“So says my demon.” His finger runs along the rim of his shot glass, absentmindedly. I wonder if by slipping into the cab, I agreed to sleep with him. More than just on the couch. Sex. With a twenty-six-year-old Russian athlete.
I’m on my period, my inside voice shrieks in horror. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked if he saw me as a sibling. The answer has altered my perception of little things—like how he watches me intently. How his gaze dips to my coat, the straps beginning to unknot and reveal my risqué costume.
I’m seventy-five percent sure that he might be thinking about sex. About the devil screwing all of his demons. On red sheets.
Okay, I’m one-hundred percent thinking about sex. Not the act of doing it. But all the baggage that is attached to it. And I’m on my period. And he knows it. Which is so much worse.
Now I’m thinking about him thinking about my period.
This is too much.
I chug my tequila sunrise. It burns. I set it down roughly, about a quarter left. And I gasp for breath like I downed lighter fluid. Slowly, I look at Nikolai.
I shouldn’t have. His brows just rise, his lips slightly upturned. I’m overly aware of how much older he is than me. And of his it’s complicated status.
I think I need to change mine.
This is so complicated my head hurts.
…maybe that’s just the tequila.
He reaches down and seizes my ankle, lifting my leg onto his lap. I watch him unbuckle my stiletto heel, revealing a battered foot with three blistered toes, nearly bloody. But they’re free, the air stinging the sores. He gives me a disapproving look—since I didn’t tell him how badly they’d been hurting.
Then he removes the second stiletto and keeps my legs draped across his lap. “Better,” he knows, sipping his next shot. He soaks in my long legs and then says, “When you perform, you have beautiful lines.” He pauses. “It’s what every director said after you auditioned. It’s why you were brought here.”
I stiffen. I’ve shut out the audition, filed it away in that dusty folder.
Now that he’s retrieved it, a nauseous pit wedges between my ribs. Sex is a better agonizing thought, I realize.
But I take the opportunity to ask him, “What do I need to work on then?”
“They said that you were just background. Others onstage would outshine you. You don’t have the passion.”
My throat feels dry. I don’t have the passion. I’ve flown across the country to be here. I’ve risked everything. What is that if not passion? I know it’s not sexual or sensual, the passion they mean, but it’s something. There’s something in me.
I just have to translate it to everyone else.
“Okay. I’ll work on it.” Somehow.
“Do you ever quit?” he asks me, his tone serious.
Softly, I say, “I can’t.”
“Why? Even if everyone tells you that you don’t possess the right amount of talent, you’d keep trying?”
“Because I love it,” I say like there is no other option. In my bones, there isn’t. I feel like I’m fighting for my happiness. And no one else can sense it or see it but me.
“You’re cursed then,” he tells me. “There are people with far greater talent, who don’t love it the way that you do.”
The weight of his statement sinks in.
That’s just life, my dad would say. People will always be better than you. Whether they enjoy it or not isn’t a factor. It’s superfluous.
“Do you love it?” I ask him.
His eyes fall as he contemplates this. “Not as much as I used to. But the circus is my only love.”
“What about your family?” I think of Katya and Luka and Timo. I can tell—just by the way he protects them—that there’s a tremendous amount of love there.
He smiles. “Circus is family.”
The sentiment washes over me, a second wave of chills. Not even a second later, the bartender pushes more vodka shots towards us. Timo knows him, so he’s been supplying us free drinks all night. I pick up a shot since my sunrise is almost empty.
“To finding your sister,” I tell Nikolai.
He raises his shot. “No,” he says, “to your first week in Vegas.”
My heart clenches. He remembered why I stopped by The Red Death to see Camila. I sway a bit, and the overflowing shot spills on my fingers. Fantastic. I try to peel the soggy napkin from the bar.
Then Nikolai smoothly takes my hand. And he sucks the vodka off my fingers.
I freeze as his eyes flit up to mine, while his lips warm my skin. Sex pops back in my brain. Especially as his tongue works with skill.
When he finishes, he even sips a little from the rim of my glass, so I won’t spill more on myself.
This happens in maybe less than fifteen seconds. It felt like eternity. He clinks his glass back to mine. I haven’t unfrozen yet. He wants to have sex. No, he doesn’t. He downs the shot, and his eyes flit to my boobs. Yes he does.
“What are your plans?” he asks, out of the blue. Or maybe it’s been on his mind instead of sex. I can’t tell anymore.
“To practice every day before work at Phantom, audition for any openings that come up,” I say with a satisfied nod. I like this plan. It seems solid.
He tenses more. If the alcohol is doing anything, it’s making him even more touchy-feely than he already is. His large hand stays firm on my legs. But he’s still rigid, commanding. All masculine and man. What anyone would expect of a lead male in a show about love.
He checks on his brother with a quick glance before focusing one-hundred percent on me. “It’s unlikely that Amour will ever have another opening. What happened with my old partner…it’s rare.” He hasn’t ever mentioned Tatyana before now. I can tell it’s a sore subject, so I won’t surface it any more than he has.
“There are other shows besides Amour,” I say. “There’s Infini and Viva. Seraphine is traveling, but they’ll be in Los Angeles around May. Plus there are other troupes if Aerial Ethereal isn’t hiring.”
The charm drains from his features, leaving gunmetal eyes with no shine. “High Flyers Company isn’t safe, Thora. They hire riggers as contract employees, pay them close to nothing, and give them days to learn how to harness artists before beginning shows.”
“I think I’ll be alright in my discipline.” Riggers sometimes have an artist’s life in their hands since they fasten harnesses and work the wires.
“Aerial silk,” he guesses my discipline right. “But if you’re in group acts with intricate choreography and a new apparatus that needs a harness, you’ll be asked to wear one. You’re risking your life with High Flyers, so please be smart and don’t even entertain them.”
“Emblem & Fitz Circus,” I say, one that’s based in London. High Flyers is AE’s direct competition, since Emblem is known for their carnival shows. Elephants. A ring leader.
“That can’t be the circus you’ve fallen in love with if you’re here,” he says. “It’s apples and oranges.”
“So what do you suggest I do?” I ask, about to retract my legs from his lap, but he holds tighter.
“I’ll train you.”
My lips part. “What?”
“I want to train you.”
“You’re drunk,” I breathe, half hoping he’s not.