Page 90 of Canadian Boyfriend

“Is that dumb?” I always skipped this location, but hearing John mock me for it the other day had made it seem stupid.

“No,” she said, but there had been a pause before she spoke.

“Say it like you mean it.”

“You want some friendly advice?”

How much of a dick would I be if I said no? “Sure.”

“Youarefamous.” I wanted to object so badly, and she must have been able to tell, because she held up a palm. “OK, yes, you’re not a household name, but you are a certain level of famous in certain circles. You made some choices in life, in your career, that created that outcome. It’s notwhyyou made those choices, but it comes along with them. If there was a way you could…”

“What?”

“I should stop talking. Like I’m in any position to give advice.”

“You’re in a position to give me advice. You know me better than anyone.” Which continued to be a little surprising, but why should it be? I literally lived with her.

“I wish there was a way for you to be more comfortable with the way people treat you. I get that it can be awkward, but most people mean well. Most people like you, or the idea of you—”

“That’s the problem, though. Theideaof me. That’s not the same asme.”

“I know. But isn’t that true of everyone to some degree? My dance kids don’t really know me. They know a version ofme—an idea of me. The key is, most of themlikethat idea of me. It means something to them. I think that’s even more true for you. So even if people’s idea of you isn’tyou, it might still be a positive thing in their lives. Is that such a bad thing? And who knows, you might be missing out on some really great people who happen to be fans of yours.”

Hmm. It was hard to argue when she put it like that.

“Now that I’ve seen where you come from, I get the desire to shirk the spotlight. Your parents did a good job keeping you humble. But I don’t think they’d want you to hold yourself apart from people the way you do. To have to drive past one Tim Hortons to go to another one. Doesn’t it get tiring?”

My impulse was to be defensive, but I reminded myself that Auroradidknow me like no one else. And my skin was getting hot in the way that sometimes happens when your body recognizes a truth your brain doesn’t want to acknowledge. So I flipped on the turn signal and prepared to make a U-turn. What have I always said? I’m very coachable.

I’d only been planning on going through the drive-through at the other place, but now I had something to prove, so I parked.

She ordered her coffee like a pro, and I said, “Look at you. You’re an honorary Canadian now.” As predicted, when it was my turn and the woman at the cash register realized who I was, she had a minor freak-out. She called for my dad, and soon I had a small crowd of employees and customers around me.

A kid asked for an autograph, and I tried to keep in the front of my mind what Aurora had said. I always got all tied up in knots because I didn’t want people to only see the hockey player, but maybe itwasOK that all this kid saw was the hockey player.

“Ed’s so proud of you, you know,” said Dorrie, my dad’s longtime assistant manager. “He talks about you all the time.”

It was hard to imagine Dad talking “all the time” about anything, but I appreciated the sentiment. It also occurred to me that here, to the staff at least, Iwasn’tjust the pro hockey player; I was the boss’s kid. I found that oddly comforting. Neither of those personae wasme, but thinking about both of them coexisting made me realize Aurora was onto something. We showed different people different parts of ourselves all the time.

“I don’t think I’m wrong, though,” I said when we were back on the road.

“What?”

“I take your point about being more graceful in public, but I don’t think it’s wrong to prefer having people in my life—like, actually in my life—who don’t care that I play hockey.”

She looked at me for a long moment, like she was trying to figure something out. She finally said, “I don’t disagree. But you also have to live your life. Maybe there’s a balance where you don’t have to skip over the closest Tim Hortons, you know?”

Maybe there was.

“This is not at all what I thought Manitoba would be like,” Aurora said as we hiked in to our site. “That’s a cactus!”

“Yeah, this park is a bit weird. Lots of different types of landscapes, including this desert stuff. Something to do with the remnants of the glaciers. I’ve never been here, but it’s a dark sky preserve, so I thought we’d give it a shot.”

We chatted easily on the hike in, and at the site, I strung a hammock between two trees and installed Aurora in it. “You chill out, and I’ll put up the tent.”

She talked as I worked, asking questions and wanting me to narrate everything as I pitched the tent and unfurled sleeping bags. It was awfully cute. “I thought you were supposed to be communing with nature over there,” I teased.

“Sorry, sorry. I’m talking too much.”

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