Maybe Baby (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

The Best Decisions Are Made Over a Bloody Mary

I
t took several days before I even broached the baby subject again. I’d waited, swallowing my anger at his blatant avoidance of the issue. We slept in the same bed without touching one another. Now it was Sunday and we were reading the paper in our kitchen in Vasastan. Croissant crumbs and blobs of lemon marmalade dotted the tabletop, vying with the messy pile of Swedish and English-language newspapers. I pushed aside my
New York Times
. There was no way I could concentrate on any of the articles when all I could think of was how to bring Niklas around to the possibility of our having a baby.

We lived in a turn of the century building on Dalagatan with a view of Vasaparken and the Astrid Lindgren memorial. Our kitchen had none of the Art Nouveau charm of the rest of the building—it was sleek and modern, with polished concrete countertops and seamless cabinets that had no handles. The walls were painted a warm shade of white called
"Stockholm White," the floor a slate so dark it looked black. Everything in this kitchen screamed "Modern." When we first moved into the apartment, it still had its original kitchen with cabinets from the early 1900s. The appliances had been updated in the 1990s, but otherwise the kitchen looked as one imagined it would have in the days when August Strindberg still reigned supreme in Stockholm. Then we moved in and Niklas, who’d loved the old kitchen when we bought the apartment, decided it was not functional enough for us and hired a contractor and an architect to completely revamp not just the kitchen, but also the entire apartment. The only thing left from the old days was the tiled stoves towering in corners of our living room and bedrooms. It was a showplace of an apartment. It was bigger than the row house I grew up in West Philadelphia, and its sheer size was overwhelming. I used to be so proud of it. It reminded me of something from a fairytale with its intricate crown molding, gracefully old-fashioned chandeliers and creaking parquet floors.  Now it felt more like Niklasʼs place than our place. I missed the way it used to be.

"
We could adopt a child," I said. "That could be a good option for us, couldn’t it?"

"
Maybe." Niklas didn’t look up from the main section of Svenska Dagbladet. He coughed and reached for his glass of orange juice.

I’d tried not to think about babies since we arrived home from New York. Instead I’d focused on getting over my jet lag with Melatonin tablets and returning to work. But the thought of a baby—our baby—niggled at me. I spent more time Googling adoption processes than catching up on my new project at the agency.

"We could get help from Adoptionscentrum," I continued, hoping I could snatch his attention away from the woes of the western world. "We’re in a perfect situation. We have a stable relationship, a good income... we’re both healthy."

"
I'm healthy," Niklas corrected. "You smoke."

"
Not often."

"
They won’t care if it’s once in a while or every day." Niklas finally lay the paper aside. "You smoke, so that’s a strike against you."

"
Niklas, be serious."

"
I am being serious, my darling." But he was grinning at me, like he thought all of this was an amusing way to pass the time. "Besides, you know these adoptions take forever. You may as well adopt a rescue dog."

"
I don’t want a goddamn dog. I want us to start our own family. You and me, together."

He sighed.
"You know, I was talking to Karolina about this..."

"
You discussed this with Karolina?"

Niklas nodded.
"It came up in conversation, yes."

"
Why would you even discuss something so private with your ex?"

"
Laney, calm down. I simply mentioned to her that you wanted to have a baby."

He was so matter of fact about it. God damn him!

"You know how much I hate it when the two of you discuss things about us that are private," I retorted, my voice escalating. I could already feel my skin growing hot. My throat went tight. "Our private life is not something you should be discussing with your ex!"

Niklas folded his hands in front of him.
"I don’t understand why you feel so threatened by Karolina."

"
I think you know exactly why I don't want her to know, Niklas." I didn't even want to bring up his past transgression with her. We'd discussed it so often that it was more like a blister that never healed properly. "I don’t feel threatened by her, Niklas. I just don’t want you discussing anything that has to do with me, with us, with your ex. Talk to me instead."

"Laney, I don’t feel comfortable with the conditions you’re putting on me."

"
Would you want me discussing our sex life with one of my exes? Shall I start asking Jens for advice during our coffee breaks?"

He tapped his index fingers on the tabletop.
"You can discuss whatever you like with Jens." He smiled again but it was the bland smile I’d seen him use with annoying neighbors. He didn’t like being reminded of Jens, or any other man who’d been in my life before him.

"
So it’s all right if I go to work tomorrow and dissect your predilections with my ex? Maybe I should ask him about using a vibrator on you, considering some of the other things we've done together."

"
You’ve made your point, Laney."

"
Good." I took advantage of the situation. "So, now... about adoption, I was thinking we could adopt a child from Africa. Initially, I considered the US, but there’s just too much red tape."

"
You know it’s going to take at least a year," Niklas said.

"That’s not so bad." It wasn’t, not really. If I could wait nine months to have a baby the natural way, I could wait a year to meet my adopted child.

"
It could take longer. I've heard of adoptions that take almost three years to finalize."

"Niklas, don't look for problems where there aren't any."

"I'm just trying to be realistic, Laney." He gives me a pragmatic look that I know is his way of saying
Come on…
But I didn’t want to kill the dream before it had even begun.

I counted to ten in my head. It was a good way to stay calm when dealing with the Type-A side of
Niklasʼs personality. He insisted on planning everything. He needed to know what to expect before taking a step into the unknown.

I was probably the only aspect of his life that wasn’t planned well in advance.

We met, by chance, at the American Club's Third Thursday event. I usually never went to those mingle sessions the club, hosted at the Hilton Slussen. Mostly because the people who showed up were consultants looking to network, or divorcées looking for husband number two or three. I was blissfully single then. I wasn’t looking for a relationship. I'd just started working for the Stockholm office of a UK-based branding agency as a copywriter. I was also sleeping with Jens, one of the art directors I worked with. He was Swedish. Younger than me by five years and good-looking enough that he made me weak at the knees, but he wasn’t relationship material. He was too much of a player, and I wasn’t interested in being his or anyone’s girlfriend. We worked together. We fucked whenever one of us was in the mood. But we never spent the entire night together. I liked sleeping alone, and so did he. And we both were adamant we liked our no strings attached mode. We came and went as we pleased, and it worked for us.

But by the time I went to that fateful Third Thur
sday, our arrangement was becoming less satisfying. I was still convinced I didn’t want a relationship, but whenever Jens and I hooked up, a little piece of me wondered why he never wanted more from me. The emptiness of it all ate away at me, even as I claimed I wanted to be free to sleep with whomever I wanted when I wanted, until I met someone who peaked my interest enough to believe in true love. And as I walked around the bar, occasionally chatting with people and wondering how much longer I should stay, Niklas appeared in the doorway. He wasn’t even there for Third Thursday. He’d shown up looking for one of his colleagues. Instead, he found me. I won’t say it was love at first sight. It wasn’t really like that. He wasn’t as slick as the men I was used to from my office. The men who wore skinny jeans and clunky boots with tight black T-shirts under even tighter jackets. He didn’t look like an overgrown boy. He looked like a proper man, someone with experience and enough confidence that he didn’t need to assume a facade of bravado.

Niklas wasn’t blond like your stereotypical Swede. He had thick chestnut hair that he swept back from his face. He looked more French than Swedish, and later I found out his mother was from Normandy. When he a
pproached me, he claimed he thought he recognized me from a conference he’d attended in Vienna. I knew it was a bullshit line, but I liked that he didn’t do what most Swedish men did when they tried to pick me up. He didn’t address my breasts, and he didn’t think he had to sound tough just because he was talking to a black woman from the States. He bought me a drink and we ended up trading notes about our favorite places in Stockholm. I remember thinking I liked the faint lines of crow’s feet around his eyes and the sharpness of his cheekbones. I liked his full lips, and the very masculine notes of the cologne he was wearing. Most of all, I liked the shape of his hands and I couldn’t stop thinking about how they’d look cupping my breasts. I wanted to take him home after just a few minutes of listening to his voice.

As the bar filled, the crowd pressed us closer and closer together. I was practically in his lap thanks to being jostled around by people anxious to order drinks while the special American Club discount price was still available. My ass brushed
Niklasʼs crotch and met the thick hardness of an erection.

"
I think we should get a room," I suggested.

He looked a little surprised, but I could tell he was i
nto it. He looked away, the tips of his ears burning red. I didn’t move. I stayed there, wanting to tease his erection with a gentle sway, but I stopped myself. I wanted him, but I didn’t want to come across like a sex-crazed teenager. But then he rested one hand on my hip and, turning to look at me again, said, "You’ve got to be the sexiest woman I’ve ever met."

"
I think we should get a room," I said again.

And we did. We spent the night together, fucking in that frantic, almost crazed way that only happens with a stranger. When your senses are a little too heightened and it either works—and you keep coming and coming no matter what he does to you—or you don’t come at all and you fake it because you’re still having a good enough time that you want to keep him going. But I didn’t have to fake it with Niklas. We were a good fit. Every time he
touched me, he chipped away at the wall I’d built around me until all that was left was the part of me that wanted to feel safe, and he gave me that. The warmth of his skin, the way he whispered my name in that dimly lit hotel room. He felt so steady, so calm, even with the haze of arousal surrounding us. I didn’t want to go home to my apartment. I wanted to stay in that bed with him.  He was the first man I wanted to spend an entire night with. I liked how it felt to curl my body around his. I liked how it felt when he kissed my neck and held me close. I liked how his skin smelt after we’d fucked… sweet, almost like honey. He made me feel safe.

But now, as we sat in the kitchen and he began listing all the things that could go wrong with an adoption, I wondered where the old Niklas went; the one who made me feel safe and who made me feel like I was the sexiest woman on the planet. The one who cared about my hopes and dreams. There was a glimmer of him beneath the facade. In New York, he'd blossomed again, waking me up with morning sex, taking me on romantic walks in Central Park, kissing me deeply in doorways and subway trains… in backseats of cabs and in elevators. I was in a constant state of arousal. Maybe this was when the desire to have a baby, to have his baby and start a family of our own, anchored itself in my thoughts. He lit this longing inside of me with his kisses and his cock and those bea
utiful hands anxious to touch and explore every part of me. Then we returned to Sweden, and his reserve cloaked him again.

I wished the New York version of Niklas had come with us back home.

"Are you trying to talk me out of even considering adopting?" I asked carefully.

"
No, no, no. Nothing like that. I'm simply weighing our options."

"
Maybe we shouldn’t discuss this anymore until you’ve finished analyzing the possibilities."

"
Now you’re just teasing me, Laney." He sounded exasperated even if he was trying to smile at me.

"
No, I'm not. I just don’t see the point of possibly getting into another argument, since you’ve obviously formed an opinion and you’re trying to figure out how to back it up."

"
Adopting is still an option for us."

"
I hope so. The natural way obviously isn’t."

"
No, it’s not. I'm not getting the vasectomy reversed. That’s not an option."