Act Twenty-Nine
Luka Kotova
18 Days to Infini’s Premiere
In my suite, I have one hand on the fridge handle and I text using my other.
Do you need ice for your burn? I can bring some over. I send the message to Baylee. I’ll be in her suite because everyone’s eventually congregating there for Nik and Katya. All before we leave for the party tonight.
I check the oven clock. It’s only 8:00 p.m.—still early.
I mouth the lyrics to “ABC Café / Red & Black” from Les Misérables that blasts in my ears, my headphone’s cord tangled around my cell.
Incoming text.
You know you can’t. – Baylee
Just tell me if you have ice in your freezer’s tray. I type and send it, refusing to pretend like I don’t care about Bay. I’d care as just co-workers. (We’re more than that, but still, no one can know.)
She majorly burned her forearm juggling fire at practice this morning and had to see AE’s on-call docs.
I reread my text and then send a heart emoji.
With my elbow, I rub off water that drips down my temples. I should’ve towel-tried my hair better after my shower. I face the fridge in just charcoal-gray boxer-briefs. Still getting ready.
I scan the fridge’s contents for any food without Brenden or Zhen written on it.
My phone buzzes.
:( -- Baylee
I frown, my stomach dropping. Sad? I send.
Yeah. I feel like sleeping … or just talking to you. Do you think we can hang out at The Red Death in front of everyone? Or is that too much? (no ice) – Baylee
Someone suddenly rips my earbud out.
I flinch and my head swerves to my right. Brenden stands a foot from me, and I instantly lower my cell, hiding the screen from his view.
Brenden sighs like he’s annoyed at the annoyance he feels for me. “I called your name five times.”
“Sorry,” I say casually. “I couldn’t hear you.” My muscles constrict. Unsure of where this is headed. We’ve successfully avoided each other for months.
If I’m in our kitchen, he turns the other way.
If he’s in our living room, I dip out of the suite entirely.
Beneath an unzipped windbreaker, he’s shirtless, and I immediately spot the letters Baylee inked with Mom and Dad over his heart.
I try not to forget how much he means to Bay, and how much she means to him.
“Are you done?” He gestures to the fridge.
“No, but you can go.” I step back, but he’s already shaking his head.
“You can go first.” He motions and then crosses his arms over his chest.
The exchange is more awkward than it even seems. We’re both uneasy, and we’re just standing in the tiny kitchenette opposite a refrigerator.
Quickly, I scour the shelves and realize that I need to go grocery shopping.
I find a jar of dill pickles. Dimitri’s food, but he won’t care.
Brenden stares at me weirdly as I exit with the pickles. He hangs onto the fridge door and watches me unscrew them and search for a fork in the drawers.
“What are you looking for, man?” he asks.
“A fork.”
“No, I mean food.” Brenden points at fridge shelves. “I was going to make myself a sandwich.” He pauses. “If you want one, I have more cheddar and turkey. Wheat bread, though. And it’s all organic.”
I’m caught off guard by the offer and a little on edge. Still, I nod. “Yeah, sure.” I nod again. “Thanks.”
Brenden pulls out cheese, turkey, and mustard, and then he points to the cupboard. I follow the silent direction and grab the loaf of wheat bread.
When we collect plates and silverware, we run into each other and awkwardly side-step. Then tensely, we both start making our sandwiches. Side-by-side on the same counter.
For as many moments I shared with the Wright family, there’s not one stretch of memory where Brenden and I bonded. We were nothing stronger than acquaintances. Not friends. Not enemies until after I got Bay in trouble.
A quiet, invisible divide has always separated us.
Brenden is bookish and intellectual. When we were being tutored, we shared the same table in a hotel conference room. At sixteen, he aced every school exam that I failed. He worked hard for his grades and his physical victories, and he saw me leaning back on my chair, listening to music. Staring out the window.
I wonder if he looked at me and thought that I had it easy. I was a Kotova. Born into a legacy more sturdy and predictable than his life would eventually be.
I wonder if he looked at me and thought Baylee deserved a better friend. Someone smarter. Someone less reckless and wild. Because I ran with his sister to vast unexplored places. In a city more new to me than to her.
And even when I remembered to ask, he never wanted to come along.
In the kitchen, Brenden meticulously spreads mustard on one slice of wheat bread while I just throw cheese down on mine.
The air strains the longer we share company, and I feel something brewing.
My cell vibrates on the counter. I try not to grab it too fast, but I’m also worried he’ll see the sender on the screen. Discreetly, I check the text.
Are you okay? Usually you reply faster… – Baylee
I text quickly: I’m talking to your brother (and yes to hanging out at the club. I’d risk more than that)
After I send the message, I glance at Brenden. He looks at me with an unreadable expression. I set my phone on the counter and reach for the turkey, but I realize it’s in his hand. Not purposefully since he hasn’t put meat on his sandwich yet.
But he’s still staring at me.
(It’s nothing.)
I believe it’s nothing.
I try to believe, at least.
“Something wrong?” I ask just as the main door opens.
Zhen crests the doorway and then skids to a stop. His confused and slightly alarmed eyes dart between Brenden and me. “…is everything okay?” he asks Brenden. I hear, do you need me to stay?, beneath his words.
“I’m fine,” Brenden says.
Frazzled, Zhen spins on his heels and leaves through the same door. He looks back once before shutting it closed.
I rotate my taut shoulders and hold his gaze.
“Tell me you’re not texting my little sister,” he says, freezing my muscles. “Tell me I’m just imagining this nightmare in my head with you at the center.”
“I’m not texting her,” I lie in one breath.
Brenden gauges my features and then shakes his head. “I don’t trust you. I don’t think I ever trusted you.” His jaw tightens and he caps the mustard.
“I’m not texting Baylee,” I repeat, suppressing all of my emotion. Numb—I want to be numb. I want to not fucking care, but Brenden is Baylee’s rock. He’s her world. Her brother, her heart.
Slowly, he rotates to face me. “Show me your phone then.”
I rest my elbow on the counter and grab my phone, but I don’t pass it to him. I open my mouth and expect to let out a million excuses—but I say, “I love her.”
His nose flares, jaw muscle clenching. Trying just as hard to trounce uncomfortable sentiments.
“I’m in love with Baylee,” I say again, my heart on fire.
“I heard you,” he says flatly.
I breathe deeply through my nose, and I rake my fingers across my damp hair. I thought it’d change something if he knew, but it only makes it worse. A rumor about “my love” for Baylee can’t spread through the troupe. It’ll somehow reach Marc Duval.
The no minors policy will be enforced.
We’ll probably be fired.
So I backtrack. “Just as friends,” I clarify. “She doesn’t know either. I’ve never told her.”
He processes this. Staring me dead in the eyes. “But you text.”
“About work. Sometimes about Katya. It’s my sister’s birthday today—that’s what the text was about.” (I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.) Lying to Brenden feels equivalent to ripping at his relationship with his sister. I don’t want to touch it with malicious hands.
Brenden scrutinizes me, discomfort mounting between us, and I can’t tell what he believes. He might not even be sure himself. “Katya’s turning seventeen, right?” he asks.
And I immediately regret bringing up Katya.
“Yeah.” I screw on the pickle jar for something to do. “She’s seventeen today.”
Brenden nods. “You know what I remember?” He leans slightly on the counter, angled more towards me. “She’s little. Like this high.” He motions to the counter’s ledge. “Ten or eleven? We were conditioning for Infini, and Katya accidentally slid down the climbing rope. Burned her palms badly.”
I remember this, but I don’t add to the memory. I just listen.
“Before she even thought about crying, you were there. You blew on her hands and then lifted her onto your back. You were silly enough that she started laughing, and you found the nearest first-aid kit and bandaged her palms.”
A chill slips down my neck. I see where he’s going. I can share a story in the same vein as that one, only replacing me and my sister with Brenden and his.
Bay was almost inconsolable when their parents passed, and Brenden was the one who made sure she had a dress for the funeral. The one who accompanied her to the doctor for checkups. The one who kept her upright when she wanted to sink low.
I understand more than I want to.
Baylee and Katya aren’t alike, but our relationships with our sisters are similar. Mirrored. Almost identical. He played the brother and the friend and the parent to Baylee. Just like I did to Katya.
Just like I do.
“How you treated your sister—that’s what I liked most about you,” Brenden tells me. “And then you screwed over mine, and I thought, fuck this guy.” He glowers and grimaces.
I go cold.
He nods to me. “So I want to know how you’d feel.”
I dread the next moment. “If what?”
“If your little sister met a guy that got her into hard drugs. That steals on the regular. He’s been to jail for theft, and he’s a stain on the company that she’s employed by—how would you feel if he came into her life and tore at her career and everything she’s worked so goddamn hard for? How would you feel then?”
(Heartbroken. Worried. Protective.)
My eyes burn, and I nod more than once before I say, “I’m sorry.”
“Tell that to her.”
“I already have.”
He shelters his feelings. And then he faces the counter and finishes putting together his sandwich. The air is even tighter than before.
“I would never wish ill on anyone,” Brenden tells me, “especially not Katya, but I hope you realize something.”
I place a slice of bread on top of my sandwich and cut it in half. He waits for me to ask, and I finally do. “What?”
“Being a Kotova doesn’t make your little sister immune to bad guys. Some prick can come into her life and completely unhinge it—and then you’ll stand there and you’ll look him in the eye.” His gaze latches onto mine. “And you’ll think, fuck this guy.”
I feel like I’m seven billion tons of brick.
Brenden take his sandwich to the couch, and then I stare off at the wall, his words echoing shrilly in my head.
Stomach coiling, I grab my phone and text Bay.
Has my sister opened her birthday present from me yet? I send, and she replies back fast.
Not yet – Baylee
I stare off again. My gift was a bad idea. And I’m going to take it back.