Free Acrobatic Duality by Tamara Vardomskaya Page B

about, but nutritious meals full of protein and carbohydrates for the bodies of the best athletes on the planet. Acrobats in competition form cannot afford to be gourmets—even an extra kilogram or two, and the balance point will shift, and the carefully synchronized tumbling will fall out of sync in muscle memory.
    Chris of the mixed pair stands in line for the chicken just ahead of our top. Eva of the mixed pair is with the base halfway across the cafeteria getting salads.
    We say hello to Chris and Eva, separately, but our greetings echoing each other. We exchange a few pleasantries about the food, and our routines, and getting ready for dynamic and combined qualifications this afternoon and the final tomorrow.
    By the salads, Eva confesses to the base, “Chris and I are hoping for a top five finish. But you two—oh my god. I have no idea how you even do that footstand, how you even learned.”
    The base says, modest as is conventional, “It’s in the Code; someone must have done it before.”
    â€œBut no one does it except you.”
    â€œThanks. It took six months before Salter got us to it.”
    By the chicken, Chris says. “Kim? Um…” His face matches the red of his curls, in intensity at least if not shade. “I was wondering if … you’d like to have coffee with me, um, sometime? If you and Alana are not, are you, um…?”
    Like a badly landed dismount, he bounces to a stuttering stop. “Um, that didn’t really come out the way I intended.”
    Only then do we realize that although the entire global acro gossip network (elite acrobatics is a small, small world) knows us as roommates, there must be heated debates as to whether we are lesbians as well.
    We want to laugh; it’s so much more complicated than that! “We are not lesbian lovers, if that is what you’re asking,” comes out smooth and even as skidding on polished, unforeseen ice.
    He turns possibly redder than his hair now. “So … Kim, will you have coffee with me?” he says in a machine-gun rattle. “If Alana doesn’t actually mind…”
    We can’t keep in our laughter now. We turn to what’s likely a triviality, to hide it. “Wouldn’t Eva object?” Then we realize that we were committing the exact same age-old error he had been: assuming that athletic partners must be romantic ones as well.
    Some are; like figure skaters, most of the ones who had started training together as children aren’t. “Why would she care?” is the response, as we expected. “She’s dating one of the girls in the women’s group.”
    â€œSure, then,” the top says. “We—I will. After quals? Due to that security thing, it seems all we have is the coffee shop in the food court, but we can do it there.”
    That ambiguous we .
    *   *   *
    We dance through our qualifications dynamic routine, the top leaping onto the base’s shoulders and twisting and somersaulting off, then the two of us tumbling along the diagonal and flying up, spinning in complete synchronization.
    We think of Chris. Both of us. Of the way he smiles. Of his chest muscles under his leotard. Of how damn long it has been since we—I—Jennifer had last gotten laid.
    Front handspring— his tongue in our mouth —aerial cartwheel— his hands on our breasts— double pike somersault— his thighs on our hips—mine, mine, not our, he wants the top, not the base, he wants Kim, not Alana, he didn’t ask for a threes—
    We land wrong. The base collapses, the top rolls, sprawling, a broken puppet. A hundred times we’ve hit that routine, in practice and in competition, and had never had so much as a form break, much less fallen.
    And in the stands, our competition, our competition’s coaches, everyone who is anyone and could make it there, let out a collective gasp, and then a