I frown, trying to make my eyes turn to hardened steel. “What look?”
“Maggie, it’s okay to want this guy. I think you should get dressed up and make yourself feel sexy. Shave your legs. Shave your lady bits. Put on makeup. Wear a dress. Heels. Go out with this Viking god and have a wonderful date. Forget about your brothers and sisters. Forget about April and all her shit. Forget about everything except that you’re out with this guy that you want to fuck and then you go back to that La Quinta and you fucking fuck him.”
I swallow hard. “It’s not that easy.”
“Oh my god.” She sighs and does a mock fall back away from the phone.
“What? I just…I just met this guy.”
“You’ve already seen him naked,” she points out.
“I know but that wasn’t sexual.”
“It doesn’t matter. You saw him naked, you rescued him drunk, you bandaged up his wounds like Florence Fucking Nightingale. Go and get those Swedish meatballs, girl!”
I burst out laughing. “Stop!”
She’s laughing too. “I’m sorry, I was waiting this whole conversation to sneak that in there. Believe me, I’ve got a joke about his Swedish berries as well.”
“Sam.”
“I know, I know. I can’t help it.” She sighs happily. “Anyway, I’m just saying. Stop worrying and just enjoy it. You know he’s not going to stick around forever.”
“I know. I think that’s what’s putting a damper on this whole thing. Here is this hot as fuck, sexy, rich, funny, smart, exotic beast of a man and he’s only here because his car broke down. Soon, maybe even tomorrow, he’ll be off to LA and then home. And I’ll still be here.”
“At least you would have gotten some food and orgasms out of it.”
“And a broken heart.”
“Oh please. This is all about your vagina, there’s no need for your heart to join the party.”
I giggle. Apparently, I’m immature. “I miss talking to you, you know.”
“Well call me more often and not just when you’re about to get laid, okay?”
“I’m still not sure about that.”
“Either way, you should at least prepare like you’re going to get his cock. None of this Bridget Jones reverse psychology bullshit. Put on your sexiest bra and underwear. Shave.”
“You already told me to shave.”
“Well shave again because I have a feeling you’re in for a lot of yard work.”
I sigh. “God, if I do sleep with him, it’s going to suck when he leaves.”
“So, just follow him to Sweden. You can get a Swedish travel article out of it and sell it.”
“Yeah right. Do you remember what my life is like now? Even if I could go, I couldn’t. And I can’t even convince the local newspaper here to hire me. I don’t get it. I’m a good writer. What I did at NYU was good shit.”
“It was, but they probably just can’t hire anyone right now. Your best bet is to stick to freelancing. Are you doing that?”
“I can’t even write,” I mumble. “I have zero inspiration. Zero time. Zero motivation.”
“Make time.”
“Sam,” I say, feeling a hit of anger cut through me. “You have no idea what kind of pressure I’m under over here with everything.”
She pouts. “I know. I’m sorry. I just want you to succeed that’s all. You shouldn’t have to give up on any of your dreams or hopes just because of what happened.”
“Yeah, well, I have.” I exhale, feeling sorrow dampen me. Funny how you can go from excited and elated to defeated in second’s flat. Welcome to my world now.
“Speaking of hot Swedish men, have you seen the prince of Sweden?” she asks.
“Sweden has a monarchy?” I ask but even as I do so I remember Johan’s story about ABBA and the queen.
“Yeah and the prince is fucking hot. There were actually two of them but the other one died a few months ago or something. Sad. He was young too, only in his mid-thirties.”
God, I haven’t been keeping up with the news at all. Not that I’d take any notice of anything happening in Sweden of all places.
“How do you know all this?”
“Dude, I’m like a royal junkie. Harry and Meghan, Will and Kate. Those sexy ass Casigrahis of Monaco. I am on it.” She adds, “I guess all Swedes are exceptionally tall. Your guy. The prince. Alexander Skarsgard.”
“Looks like I was born in the wrong country.”
“Crown Prince Viktor of House Nordin,” she says as she gets up from where she was sitting at her desk. “Here I think I have the magazine.”
“Magazine?” I repeat. “Oh jeez, Sam. You need a hobby.”
I hear the rustle of papers as she rummages through something and then returns to the screen holding up a magazine. Through the grainy video I can make out Royalty Monthly with Harry and Meghan on the cover.
“Hold on,” she says while she flips through the pages. “I was thinking of starting, like, a royalty blog, you know.”
“Well it would at least put this obsession to use, though I can’t say it’s good use.”
“Here,” she says and then opens the magazine so I’m staring at one of the pages.
The headline says Prince Alexander and Prince Viktor visit the Stockholm Children’s Hospital with a picture of the princes below it.
Both are tall, about as tall as my Swede. One has dark hair and a paler complexion while the other’s hair is lighter and skin more tanned and…
Wow.
Though the picture isn’t clear, this guy looks a lot like Johan.
Sam takes the magazine away from my view. “See, they’re hot.”
“Hey, put it back,” I tell her.
She smiles. “I knew you’d like it.”
The picture comes back onto my screen. It’s so grainy because of the low light of Sam’s room so I can’t make out the details, but fuck, it really, really looks like Johan. Obviously, it’s not, but it’s striking the resemblance.
“Happy?” she asks.
I shake my head. “It’s weird. Johan looks exactly like the prince.”
“Which one? The dead one or the not dead one?”
“The one with the lighter hair.”
“That’s Viktor. He was always the one who kept to himself. He wasn’t heir apparent until Alexander died.”
“How did he die?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. Something to do with the wrong prescription maybe? Or he had some heart defect? I’ve read a lot of different things.”
“Hmmm,” I muse.
“What?”
“I don’t know.” There’s something about all of this that’s making me feel off-balance. It’s not just that they look the same but it’s that…it’s that they really look the same. There’s something here not right. “Hold on Sam, I’m going to put you in the background.”
“Looking them up are you?”
“Yeah well the picture is really grainy and blurry,” I say absently as I open up the Google app and enter in Prince Viktor of Sweden.
The first thing I see in the search results is the Wikipedia entry and the headshot of Prince Viktor to the side.
My heart stills. Pins and needles rush up and down my body as I stare at it in disbelief.
“Oh my god,” I whisper.
Oh my god.
It’s Johan. Sverige. Mr. Swedish Driver’s License.
“What? What’s happening?”
“It’s him,” I say breathlessly. “It’s him.”
“Who?”
I quickly click the images and suddenly I’m bombarded by a whole grid of him. I click through and through and through, staring closely at the photos but I don’t have to. I know it’s him.
How the fuck is this possible?
“He told me his name was…”
“Johan,” she fills in quickly.
“Yeah, Johan Andersson. That’s what his ID said. I saw it.”
“You think…wait…you think that the rich big-dicked Swede you’re going on a date with is the actual prince of Sweden?” She starts laughing. “Maggie! You’re crazy!”
“I know, I know it’s crazy but fuck. This is him.”
“It can’t be.”
“I’ll get a picture tonight of him and I’ll show you.”
But she’s also right because how can it be him? How could this be true?
“You’re seeing what you want to,” she says. “I put the idea in your head and now you’re thinking it’s him. Your mind is warping your image of him to fit this Viktor’s. But it’s not him. It can’t be. He’s in fucking Sweden right now.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t know, but I do. Look, come back to me. Let me look you in the eyes and tell you how nuts you are.”
I sigh and close the Google app and come back to Sam’s face. She’s earnest, I’ll give her that. “You’re nuts, Mags.”
I shake my head, unable to get rid of that feeling that I’m right. “It’s him.”
“It’s so not. Come on. You know I’m your biggest supporter and I think you’re one fine hot piece of ass, but I can guarantee you that if the Swedish prince were in your town for some fucking reason, you wouldn’t be walking in on him naked. Staying at the fucking La Quinta!” She barks out a laugh. “And then he wouldn’t be alone and drunk and drugged at a bar and he wouldn’t, I repeat, he wouldn’t fight your sister’s thug ass boyfriend. You’re hot but you’re poor in small-town America and he’s a fucking prince from Europe. Okay? Think about everything I just said.”
I know what she said and it all makes perfect sense.
But…