Page 19 of Canadian Boyfriend

I smiled. “I think I can handle it.”

“Anyway, I’m telling you this long, sordid story because I thought you should know what’s going on. Sarah’s parents FaceTime Olivia a lot, which is fine, but I’d rather they not do that when you’re here. They want to talk to Olivia about Sarahallthe time. I’m not opposed to that, if Olivia is into it, but it only seems to make her sad. Sadder.Madder.” He blew out a breath. “It’s hard to explain.”

“No, I get it. Trust me, I get it.” He raised his eyebrows inquisitively, and I said, “I have personal experience with toxic mothers.”

“Ah. I’m sorry.” I shrugged and gestured for him to continue. “I’m making all this sound more dramatic than it is. Basically, it’s going to be: Drive Olivia here and encourage her to do her homework until Lauren shows up. Don’t answer calls from Sarah’s parents. The hardest thing will be trying to get Olivia to do these reading responses she has to do every night.”

“Great. Anything else I need to know? House rules, anything like that?”

“I’ll get you keys and garage and alarm codes—and the car, of course. Everything else I figure we can muddle through as we go, except…” He tilted his head back and looked at the sky.

“Yes?”

His eyes had gone flat when he righted his head. “I really fucking hate liars, so don’t lie to me, OK?”

Whoa.“I…”

His eyes went back to normal, and he shook his head sheepishly. “Sorry. That was…” He waved a hand in the air. “Not about you. That was about me and some of my shit. I just… I want to know if stuff happens, OK? I want to be in the loop.”

I looked at him for a long time. I almost told him. But then I didn’t. He was talking about Olivia. He’d want to know if Olivia was doing her homework. If she missed him. If she was OK.

Or so I told myself.

I hadn’t told Gretchen about dinner at Mike Martin’s house that evening. And I told Gretchen everything. Which was why it was a bit awkward that when Mike Martin dropped me off, Gretchen was standing outside my building doing something with her phone. I got mine out, realizing I’d unintentionally ignored it all evening. There was a series of texts from Gretchen beginning with one saying she had an idea for the Tap 3s for the holiday recital and a profile of a Tinder guy she wanted me to weigh in on, escalating into demands to know why I was ignoring her, and finishing with I’m done at the studio, and I’m coming over.

Even though it was starting to get dark, Mike Martin and I had made the trip with the convertible top open at my request.There was something so compelling, so freeing, about cruising along with the top down, as if you were a person who was immune to the elements.

“Hey, Miss Miller!” Mike Martin called, and Gretchen raised her eyebrows in a way that would look benign to not-in-the-know onlookers but I recognized as her the-plot-thickens face.

Gretchen did not speak as we climbed the stairs to my apartment, but I couldfeelthe questions emanating from her. When we got inside, she dropped her dance bag and lay down flat on the carpet in my empty living room. “I know I told you earlier to get some furniture as a way to move on after Ian,” she said to the ceiling, “but upon further reflection, I am digging this empty space. It’s got a Zen vibe.”

I sat next to her on the beige carpet. “There’s no point in getting new furniture until I know the specs of my new place.” I’d been apartment hunting, but not very seriously. I needed to step up the search now that the end of my lease was looming.

Gretchen sat up suddenly and said, with faux innocence, “Did you have a nice evening?”

I smiled. Her question was intrusive and a little bit snarky, and I loved it. Sometimes it blew my mind that Gretchen Miller was my best friend. Sometimes it blew my mind that I had a best friend, period.

I don’t mean this to sound like a huge sob story. I hadn’t been bullied in high school, not overtly. I just hadn’t… had friends. Or fit in. I’d never learned how to. How could I have when I spent every nonschool weekday hour at ballet and my weekends at the mall? And as the school started to make accommodations for me so I could be in professional productions, the idea took hold that I thought I was better than everyone else, and my isolation intensified.

I was friendly with a few girls at ballet, but it wasn’t like we were hanging out in the real world. We were more like fellow soldiers. And then in New York, well, I was too busy falling apart.

So falling into best-friendship with Gretchen had been a surprise, but probably the greatest one of my life. I still remember the first day she called me her best friend—like, out loud. She’d said it in passing to a parent at a studio open house—“Miss Rory, my best friend, has an impressive dance résumé.” I had only ever seen best friends on TV or read about them in books. The Baby-Sitters Club. Or even, from my lonely only-child vantage point, Laura, Mary, and Carrie Ingalls—sisters but also friends. Girls who braided each other’s hair, adopted orphaned racoons, and called each other their rides-or-dies in a Ye Olde Frontier sort of way.

Maybe I should have invented Gretchen when I was in high school instead of Mike Martin.

“Did you have a nice evening?” Gretchen repeated when I didn’t answer the first time.

“Cool your jets. He had me over so he could orient me.”

I expected her to launch an interrogation, but she just said, “Where was Olivia when he dropped you off?”

“With a neighbor she’s going to be staying with when Mike is on the road.”

She didn’t say anything more, but to make sure we were done with the topic of Mike Martin, I prodded her arm. “So let’s see this Tinder profile.” Getting Gretchen started on the indignities of modern dating, and the mediocrity of modern men, was a surefire way to distract her from any wildly inaccurate inferences she might be tempted to make about Mike Martin and me.

“Right!” She futzed with her phone, and when she turned itto me, the screen was filled by a photo of a man in a suit with a caption that read, “Talon, 39.”

“Is that… his name?”

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