Act Nineteen
Luka Kotova
I raise the journal higher and nearly smile at her handwriting. It’s always had character. Some letters swoop and pull together, connected but not cursive. Other letters stand on their own. Beautiful like her.
I have no theories about what this list could be, but a chill bites my neck—and I find myself reading slowly.
I lost my parents at 12. I lost you at 14. Maybe this isn’t something you can help me with. Maybe it is. I’d be remiss not to try. (My dad would like that word “remiss”—it’s in the summary of his novel Bones Against Bones. You also drew a carrot next to it in my thesaurus. No reason why. You just did it. I miss being random with you.)
I pause here and glance up at Bay.
We were just talking about her thesaurus, and she’d written about it here—who knows how many days ago.
Our lives have been circling back to one another. To these moments. Not temporary like the throw of a boomerang. Not flashy enough to be fireworks, but we’re something subtle—yet bigger. Greater.
Infinite.
Baylee holds my gaze, and I see a pain in hers that says she’s still terrified.
“You look scared,” I say.
She makes a face at me.
I make one at her. “Come on, I can tell.”
She shrugs, tense. “What I wrote is heavy and it’s not like we’ve been…” She gestures from her chest to mine.
“Communicating?”
Bay nods. “We just started talking outside of work.”
“Right…” I wish we could erase all the years of silence. Replace them with actual memories of us together. So my name doesn’t sit side-by-side with her parents, in a pool of everything she lost. More than anything, I want to return to what we were. To be here for her.
To give her what she needs.
But it’s not real. Because “giving myself” means breaking the contract even more, which I’m not sure she’s willing to do. Me—I’d do just about anything at this point.
(I realize I’m reckless like that.)
I return to her list.
We ended things abruptly (no breakup, no closure, nothing) and ever since, physical intimacy has been difficult for me. This is a more detailed list of what I’m having trouble with:
1. any over-the-clothes touching: every time I’ve done this with another guy, I feel really numb.
2. all kissing: refer to explanation #1.
3. skin-to-skin contact: I’ve been called a wooden board and a corpse by two different guys.
4. oral (giving & receiving): I freeze up. Every. Single. Time.
5. sex: refer to explanation #4. I haven’t been able to go this far with anyone else but you. Honestly, every time I try, it just feels like I’m betraying the memory of you (and I know that’s so inaccurate and weird—we’re not together). But I’m still holding onto you, and I have to figure out how to let go emotionally. I eventually want to be able to have sex again. I can’t cling onto you forever.
I can’t.
I reread the entire list three more times. My muscles strain, burning up—and the only time I move is to lean back, stunned silent.
She’s still holding onto me.
All this time—I had no clue. I didn’t even recognize the impact it’d have to leave Baylee the day after we screwed behind a costume rack. Without ever talking to her. We should have had time to discuss us.
Everything physical we had was layered in emotion. She was fourteen. I was only a year older, but we’d lost our virginities a year beforehand. We were both anxious, nervous, excited, so many sentiments pooling together as we fooled around, but I did everything I could to make her comfortable.
On a rare day her brother was gone, we had sex in her bedroom. I lit candles and put on a playlist of her favorites and mine. I can still see her escalating smile when “Hold Me Tight” by Johnny Nash started playing.
In our extraordinarily abnormal lives, that night was the most typical teenage experience we’ve ever had.
After that, it became hard to find locations to have sex. We didn’t own cars. (Still don’t.) Our places were almost always occupied, bedrooms shared, and so we chose riskier spots like the elevators, the hotel guest bathrooms, the seemingly empty backstage.
It’d all been good up until we got caught.
I put my hand to my mouth, thinking.
She can’t move on physically until she moves on emotionally…is that it?
(Corporate did this.) I blame AE for not giving us a chance to have closure. Four-and-a-half years ago, I pleaded to talk to her. To end this cleanly.
I look up just as Baylee sips her coffee. She’s watching my hands as I flip through the rest of the journal. The pages are blank except for this one. I close the journal but keep it near me.
I have so much to say, but I choose to start with this. “These ‘two different guys’ that called you a corpse—they can go fuck themselves.”
“Funny,” she says, corner of her lip rising, “that’s exactly what I told them.”
“You didn’t,” I say, knowing her.
“No, but believe me, I was put-off. I physically kicked the second guy out of my bed.”
Good. “Kick his dick or balls?”
“I was an inch away. No one was more pissed than me.”
“I don’t know. I’m pretty pissed right now.” I never envisioned Baylee with another guy. I could’ve, but I tried not to torment myself like that. Not even when I saw her with Sergei at the bar.
Now I’m thinking about her in bed with a bunch of pricks—it’s as horrible as I thought it’d be. (I don’t suggest this for anyone who has an ex.)
I literally can’t stop shaking my head. It’s like I have a neck spasm, and now I’m grimacing at the ceiling. Fuckfuck.
I reopen the journal.
She watches.
With knotted brows, I reread everything. She’s only had sex with me. If I were another guy, it’d probably make me feel great, but since I’ve slept with other women—I just feel like an asshole. And terrible.
I feel terrible.
I risk a glance at Bay, but she’s unzipping her wrist wallet and inspecting the contents.
“I finished,” I say.
“I saw.” She looks up. “You still weirded out?”
“I wasn’t ever.” But we’re both sitting uncomfortably straight again. I know what the list boils down to, and it kills me that she’s struggled for this long. “How can I help?” (I want to help.)
Before she can respond, the waitress carries out my plate of fried Moon Pie. We don’t order anymore food.
I stab a fork into my discolored “extraterrestrial experience” and marshmallow oozes. I take a bite. It’s burnt and tastes like canola oil and soot.
Still, I eat another piece.
Baylee finishes off her coffee. “My original plan was to talk with you about your experiences. How you were able to move on, how you got over me—”
“I didn’t get over you,” I interject, mauling the Moon Pie with my fork.
“Luka.” Baylee shrugs at me. “Don’t make me say it.”
I lean forward. “Emotionally I didn’t get over you.”
“I’m not talking about emotionally. I mean physically.” She eases forward too, elbows on the table. “Do you really want me to say it outright?”
“Yeah.”
“You fucked other girls.”
We both wear a pained expression. A thousand arrows pierce and plunge into my chest—but I force myself to stay close, not recoiling. Not rocking back.
I stay right here. “We were apart for five years. I didn’t think I’d ever be with you. And I never…” I take a breath. “They were all one-night stands, Bay. I never even dated another girl. You could’ve had a boyfriend…”
“I didn’t…it didn’t work out like that,” she says. “Sure, I dated, but none stuck. I tried casual sex, but it didn’t happen either.”
(I realize that.) “Okay, do you think…are you saying that I don’t love you as much because I didn’t wait around?” I shake my head vigorously again. “This isn’t a reflection of my love for you, Baylee. It’s not.”
“Hey, I know it’s not.” She drops her leg to the ground and scoots even closer to the table. As close as me. “I remember what you told me when I was thirteen, right after I asked if you knew what to do.”
She means in terms of sex.
I can’t recall exactly what I said, but thick nostalgia hangs in the air. “What’d I say?”
“You told me that you knew more about sex when you were seven than you did math or science. Not because you experienced it but because you were surrounded by men who constantly talked about ‘fucking’ and ‘masturbating.’”
My older cousins: too many to name. My older brothers: Sergei, Nikolai, Peter. It suddenly reminds me that I did grow up with Sergei. More than just his absence shaped me, and I didn’t really recognize it.
I listen closely as she continues, “You were raised seeing sex as an act of pleasure. Like momentary fun. Love wasn’t a requirement. So I understand.” She exhales. “I just want to know how you do it. How do you shut off the emotional aspect in order to just get physical?”
“You want me to visually describe all of my one-night stands?” I go numb.
She sits more stiffly. “Not all of them—please, don’t give me an exact number.”
If she can’t even stomach that, then how would this ever work? I can’t even fathom sharing the details with her. I want to scrub them all right now, and she’s asking me to push them to the forefront.
I shake my head over and over. “I want to help, not cause you more pain.” She deserves to be unburdened by our past, but this’ll make her freeze-up more.
And I’m not even touching the fact that helping her means she’ll be having sex with other guys. She should be able to, the moral part of me screeches. She deserves to be free of me.
The selfish part of me yells and shouts to hold on for dear fucking life. I already gave Baylee up once. I don’t want to lose her again.
She leans back, dejected. “It was a long shot anyway.”
My mind speeds through our history, and I dump out a container of toothpicks, slowly pocketing them. “Look, you don’t need to be fixed. It’s okay if you can’t separate the emotional from the physical. Both ways are fine, and neither is wrong.”
She nods once and then hesitates, contemplating. “Maybe I shouldn’t do it like you then, but in order to do it my way, I need to figure out how to get over you emotionally. That way I can form an emotional connection to someone else and eventually be physical with them.”
I have no idea how to do that. My emotions are still completely tied around her. I’m no sooner ready to let go than she is. But really, I want to help as much as I can.
A thought pops into my head.
“You could just need closure,” I say. “Like a redo.”
Her brows spike. “With you?”
“Yeah, with me.” I give her a look and upright the empty toothpick holder. “Who else?”
“We can’t touch.” She stares off, remembering earlier at the hotel, the cab. Where I did actually touch her. More than Corporate says I’m allowed to.
I take my cell out of my pocket and set it down. “It’s not going off. No one’s scolding us by email.” I lean forward for the thousandth time. “I can touch you—outside of the Masquerade, we can do anything we want. We’ve just never tried.” There’s the risk of being caught, but it lessens outside of the hotel.
We’re older.
We have more ways to evade Corporate’s vigilant gaze than we did before. More freedoms. Simple ones: I don’t have a curfew set by Nikolai. She doesn’t room with her brother anymore.
Baylee rotates her empty coffee cup, deep in thought.
“Hey,” I whisper, “it’s up to you, krasavitsa.”
She may not be ready to mess with Corporate again, not after we were burned. Since this is our first long conversation, I don’t know where her head is at. She was only initially seeking a talk about her list and my experiences. I pushed things further.
I always do. Nikolai was right. Give me an inch, I go five feet.
I’m okay with that. (Chastise me. Sue me. I don’t care.)
Bay looks up. “Let me get this straight.”
“Okay.”
“You want to go through my list and physically redo everything with me?”
“Yeah,” I say, absolutely serious.
“That really seems counter-intuitive.” She eyes me. “Sleep with you to get over you?”
Yeah. It’s dumb.
I think we’re both fighting for a way to see each other more. I’m definitely fighting for a way. It’s a narrow path, but I’ll gladly cross it. “It’s an ending. Something you didn’t get before.”
She stares off for a moment and says, “And maybe…maybe the sex and being with you will be different.”
“Different how?” I ask, nerves infiltrating.
“Well, the last time we were together, we were young. Maybe it’s all in our heads, right?” She winces at this thought. “Maybe time has changed us, and we’re not good together anymore. We’ll never know unless we try again. And then I can move on…”
Chills snake up my spine. I want to defend us, but in the same breath, she’s throwing out a rope to this half-brained idea. The only idea that’ll push us towards seeing each other outside of work. And watching her, I’m not even sure she believes we’ve changed that much.
She adds, “We’ll put a close to us. That way I can finally have sex with other guys.”
Pain flares in my gray eyes. “Or you could just be with me.” I’m a dreamer.
She’s a realist, even when it hurts. “So we’ll be together in secret forever. And you’ll never be able to kiss me in public. No one will know we’re married, and when I get pregnant, I’ll have to tell people the baby belongs to some no-named guy that looks strangely like you.”
“I’m already getting you pregnant?” I tease.
She rolls her eyes, but her face slowly morphs into a smile. “You’re unbelievable.” At this point, I’d usually pull her body against mine.
It’s killing me not to touch her—not to do something more. I want Baylee Wright. No limitations.
No one controlling us.
I want to push the table away and fuck her how she should be fucked. Until her legs quake and her mouth parts and a moan escapes. I want to give her that.
Not some other dude. Me.
I nod to Bay. “Do you have a synonym for unbelievable?”
She raises her brows, acting all grave and poised.
I smile. “I bet you’re missing your thesaurus right about now, huh?”
She throws a sugar packet at me, and we both start laughing. Bay is almost always serious, which I love because it makes breaking her New Yorker cool-as-steel attitude more fun and worthwhile.
But tension soon replaces our laughter, and we’re back to the list.
Even if we quit our jobs, Marc would still enforce the no minors policy. There are no clear answers. There are just risks we can take and safe places we can hide. One is dull, the other is full. Of love, of life.
Our future, together, may be a dangerous mystery, but we can start somewhere.
I catch her gaze. “Let’s just try to work on your list,” I tell Bay, my old best friend, my ex-girlfriend—she meant the entire universe to me. She still does.
“Say we do this,” she says, “and we basically perform my list together. When does it end?”
If the point is to bring closure to each act, there’s only one answer to that. “When we finish all the numbers on your list.” Then it’s over.
I try to push this part, this fact, so far back in my head.
She’s thinking hard.
“Okay?” I ask, but right as I do, my phone vibrates on the table. Her cell buzzes in her wrist wallet.
We both tense.