At thirteen, Corporate said that I’d settle down in New York City and join the cast of a new show called Infini.
I was happy. Like wish-upon-a-star, blow-out-all-your-birthday-candles kind of happy. For the first time, I’d live in one place. I could unpack my suitcases for real. I could memorize city streets knowing I wouldn’t have to forget them in a couple months. I didn’t even care that Corporate housed us in dingy apartments. For one brief second, I was happy.
Then the second passed. Stupidly, I never looked at the fine print.
The cast list didn’t include handfuls of my aunts, uncles, some of my cousins, and all the older generations. And most glaringly, my mom. My dad.
None of them were joining Infini.
Our huge overwhelming family was being split apart in several directions. My parents were recruited for Somnio, which would tour Asia, Europe, and South America for five years. Where Corporate says you go, you go.
“It’s our living,” my dad would tell all of us. Fight back and Aerial Ethereal could easily replace us. What kind of life would we be living outside of the circus? No one toyed with the idea.
I figured I’d lose some contact with my mom and dad. Halfway across the globe, too busy, all the time differences—so much separated the touring side of our family from us. Now I barely speak to any of them, and not long after my parents left, Nikolai became my legal guardian.
He was just twenty.
He was the age that I am right now. I think about that a lot. Could I’ve done what he did? Could I’ve taken care of Timo, Katya, me, and all of our emotional baggage in a big, brand new city?
(Not at all.)
I barely have my own head on straight. Sadly, too, my brotherly relationship with Nik disintegrated the day our parents left. Sometimes I wish he could be more like Dimitri.
More of a big brother than a dad.
Then I hate that I think it—because I’m sure he wishes he could’ve filled that role over the parental one.
I swallow my Junior Mint almost whole and focus my attention back to Dimitri. Who still mourns the dismal future of his sex life.
“We have a couch,” I remind him. “Just screw there.” He knows I don’t care.
Dimitri drops his hands from his face, strong-jawed and broad-shouldered like all of us, but his ocean-blue eyes contrast the usual Kotova gray. “Let me do that, and then watch our two other roommates cock-block me and take a steaming dump on my work life. I don’t shit where I eat.”
When I was eleven, he told me that fucking anyone who works for AE is like swimming in a “polluted pussy ocean”—his ineloquent way of saying: extremely dangerous. And in some cases for our careers, fatal.
I didn’t listen to his advice.
I usually don’t.
I straighten off the door frame. “Speaking of that other roommate…” I can’t even say her name. I think of B. Wright and all of my muscles tense. I shake the rest of my candy into my mouth.
Dimitri scrutinizes me. “Huh.” He stands up. “That roommate? Are you talking about Baylee Wright?”
I shrug. Don’t think about her. My stomach overturns, and I have to clutch the doorway. I crumple the Junior Mints box in my other hand.
“Little Kotova,” Dimitri jeers when he thinks I’m being an idiot. “You’re out of your mind if you believe HR put Baylee in our suite. For one, she has a cunt.”
His crudeness is a second-by-second occurrence. With that kind of consistency, I’ve become overly desensitized. And maybe I shouldn’t be.
“Second…” He seizes my gaze like he’s trying to pry this fact into my skull. “She’s Baylee Wright.”
I feel sick.
My past—with her—tries to burrow deep into my body. (I can’t let it.) I lower my baseball cap so he’s unable to read my features.
Dimitri still appraises me, and he wedges his towering build into the doorway.
So I have to confront him head-on.
“But you do realize she’s in Infini?” He cocks his head and waves his hand at my face. “You there, hello?”
I roll my eyes as I lift my gaze. “Leave it alone, dude. I don’t—no, I literally can’t talk about her.” When I say that I can’t speak about Baylee, it has nothing to do with our feelings. They could be good feelings. They could be miserable, and it still wouldn’t change this one fact.
I literally can’t talk about Baylee Wright.
And she literally can’t talk about me.
“I just want to know,” he says roughly.
“Know what?”
“If you auditioned for Infini forgetting that you’d have to work with her again.”
“I didn’t forget.” I’d never forget. When Infini moved to Vegas and I jumped to Aerial Ethereal’s Viva, Baylee stayed in Infini. She’s one of the few original cast members from its inception.
I never really believed Corporate would shift me back to Infini. Even if I auditioned, I always knew it was a long shot. Now that it’s actually happening, it’s still hard to process the reality. We have two entirely separate acts, so I’ve prepared for our paths to parallel—not intersect.
Now we have new choreography where I may actually work with her.
Now she’s living in my suite.
I shake my head to myself but I say aloud, “I didn’t mentally prepare for her to live with me.”
“Good because she’s not,” Dimitri says with certainty. Off my confusion, his brows knit and he makes a face like he’s about to disown me. “Don’t tell me you forgot she has an older brother.”
“Fuck,” I say.
Fuck.
My whole face drops. I never put the pieces together. When I see those initials, my mind cements on Bay.
Not the obvious answer…
Brenden Wright.
Act Three
4 ? Years Ago – New York City Luka Kotova
My knees bounce.
Restless, I rub my sweaty palms on my gym shorts. I’ve never ventured this far into Aerial Ethereal’s Manhattan corporate offices. Large, black-framed show posters hang on the waiting room’s periwinkle walls, and fresh lilies sit in a ceramic vase.
On any other occasion, this place would seem inviting, but today, I’ll meet Marc Duval for the first time. Any kindness will vanish as soon as I step into his office.
“Apologize and then stay quiet,” my older brother coaches in his stern voice, darker and more severe than ever. “Let me do the talking.”
He towers above me, not able to sit, and his broad arms won’t uncross. Nikolai Kotova is intimidating in almost every circumstance, but now I can barely even meet his gaze, which carries forty-tons of parental disappointment.
As my legal guardian, my failings reflect poorly on him, and this wasn’t a tiny hiccup. In his words: “this is a colossal fuck-up, Luka.”
I know.
I slump forward, hands cupped together, my stomach coiling in vicious knots. I’m not sure what I should say to anyone. There’s no denying that I broke a rule.
A rule that’s been cemented into the foundation of this company.
A rule that’s been upheld by every Kotova that ever existed.
I broke this rule every day, but I was caught only once. And that’s all it takes.
Just one moment for everything to change.
Next to me, Dimitri Kotova pinches the bridge of his nose, and in all the years I’ve known him, he’s never looked this distraught. Briefly, he glances at me, and a flash of remorse ignites his ocean-blue eyes.
“This is serious,” Nik tells me, his voice low—even if we’re the only three in the waiting room. Long pieces of his damp hair hang over a rolled bandana, tied around his forehead. Sweat stains the neckline of his gray shirt.
Corporate pulled all three of us out of practice today.
It’s not like my older brother and cousin are cheering for “free time” off work. Most of us stress if we lose gym time, if we’re not stretching enough or not rehearsing our acts. I screwed that up for them too.
Nik waits for me to acknowledge my mistake.