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.
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 ½ 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.
&nbs
p; 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.
“I know it’s serious,” I say beneath my breath, blinking through my rampant thoughts and feelings. What more can I say? While I sit, my body bows forward. My emotions are teetering on a precipice, and I’m a second from falling off and puking.
“Do you?” Nikolai says, his muscles flexed. As tense as I feel. “Every single artist who has ever broken this rule has been fired from Aerial Ethereal. Not transferred to another show. Gone. Do you understand that? I can’t help you.” His face is full of brutal gravity.
And I think, fired.
The word still distorts in my head. A word with no meaning. With no context. I struggle to flip it over and make sense of it. I know the history of this rule.
I knew the inferno I was running through. Now that I’m burned, I try to sit numb instead of screaming in pain. “There are other troupes,” I say with no emotion. “High Flyers Company and Emblem & Fitz—”
“Aren’t your family,” Nik interjects. “Aerial Ethereal is the only troupe with your family, Luk—and it’s the best.”
He says it like I still deserve the best, but I don’t. An immeasurable amount of guilt fists my bare bones. Trying to shatter me. Trying to crush every limb. I’m not sure I can ever be absolved, and at the heart of it: I only regret being caught.
I don’t regret one day of breaking that rule. Because it’d mean regretting every moment that I spent with Baylee.
And I don’t. I just don’t. I can’t.
It feels like betrayal. Like a knife in the heart—and I’d rather gather her in my arms and shield her from this incoming misery than never feel what we felt together. Than never live as happily as we lived.
I stare at my cupped hands.
Fired.
I can barely picture losing my family. If AE sacks me, that’s what’ll happen. None of us have much time for people outside of the circus. And without this job, I won’t be able to afford room & board at the Masquerade. I won’t spend hours of every day working beside Timo and Katya. I won’t be tutored with them. I’ll need to go to public school—I’ve never even been inside a normal high school.
I’ll be on the outside looking in.
I’ll miss their lives, and they won’t really be a part of mine. To go from being in each other’s company daily, hourly, to being ripped out of their world—it kills me.
Everything that defines me resides in this place.
Everything and everyone I love is here.
Dimitri makes a wounded noise, seconds from screaming. He’s bent over, his hand splayed over his eyes. It takes me a second, but I realize that my unbreakable cousin—the one that everyone calls “the tank”—is breaking down before me.
I’m immobile.
Physically here, but drifting. Leaving. Somewhere else. Somewhere that feels more real than this unbelievable moment.
“It’s not your fault,” Nik tells our cousin. “Luka was the one who made the mistake. He has to take responsibility for his own actions.”
I’m unsurprised by Nikolai’s lack of sympathy. He’s always told me that same thing. He’s always been a stiff, follow-the-rules kind of guy, and he constantly tries to drill the same sentiments into me.
Even now.
When it’s too late.
Dimitri drops his hand, his face full of hard lines, and he nods rigidly in cold agreement. Of course he sides with Nik. Both the same age, Dimitri prides himself on loyalty, and as Nik’s best friend, he’d stand by his side to the death.
There’s no tender consoling happening. It’s not like there really ever has been. Before my family split apart, I never felt like my mom was mine. I saw her like a friend or a distant relative. My mom and dad wanted this corporation to raise us. To feed us. Clothe us, teach us.
I can see how they’d rarely call now. I can see how they’d feel like their jobs as parents were done once we landed a career. Once we learned skills that furthered us in the world. Only this happened when I was five-years-old.
Right now, I don’t have to look hard to know that there aren’t any gentle hands. No one is here to wrap their arm around my shoulder and whisper, “it’ll be okay,” in my ear.
I face hard jaws. Muscular bodies. Overpowering masculinity, and look, I’m only human. Sometimes I’d like a mom to hug me.
Just once.
Nikolai doesn’t blink, and his harsh gaze meets mine.
“Just say it,” I tell Nik, my eyes burning. Reddening.
“You valued sex over your career, and there’s no coming back from this.”
I shake my head repeatedly, my features contorting. I didn’t risk everything for sex. It was more than sex. It was always more. But how can I defend myself? The rule I broke was about sex—and that’s all they see. A fling. A hookup.
Not love.
I fucking love her—and that means nothing to everyone but me.
I ache for compassion.
Sympathy.
Everything that Nik can’t give me.
“Would you even care…?” I say so softly he can’t hear.
“What was that?” His gray eyes narrow on me.
I hoist my head, high enough to meet his intensity. “Would you even care if I got fired?” He’d be free of me.
His nose flares, suppressing a multitude of emotion. He believes that I am going to be fired. That there’s no other alternative.
(There never has been.)
He’s right to think this. I’m the one dreaming.
“No matter what happens,” Nik says, “I’m still your guardian.” He didn’t exactly answer my question, but he pats my shoulder, trying to be comforting. Gentle.
It’s a harsh pat, but I understand.
I see that he loves me, even if he has trouble expressing the sentiment outright.
No one says another word after that, and all my thoughts circumnavigate back to one moment. One night. Yesterday.
I wonder how long it’ll haunt me. How many times I’ll replay the past in my head.
After Infini’s show last night, Aerial Ethereal threw a huge cast party for their patrons. Attendance was required so investors could shake hands and chat with all the artists. In hopes that they’d make a donation by the party’s end.
I’d been to plenty before, and in my mind, the word “required” was a loose suggestion rather than an actual rule.
Wearing makeup and garments from the show, I snuck away with Baylee to the costume department. We had sex behind one of the dressing racks. A colorful array of sequined outfits shrouded us from sight.
My older brother will say that having sex was my mistake, but I believe my real and only mistake was not accounting on anyone else leaving the party.
Swept up in the moment, we didn’t hear Dimitri or the Marketing Director of Aerial Ethereal enter the room, but they heard us.
Apparently Vince laughed about the incident and said something like, “Looks like this room is taken.” Dimitri told me that Vince even motioned to leave, but my cousin was the one who stepped forward.
“Anton,” Dimitri called out, humored, “if that’s you, I’m going to tell everyone where you like to fuck.”
I had just enough time to grab a dress from the floor and throw the garment to Baylee. Then Dimitri pushed the hung cloth
es aside and caught us.
As soon as he saw me, his smile fell, and before he could yank the costumes back to conceal us, Vince careened his neck.
One glance from a member of Corporate and our whole world came crashing down. Vince reported us to his supervisors, and his supervisors reported us to Marc Duval, who’d been in Montreal. Apparently he took the red eye to New York, just to have this meeting.
Baylee and I had been secretly dating for about a year and a half, and in that time, we never really believed we’d be caught.
We felt invincible.
I’m fifteen.
She’s fourteen.
We’re young enough to make mistakes, but we’re old enough to be employed by a billion dollar company with strict, unbending rules.
Aerial Ethereal minors (i.e. employees younger than 18) are not allowed to date or have sexual relations with other Aerial Ethereal employees.
The line in my contract wreaks havoc on me.
On us.
Exactly 48 minors were caught breaking that rule in the past forty years. Exactly 48 minors were sacked from Aerial Ethereal.
There should be no hope for me or her, but I haven’t accepted my reality yet. I just can’t.
I glare at the door to Marc Duval’s Manhattan office. Baylee is on the other side, and it’s not like I had much of a choice in who went first. I would’ve taken her place.
Truth: I’d do anything to lift the consequence off Baylee. She doesn’t deserve to be fired. This circus—it means so fucking much to her. Infini, especially. It’s more than a job for Bay.
It tears at my insides knowing that I’m responsible for hurting her…in an insurmountable, unthinkable way.
And if I start focusing on what she means to me—I’ll really puke.
(They won’t split us apart. They can’t.)
I feel how naïve I am. I feel young.
I feel fifteen for, maybe, the first time in a really long while. I’ve been independent most of my life. Able to take care of myself and make my own money. It’s what my mom and dad wanted. I’ve never felt like I needed a parent. Not until this moment. Not until right now.
Infini Page 3
