Page 24 of Wristlocked
“I was really struggling with my training at the time and was having a hard time sticking with it. Basically going through the motions for Lyot.”
“We get that. There have definitely been times where one of us would have burned out without the other keeping her going.” They share a smile, and the Lyot-shaped hole in my chest aches.
“The year I met Lyot was supposed to be the end of it,” I confess. “I was thirteen and hated everything and everyone. Viva was still new. My parents were part of the organizing committee, which meant of course I had to do it. I couldn’t audition for Probecause they were on the judges’ panel, but I could do Emerging, and they could wow the world one more time with their amazing daughter who beat all the adults when she was barely in her teens—” I stop, hearing the bitter sarcasm in my voice and glance at my friends. “I know that sounds super stuck-up, but it’s the way they think. They wanted to use me to promote the new festival and whatever.” I grimace and charge ahead. “But I was so over it all. I mean, I never really loved it, the trapeze. Not the way they did. So I told them if I did the competition and won, then I was done.”
I close my eyes, remembering the confrontation. My father, cold and angry and implacable, pacing in our dining room and talking about his legacy. My mom, gentle and condescending, placating both of us, telling meit’s a phaseand all young girls have to rebel against their mothers for a little while,while I choked down tears of rage and held my ground.
“Didn’t you win two years in a row?” Vaya asks.
“Yep. And I competed a third year, but Lyot beat me.” God, that was a great day. I was drunk for weeks on Lyot’s elation and my parents’ humiliation. I hold up my empty mug. “Is there more?”
“Coffee? No. Unless you want to go downstairs and get some.” Vaya jumps up and takes the mug. “Whiskey? Hell yes.” She pours me a generous slug and tilts the bottle at Jules, who declines, before refilling her own mug on the nightstand.
“So they didn’t actually let you quit? Or you changed your mind?” she asks after we both take another sip.
“Both.” I shrug. “They said I could quit and then took it back. But like I said, I met Lyot.”
“He convinced you to keep training?”
“He didn’t convince me. He…made it fun again.” I don’t even try to explain what it felt like meeting this kid who mademe feelseenfor the first time in my life. What it meant that he shared my world and yet had never even heard of my family. How he swept me up in his exuberant dedication to the things he was passionate about and made me one of those things.
“Jesus. You guys seriously need to make up.”
Jules shoots her a warning look, but Vaya’s words are an echo of my own sad heart.
“But you said when you saw Gale perform, you were drifting,” Jules says. “And that was only two years ago. It must have gone sour again. What happened in between?”
“Puberty? Boredom? Sex was more fun? I don’t know.”Lyot outgrew me.“Lyot started training with the older straps guys who could challenge him. He knew I was dissatisfied with the trapeze, that it didn’t excite me, and he tried to get me to explore other disciplines, but it wasn’t only the apparatus. Why work as hard as we do to master something if we don’t love it? It’s impossible.” The words are falling over themselves now, whiskey-fueled and urgent. I should not drink whiskey around these girls.
I need more whiskey.
“Teenage me was like a circus movie.” I stand and help myself to the bottle. “Painted and costumed and staged to perfection.” I do an ironic little twirl on my way back to the armchair. “But teenage Lyot was a fucking dream. How could I be around him when I was dreamless? You’ve seen him in the gym. He’s got this grace that’s so effortless, right? And this—” I struggle through the whiskey for the right words. “Unfetteredjoy of movement that charms everyone around him fucking breathless. I could appreciate it, even love it. And, as I discovered that year, I could definitely fuck it. But I couldn’t train with it anymore, and I could never have it for myself.”
“Wow. Okay. That was awesome.” Vaya gets up and holds her hand out to me. “I like whiskey Gia. She’s very eloquent.” She twirls me under one arm, which I think we manage surprisingly well, considering she’s a good bit shorter than me.
“She’s also talking a lot about Lyot for a story that’s supposed to be about Gale,” Jules says, watching us both with amusement.
“Gale. Right.” Vaya drags me back to the bed with her, clutching both my hands now. “Did you ditch Lyot and fuck him backstage? Oh my God, please tell me that’s what happened.”
“Jesus, Vaya, no.” But I’m laughing.
“What is wrong with you?” Jules asks, also cracking up. “This is not a sex story. She’s talking aboutart.”
I sober a bit at that. We are all trying to be artists, after all.
“No sex,” I agree. “I saw him on stage, and it was like something in me woke up. Something I’d given up on.” I shrug again, helpless. “Because that’s what he was like on the straps. Something broken that refused to give up and became beautiful in its defiance.”
“Maybe if you told him some of that, he’d stop being an asshole?” Jules says, ever the optimist.
“Guys like him don’t stop being assholes when you tell them beautiful things,” Vaya retorts. “That’s just the myth that makes them irresistible.”
“Preach, sister.” Not that I tried to tell him beautiful things today. No, I kept stoking the fire, hoping to get burned. And now that I have, I shouldn’t be whining about it. I know I’ll go back, drawn like a moth to the flame of violence around him.
I don’t tell them the rest of it. How I let him see my monster today, and herecognizedher.
15
Gia
