Same Time Next Year

by Tessa Bailey

My mother raised me to be an unholy terror on the ice but a gentleman as soon as I take off my skates. Like a fucking Canadian should be, she’d say.

Oh Jesus, this is it. The first time I’ve ever been alone with her . . . and the topic is marriage. Hell of an icebreaker.

“No, I don’t agree with that. You can’t forgo the risk when the potential reward is so great. That’s why people do it. Fall in love and get married. Because if you get it right, you end up with forty pictures on your wall of the same woman. You have a person.”