Page 106 of Canadian Boyfriend

I nearly collapsed right there, from a mixture of relief and hope and fear and who even knew what else. But I rallied and yanked the door open, hoping that he hadn’t driven away yet, that maybe I could run after him like in the final scene of a rom-com. But I didn’t have to run, because there he was on Gretchen’s porch, my Canadian Boyfriend. The real one.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” I said.

He opened his arms, and I stepped into them.

We stood like that for a long time. I was physically shaking, and he held me tight. Eventually he said, his lips against my hair, “You want to go for ice cream?”

“I sure do.” The Depression Car was parked in the driveway. “Maybe we should put up the top, though, so we can talk?”

“Nah.” He came to a halt in front of the car that matched his eyes. “We can talk later. For now, let’s start over, OK?”

“Yes.”

He smiled.Click-click-click.“Hey, Aurora, can I give you a lift?”

I nodded, a little too overcome to speak, and let him hold the door for me. Then he ran around to the driver’s side, and we vroomed away.

EPILOGUE AND THEY LIVED

MIKE

This is the part where I’m supposed to say that we got married and had kids. We did not. We didn’t even end up living together right away. I did take Aurora for ice cream that morning, but then I took her back to Gretchen’s.

I went through with my plan to hire a nanny. An actual nanny who was not Aurora. Because Aurora was my girlfriend, and it’s weird to employ your girlfriend? There’s a question mark at the end of that sentence because I tried to argue that our relationship had already spanned lots of strange categories, but she wasn’t having it. She said if we were starting over, we were starting over.

So we dated, though it seemed funny to call it that since I knew in my bones that Aurora Lake was a foregone conclusion. But I took her out to public places and worked on not being a dick when people recognized me. She came over for fires and skating that winter. She spent Christmas with us, and even stayed over a few nights—like, openly, in my bedroom. She did not make up with her mother. She said she might someday, but not now. I got to meet Mary-Margaret, and Aurora came with me to Dr. Mursalfor a few sessions. By the summer, we were in full boyfriend-girlfriend territory, and we all went to visit my parents.

She was killing it on the ballet front. She’d started her own business called Ballet for Every Body, doing exactly what she’d talked about that first Christmas: teaching ballet, on her terms, to adults. Word of mouth had been good, and she was teaching five classes a week out of a church basement. She still taught at Gretchen’s, but she was in the process of drawing up a business plan to open her own studio, except she wasn’t going to call it a studio. She was looking for the right word. I was so proud of her, I could bust.

By some miracle, I’d gotten a one-year contract with the Lumberjacks. It would certainly be my last. I’d started mulling a future in which my retirement had me doing a hockey version of what Aurora was doing with ballet—bringing it, or some version of what it offered, to people who weren’t likely to go pro. Maybe I’d start my own skills training and leadership camp for teens. Or maybe I’d volunteer with the teams at Olivia’s school. She would never deign to be on one, but that was OK.

I was coming around to the idea that I could have a life full of kids even if they weren’t my own. I did get another dog, though. A five-year-old mutt from the Humane Society who came with the name Tinkerbell. The girls had insisted on her, Olivia because of her name and Aurora because she was part Chihuahua. How could I resist? So although I’d always imagined Earl 9’s sibling would be a big badass dog named Gretzky—my childhood dogs Bobby and Gordie had been named after Canadian hockey greats—what Earl 9 and I actually got was tiny, fluffy, hyper Tinkerbell. She was a very good girl, and I considered her an example of the old Rolling Stones adage about how you can’t always get what you want,but sometimes you end up getting what you need. Another example would be how I kept asking Aurora to move back in, but she kept resisting. She would say that there was no hurry, and insist that everything was great as it was. I couldn’t argue with that, but I was greedy.

I took Aurora to Tomfoolery for her birthday that summer before my final season. Olivia and Gretchen joined us, and so did Ivan and Lauren and Annika, who was now fifteen months old. We had a proper party with pizza and cake and games.

“I’m sorry you can’t go in the ball pit for your birthday,” I said to Aurora at one point when we found ourselves with a moment alone. “For the record, I did ask them if they’d make an exception, and I even, for the first time ever in recorded history, played the do-you-know-who-I-am? card.”

She laughed. “That’s OK. I have accepted that the ball pit dream has to die.”

“So you’re thirty-one now. We’ve been ‘dating’”—I made air quotes—“for almost a year. You want to move in with me yet?”

“Yeah. OK.”

I choked on my Diet Coke.

She smirked. “I mean, we’ll have to work it out with Sabrina”—Sabrina was the nanny—“but yeah, at this point I think I’m just being stubborn, and that seems… dumb.”

Well, eff me. My whole body flushed with pleasure. Not sexual pleasure, or not only sexual pleasure, but goofy, teenage-boy, she-chose-me pleasure. “Yes!” I did a little fist pump that made her laugh even though it had been entirely in earnest.

“Let’s get married,” I said, and immediately regretted it. In my mind that was the endgame. Like I said, Aurora Lake was a foregone conclusion. But I hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that. I didn’t want to scare her away.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” she said, predictably.

I pretended to be slain by her rejection.

“Tell you what, I’ll let you renew my health insurance when it comes due.”

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