He bites back a grin. “No.”
“But we could get in trouble, I don’t think they allow smoking of any kind.”
He studies me for a moment, his expression soft, amused, content. “We’ll be okay.”
I shrug at that, trusting him. After we gave new meaning to the word Splash Mountain this afternoon, smoking in a hotel room shouldn’t have me so worried.
I have a puff. Hold the smoke in my mouth, probably for a bit too long, probably because I’m trying to show off in front of him, and he has to take the joint back from my fingers.
“And for a moment there I didn’t think you smoked,” he muses.
“I don’t,” I tell him and then start coughing violently. Point proven. “Honestly. Very rarely. Sometimes Pike has some but that’s about it.”
He nods, puffing back. “I understand,” he says, smoke falling from his mouth. “You have a lot to worry about, a lot to be ready for.”
I pull the edge of the blanket over my chest, tucking it under me. I like the whole lying around naked thing but a girl has her hang ups. “To be honest, I rarely drink. I can’t afford the hangover for one, not when I have to work so early, and I feel like I have to always been on. Like, with my parents, they were always drinking. I mean, not in a bad way, but it was a common sight. I think back now and I’m like how did you do that? How did you let yourself be loose and relaxed and just know that everything was going to be fine?”
I catch myself and then reach out and grab the joint from him as a way to start blurring memories. “Of course, it wasn’t fine in the end, was it?”
“It will get easier, Maggie,” he tells me as I inhale. “I promise.”
I take a moment before I exhale. “How would you know?” I cough.
“I don’t know. That’s what people tell me. I suppose becoming a king and becoming a parent are similar in a lot of ways.”
“I guess,” I say. “But with you, you have a system in place. You have, like presidents or prime ministers or something to actually pass rules and do all the dirty business. If you’re a parent, all that dirty business is on you.”
“You’re right,” he says, taking the joint back. “I can’t pretend to know. I can only say I understand.”
I know he does. We’re in such similar situations. Very different situations, mind you, but similar all the same. Saddled with responsibilities that are bigger than we are, overwhelmed by the change in our lives, grappling with loss.
I sigh and fall back on the bed. The pot is starting to affect me already and I hope things don’t get weird. “Tell me about your brother, Alex.”
Viktor exhales sharply through his nose and I can feel him tense up.
“I don’t mean anything bad,” I say. “Let’s just forget, just for tonight, that we’ve lost them. Pretend they’re still here. Pretend we’re at a party and people want anecdotes about them. What would you tell them? What are some of your best memories?”
The room has grown silent except for the sound of my beating heart and the dull thud of the music outside. Viktor then lies back on the bed beside me and we both stare up at the ceiling.
“Alex was always a bit of a weirdo,” he begins. “But I never had a problem with it. He was totally fascinated by the strangest things. Things like trains, for example. He loved trains. He was obsessed for years. I know it sounds silly, but being my parents and all, we had a massive playroom for all of our toys and at the end of it was his train collection.”
He takes another hit of the joint and lets the smoke float above us like fog.
“He’d spend hours in there, even when I got to an age where toys no longer interested me, he was still fascinated. But it wasn’t the locomotives or the tracks or the romantic quality of trains that kept him going. It was just the wheels. Of all things, there was something he found comforting about the wheels turning. Give him a train without a track and he didn’t care for it. Give him a track and he would spend hours and hours watching it make the rounds around the room. Even now the sound of a toy train brings me back.”
“Sounds like a nice memory.”
He looks at me in surprise, as if it hadn’t crossed his mind. Then a small smile tilts the corner of his mouth. “Yeah. It is a nice memory. It was something about him that I found peculiar but so essentially Alex.”
“What else is a nice memory?” I ask, wanting to know more.
“Christmas,” he says. “Christmas is a big deal in Sweden. As you know, Santa comes from Lapland. We also celebrate Christmas Eve instead of morning.”
“So when do you open your presents? I mean, how does Santa get them to you without you seeing him?”
He smiles. “Well that’s the thing. You have to have a pretty sneaky Santa. And we did. You’d never see him. Until one day I rigged a trap.”
“A trap? You set a trap for Santa?”
He shrugs and then puts the joint out on the notepad beside the bed. “I was curious. Anyway, I made it so that he would trip over a wire which would then send all these metal things, like the fireplace poker and an ashtray and a tin box, stuff that was hard and noisy, onto the floor. We had hardwood floors in the living area where the tree was, so you would hear it. And I knew that we were always sequestered for some convenient reason in another room the same time the presents would appear.”
“I see where this is going.” I can’t help but smile at the thought of a super curious and devious Viktor rigging a trap for Santa. It reminds me of Callum for some reason.
He nods, still staring up at the ceiling with a dreamy look on his face. “Oh, yes. So we were all in the study because my mother had to show us something, who knows what, and then CRASH. There was a huge bang and commotion from the other room. So I raced out of there first and my mother managed to hold back Alex, or maybe Alex already figured it out by then and he didn’t care. Either way, I ran into the room to see my father dressed as Santa, a sack of presents at his feet, along with all the other crap I had set up scattered on the floor. Do you know what I did?”
“What?”
“I looked into my father’s eyes and for once I saw a father. I know that sounds silly, of course he’s my father. But he’s also the king and he often has that mentality first, father second. The fact that he dressed as Santa himself and didn’t have a palace worker or butler do it, that meant the world to me. Meant that he actually cared. So I looked at my father and I said, ‘So sorry to disturb you Santa, thank you for the presents.’ And then I ran out of the room. To this day my father still thinks he had me fooled but the thing is, I wanted to be fooled. I never wanted him to know that I knew, it would take all the magic away.”
“That’s actually really sweet,” I tell him, running my fingers over his chest.
“What about you?” he asks. “What do you remember from your childhood that was good?”
“Honestly? Everything.” I don’t have to think too hard. “Even though we grew up fairly poor, you know, and yeah I was upset that I didn’t get to go to Disneyland like other kids did, or I didn’t have the toys everyone else had or I didn’t have new clothes, my childhood was pretty happy. I don’t know, it wasn’t until I was much older that I realized we lacked. Even so, I loved my parents and they loved me, I know they loved me, you could feel it, they showed it, you knew, we all knew their love and…”
The tears hit me like a slap in the face. I thought I was going to be fine talking about this. I should be fine by now.
Viktor reaches out and pulls me to him, holding me tight.
“I’m fine,” I say, but I’m not fine. I can’t even find the words to go on, the tears just keep flowing and flowing. “I…I’m…”
“It’s okay,” Viktor says. “I’m here.”
I know you’re here. You’re here for me. And then you’ll be gone. They were here for me and they’re gone. Everyone I love leaves me.
Everyone I love leaves me.
“I miss them so much,” I cry out, sobbing so loudly that it hurts my chest. My mouth is open, gaping as the choked, silent wails try and escape me. “Oh god, oh god. I miss them so much. It hurts, Viktor, it hurts me.”
“My Maggie,” he whispers, kissing the top of my head over and over again. “I hate to see you hurt. I wish I could take this pain from you, I would give anything to do so.”
I dig my fingers into his shoulders, hanging on tight, afraid to let go. If I hold on tight enough, maybe I won’t have to be alone.
“I just want to see them again,” I whimper, my words garbled. My heart is so heavy I’m afraid it might pull me down so low that I’ll never get back up. “I just want to tell them how much I love them. How much they meant to me. How much I need them. I don’t think I’ll ever stop needing them.”
I try and hold my breath, try to supress the sobs but it doesn’t work.
I cry and I cry, feeling like I’ll never be free of this.
“I don’t think we’re supposed to stop needing our parents,” he says softly, smoothing my hair with his palm. “I think that’s what love is, always needing someone. Needing doesn’t have to be a bad thing or a weak thing. It’s just part of living. We need air to breathe and food to eat. We need certain people in the same way. In the end it’s what keeps us alive.”
I nod, sniffling in to him.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he tells me softly. “I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”
“But you are,” I manage to say. “You’re leaving me too. And I need you, Viktor, I need you.”
He exhales, long and shaking.
“I know, Maggie, I know.”
Silence passes between us and the dark of the room seems to press in on us. The crying has dragged the life out of me and suddenly I’m so tired I feel I could sleep forever. Every part of me feels poured in concrete.