Page 8 of Canadian Boyfriend

My point is, I wasn’t unhappy. I loved job number one. I didn’t mind job number two. I loved Gretchen. I didn’t miss Ian as much as I’d thought I would and was even starting to enjoy the peace of singledom. I had a good life.

I just… ran into trouble sometimes. That trouble was often heralded by a spike in my heart rate and a floppy feeling in my stomach.

But OK. Concentrate.Your brain does not have to follow your body.That’s what my old therapist used to say. She’d taught me a lot of useful stuff I still relied on. I let my left hand float up to my temple. I couldn’t do my full EFT tapping routine in public without looking like a freak, but sometimes I could do a quick tap-rub at my favorite points.

It worked. Not completely, but enough that I could tune back into the thick silence in the room.

I contemplated the question that had set me off. Did I want a ride home from Mike Martin? I did. Not only would it get me home faster than the bus, but I also wanted to ride in the green convertible and feel the wind in my hair.

“Why don’t you guys get your ice cream,” I said to Mike Martin, “and I’ll meet you outside Suz’s in a few minutes. I have some wrap-up to do here.”

“No you don’t.” Gretchen physically edged me away from the computer where I had been entering attendance. “I’ve got everything under control. You go.” She swiveled so she was facing me and mouthed, “Again.”

Gretchen was always trying to get me to do two things. One was go on dates. She had never been Team Ian, and when Ian finally pulled the plug on our wheezing-along-on-life-support relationship, she’d said “Good riddance,” wrested my phone from me, and downloaded Tinder. The other was take a vacation. I resisted on both fronts. I had no money for a vacation and no desire for dating.

She made a shooing motion. I was going to pay for this later in the form of an interrogation.

At Suz’s, Olivia ordered a double scoop of watermelon and birthday cake on a waffle cone, and after some hesitation Mike Martin ordered a single scoop of coconut on a regular cone. “I’m going back to hockey this season,” he explained. “It’s been hell getting into shape, and ice cream won’t help.” I knew the feeling.

When it was my turn to order, I tried to pass. “I’m not really an ice-cream person.” I had not had ice cream for years. Eleven, to be precise.

“How can you not be an ice-cream person?” Olivia exclaimed.

I wasn’t convinced that my body wouldn’t reject ice cream if I tried to eat it, my white blood cells mustering like a line of good little soldiers going, “Nope!” Conversely, it was possible that once the first bite crossed my lips, my brain stem would embark on a campaign to fill whatever was empty inside me with ice cream and not stop until I was frozen and alone, like Princess Elsa in her icy prison-palace.

Either way, ice cream was risky.

“Come on,” Mike Martin said. “Treat yourself.” But then, seeming to backpedal, he added, “If you want.”

I should be able to do this. These days, I ate pizza with (almost) no trouble. Gretchen and I had sleepovers duringwhich we split a bag of her favorite, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. One scoop of ice cream wasn’t going to kill me. Probably.

“I will have a single scoop of…” What? I didn’t want any of the wild flavors on offer, but if I was actually going to eat ice cream, plain chocolate or vanilla seemed too boring. I settled on the first boring-but-not-too-boring option my gaze landed on. “Mint chocolate chip. In a cup.”

The teenager behind the counter plopped a truly enormous, dubiously “single” scoop into a cup, and I dug in my purse for my wallet while keeping my eye on that ice cream like it was a drink I had set down at a crowded bar full of sketchy dudes.

“I got it.” Mike Martin passed the teenager some cash.

“No, no.” I did not want him to pay for my ice cream, but he was already pocketing his change. “Thanks,” I said weakly, telling myself not to stress over three dollars.

There were picnic tables outside, but Mike Martin and Olivia made straight for the car. I thought about how my mother would never have let me eat ice cream in the car. Well, my mother wouldn’t have allowed ice cream to begin with, so the prospect of eating ice cream in the car was hypothetical. But she never let me eatanythingin the car, even in those years when we’d had to race from school to ballet classes downtown that would run into the evening. “I have to drive clients around in this car,” she’d say. “I can’t have crumbs from your garbage granola bars everywhere. You might as well eat an actual candy bar.”

Mike Martin opened the passenger-side door for me, and I got in. I thought he was going to open Olivia’s door next, but instead he wordlessly took her cone from her and watched while she did a little run, leaped over the closed doorDukes of Hazzardstyle, and landed in the back seat with a thud.

“Good one.” Mike Martin handed her cone back, and they both raised their free hands and high-fived.

Mike Martin jogged around, got in the driver’s side, and took a big bite out of his ice cream, like with his teeth, rather than licking, like you’d think was more… normal.

But how did I know what was normal? I hadn’t had ice cream for eleven years.

I watched as he finished the ice-cream part and hit the cone. In a few big crunches and a matter of seconds, it was gone.

He started the car, glanced over at me, then down at my untouched ice cream. It was starting to get melty, and I was starting to get sweaty. Here went nothing. I scooped up a blob with my spoon and shoved it into my mouth, and—

Oh!

It was as if all my senses had, unbeknownst to me, been muted, and someone had suddenly cranked them up to eleven. No. Not someone, something: mint chocolate chip ice cream. Cold, sweet, mentholy,perfect. Goose bumps rose all over my skin even as a wave of warmth that felt like relief radiated through my body. The world looked brighter as my vision sharpened. I felt like a superhero. I still didn’t know what my superpowers were, but I was pretty sure they were rumbling to life, conjured by mint chocolate chip.

“What’s wrong?” Mike Martin asked urgently.

---