Maybe Tonight by Kim Golden Page B

Laney leaned into him and he slung his arm over her shoulder. “But you need to call your father and tell him you’re here.”
    “He’s at a conference in Barcelona,” Jesper retorted sullenly. He finally looked up from the floor and raked his hair back from his face. A bluish bruise shined from under his right eye.
    “What happened to you?” Mads went over to him and examined the black eye. It looked fresh, perhaps only a day old at most.
    “Someone hit me.”
    Mads grinned at him. “I can see that.”
    “Who hit you?” Laney asked him. “Were you in a fight at school?”
    “Skinhead asshole at school.” Jesper muttered.
    Laney took Jesper’s hand and led him into the kitchen. “You were good at hiding this from me when you arrived.”
    “I didn’t want you to worry,” he muttered.
    Mads pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and gestured for Jesper to sit. “Are you hungry?”
    “Laney already gave me something to eat.” But Mads began pulling cold cuts out of the refrigerator anyway. Teenage boys were always hungry.
    Laney handed Jesper a bag of frozen peas. “For your eye. It’ll keep it from swelling more.”
    While Mads made sandwiches, he eavesdropped on the conversation Laney and Jesper were having. There was an easiness to them that he hadn’t expected. Laney was sitting at the table now, holding Jesper’s free hand and telling him he needed to at least leave a voicemail for his father.
    “Nobody cares what’s going on with me,” Jesper muttered. “I wish I could just stay here with you.”
    “Honey, you know you can’t…you’ve got your mom and your dad.”
    “You were the one who always looked out for me.”
    “I know, sweetie, but things are different now…”
    “Dad didn’t tell me you were pregnant. Does he know?”
    “I don’t know. I left a voicemail for him but he never answered.”
    “So…your boyfriend, he seems nice. I can’t understand him so well though.”
    Laney laughed. “Speak English with him then…He can speak Swedish too. He used to live there.”
    Mads grinned at the boy and said in perfect Swedish, “It’s true. I lived there for four…maybe five years.” Then Mads set the plate of sandwiches on the table and sat opposite Laney.
    He watched how she mothered Jesper, how she brushed his hair away from his forehead and chided him for not getting a haircut, how she seemed to know the right way to ask questions so the boy would answer without the usual sulky “I don’t know” or “Leave me alone” he remembered from his youth.
    And as they sat there, Jesper finally told them about the skinhead who’d stalked him, who’d called him a svartskalle because Jesper had a girlfriend–a girl who was born in Sweden but whose parents were from Iran. Mads inched closer to the boy, remember how it had been when he’d been in love and defended a girl…he still bore the scars from it.
    When Jesper finished his story, Mads tapped his own nose. “Do you see these ridges?” He hoped he’d phrased it properly in Swedish.
    Jesper nodded slowly.
    “They’re my battle scars in the name of love.” he told him. “I got suspended from school because of it but I know I did the right thing.”
    “I’m suspended too.” Jesper admitted. He ducked his head sheepishly.
    “How long?” Mads asked.
    “Five days.”
    “If your dad says it’s okay, you can stay here during those five days, but you have to come to the workshop with me.”
    “Okay.”
    “We’re going to finish two projects, you and I. Bedroom furniture.”
    “I don’t know how to do anything like that though.”
    “I’ll show you,” Mads assured him. He nudged the plate of sandwiches closer to Jesper. “You call your dad and make sure it’s okay.”
    “Okay, I will.”
    Laney looked both relieved and pleased. She mouthed a “thank you” at Mads, then she focused on Jesper again. “You know you will always be special to me, Jeppe.”
    “You too, Laney. It’s just not the same