Page 30 of Canadian Boyfriend

I made a bring-it motion with my fingers, and she pushed herself up to sitting cross-legged. I joined her.

“OK,” she said with typical Gretchen directness, “here’s a representative thing: You remember how before your car fully died, it would sometimes be in the shop and Ian would be lined up to pick you up after class, but he’d forget?”

“Ian had his head in the clouds a lot of the time.” Or his head in his video games. “It wasn’t personal.”

“It was literally personal. You were supposed to be his person, and he forgot about you. More than once. Yet you always went out of your way to do nice things for him.”

I sighed. “I always thought breakups were supposed to be traumatic.”

“So, what? You’re not traumatized but you want to be?”

“No, but I thought I’d miss him more.”

“Still not getting it. You’re upset that you don’t miss him?”

“I’m not explaining myself well. With the advantage of retrospect, I’m seeing how you’re right. Ididalways go out of my way to do nice things for him. I did all the cooking. I made his favorite dishes.” Even when they were so rich I could only eat a tiny serving. “We got this place because he wanted a two-bedroom so he could have a gaming room, but we split the rent fifty-fifty.” I paused. “Why did I do all that?”

“Because, and I say this with love, you’re a bit of a doormat. You go out of your way to please people, to keep them happy. You accept life on their terms as long as it means they’ll keep you around. I mean, I love you, but not making Ian pay his already-too-small share of the rent for the rest of the termof the lease when his name is on it along with yours, and whenhe’sthe one who left, is insanity.”

I blew out a sharp breath, and tears gathered in my eyes. It was that sucker-punch feeling only the truth can deliver. “That’s why I stayed in ballet so long,” I said, my voice a meek squeak, “to keep my mom happy.”

“Aww.” Gretchen patted my leg. “It’s only fifty percent you. The other fifty percent is called being a single woman in the modern era. We all do this shit.”

“You don’t.”

“Well”—she preened—“we can’t all be as self-evolved as I am.”

“The New York boyfriends weren’t real boyfriends, you know?” I said, circling back to the original point, which I had yet to make. “When Ian and I moved in together, I thought,This is what it’s like to have arealboyfriend, to share a life with someone. You become… co-CEOs.”

“Except youweren’tco-CEOs. As you just said yourself, you did everything around the house, you paid half the rent even though he made more than you and was the one that wanted the second bedroom.”

“To be fair, that was about not wanting to feel like I’m in debt to someone.” After spending my first twenty years exquisitely aware of how much my mother had invested in me and my training, I was done with that.

“Well,” she said skeptically, “I think that can be true,andyou can be a doormat.”

I chuckled. Gretchen was so very much herself.

“Maybe. But if a bunch of different things can be true at the same time, I think the problem was also the fact that Ian didn’t know what kind of pie I like.”

“Huh?”

“No,” I said, ignoring Gretchen’s confusion as I formed my argument in real time. “It’s bigger than that. Ian didn’t know that I didn’t eat pie. No. He didn’t knowwhyI didn’t eat pie.” Furrows appeared in Gretchen’s brow. “He dumped me, but now I can see that I’d been settling. That’s my point. I don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t want to settle.”

I expected Gretchen to launch into an I-told-you-so speech, but she leaned forward and hugged me. My mind flashed back to when I’d told my mom I was quitting ballet. I’d wanted her to hug me then, so badly, as I’d been standing on her literal doorstep crying. Instead, she told me she wouldn’t let me in unless I agreed to go back to New York.

I clung to Gretchen for longer than was seemly, but she didn’t seem to mind. She only hugged me harder.

When we pulled away, I tried to return things to normal by asking, “How’s Talon?”

“Oh Lord.” She rolled her eyes. “Long story, but I am, against my better judgment, going out with him next weekend. When it turns out to be the disaster it is almost certainly destined to be, we shall return to the topic of Talon. Oh, hang on!” She dug around in her bag. “I forgot I have a lead for you on an apartment that Ingrid’s boyfriend’s brother manages. He said he’d knock a hundred bucks off the rent for someone who came with a reference and was willing to sign a two-year lease. And if you’re willing to shovel the walk in the winter, he’ll take off two hundred.”

Ingrid was Gretchen’s sister, but I hadn’t realized she had any apartment connections. I took the card she handed me. “This is in St. Louis Park?”

“Yep, so it’s a bit farther from the studio—and me—but now you have Mike’s car, so that shouldn’t be a problem.”

She was looking at me kind of funny, so I got up and said, “Great, thanks. So we’re gonna work on the ‘Vacation’ routine?” The all–Go-Go’s recital was a go.

She got up and started circling her arms to loosen what I knew was a tight shoulder. “Wait.” She paused midcircle and turned her fingers into pointy guns. “Does Mike know what kind of pie you like?”

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