Page 54 of Canadian Boyfriend

He looked up andclick-click-click, out popped the dimple. “I’ll teach you.”

When I recovered from my smile-induced stupefaction, my instinct was to argue. I didn’t like the idea of being bad at skating. Who was I kidding? I didn’t like the idea of being bad at anything. But it occurred to me that I hadn’t tried something new since… ever. I’d come back from New York and gotten jobs teaching dance and making coffee, both of which I already knew how to do. I hadn’t picked up any hobbies or really extended myself in any way.

As much as I didn’t like the idea of being bad at something, I liked even less the idea of myself as frozen in time, unable or unwilling to evolve.

All right. Maybe Mike Martin had taken my low-stakes disclaimer to heart and there was nothing to worry about. And maybe it was time to put myself out there—literally, on the lake.

“I suppose having an NHL star teach you to skate is a big deal,” I said a few minutes later. I was sitting with my feet dangling over the edge of the deck, and Mike Martin was kneeling in front of me lacing up my skates. It was a gorgeous, sunny afternoon.

“Still not a star.”

“I suppose having an NHL reliable stay-at-home defenseman”—I made a silly face—“teach you to skate is a big deal. Thisis the kind of stuff that gets auctioned off for charity. ‘Thirty-minute skating lesson with Mike Martin. Bidding starts at a thousand dollars, all proceeds to the teacup Chihuahua rescue.’”

“All proceeds to the English bulldog rescue.”

Well, here went nothing. “I need one of those walker things kids push around when they’re learning,” I said as I shuffled out onto the lake, arms extended as if warding off an attack.

“Nah, you’ll find your feet. You have balance and grace and strong legs. You just have to get used to being on blades.” He offered an arm, and I clung to it.

I squinted at him through my sunglasses, which weren’t up to the task of defending against the blinding white of the snow beyond the makeshift rink—or against the radiance that was Mike Martin. The sadness I sometimes saw in him, the heaviness, wasn’t evident today. I could see my reflection in hisTop Gunsunglasses. I looked happy, too. “How do you know I have grace and balance and strong legs?”

“I’ve watched you.” There was a pause. “Did that sound creepy?”

I laughed and shook my head. It was actually kind of flattering to think that he’d looked closely at me and come away with positive impressions. “But now I have to live up to my reputation.” I started shuffling forward again, and he accompanied me, except without the shuffling. He was all grace and easy agility.

“It’ll probably be easier if you let go of me,” he said eventually. “You’ll be able to balance better.”

I could sense that he was right, so I let go. “Stay by me, though.”

“Always.”

I was a little startled at the vehement tone thatalwayswas delivered in, but too focused on not falling to parse it.

“Eventually,” he said, shadowing me like a fighter jet escorting a poorly piloted drone, “you can try to start picking up your back foot on each stroke. Use that foot to push off, then lift it up and glide on the other.”

I did what he said and laughed in delight when it worked. I did it again. “I’m skating!” I exclaimed.

“You sure are.” There was something about the difference between the power and speed I knew he was capable of and the way he had both qualities leashed, coiled up tightly inside him as he glided next to me with his hands clasped behind his back. Eventually, sensing that I was getting more comfortable, he stopped hovering and let the distance between us expand.

I had a few bobbles, and he swooped in close to me with each of them, but I never fell, and once I got the hang of things, I picked up some speed. I did have all that stuff he said—grace and balance and strong legs. And although this was mechanically different from dancing, some of the skills were transferable. Eventually, I stopped having to think about it consciously, and once my mind was free to wander, I started to see what he meant about the kid on the bumpy pond breathing the sharp, cold air. Unlike in a dance studio, the air my lungs sucked in felt like it was capable of scouring them clean, like maybe whatever was stale and dingy inside me could be purged.

“One thing you forgot to tell me,” I called after several minutes of losing myself in the rhythmic scraping of my blades, “is how to stop.”

He vroomed over to me. “Easiest stop is called a snowplow. You push your feet sharply out to the side, and the forward momentum turns your toes in and your heels out.” Hedemonstrated, skating into the center of the rink. “Your blades scrape against the ice like a snowplow.” He did it again, creating a little spray of ice.

“Why do I feel like you’re making that look easier than it is?” I asked as I continued my laps.

He whooshed over to the deck and did a stop I was pretty sure was not a snowplow but some kind of advanced-class move. “Try it in my direction, and I’ll grab you if you run into trouble.”

“OK, here goes nothing!” I was on the far end of the plowed area, and I shifted my weight to tip myself out of the lapping circle I’d been in and cut across the rink.

“Now push your blades out!” he called.

I’d been trying to slow on the approach, so it was an anticlimactic landing. Less fighter-pilot-lands-on-aircraft-carrier—speaking ofTop Gun—and more toy-train-runs-out-of-batteries. I crashed into him, but it was a slo-mo crash. He fell back onto the dock and took me with him.

Except, as we sputtered and laughed, I realized we weren’t actually falling. Mike Martin was a man in possession of an almost annoying combination of brute strength and graceful precision. There was no way my little paper-airplane landing was knocking him over. If we were falling, it was because he wanted us to.

He ended up on his back with me on top of him. We were both laughing like we had no cares in the world, which for two people with an objective shit ton of cares was pretty remarkable. I was panting, too, and for a minute we just laughed and stared at each other. My heavy breathing sent little puffs of steam into the air, and I fogged up his glasses. He took them off, and then he came for mine. I had to squint under the spotlight of the cold yellow sun.

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