Page 73 of Canadian Boyfriend

He lifted his hand, so, taking that as my cue, I started to retract mine. He stopped me, grabbing my wrist and fingering my bracelet. “What’s the story with this?”

“Just a charm bracelet.” I started to get hot. I didn’t know why.

Well, I did know why. Because I’d lied to everyone I’d known and told them my Canadian Boyfriend had bought it, and all the charms on it, for me.

“It’s awfully cute.”

“Thanks.” I tugged against his grip, but he didn’t let go.

“Ballet shoe, state of Minnesota, apple—is that the Big Apple as in New York?” I didn’t give an answer, but he didn’t seem to need one. He moved on. “Those all make sense, but what’sthe deal with the Snoopy? Oh, and look—is that a maple leaf? What are you, some kind of closet Canadian?” He grinned.

I used his own words. “I don’t really want to talk about it, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course I don’t mind,” he said, using my words as the smile slid off his face, replaced with something that looked dangerously tender.

What I could not do was use his other words:I promise it has nothing to do with you.

We had a lot of sex that week. Seeing Mike Martin naked became normalized. (Seeing Mike Martin naked became normalized!) The niggle was gone, and we had a blast. For the first time in my life, I got myself into that space Gretchen had talked about, where I was having great sex with a man and we were both in sync about the context of said sex. I knew we weren’t going to become boyfriend and girlfriend. We didn’t sleep in the same bed. We jumped each other wherever and whenever was convenient, and sometimes we’d nap a bit after sex, but we seemed to have an unspoken agreement to eventually retreat to our own bedrooms. I knew what this was, and what it wasn’t.

The morning of the day Olivia was due to be dropped off, I seized what I assumed would be my last opportunity to ask Mike Martin about his tattoo.

He looked at me very seriously for a long time, and I feared I had unwittingly opened a Pandora’s box of some sort. Until he grinned and said, “I was eighteen, away from home, and I thought it looked badass.”

“There’s no big, deep meaning?”

“There’s no big deep meaning.”

We both cracked up.

“I think I better examine this eagle a little closer,” I teased, leaning over to lick his chest.

“Hey now, this is a falcon. Would a good Canadian boy get aneagletattoo?”

“Oh, excuse me, my mistake.”

We cracked up. Laughing in bed had remained a thing—after those initial tears, anyway. Great sex could be fun. Funny. Who knew? Great sex could also, it turned out, make everything else better—like some kind of orgasmic Mrs. Dash sprinkled over your entire life.

After our second go-round, we went back to the laughy stuff when he said, “Do you know that your orgasm face is the same face you made the first time we went for ice cream?”

“Itis?”

“I thought maybe you didn’t like the ice cream, but now I know that wasn’t the case.”

“Yeah, that was the first time I’d had ice cream in eleven years.”

“Really?”

“My mom never let me have it—I’ve told you about her and sugar.” He nodded. “I tried to have some in New York—a little act of rebellion, I suppose. I only got a couple bites down before I freaked out.”

“Panic attack?”

“No, those were always about being the center of attention. Being tested or fitted for a costume, stuff like that. With the ice cream, I don’t know, I guess I’d internalized the whole sugar-equals-poison thing so much that I couldn’t enjoy it.”

He got quiet, staring at me while he played with my hair. “I didn’t know any of this when I started buying pies for you.”

“No,” I agreed.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have?”

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