Page 40 of Canadian Boyfriend

“Yep, Aurora is Sleeping Beauty’s actual name, and there’s a famousSleeping Beautyballet. I got to play the role once. It was…”

“What?” he asked gently.

“I was going to say it was fun, but…” I thought of that framed picture of me from that performance, the one I couldn’t bear to display. “It was fun for my mom, anyway.”

“What if you’d grown up and wanted nothing to do with ballet? What if you’d wanted to become a sumo wrestler? Or an accountant?”

I smiled. “If it had been solely up to my mom, she would have named me Giselle or Odette—Odette is the white swan inSwan Lake. The one thing my absent dad did for me was prevent that from happening. He was a hippie, to hear it told, so he was into Aurora. It’s the hippie-dippiest of all the famous ballet names.”

“To hear it told?”

“Yeah, he split a month before I was born.”

“Hmm.”

I knew what he was thinking. I wanted to address it instead of turn away from it, because I was feeling braver than usual. Or maybe it was just Mike Martin—maybe he in particular made me brave. “They met at a concert. He was a roadie. He stuck around for a while. Long enough for him to pretend to be into the idea of my mom being pregnant—and to name me. Then one day, she woke up, and he was gone. Never heard from him again.”

Mike Martin winced.

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I used to google him when I was younger, and look for him on social media, but his name is Rob Johnson.”

“Ah.”

“I confess I have thought of doing 23andMe, seeing if I can find him that way.”

“But?”

“Well,heleftme, right? My mom’s had the same phone number forever. She has a real estate website. He could find me if he wanted to.”

He nodded, and I knew he was thinking of Olivia’s biological father. “It’s sort of amazing how easily some people—well, some men—can just waltz away from…”

“… from their responsibilities?”

“I was going to say that, but that’s not really what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

He snorted and ran a hand through his hair, as if embarrassed. “Well, it sounds cheesy, but I suppose I meant love. Do even a half-decent job, and a kid will love you unconditionally. Well, she will until her mom dies, then things might get a little iffy.”

“She loves you. She’s just struggling right now.”

“I think so. I hope so. Anyway, my point is that when you leave a kid, you leave a lot of potentially great stuff behind. It’s a dumb move. Kids aren’t responsibilities, or aren’tonlyresponsibilities. They’re opportunities.” He shook his head. “What’s your middle name?”

“Lake.”

“Aurora Lake. Wow. Forget ballet, that is atotalsuperhero name. Your sperm donor really was a hippie, eh?”

I smiled. I loved when he peppered his speech with his Canadianehs. “Yeah, they settled onAurora, and my mom was happy with that, so she let him do the middle name, and he choseLake. He apparently thought it was unique.” I scoffed. “Which goes to show he wasn’t from Minnesota—the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes.”

“But only one Aurora Lake.”

I wanted to hear more about this business about kids being opportunities and not responsibilities. I wanted to know why Mike Martin and Sarah had never had one together if he felt that way. But I was out of time. “I’d better go face the Go-Go’s.” The Ballet 3 girls were doing a routine to “Circle in the Sand.”

He got up and offered me a hand. This time I took it unhesitatingly, even knowing it would probably do a number on me. “Have you done any ballet since…” He trailed off.

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