Canadian Boyfriend

by Jenny Holiday

Genres: Contemporary Romance; Romantic Comedy; Sports Romance

Synopsis

Fate brings together a ballet teacher and a hockey player in this big-hearted novel about second chances and taking risks by the bestselling author Entertainment Weekly calls the “master of witty banter.”

Once upon a time teenage Aurora Evans met a hockey player at the Mall of America. He was from Canada. And soon, he was the perfect fake boyfriend, a get-out-of-jail-free card for all kinds of sticky situations. I can't go to prom. I'm going to be visiting my boyfriend in Canada. He was just what she needed to cover her social awkwardness. He never had to know. It wasn't like she was ever going to see him again...

Years later, Aurora is teaching kids’ dance classes and battling panic and eating disorders—souvenirs from her failed ballet career—when pro hockey player Mike Martin walks in with his daughter. Mike’s honesty about his struggles with widowhood helps Aurora confront some of her own demons, and the two forge an unlikely friendship. There’s just one problem: Mike is the boy she spent years pretending was her “Canadian boyfriend.”

The longer she keeps her secret, the more she knows it will shatter the trust between them. But to have the life she wants, she needs to tackle the most important thing of all—believing in herself.

Release date: January 30, 2024

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 368

Sample

Thirteen Years Later

The first time Olivia Kowalski came back to class at Miss Miller’s of Minnetonka after her mom died was the night everything changed. Nobody but Miss Miller, aka my best friend Gretchen, and I knew that Olivia was returning.

“Let’s keep it between us,” Gretchen said before my Tap 3 class. “She doesn’t need everyone primed to gawk at her.”

By everyone, Gretchen meant the Minnetonka Dance Moms™. And would they ever gawk, if their performative grief when Olivia’s mom, Sarah, had been killed in a car crash seven months ago was anything to go by. They wanted to know how Olivia was doing. They wanted to know if Gretchen would pass along Olivia’s address so they could drop off a Tater Tot hotdish. (Gretchen would not.) They wanted to know what was going to happen to Olivia.

Well, really, they wanted to know what was going to happen to Olivia’s dad, who was allegedly an extremely good-looking player for the Minnesota Lumberjacks. I, not having followed hockey since high school, didn’t know anything about Olivia’s dad. I didn’t even realize he played hockey until the chatter about Sarah’s death started. I had no memory of ever having met him. If I had met him, it would have been in passing at recitals, since Sarah was the one who’d brought Olivia to class. Even though recitals no longer gave me literal panic attacks, I was still more focused on getting through them than I was on any hot dads who might be in attendance.

Olivia’s dad had taken the rest of last season off after the accident. He’d pulled Olivia out of dance, and out of school, too, according to some of the girls who’d been her classmates. We hadn’t seen Olivia since last January.

Gretchen’s understanding of the habits of the Minnetonka Dance Moms™ was such that she’d suggested Olivia show up late that August afternoon, so there would be less fuss made over her return. I had always liked Olivia. She wasn’t the best dancer, but she had heart. She used to arrive every week with a big smile on her face and shuffle off to Buffalo with great enthusiasm, if not great aptitude. She liked dancing, and you’d be surprised how often that didn’t seem to be the case with these girls. I wasn’t, but you would be.

So I was looking forward to seeing Olivia again, but also, per Gretchen’s instructions, primed to play it low-key.

When she arrived, we were working on over-the-top jumps. “Cross left over right, point right, plié, and… jump! And again, right over left! Good!” I smiled at my herd of little elephants, metallic thunks heralding their landings. “Try not to let the left foot touch the ground. Let’s do five more in unison without me talking you through it. We’ll start again, and—one!”

We got into a rhythm, all of us leaping and landing in time. This was what I liked about dancing. What I had salvaged from it. That sense of your body as part of a larger machine, a dedication to precision allowing, paradoxically, a kind of freedom. It didn’t matter if you were doing the “Waltz of the Flowers” in the corps de ballet of a professional company or over-the-top jumps with a roomful of tweens in suburban Minneapolis.

I was in the zone.

Until Sansa’s mom, who was watching as she always did, stage-whispered, “Oh my God! Here comes Mike Martin.”

I was supposed to be playing it cool, but apparently I was no better than the Minnetonka Moms™. I swiveled my head just as he appeared in the doorway between the studio and the viewing area, which was separated from the dance floor by a half wall and was where the parents who wanted to watch sat. The parents sitting there were not watching the class at that moment though; they were watching him.

As was I. He had straw-colored hair, and he was holding a cup with a teabag tag sticking out of it.

No. My brain had randomly conjured a phantom from my past.

But then Sansa’s mom said something, and he opened his mouth to answer her.

He was missing a tooth.

Holy shit with a grand plié.

I tripped over my own feet, not quite making it over the top of over-the-top jump number four. I stumbled toward the parents, fell, and landed on my butt—at the feet of Olivia Kowalski’s dad, who might or might not have been the corporeal manifestation of my imaginary high school boyfriend.

“She’s the one who was a ballet dancer in New York?” he said.

Creases appeared on his forehead. I was pretty sure those creases signaled skepticism, which, given that I was sprawled in an inglorious heap at his feet after the world’s least graceful over-the-top jump, was fair.

“Yes!” Olivia said. “Miss Rory went to the Newberg Ballet School!”

One corner of his mouth turned up. After a beat, the other side turned up, too, and OK, calm down: he had a dimple. That settled it. There had been no dimples in evidence with Mall Mike. This was a strange coincidence.

He extended a hand to help me up. “Maybe you should look into getting a refund.”

I tried to smile. Even though I didn’t know him, I could tell his teasing was not mean-spirited. I was an expert at distinguishing among subtle shades of mockery. But I was still reeling from this freaky encounter, and I couldn’t quite get my mouth to work the way I wanted it to.

The skin of his palm was rough, rougher than would seem attributable to hockey. He pulled me up, but he didn’t let go once I was upright. He kind of… stroked my hand with his thumb?

No. I must have made that up. Been so lulled by his magnetic good looks that I forgot where I was. Forgot when I was.

I reminded myself that this man had a dimple.

It did, however, occur to me that a person could have a dimple but if that person also had a beard, as Mall Mike had, that dimple might be hidden.

Olivia’s dad turned holding my hand after helping me up into shaking my hand. “I’m Mike Martin.” He pulled off his sunglasses with his other hand. He pulled them off slowly, though, like he was starring in a slo-mo montage from Top Gun. I watched, transfixed, as he revealed a pair of gold-flecked green eyes.

Well. Holy shit with two grand pliés.

I’m not saying it was love at first sight, but I’m not saying it wasn’t.

Earlier, when he’d been joking about my (lack of) grace, his smile had come in two parts, like the clicking up of a ChapStick. One click—one side of his mouth. Another click—the other side. This time, there was a third click, and both sides inched up a little more.

“Miss Rory!” Olivia exclaimed. “Your knee is bleeding!”

“It’s that nail on the edge of the dance floor that keeps coming up,” I said calmly, like my heart wasn’t about to beat out of my chest.

Gretchen appeared with a hammer and pounded the nail down. “I’ll take over. After you clean yourself up, can you get Olivia’s registration squared away? I’ve prorated it for the weeks she missed, and the forms are on the desk.”

“Sure.” I nodded and, realizing I hadn’t properly greeted Olivia, said, “I’m so glad you’re back. I missed you.” She startled me by coming at me with a tackle-hug. She held on hard enough, and for long enough—and her dad watched us intently enough—that I started to feel awkward. I could feel the parents watching us. “Go join the class so I don’t bleed on you. That wasn’t how I was imagining welcoming you back.”

I gestured for Olivia’s dad to follow me as I clacked into the lobby, though what I really wanted to do was riff-walk my way right out the front door. Jazz hands! Nice to meet you! Hope to see you again never! But I ordered myself to get it together and said to him, this ghost of malls past, “Have a seat. I’ll be right back.”

While bandaging myself in the bathroom, I did my tapping routine—ha ha, not that kind of tapping, though I was still wearing the shoes. I made a couple of rounds, letting the pad of my middle finger ping off the bones around each eye, and soon I had control. Thankfully, this one hadn’t gotten very far—panic attack lite, anyone? Before I left, I rehearsed several questions:

What happened to your tooth?

When was the last time you visited the Mall of America?

When was the first time you visited the Mall of America?

And, because I am not a monster: How are you and your daughter doing?

Back in the lobby, Mike Martin was sitting with Kylie’s mom on one side of him and Sansa’s mom, having abandoned her spectating, on the other. They were asking him questions, but none of the ones I had.

“Will you be coming to the holiday recital?” (It’s August, Jan. Calm down.)

“Did you know that for Tap 3, the requirement is a blue leotard and pink tights?” (It’s a suggestion, not a requirement, Darla.)

“Would you like some help shopping for the correct leotard?” (Stand down, Jan.)

“How is poor Olivia?” (Oh, for God’s sake.)

Mike Martin was looking at his hands and murmuring vague “Not sure yet” and “We’re fine, thanks” responses. I pitched my voice to cut through the women’s gooey, mercenary concern. “I have the registration forms for you, Mr. Martin.”

He popped up and jogged over to the desk. “You never told me your name. You’re the famous Miss Rory, I think?”

I rewound the tape, and yep, he told me his name after he helped me up, but I’d been too busy being agog and, you know, bleeding, to reciprocate. “I feel like in some cultures, me collapsing into a heap at your feet would count as an introduction. We even sealed it with blood.” I kicked my leg up so it cleared the reception desk and showed him my Dora the Explorer Band-Aid—Gretchen had been out of the regular ones, so I’d raided the stash she kept for the little kids.

He laughed, a single bark that was equal parts surprise and amusement. To make such a man laugh sent a thrill through me.

“But yes, I’m Aurora Evans. People call me Rory.”

“Aurora Evans,” he said, stretching my full name out over his tongue, like he was trying it on. “Rory.”

Oh my God. Would he remember?

Was there anything to remember? I’d started out sure this guy was my Mall Mike, but there was still the dimple to account for.

There was also the fact that the odds of that same guy showing up in this studio all these years later were impossible.

I wished Mall Mike had told me his last name.

Click-click-click: this Mike, whoever he was, deployed the three-stage, ChapStick-tube smile again. “That is a great name,” he said breezily. “It sounds like the alter ego of a superhero.”

OK, so he didn’t remember. Which was probably because it wasn’t him, because there was nothing to remember.

And/or because normal people did not remember mundane retail interactions from thirteen years ago, much less build up entire fantasy worlds based on them.

I attempted to click my own lips up into something approximating a smile. “Ha. Right. Klutzy dance teacher by day, but by night…” I had nothing. I could think of no magical abilities to assign myself. “What’s my superpower?”

“I don’t know yet.”

I’d asked the question glibly, trying to match his tone, but he’d pivoted and answered it earnestly, his easy smile replaced by a quizzical expression. There was something about that yet, about the way he studied me as if he had superpowers, as if he had the ability to see inside me, that felt… well, kind of ominous. As if letting him hang around long enough to figure out my superpower would cause more damage than a scraped knee.

I turned my attention to the forms. “I need you to sign this registration.” I handed him the paper and picked up another that was lying on my side of the desk. “It also looks like Gretchen printed a copy of Olivia’s emergency contact form, if you want to…” Cross off your dead wife’s name. “Update it. You can write over it, and we’ll make the changes in the computer.” I set it in front of him with a pen.

Mike Martin had had such an expressive face, up until this point in the proceedings. Those gold-flecked green eyes had danced with laughter and crackled with… something when he’d pondered the question of my superpowers. But that emergency contact form hollowed them out. They turned flat, like cartoon eyes, except you know how in cartoons, there’s often a little bit of white on the colored part? Light being reflected, to indicate life or something? There wasn’t any life in Mike Martin’s eyes. They turned into the green version of black holes. He picked up the pen and contemplated the form. He stood there for longer than it should have taken to read it, and I was suddenly aware, in a way I hadn’t been earlier, of the steady attention of Sansa’s and Kylie’s moms. Of course they’d been watching this whole time, but as I had learned, Mike Martin, when he had life in his eyes, was capable of shrinking the world down so it was only you and him and his X-ray vision.

The air was heavy but silent, and when Mike Martin clicked open the ballpoint pen, it echoed against my eardrums like a door slamming. He still didn’t write, though, just stood there staring at the form with his flat eyes.

I wondered if he’d felt the door-slamming sensation, too. I wondered how many doors had shut on him lately, and whether he sometimes encountered those doors in places he didn’t expect, in places that seemed benign, like his daughter’s dance studio.

“Jan! Darla!” I came out from behind the desk, trying to make myself big in order to shield Mike Martin. Even though my ballet career had been rife with instances when I’d been deemed “too big,” my rational mind, the mind that had never been in the vicinity when costume mistresses had been tutting at me, knew that I was, in a normal, civilian sense, a smaller-than-average person. Mike Martin, by contrast, was a larger-than-average person. So to puff up my chest and put my hands on my hips as if I could actually shield him from anything was absurd. I did it anyway.

It wasn’t until I was standing directly in front of them that Jan and Darla reluctantly pulled their gazes from Mike Martin. I had to give them something big enough to distract them long enough so he could update the form in peace. I lowered my voice conspiratorially. “Gretchen has the holiday recital costumes in, and she thinks the skirts are too short.” This was a lie. “She values your opinion.” Also a lie. “She asked me to show them to you on the down-low.”

There was nothing like perceived insider status to perk up those two, so when I gestured for them to follow me downstairs, they didn’t hesitate. I led them into the storage room, having no idea what I’d find.

“Hmm,” I said after making a show of looking through a few boxes, “Maybe she sent them back already.” I hoped enough time had elapsed that when we went back to reception, Mike Martin’s eyes would be back to normal.

Upstairs, he was nowhere to be seen. The moms looked around not subtly, and I went back around the desk.

Our emergency contact forms had space for three people. Olivia’s original had her mom listed as number one, a person named Renata Kowalski second, and Mike Martin third.

Mike Martin had crossed off his late wife’s name and that of Renata Kowalski. He’d used a single pen stroke for his wife’s but had almost completely obscured Renata’s with a series of dark Xs. Next to his own name, he’d drawn an arrow indicating it should move to the top spot, and he’d added a Lauren Zadorov as number two. There was no number three.

There was, however, a Post-it—he must have snagged one from behind the desk—stuck to the form.

Can you tell Olivia I’m waiting for her in the car? Thanks. —MM.

I should have taken my class back; instead I returned to the bathroom and opened Wikipedia.

Michael McKenna Martin. Canadian professional ice-hockey player currently playing for the Minnesota Lumberjacks NHL franchise. Thirty-four years old.

I did the math. It couldn’t have been him, all those years ago. Because that guy had been in town for a high school hockey tournament. This guy, Olivia’s dad, was thirty-four, which would have made him twenty-one at the mall—too old for high school. So in addition to the dimple in the “It’s Not Him” column, the ages didn’t line up.

On the other hand: The eyes. The handshake-caress.

And of course the entire “hockey player named Mike from Canada” thing.

On the other other hand: there must be literally thousands of hockey players named Mike from Canada.

I skipped to the “Personal Life” section.

Martin was born to Ed and Diane Martin in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba.

I clicked over to Google Maps and learned that Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, was an hour’s drive west of Winnipeg.

Holy shit with three grand pliés.

He has an older brother, Christopher Martin, who is a goaltending coach with Pittsburgh. Martin grew up idolizing his brother and credits him with sparking his interest in hockey.

He is close with fellow Lumberjacks defenseman Ivan Zadorov, the pair having appeared in a Sports Illustrated spread on bromances in sport.

Martin was married to Sarah Kowalski, whom he met while playing for Chicago in the American Hockey League. They married at the Art Institute of Chicago and served pie, which was a favorite of both, at their wedding instead of cake.

There was a citation on that last bit that looked like it referenced a Chicago Tribune article about the wedding. I made a mental note to read it later.

Kowalski died in a car accident in Montreal while in town to attend a Minnesota versus Montreal game.

Someone knocked on the door. I fumbled my phone away. “Just a sec!” I called in a voice that sounded like it was coming from someone who was not me.

Maybe that person could go finish teaching Tap 3, too. But no. Whatever else was happening, Olivia Kowalski was back after a long absence, and it was time to tap my way into class and welcome her back.

After class, I was standing at the bus stop reading that Chicago Tribune story about Mike Martin’s wedding when the man himself pulled up in a convertible the same color as his eyes. Olivia was in the back seat eating an ice-cream cone.

“Aurora!” Mike Martin called over the car’s noisy engine. “Can we give you a lift?”

It was a simple yes/no question, and the answer was no, but instead of saying that, I blurted, “Your car matches your eyes.”

Click-click-click. Out came the dimple, and how could a grin that was a tooth shy of a full set be so powerful?

“It’s our depression car,” Olivia piped up from the back.

Huh? I forced myself to stop pondering the paradox that was Mike Martin’s broken yet inexplicably alluring dental situation.

The car behind him beeped. Yeah, there was no way I was letting Mike Martin drive me home. For many reasons, not the least of which was that accepting a ride from him would force me to postpone the urgent task that was currently using all my brain cells: reading everything Google served up on him so I could match him up—or not—with the boy from the mall.

“I’m fine, thanks.” That was true. “The bus will be here soon.” That was a lie. Buses were few and far between in this fancy suburb, with the exception of the express buses that took the Minnetonka Men™ to their jobs in downtown Minneapolis in the mornings and home at night. My car had died a few weeks ago, and since I hadn’t gotten my finances organized yet to get a new one, I was stuck on the bus.

Another honk sounded from the car behind Mike Martin, this one longer and decidedly less polite. “That guy sounds pissed. You’d better get in,” Mike Martin said.

I got in.

“Where to?” he yelled over the vroom of the engine as we pulled away.

“I live north of Cedar Lake Road, east of the Hopkins Crossroad.” Did he need directions beyond that? Apparently not—he hit the gas without another word.

“Miss Rory, your hair is so long!” Olivia called from the back seat.

The kids didn’t generally see me with my hair loose. I’d taken it down on my walk to the bus stop because I’d done a poor job with my bun today and the bobby pins had been digging into my scalp.

“And your hair is so amazing!” I called back. Sometime in the past seven months, Olivia had dyed hers lime green.

“I was inspired by Miss Miller!”

Gretchen was known for her seasonally rotating brightly colored hair; it was one of the things that made the kids adore her.

We tried to keep talking, but when Mike Martin got on the highway, it was hard to make ourselves heard over the rush of the wind and the noise of the engine.

“This is the part where you sit back and enjoy the drive!” Olivia shouted.

I glanced at Mike Martin. He was wearing the mirrored sunglasses and steering the car with his right hand while his left arm rested on top of the door. He was the picture of freedom, the poster boy for a carefree summer, cruising along on a still-sunny evening, which just went to show you how easily pictures could lie. I had seen his green-hole eyes.

I had a picture of me, an actual physical picture my mother had had printed and framed, dancing the part of Aurora, my namesake, in the Minnesota Ballet Center’s production of The Sleeping Beauty twelve years ago. It was a still photo they’d used for PR, a shot of me dancing the wedding pas de deux with my prince, en pointe, dressed in a white confection of a costume that made me look like a music-box ballerina. And—this is the lie part—I was smiling widely for the camera, as if I were happy. I kept the picture hidden in my dresser except for when my mother came over.

I had so many questions for Mike Martin. The same ones from before but also new ones. What was a depression car? Did it have anything to do with him waiting in it for Olivia’s lesson to finish, or had he merely been fleeing the Minnetonka Moms™ because he was a rational human being?

Also: How was he here?

Was it even him?

I directed him into the parking lot at my place. I probably should have been embarrassed. Home sweet home was a big, nondescript apartment complex made of three-story beige stucco buildings.

I thought of the face my mother had made the first time she’d visited, the lemon-drop face, I used to call it—in my head—when I was little. I told myself what I’d never had the guts to tell my mother, that there was nothing wrong with this place. It was modest, but that was not a crime.

“Is there a pool here?” Olivia asked as Mike Martin cut the engine.

I twisted around to look at Olivia, whose eyes were wide with excitement in a way that made her look younger than her years, which in turn caused something in my heart to twinge. I had a thoroughly middling mother, but at least I had one. “There is.”

“You are so lucky.”

“You can swim at home anytime, Liv,” Mike Martin said with fond amusement in his voice.

“Yeah, but a pool doesn’t have fish in it. It doesn’t have seaweed in it.” There was an edge in her rebuke, and she held Mike Martin’s gaze with what seemed like defiance. I wondered if I’d imagined that, though, because when she turned back to me, she was rocking some serious puppy-dog eyes.

“Do you… want to come for a swim sometime?” Was it a conflict of interest to invite a student to swim at my apartment? Was it a conflict of interest to invite the daughter of the man who might or might not be my imaginary Canadian Boyfriend made flesh to swim at my apartment?

“Yes!” Olivia said, with an urgency that made me worry she thought I meant right now.

“Olivia,” Mike Martin said. “You can’t just invite yourself over to someone’s house.”

“I didn’t,” she said indignantly. “She invited me.”

“Yes, but—”

“She. Invited. Me.” Indignation had crystalized into something closer to anger. This was not a version of Olivia I saw in class. Mike Martin put his hands on the steering wheel. He closed his eyes. I wondered if, when he opened them, they’d be flat.

“The pool is closed for cleaning right now,” I lied, trying to steer us out of this logjam. “So you’re out of luck, but maybe another time?” When I looked back at Mike Martin, he was no longer gripping the steering wheel, and his eyes were open—and not flat. I turned back to Olivia. “I’m glad you’re back in class.”

“Do you think I’m going to be behind?” she asked, her tone shifting with whiplash-inducing speed from peevish to tentative.

“I do not.”

“I kept messing up today.”

“You’ll get your groove back.”

“But the session is almost over.”

“Summer sessions are short and informal, and we’re going to roll right over to fall, and that always brings with it a few new faces, so everyone will be playing catch-up to some extent.” She looked only slightly placated. “Remember ‘Miss Miller’s Morals’?” I said, citing Gretchen’s famous studio rules. “Dancing is supposed to be fun, right? Not stressful. You have nothing to worry about. I mean that sincerely.”

“OK, thanks, Miss Rory.”

I turned to Mike Martin, who’d been silently watching our exchange. “Thanks for the ride. I hope it wasn’t too far out of your way.”

“Well,” Mike Martin said, “what else were we going to do?”

The next Tuesday, Mike Martin offered me a ride home again. He cornered me after class right there in front of Gretchen and the Minnetonka Moms™ and said, “Aurora, can we give you a lift again?”

He smiled, and he had all his teeth. What? Had I hallucinated the missing one last week?

“‘Again’?” Gretchen, who was standing next to me behind the desk, said under her breath—sufficiently under, I hoped, that no one else heard. I avoided her gaze. I had not told Gretchen about the ride home last week, which was weird because I told Gretchen everything.

“But we’re getting ice cream first, remember?” Olivia said to Mike Martin. There was an ice-cream place in the same strip mall as the studio, and the kids were always lobbying their parents to visit it after class. I would have thought Olivia’s request a run-of-the-mill one. But after witnessing her tense exchange with Mike Martin last w. . .