Viktoria's Secret

Jumping out of the car as quickly as possible, I adjusted the cute plaid blue and yellow plaid shorts that covered little to no skin on my legs. It was a warm day here in St. Louis, so the boys decided it would be fun to go mini golfing.

“Oh, come on, Lexie, this will be fun, I promise,” I heard TJ speak from somewhere behind me. I rolled my eyes, not bothering to hear the girl’s reply before I walked forward, with Patrik at my side.

“Is she going to complain this whole time?” I asked Patrik in a whisper. He only shrugged and looked behind him, waiting for Oshie and his bitch to catch up to our pace.

TJ winked at me as he fell into step with me as his thick lips pulled up into that irresistible smirk. I rolled my eyes, feeling his bitches glare burning a hole into me. If there was one thing I learned about him this week, TJ Oshie is nothing but trouble.

I was informed early that TJ brought a lot of random girls around. Kind of like a color of the week thing. Erik told me that Lexie wouldn’t be around long, so there was no use in us even trying to remember her name or getting to know her. It was obvious that the boys had gotten used to TJ’s man whoreish ways a long time ago.

My time here in St. Louis has been speeding by. Having being here a week already, it seems like it’s still the day I stepped off of the plane and onto American soil for the first time in my life.

It was a Tuesday. The guys didn’t have practice or a game, and let’s be honest, I never had anything to do. So TJ and Patrik decided it would be a good time to bond, since they claimed that when the season got into full gear, we wouldn’t have time to do fun things like this. If you’d call embarrassing myself and dealing with a Barbie wannabe fun.

“What color balls do you want, Lexie?” TJ asked, his elbows propping him up on the counter of the stick and ball stand. The boy behind the register looked like he was only about sixteen, star struck as he looked at TJ Oshie.

I had gotten accustomed to having Patrik, TJ and Erik being adored when we went out in public. Whether we went to the bar for a few drinks(though I couldn’t drink here in the States) or if we went out for pizza, and even to the grocery store, people always stared. It didn’t matter where we were or what we were doing, there was always unwanted attention attracted by the guys I surrounded myself with.

At first, it was kind of cool to see the way the guys interacted with their fans. But after the seventh time I heard ‘Ohmigawd, can I get your like, autograph?!’ it became old. I can only imagine how annoying it gets for the players themselves.

“Pink!” Lexie told him, her tone too loud and suggesting that he shouldn’t have had to ask. He gave her a short not.

“And you, Viks?” I smiked.

“Green! Duh!” I exclaimed, matching her high pitched voice perfectly with sarcastic excitement written all over my face. Patrik stifled his laughter beside me while TJ narrowed his eyes before he turned back to the teenaged boy.

I took this time to better examine the poor boy. He was obviously going through his awkward stage of life. His face was breaking out in every spot possible, leaving his skin blotchy red, his hair was gelled back, and was incredibly lanky.

“I wonder if that kid ever gets laid,” I said aloud, but just loud enough for Patrik to hear as I leaned towards him. He chuckled.

“Doubtful, poor kid,” Patrik concluded. I nodded, a smirk coming to my lips once again when I saw TJ back away from the counter with two baskets of balls.

“Gimme a sharpie,” I demanded. Patrik gave me an odd look, but obliged. I took the black sharpie that he carried with him everywhere, and stepped up the counter, leaning up on my elbows seductively, giving the boy a modest look down my shirt. He instantly became flustered, causing my eyes to spark.

“You know, you’re pretty cute,” I told him casually, “zits are kinda my thing,” I whispered, leaning closer to him as if it was a deep, dark secret. He blushed deeper, so I grabbed his arm, and wrote in big loopy letters, TJ’s phone number, which I had memorized by now. “Give me a call, we can watch Star Trek together,” I said with a wink before I turned on my heel and walked towards the group of my friends.

Both Patrik and TJ were shaking with laughter when I approached. Tossing the sharpie to Patrik, I grabbed my golf club out of TJ’s grasp.

“Ew, did you really just hit on that kid?” Lexie asked. I shrugged, giving her a smirk.

“So what if I did?” I countered, throwing her a smirk before I looked over my shoulder, and gave the boy, who was not shockingly watching me, a sexy cat growl.

I laughed as Patrik pulled me away, leading me to the first hole.

“You do realize he could probably hardly understand you with that accent, right?” TJ asked as Lexie went first, with her pink ball. I jutted out my lower lip into a pout.

“I thought you liked my accent,” I whined, giving him my puppy dog eyes that were simply to die for. He grinned, leaning on his golf club.

“Oh, I do, it’s sexy,” he flirted. I winked at him, just as Lexie turned a bit to look back at us and rolled her eyes before she hit her ball way too hard, sending it out of bounds and into a mini sand pit. I stifled a laugh.

“You probably gave the poor kid a heart attack,” Patrik stated as we finally moved onto hole eight, after taking at least twenty minutes waiting for Oshie’s bitch to finally get it in the hole. You would think just by looking at her that she would be an expert at that.

“Or a boner,” TJ added as he tapped the ball lightly with his stick, smiling as he banked the hole in one. I rolled my eyes at his smug expression as I brushed past him to take my turn. Smirking at him, I teed it up and watched it go right in. I stuck my tongue at him, retrieving my ball.

“You can to it, Pat!” I cheered him on, standing beside the sign that read ‘HOLE 18.’ He looked up from his ball to glare at me before he tapped it in, hole in one, just like the rest of us. Well, minus Oshie’s bitch. But she sucks at life.

Speaking of Oshie, I looked in his general direction, to see Lexie on her tippy toes, whispering something in his ear. A grin stretched at his lips.

“We have to go,” he said, dropping his club, latching onto her hand and running towards the exit. Sighing, I turned towards Patrik.

“Looks like I won anyway,” I stated. Patrik rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, whatever. Let’s go get lunch.”

Dropping our clubs where we were, we also dashed towards the exit, but not before I tossed another wink to the boy who was working the register. His cheeks flared up again as he waved.

I just laughed and followed Patrik, who was jogging, latched onto my hand, towards the McDonald’s across the street.

“So, how have you been, Viktoria?” Patrik asked through a bite of his burger. I simply shrugged, casting my eyes out the large window that I was seated next to. Watching the cars zoom by, I heard Patrik sigh before he took a drink.

“That’s not the answer I was looking for. How have you really been, Vik, you know you can tell me anything. We haven’t talked in so long,” Patrik spoke softly, his voice making me swoon as all the feelings that I never wanted to have for Patrik ever again rushing back to me at full force.

Willing the butterflies away from my stomach, I sighed. “I failed out of college, I almost lost my home, and now I’m here. What more is there to talk about?” Patrik watched me intently with those baby blues as I twirled a salty, fattening fry in my fingers before casually tossing it into my mouth.

“You never wanted to go to college,” he observed. I nodded, confirming his accusation.
“I didn’t have a choice.” Patrik’s eyes squinted, as if he were examining me very very closely.

“Yes you did, you could have come here and lived with me,” he insisted. I laughed sarcastically, shaking my head as I looked at him over the table.

“Yeah, Patrik, because that would have been perfectly okay after what happened,” I spat. This time, Patrik’s eyes trailed away from me and out the window, where he stared intently without answering for a few minutes.

In the time of silence, I inspected him closely. The way his green polo hugged his abs, chest and biceps drove me crazy. How his blue eyes shined brighter than any star I could ever recall seeing in the night time sky sent my stomach into somersaults. And the way his nose scrunched up when he was thinking about something that he felt was forbidden made my head spin and my vision get fuzzy.

These were all the feelings that I used to get any time that Patrik was even mentioned in a conversation. The days when I was in love with him, I would do anything to get this natural high that he could give me just by looking into my eyes. The way he said my name sent me to the moon and back, the syllables just rolling off of his tongue as if it was the only word that mattered in his dictionary.

I knew in my head that I shouldn’t be thinking about this. These thoughts were off limits, forbidden even. If I had to live with Patrik for however long, I couldn’t fall in love with him again. I went through too much pain the first time around to go through this again.

But the feelings that Patrik was giving me right now were worth any ounce of pain or regret I would feel in the future. Deep inside, I wanted to feel these things, and I wanted to take them to the next level. To touch, to caress, to love, but I knew that was impossible. We both moved on.

“Why’d you leave me, Viktoria?” Patrik finally asked, his eyes floating away from the dark evening and back to my eyes. As his blue orbs met mine, my own green eyes dropped to my tray of food.

This was the question I had been dreading. Ever since Patrik and I had been reconnected, I’ve been imagining the day he finally spoke the words. I didn’t know how to answer him. Surely, I couldn’t tell him the real reasons for my depart. There was just some things that Patrik shouldn’t know about us, our relationship, and me. This was one of those things.

I let out a shaky breath. After weeks of fantasizing about this, it was clear that I still wasn’t prepared to be put in the actual situation.

“Reasons that you will never understand, Patrik. I’m sorry, but you just wouldn’t get it,” I told him weakly. His face contorted with confusion and unsettlement as my eyes finally worked up enough courage to look at him.

“Try me,” he demanded. With another sigh, I shook my head, moving my eyes to the window again, in fear if I stared into those eyes for much longer, I would jump over the table and crash my lips against his.

“I’m sorry, Patrik, I can’t,” I started, looking back at him. “We’ve both changed a lot, we’re both over it. Why can’t we act like we are when we so clearly are over it?”

Patrik let out a long breath as he stared me down with a shake of his head. “Yeah, you’re right,” and with that he stood, and walked out of the restaurant, leaving me by myself in a city that I couldn’t even point out on a map.

Bitterly chewing on a fry, I glared at the table. So maybe I do still love Patrik Berglund.