Page 1 of Canadian Boyfriend

PROLOGUE

ONCE UPON A TIME

I was sixteen years old when I invented my Canadian Boyfriend. I was twenty-nine years old when I manifested him in the flesh.

We “met” at the Mall of America, and I don’t know why I’m putting that in quotation marks, because we really did meet.

Well, I know why. Let me start over.

I was sixteen years old when I met a boy at the Mall of America.

He was in town from Winnipeg for a hockey tournament, and I was working at Caribou Coffee.

“Did you want the whipped cream”—I tilted the cup to read the name off it—“Erik?” I was in the habit of asking specifically about the whipped cream even when there were no instructions written on the cup suggesting it was unwanted. Whipped cream was a more controversial topic back in those pre-keto days, and you’d be surprised how many people would order something like a large turtle mocha, a drink that contained 980 calories and 105 grams of sugar, but consider whipped cream a bridge too far.

When my Canadian Boyfriend answered, I assumed he was Erik. He seemed like he was really exerting ownership over that mocha.

“Erik definitely wants the whipped cream. The more the better, eh?”

“Does Erik always speak of himself in the third person?” I was wittier, and more outgoing, at the mall than at school. At the mall, I didn’t have anyone’s preconceived notions about me holding me back. I could be a normal girl. A girl who spent her lunch hours laughing with her friends in the cafeteria. A girl who spent her lunch hoursactually eating lunchwhile laughing with her friends in the cafeteria. “Is Erik using the royalwe?”

I hadn’t made eye contact with my Canadian Boyfriend. We were slammed—I had cups lined up on the bar as long as my ballet frenemy Emma’s perfect arabesque—and even though I was talking to him, I had registered him as a presence rather than an actual and specific human being.

But when he said, “Sorry, what?” I looked up and we locked eyes. His were deep green and topped by a brow furrowed in bewilderment. His straw-colored hair was flirting with mullethood, and he had a full dirty-blond beard a few shades darker. He was holding a cup with a teabag tag sticking out of it.

I’m not saying it was love at first sight, but I’m not saying it wasn’t.

“I just meant,” I said, trying to explain away those forehead lines, “you said, ‘Erik,’ like you were talking about yourself in the third… You know what? Forget it.” I guess Iwasn’twittier at the mall. For that to work, people had to get your jokes. As usual, something about me wasn’t quite hitting.

At that moment, Erik—the real Erik—clattered up to the bar, enormous and galumphy. Later, when I learned a bit about hockey—just enough to suit my purposes, thank you,Hockey for Dummies—I decided it was probably because Erik was an enforcer.

“Can you shake some shit on that whipped cream?” Erik asked.

“You must be Erik. And Erik, you’d like someshiton your drink?” I widened my eyes in what I hoped was a comic fashion, because if at first you don’t succeed and all that. “A turtle mocha comes with turtle pieces and caramel sauce. I also have chocolate chips, brownie pieces, and chocolate mints, but I’m fresh out of shit.”

My Canadian Boyfriend chuckled, which thrilled me almost as much as being praised in class yesterday for my grand battement had.

“Give me everything,” Erik said. “You know, like when you go to McDonald’s and you put a little of every flavor of pop in your cup?” I did not know, at least not from experience, as I consumed neither pop nor McDonald’s, but I was familiar with the concept.

My Canadian Boyfriend raised his eyebrows at me in what seemed half solidarity, half dare, so I got out my toppings and went to town. When I passed the drink over, my Canadian Boyfriend wrinkled his nose. “I don’t think I’m a fan of candy in coffee.”

“Me neither,” I said, because it was true. Or I thought it was true. Or at the very least, if it wasn’t true, it was my excuse. If I had any hope of making it to New York—andinNew York—it certainly didn’t involve large turtle mochas with extra “shit,” and I didn’t even need my mother to tell me that.

He smiled at me then, my Canadian Boyfriend, and his pine-tree eyes went all twinkly. It was sudden and blinding, that smile of his. So blinding it took me a second to register that he was missing a tooth, which was startling, but, oddly, didn’t detract from his rugged beauty. Or maybe it made himseem a little dangerous, danger being another thing that was not part of my life, unless you counted the ever-present fear that I would refracture my fifth metatarsal.

He and Erik were back the next day. I was working the cash register when they appeared. “Hi,” Erik said. “Can I get a double-double, please?”

“Can you get a what?”

My Canadian Boyfriend intervened. “You’re speaking Canadian, dude. They give it to you plain here, and you add what you want.” He pointed at the station with the cream and sugar, and to me he said, “A large coffee and a large black tea, please.” He dipped his head like he was embarrassed. “Sorry.”

“No problem. So you guys are from Canada?”

“Yep,” Erik said. “A town near Winnipeg.”

I set their drinks on the counter. “No coffee with candy today?”

“Nope,” Erik said. “I save that for later in the day. Right now, I just need to wake the fuck up.”

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