Catch Up With Fate

I didn’t talk to the Sharps when I got back. Sharpie seemed to have gone to bed already but Abby was still up. Maybe she had waited up for me, it was almost midnight. It’d barely been 4 in the afternoon when I’d left.

I didn’t have words to describe this feeling in my chest, it was empty and at the same time filled with hurt. What Jon had said had justified my plan to me but I didn’t feel good about it. More than anything I would have wished that CC and I would have been able to make a first step to work this out today, but it obviously hadn’t happened. As long as I didn’t get the chance to tell her and make her understand how I felt about this, we were going nowhere and distance was the only option, at least to me.

Sleep didn’t come easily that night, if it went on like this I was on the best way to developing a case of insomnia. With classes starting on Monday that wasn’t really an inviting idea. When I did sleep, I didn’t feel refreshed waking up. The day that lay ahead of me didn’t seem very inviting, but neither did staying in bed. I could hear Abby and Patrick moving around and finally forced myself to get out of bed. This needed to be done, there was no way around it.

“Good morning,” Abby greeted me with a smile.

“Is it?” I replied tiredly.

“How’d it go with Viktor?” It must’ve been pretty early if Patrick was still here and not at morning skate. I only gave him a blank look, mostly for the insinuating grin on his lips. “Aren’t you just a ray of sunshine this morning?”

“At least I wasn’t a sunflower for Halloween,” I gave back, both of them laughed. “Vik gave me the keys, I can move in whenever I want.”

“Nice. Got your own built-in pretty boy Swede now, huh?”

“Does he ever shut up?” I asked Abby, who shook her head.

“Unfortunately not.” Patrick just chuckled and got up to leave for the skate.

“What happened last night?” Abby asked caringly after he was gone.

“I told CC. Jon was there. It was a disaster,” I told her, and that was all I was going to say about it. Abby didn’t ask about it again and I was thankful for that.

“Do you want to come to the game tonight?” she asked instead. I shook my head.

“No, but he better fucking score,” I grumbled.

“Huh?”

“If he doesn’t, coming back early was for nothing, because we would have been back either way,” I explained darkly.

“Oh.”

“I’m gonna pack up my stuff,” with those words I disappeared back into the guestroom. Abby asking me about the game had given me an idea. CC was for sure going to be there, so I could pack my things at the apartment without interruptions.

Abby dropped me off at the apartment on the way. Luckily CC was already gone or maybe she hadn’t even been there, it certainly looked that way. I only went into her bedroom to retrieve my suitcase and when I rolled it into the living room, my makeshift bedroom, a wave of sadness washed over me. I sunk into the couch and just stared at the suitcase for a while. How sad was it that things had ended up like this? That we couldn’t be in one room for more than five minutes without going off on each other?

While I tried to pack the essentials into the suitcase and any bag and box I could find, I thought about what a waste this 2nd semester abroad was going to be. What a waste of time and money if I couldn’t enjoy it with my sister. It wasn’t completely worthless of course, but the value was low after one had removed the ‘sisters advantage’ from the equation. Without CC I could have ended up anywhere, not just Chicago. Without her this just... didn’t make nearly as much sense.

I texted Viktor that I had indeed packed during the game and he promised to come by to pick me up like he had offered. The apartment looked emptier than before, obviously, but I refrained from taking everything that was mine with me. I didn’t want CC to miss or lack anything and leaving behind something meant I had to come back. Hopefully she would understand that.

Viktor was really helpful - he carried the heavy things to his car and left me alone at the end when I needed a moment to collect myself. Just before I left, I hurried into the kitchen and scribbled those four German words on the dry erase board that told her I loved her. I had to wipe away a small conversation we’d scribbled on there. We did that a lot, one would write a small message, the other would answer and so on and so forth. The grocery list was assembled the same way.

“Thanks for picking me up,” I told Viktor quietly when I finally got into the passenger seat.

“No problem,” he replied easily and pulled out into the traffic.

.

The first night at Viktor’s place was weird. A new bed, a new, much bigger bed in fact, a new, bare room, a new apartment and a whole set of new things to get used to. Everything was so different from the feel of the new mattress to the sounds and the smell of the new place. It took me a while to fall asleep, which was nothing new, and I woke up every now and then, too. Some sounds kept me wondering what they were and a few times I was ready to jump out of bed thinking that something strange was going on in the apartment. There was no movement from Viktor’s bedroom though so it must have been normal. Hopefully I would get used to it soon!

In the morning I was the first one up since I had class at 10 and it was an off-day for the team. I quickly realized I should have asked Viktor about how we were going to arrange that, but I hadn’t thought of it. Now I was trying to find something to eat for breakfast whilst trying to keep the noise to a minimum. Mondays suck ass!

“Shiii-t,” I cursed as I dropped the carton of milk that had just slipped out of my grip. Fortunately it wasn’t a glass bottle, because that would’ve been a huge mess and would most likely have hurt a lot more, but just the carton falling on my toes was painful enough.

“Fuck, that hurt.” I wiggled my toes in an attempt to diffuse the pain by movement and leaned down to collect the carton that had only spilled a little bit of milk onto the floor.

“Are you okay?”

I dropped the milk all over again at the unexpected sound of Viktor’s voice. Obviously keeping the noise down was not one of my finer abilities... I turned to him and I swear I could have dropped the milk for the third time. A deep blush spread over my face as I tried to tear my eyes away from Viktor’s toned, bare upper body and his low riding pajama pants. Can you spell awkward?

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up,” I forced out finally, looking anywhere but him. This time I wasn’t so lucky and the milk had formed a puddle on the floor twice the size of a dinner plate.

“It’s okay, I was just being lazy anyway, I usually get up around this time,” he replied easily, finding a rag to wipe away the spilled milk right away. No surprise, this was his kitchen after all. “When does your class start? I forgot to go grocery shopping so there’s nothing there...”

It was kind of hard work to avoid staring at his bare back, while listening to what he was saying. “No wonder I was having a hard time making breakfast,” I managed finally.

Viktor grinned and ran a hand through his hair pushing it out of his face. His hair was definitely long enough to create a very nice case of bed hair, I noted in my struggle to not let my eyes wander below his chin. At least they were proper pajama pants and not just boxers...

“I’ll get dressed quickly then we’ll go get some breakfast and I’ll drop you off at your class,” he told me and disappeared.

“Good Lord, what have I gotten myself into?!” I asked myself. This already smelled like trouble. And more trouble was just what I needed. Yay.

.

Breakfast was at a diner just a few minutes down the street. Viktor seemed to frequent it a lot, that was my suspicion at least, because no one seemed impressed by the presence of a Blackhawk and the waitress that immediately hurried over called him ‘Vik’. She also asked if he wanted his usual which seemed to confirm my theory. I wasn’t in the mood for much of a breakfast, but if I didn’t eat something I was going to pass out in an hour. Many people skipped breakfast, but if I didn’t at least get a glass of orange juice to start off the day then I might as well not start it off at all. This breakfast was probably (most definitely) not part of Viktor’s meal plan as an athlete, but it didn’t seem to bother him as he freely dug in.

“Did you sleep well?” he asked after a while.

After finishing up my bite of scrambled eggs and toast I shrugged. “The first night at a new place is always the worst. You gotta get used to the bed, the smells, the sounds... it was alright.”

“Most of the strange sounds come from the fridge,” he told me with a smile. “There’s nothing wrong with it, works fine, but it randomly hums, buzzes, clicks and what not. I don’t really hear it anymore.”

I nodded, I knew how that was. The weird sounds that came from the heater in the living room at the apartment... at the old apartment, I was used to those now and just blended them out.

“I’m going to buy groceries later, anything you don’t like or can’t stand? Anything in particular you need or want?” Viktor whipped out his phone and seemingly started to type a list into it.

“We could just go together,” I suggested, seeing a way that I may be able to contribute to some bills. “My last class finishes at 3.”

“Sure, that works. I’ll pick you up, you just have to tell me which building and then we’ll go grocery shopping,” he agreed immediately and put his phone away.

.
CC and I had never shared any classes, our studies were too different. I always thought it would have been fun to have a class together but at the moment I was glad we didn’t. Actually, I only knew a few people here and there, maybe a name or two and a handful of faces. It came in handy, no one asked about my bad mood, everyone just assumed that the first day of the semester was not sitting right with me or that I was usually like this. The professors didn’t give a shit, they never did. I had to say a few words here and there because I was a student from abroad - you know, to prove I could actually speak English and that I wasn’t a mute like the exchange students from China and Japan at the German university seemed to be.

Exchange students are like shiny new toys for most of the ‘home students’ which I really wasn’t in the mood for. The standard questions of where I was from, how I liked college and Chicago and if I could say something in German (duh!) I could deal with, but someone started asking stupid questions about Germany and being German. Giving a lesson on how the past is the past, how at almost 21 years old I was 55 years removed from the event they were playing at, and how a country is actually indeed able to move on and learn from mistakes in over 75 years was so not on my agenda! I cut the guy off even at the risk of becoming ‘the rude German bitch’, and fled the scene. Some people just don’t have any tact or shame.

The day seemed to drag on forever, especially the last 30 minutes until I was free at three. It was like I could watch the clock’s hands move in absolute slow motion. Finally the teacher had mercy and let us leave five minutes early. Already I was going home with assignments, on the first day! All in all the day had reached an absolute low at that point, so I was more than glad to slide into Viktor’s passenger seat and close the door, shutting out the noisy, annoying outside world.

“Tough day? First day back always sucks,” Viktor shared his own college experiences with me.

“Tell me about it,” I sighed and buckled in.

“Off to grocery shopping!” he said in a loud, overly cheery voice.

“Yay!” ... Sarcasm?