Maybe Tonight by Kim Golden

Author:Kim Golden [Golden, Kim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION / Romance / Multicultural & Interracial, FICTION / Contemporary Women, FICTION / African American / Contemporary Women, FICTION / Literary, FICTION / General
ISBN: 978-91-981746-1-8
Publisher: Echo Books - Stockholm
Published: 2014-10-20T04:00:00+00:00

*Translation: “Yes, it’s me. I’m coming.”

13

BOY AFRAID

That night, Mads walked home in the freezing cold and tried to focus on what was ahead of him. He wasn’t the same angry, insecure teenager who lost his mother too soon. He was a man now. Soon to be a father. But walking alone, on near-deserted streets did nothing to improve his mood. He’d thought seeing his father and telling him about the baby would make him feel better. If anything, it had left an even larger hole inside him. Questions still remained unanswered.

By the time he reached Dronning Louise Bridge, the questions he hadn’t asked, the ones he’d felt too uncertain to ask, burned inside him. Almost too soon his apartment building loomed ahead. The sky was a weird orangey black with thick, heavy clouds. Snowflakes fluttered down around him as he stared up at the windows to his bedroom. Laney was sleeping still, he knew this. She hadn’t called and asked where he was. Lately she slept like the dead. Sometimes he woke in the middle of the night afraid that something was wrong and her steady, even breathing and the heat rising from her body was enough to reassure him. Maybe that was all he needed now, to be close to her again.

He pressed in the code to the main door and then pushed it open. His neighbors’ bikes were all jumbled to the right, under the loggia and protected from the falling snow. Tomorrow he’d have to remember to move his and Laney’s bikes to the shed. He crossed the cobblestone courtyard and then climbed the timeworn granite steps to his apartment. For a brief moment an image of his father, his lined face and sallow skin, his shaggy, dull gray hair flooded his mind. Damn it, no good would come of their being in touch.

He fumbled for his keys. He could have sworn he’d shoved them in his jacket pocket but they weren’t there now. Had he dropped them along the way home? Walking back to his father’s place would take too long and it was too cold. His legs were freezing and the gloves he wore weren’t thick enough to hold the pervasive damp chill at bay. A stream of choice curses rushed out of him as he knocked on the door. What an idiot he was…the keys….they’d fallen out of his jacket pocket at his father’s place and now he could picture them on the scarred coffee table, waiting for him to return to claim them. He’d have to go back in the morning. His keys to the workshop were on that key ring.

The door creaked open and a very sleepy-looking Laney pulled him inside.

“Where’ve you been?” she asked as she fidgeted with the buttons on his coat. “I woke up and you weren’t here.”

“I went to see my father,” he said and gathered her in his arms. Holding her close, breathing in the warm scent of her skin and the faintly floral scent of the oil she used in her hair always calmed him.

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