Two
Two
Nico
I t’s raining in London. Because it does nothing else on this wet, grey island. I’m not religious, not at all, but I’m certain that if hell exists, it would look exactly like London.
I’m here for one reason only, just one. And it’s not the fucking weather.
I think it’s mainly the arrogance of it. The way it loudly, and without a shred of humility, considers itself the best city in the world with next to nothing to commend it. If we’re talking about world cities then Rome, New York, Paris, and Tokyo are all far more impressive than London.
I’m stealing into the city under cover of darkness like an assassin. Which I suppose is what I am to the soloists at LBC, to hopes and dreams at least. To Felix Taylor-Brooke I’m something else altogether. We’re something to each other whether he realises it or not. So even if the most likely outcome is that we kill each other, this is something I have to do.
I’m good. Great even. Sergio made sure of that. But Felix has the more natural movement; he moves like he was born to do it, not moulded into it. Felix has power, ease, and grace that took me years to perfect, which even now, doesn’t come as easily as it does to him. So if this is the last time I’m going to walk onto a stage again—something I was certain I wasn’t going to do—then it’s going to be alongside the best.
The taxi pulls up at a modern apartment building in what I am led to understand is Holborn. Since the airport transfer has been paid by LBC, the driver simply sets my cases down on the wet pavement, gets back in his car, and drives off into the damp night. It’s a red-brick, semi-industrial looking block with a stack of key safes on the wall outside. I pull out my phone to check the email from Wells’s secretary which has the details of the box code and the apartment number on it.
After retrieving my keys and letting myself into the block—which smells of fresh paint and new carpets—I take the elevator up to the fifth floor and what is to be my new home. Kicking open the door, I lift my cases over the threshold and roll them down the short, dark hallway, into the main living space, letting the door close behind me.
When I flick on the light, I’m faced with a medium-sized, open-plan, loft-style space which also smells of wet paint. All white and brick walls, sleek cabinetry, and warm wooden floors. It’s sparsely furnished, though with a few stylish items dotted around: a low leather seat with a white rug thrown over it, a bold print of the London underground resting against the wall, a moss-green velvet sofa with bolster cushions, and a black and white abstract rug.
The kitchen is tucked behind a half wall at the corner of the lounge and the bedroom is revealed behind a large sliding door. The bathroom with a bath and shower is at the end of the hall near the front door, and I’m pleasantly surprised to find another smaller bedroom behind a door I was certain was a closet. It’s nicer than my apartment in Rome—the one I moved into after Sofia left. More modern at least.
I need to thank Benedict.
He agreed to subsidise the rental for the duration of my stay, and since he was paying me less than Romasco—a lot less—this definitely helps. He’d said I could move into the residence block near the theatre, which would be wholly free of charge, meals included, but I hadn’t lived in the dancers’ residence halls since I was 16 and had zero desire to go back to shared bathrooms and living spaces. My first time in dorms in San Francisco, I’d been assigned a Ukrainian roommate named Semen—the American students quickly explained why this was funny—I was fourteen, and I’d quickly found out that the name was disgustingly fitting. He’d masturbate four times a day and leave tissues, dried with his namesake, all over our room. He’d even used a pair of my tights once.
I empty my shower bag and smaller suitcase, then find and turn up the thermostat to what I hope is maximum, before grabbing my keys and heading out. I need food. I haven’t eaten since lunch and it’s now close to 10pm; my stomach is practically clawing its way up my throat.
There’s a burrito place at the end of the road, where the street meets a busier thoroughfare. I order two pulled pork and some nachos and wolf them down as I sit at the window and scroll my phone. I don’t have an official Instagram, but I do have an unofficial one that I keep private. Only family and friends follow me there. But it’s how I keep up with things, news and music stuff mainly, and also allows me to scroll incognito. So that is how I keep up with Felix Taylor-Brooke’s exploits. Where he lives the life not of a hard-working young ballet dancer, but some kind of celebrity-come-influencer-come-porn star. I hate the Felix I see on this account. Vapid. Superficial. Vain.
I tell myself it’s who he really is, though I am certain it’s not true. We don’t know each other, not really; we’ve met over the years at competitions, award shows, and galas and are more than aware of each other’s lives, qualifications, and credentials. In ballet, you make it your place to know these things about your biggest rivals, and in ballet, everyone is your rival. Your enemy waiting in the wings for you to break something.
Sometimes I’ll list the things I like least about him just to pass time. I do this now as I scoop up the last of my guac with a nacho.
First: his vanity.
It’s off the fucking scale. Which in ballet is quite the feat, since the dance world thrives on vanity. But he sits at the top of that writhing pit of conceit proudly, a king on his throne (or should I say, queen).
Which brings me to the second thing I hate about him: his overt homosexuality. It’s not that he’s gay, let me be clear, it’s just that he’s so fucking proud of it. He’s a walking pride march every day of the week, and that’s just not something I, personally, can get on board with. Okay, maybe I’m a little jealous because it’s not something I’ll ever be able to do, or be, but he’s just so fucking loud about it. His social media is full of suggestive captions, poses, and pictures of him draped over hot, half-naked men in varying locations all over the world, and it really fucks me off. He’s shameless. That’s what he is.
Third: his face. I hate it. I’m not sure that’s a reason all on its own, but since it takes up quite a lot of space in my head and is certainly something I could do without, I’m going to.
Four: It’s really an extension of three, but it’s so obnoxious that I feel like it deserves a whole section of its own. His smile. Or rather, grin. Straight and white and perfect—it’s sickeningly smug. Like he’s never lost anything in his life, like he’s never suffered a second of anything except pure, unbridled joy all the moments he’s been alive. I often wonder if he smiles like that in bed. While he lies back and spreads his legs—because he gets fucked, that’s not even up for debate—does he wear that mindless fucking grin of his while getting pounded? It’s not like I imagine him getting fucked that often, and it never starts with me being the one fucking him when I do; it’s really not. (It’s almost always the tattooed, long-haired guy from his Ibiza trip last year.) But when I do, it’s almost impossible to knock the thought from my head once it’s in there. Him grinning, panting, whining, begging.
Anyway, he’s posted another picture: it’s of him and Ava Sheridan. A gorgeous red-headed principal at LBC. He posts a lot of pictures with her; they seem to be inseparable outside of the company. And if he wasn’t so aggressively gay, I’d assume they were fucking. This time they’re on a sofa in a dimly lit room eating what looks to be a birthday cake with forks. They each have icing on their faces; creamy white smudged across his thick lips and on the tip of his nose. The caption reads: got cream-pied again .
With a sigh, I close out of the app.
Back at the apartment, I strip out of my clothes and press a hundred on the wooden floor. Then I take a scalding hot shower, so hot I have to grit my teeth all the way through. It physically hurts when I climb into bed and lie on my back.
I try not to think about tomorrow; about my first day at a company that isn’t Romasco. I try not to think about how I’m twenty-four years old and yet it feels like my first night away from home, in a place with unknown faces and strange accents. But if I could do it as a child and survive what I did, then I could do it now. They’ll expect me to be rusty, loose lines and lazy legs, but they don’t know I danced every single day of my ‘ self-imposed hiatus’ because my mind wouldn’t let me not.
Though I’ve silenced it, my mobile vibrates on the bedside. When I see the ID, I debate ignoring it. It’s late, and I could plausibly be asleep. But something weak and needy in me has me slipping out my earplug and picking it up.
“I am asleep,” I tell my sister in Italian.
“You sleep as badly in London as you do in Rome then, I see,” she says tenderly. She’d been angry with me when I told her I was leaving. Hadn’t spoken to me for a week. But the day I left, she’d driven me to the airport and told me she loved me, that she was being selfish because she loved having me around helping with Auro. Lastly, she told me not to date any English ballerinas because she’s still hopeful Sofia and I will work things out. “How is the apartment?”
It’s not really what she is asking. “It’s fine. Bigger than I thought. And I’m fine, too, Porzia.”
“You are always fine, pippi . Maybe I am the one who is not fine? Auro misses you too.”
“Christ, the emotional blackmail is strong with this one,” I say. “Look, I’ll be home for Christmas.”
“You better be.”
“How are you? How’s the little guy?”
“He is sleeping, finally, but I am not. It is ironic, no?”
“It’s motherhood, I think. Alessio is asleep too?”
“Yes. He has a big meeting tomorrow, so I have released him,” she says. “You are nervous about tomorrow?”
I think about this, checking in with my body and my head to see what I find in there. There’s something swirling around in the pit of me, but I don’t think it’s nerves. It’s anticipation, perhaps. An eagerness to prove myself—though there’s nothing to prove. I’d been appointed lead principal at Romasco when I was 17. I left at the height of my career, of my own volition. But there will be a lot of eyes on me tomorrow, searching for flaws, for the damage I’d done by taking time off, waiting for me to fail. I didn’t particularly care. Certainly not about what the dancers of LBC thought about me. Well, that wasn’t true; I cared about what one dancer thought of me. Cared far too much, in fact.
“No. I’m not nervous,” I tell her. “Change is good, Por. This was the right choice.”
She makes a small noise of disagreement. “I do not see how moving to another country is right for us, Nico? For your nephew and your sister and your brothers?” She doesn’t mention our father. “We love you. When you came back from America, you promised you would stay in Italy.”
I sigh, regretting picking up the phone. “It’s not for long. Then I’ll be home. I don’t want to go over this again, Porzia. I did what was right for me.”
“But you explained nothing!” she hisses quietly, clearly frightened to wake the baby. “You decide on hiatus on a whim, and then you decide on London on a whim. With no discussion with us.”
“Because it’s my life not yours, Porzia,” I say firmly. I feel guilty for the words as soon as they’ve left my mouth. A little softer, I say, “Look, it was almost New York. London isn’t even three hours from Rome; it could have been worse.”
“You promised our mother you would not leave us again, Nicoló,” she reminds me.
A terrible, ravaging guilt runs through my entire body. I was a child when I left my family the first time. My mother was still alive, my dreams were too. Slowly, night by night, those dreams withered and died. And then so had my mother.
I’d returned to Italy a danseur—at the top of my game—but inside, I was broken. Broken and remade into something else entirely.
But I had made that promise to her.
“I’m sorry,” I say, meaning it.
She’s quiet for a long time before she says, “Okay, Nico, okay. I’m sorry I said it. You know what is best.”
I hope so. “I am going to try and get some sleep; I have an entire company of English dancers to try and impress tomorrow.”
“Pffft. My little brother does not need to try.”
I smile in the dark. “Good night, sorella .”
I toss and turn for another hour or so before drifting off into a fitful but deep sleep.