart to a complete stop every single time. It’s not a good feeling. No matter how much I wish it could be.
Her name so close to my name is just bad.
Act Two Luka Kotova
The exact layout of my suite is the same as the last one, but two things are noticeably different.
One: the window-view is of the Vegas strip, not the hotel pool.
Two: three other people live with me now.
That’s four people total in the same sized space.
I didn’t focus on this detail until I entered my new bedroom, and I was met with a bunk bed like I’m at summer camp. No box springs. Not even a real mattress, just some blue vinyl-wrapped foam insert that pretends to be one.
I prop my arm on the doorway, my gray eyes plastered onto the atrocity that Corporate calls a bed. My older cousin paces the length of our tiny, shared room and rubs his unshaven jaw and chin. Completely distraught.
“What…I…what…” He lets out a gnarled sound. This might be the first time I’ve seen Dimitri Kotova lost for words.
“Hey,” I say with a nod and shake my box of Junior Mints, dumping candy in my palm. “You can take top or bottom, whichever you want.”
Dimitri is tall, not just for an acrobat’s standards. Everyone calls him “the tank” for his muscle mass and towering height.
He’s 6-foot-5-inches like my older brother Nik, but the difference: Nik is more agile, more natural—a gifted, talented artist. He out-flips, outmaneuvers, and outperforms everyone.
Except for Timo.
Dimitri tries ten-thousand times harder to do what Nik can do in one breath. I know what it’s like to be second-best to people you love. Hell, not even second-best.
Third best. Fifth best.
In some scenarios, the worst.
So yeah, I like Dimitri, even if he has a lot of undesirable qualities.
Dimitri stops by our plain dresser, the only other furniture in here. He blinks a few times, and I pop a Junior Mint in my mouth. Waiting for him to wake the fuck up.
When the shock escapes him, he finally acknowledges my presence. “Are you looking at me?”
I nod again, brows raised. Wondering where this is going.
Dimitri points to his chest. “Do I look like a third-grader? Huh? What in the fuck is Aerial Ethereal smoking?” His face nearly shatters at another thought. “How am I supposed to have sex on this thing? As soon as a woman sees this, she’s going to laugh right in my face.”
Dimitri sinks down on the “mattress” and the whole structure creaks. He looks simultaneously murderous and wounded. Covering his face in his hands, he’s one step away from proclaiming my life is over.
My cousin loves sex, women, and the teeterboard. Not always in that order.
In his family, Dimitri is the oldest of ten children, and at twenty-six, he’s six years older than me. But we were all born into the circus life together. Four generations. No other options.
Only one love.
By the age of five, I was a kid actor, collecting props. Clearing the area for the next act. Performing simple floor acrobatics in group routines.
Our job is to produce magic for an audience. No bunnies in hats or card tricks. With our bodies we do the unthinkable. Scale walls without handholds, lift people twice our size in perilous positions, slice through air with the strength of one arm—flips and twists that’d make most gymnasts go, “What the fuck?”
All while creating an aura of pure, raw beauty. Visceral, full-bodied magic thrums through our veins, and we hope it’ll reach an audience. I love the adrenaline, but even more than the rush—when I perform, I feel the closest to my family.
Hearts and souls are left on that stage, and by ten, I fought to leave mine too. I began specializing in a variety of high-risk acrobatics, a required milestone for all Kotovas. Russian swing, Russian bar, trapeze, teeterboard, and aerial apparatuses (hoops, silks, straps, metal cubes, chandeliers).
All the while, I spent two to three months in cramped hotel rooms before traveling to the next city, the next country, the next continent.