Read Online Maybe Baby by Kim Golden - Free Book Online Page B

territory.
    "Should I drive to Martins Rökeri and pick up some fish for tonight?"
    He grunted a yes at me. I fished out the car keys and slid my feet into the flip-flops I always left by the front door. I didn't ask him what he wanted. I knew by heart. But the house felt suffocating. I rushed to the car and put some distance between us, following the narrow roads that took me from Yngsjö to Åhus. It was only six kilometers away, but the distance was enough to allow me to disconnect from the tension between Niklas and me. I knew it was my fault. At least, I thought it was my fault. I'd come home from Copenhagen full of a broiling longing for Mads. There was no room in my thoughts for Niklas, and he was clued in enough to sense that some strange impasse had come.
    This is temporary, I told myself, as I turned onto the narrow curving road that led to Martin’s.
    It was late enough in the season that most of the summer people had returned to their normal lives in Malmö and Stockholm. The parking lot was nearly empty. Just a few cars with German license plates, one or two with Swedish plates. I parked close to the door and took a moment to enjoy the silence. Though there was the faint hum of traffic and the occasional burst of Swedish or German being spoken, there was nothing to distract from how beautiful it was in this part of Skåne. Across the creek, graceful houses lined the waterway as trees bowed beneath the weight of the late summer heat. I looked inside the small shop. A group of Germans was trying to make it clear what they wanted with the two girls behind the counter. Two older Swedes, most likely pensioners who lived in Åhus all year, waited with impatient faces that burned red.
    I retraced my steps and retreated to the picnic tables by the water. I sat down, facing the water, and listening to the call of the gulls swooping overhead. Going back to the house wasn't an option. Not now, while Niklas was in a funk over things being out of place. This side of him always came out when we left Stockholm and came to either his family's summerhouse in Skåne, or the small house we rented in the archipelago. He liked things just so. Even at home, he was this way. I tried to remember if he'd been like that when we first met. We'd spent most of our time in my small apartment in Kungsholmen. He used to call it cozy, but then one day when we reminisced about those days, he derided my old place, calling it shabby and ridiculous.
    I remember being stunned. He used to say how much he preferred my apartment to the place he'd shared with Karolina. How there was nothing unnecessary cluttering it. How lived-in it felt, like a proper home. Maybe he'd only been positive because he knew he needed to sound good to keep getting me in bed. Maybe it was all part of the "courtship." Of course it was, it always was. You said and did all the right things to keep getting closer to the person. I'd been the same. I'd gone into this relationship pretending to be more together than I really was. All I could think was "we clicked, this should be easy." I didn't know the click was just the beginning. I didn't know how awful his kids were. I didn't know about his mood swings. He didn't know how messy I could be, or how I liked to stay in bed late at the weekends and not get up early for morning jogs. All these things we discovered like a lot of other couples. But somehow it felt like our journey as a couple was full of wrong turns and dead end streets. I used to ask myself if everyone else had to deal with a partner's ex like Karolina—who could be charming in parts but was usually rude—or if the other women I knew who were second or third wives spent as much time compromising with teenagers who didn't give a flying fuck about them. Aside from Eddy and Ingrid, I didn't have anyone I trusted enough to compare notes with. And now that Mads was a part of the mix, I didn't think I could discuss it with them, either.
    My phone rang, jarring me from the