Free Maybe Baby by Kim Golden

course my thoughts were taking. It was Niklas. "Why did you just leave?"
    "I told you I was going to the smokehouse to get some fish."
    "I thought you meant later."
    "I'm at Martin's now," I said, not wanting to get into a discussion about the semantics of what I'd meant when I said I was going to the smokehouse for fish. "I'm just waiting for the Germans to leave."
    "Okay."
    "Is everything alright, Niklas?"
    "I don't know... yeah. I suppose it depends."
    "On what? Is it the kids?"
    "No, it's you."
    "What are you talking about?"
    "I was unpacking our bags and I found some files."
    "Sweetie, I told you I would take care of that."
    "Why do you have files about men in your bag?"
    Shit. Shit. Shit. My hands were shaking. How the fuck was I going to explain that? "It's... it was part of something I wanted to talk to you about while we're here."
    "Don't be so cryptic, Laney. What's going on?"
    "I don't want to talk about it over the phone," I said firmly, willing a resolve I usually never felt when Niklas and I were arguing. "But it's got to do with us and having a baby."
    "My God, don't we have enough going on, Laney? Do we really have to talk about this scheme of yours this weekend?"
    "I think we do. It's why we came here, isn't it?"
    "I thought we came here because you wanted to have some time alone with me."
    "I did. I do. And I thought we could discuss this, too. And we will. Just as soon as I pick up the fish. And I'm guessing we need some wine as well, so I'll swing by Systembolaget." Systembolaget was the state-run alcohol store. At least Åhus had one of a decent size.
    "Laney, just get the fish and come home." His anger came through loud and clear. Niklas didn't shout, but his voice always sounded darker, more intense when he was losing his temper. I could imagine the tense atmosphere I'd come home to.
    "Do we have wine at home?"
    "I don't know. Probably not."
    "Do you want wine at dinner tonight?"
    "Well, yeah."
    "Then I will go to Systemmet when I am done here, and then I'll come home. And then we can talk." I hung up before he could say anything else, then I turned off my phone. It was better this way. And it would give me time to figure out how to tell him about the sperm bank and using someone else's sperm to have our baby, if there was going to ever be a baby.
    I came home laden with bags. One stop became seve ral as I tried to use the time as a buffer, a way to give Niklas a chance to calm down and me a chance to come up with good excuses. In a way, I didn't need excuses—he'd said we could think about adoption, so he wasn't against the idea of us starting our own family. Sometimes, I thought the reason he was the way he was acting—especially with the vasectomy—was because, as much as he loved Siri and Jesper, their arrivals in his life marked the end of what intimacy had existed between Niklas and Karolina.
    When we moved in together, our sex life was expl osive, and then we went from having his kids once a month to every other week, and now they came and went as they pleased. We never knew which nights we'd be alone, or when Siri would show up with a new boy hanging on to her, or when Jesper would show up, wanting a gaming night with his friends because our TV was bigger than his mother's and because she refused to allow noisy, disturbing video games in her Zen-like apartment. So we were forced to accept this. I was forced to, knowing Niklas could never say no to his kids, and he still felt guilt about leaving their mother. Which I didn't understand, since she'd already left him emotionally when he finally decided to leave her.
    But I did have a reason to be guilty. I'd slept with a nother man. I couldn't stop thinking about that other man, even though I loved Niklas. And I was afraid I didn't love him enough. If I loved him enough, would I have been able to give in so easily to Mads? It wasn't as though Mads had needed to do very much to get me into bed. I was already attracted to him before I'd even spoken