See You at the Summit (heartfelt and sexy romance)

Chapter 1

SIMONE FELT LIKE HER CHEST WAS going to implode from the enormity of what she’d just posted on the internet.

Was it possible to die of sheer panic? She could have googled it, except that would mean looking at her phone, and that would only increase her chances of a panic-induced death, if such a thing were indeed possible. Also, her fingers were frozen.

She could have taken the streetcar to the Queen subway station.

Realistically, she should have taken the streetcar, if only to avoid showing up to work on her first day looking like she’d just come off a ski run.

But on this particular morning, she hadn’t wanted to cram herself in with other commuters any more than she needed to. Too claustrophobic.

Tugging the zipper of her parka as high as it would go, she leaned into the frigid January wind whipping down Queen Street. The icy gusts had already frozen her damp ginger curls solid, and while the cold definitely stung, it wasn’t the only reason her eyes were watering.

Simone pictured her parents learning the news.

They were currently doing the snowbird thing and spending the winter at their condo on Florida’s Gulf Coast. She had just been down there over the holidays with them, as well as her two older brothers and her brothers’ wives and children.

Simone, who was turning thirty this year, had been the only unpartnered adult—as her mother had pointed out numerous times.

Right now, Kathy Whitaker was probably perched on her balcony in a matching loungewear set, sipping green tea with lemon and nibbling a slice of toast with a translucently thin layer of cream cheese.

Simone’s recently retired father, George, was likely on the driving range already, warming up for today’s round of golf with his buddies.

George didn’t have an Instagram account and could barely be counted on to see text messages, so he’d hear Simone’s news through Kathy, who perused the app daily to keep tabs on her social circle.

When Kathy saw the post, she’d be absolutely mortified, but the only signs of her disapproval would be narrowed eyes, a clenched jaw, and a sharp, sucked-in jet of air through flared nostrils.

Hardly a dramatic shift from her typical demeanor—at least to the untrained eye.

She’d take a sip of tea to force down her distaste, which would stay inside her forever, festering, and lash out when Simone least expected it.

Simone remembered when she got her ear cartilage pierced in university.

The first time Kathy saw it in person, she cloaked her disgust in a sort of compliment: “You don’t think it distracts from your natural beauty, darling?

” As if Kathy really cared about promoting “natural beauty.” Once Simone hit puberty, Kathy would bring her along to get their legs waxed, their eyebrows threaded, their curls straightened, their fair skin spray-tanned before vacations and special events.

When it came to the cartilage piercing, Simone suspected she knew Kathy’s real concern, the one her mother hadn’t expressed aloud: that Simone had deviated from the narrow road Kathy had paved for her, from the version of womanhood that was considered acceptable at the family’s country clubs in Toronto and Naples.

Case in point: When the piercing got infected six months later and Simone was forced to take it out, Kathy let out a sigh of relief and said, “Oh, thank God. I always thought that thing was so trashy, Simone. Men won’t want to date you with all that crap hanging off your ears. ”

Simone gritted her teeth. No one had wanted to date her with or without the cartilage piercing, and she couldn’t blame them. She’d been the one with the secret buried deep within her bones.

That is, until now. Now, her secret was live on Instagram. Uncontained. Spreading.

“New year, new me,” she whispered into the wind, somewhat deliriously, before boarding the subway at Queen, riding it two stops north to College, and walking the rest of the way to the Village.

She’d workshopped the post until two in the morning, then lain awake spiraling about it until her alarm had gone off at six thirty.

Simone desperately needed caffeine. On Church, across the street from the large rainbow-striped building that was her new place of work, she ducked into a coffee shop and ordered enough cold brew to kill a horse.

“Big day today?” asked the guy who’d made her drink, nodding at the cup.

Actually, yes! I just came out as bisexual after a lifetime of pretending to be straight!

Besides the fact that it would have been a massive overshare, Simone still wasn’t used to saying the word out loud: bisexual.

Just thinking it made her equal parts excited and downright terrified.

“First day of work,” she told the barista.

“You got this,” he said.

Simone wasn’t sure about that, but she thanked him anyway.

She’d been so nervous about coming out that she’d barely given thought to her new job as marketing project manager at the soon-to-open Rainbow Museum.

In her interview, the founder, Frankie Marlow, had explained, “We’re not so much a museum as we are an immersive, multisensory museum experience—dedicated to celebrating, amplifying, and giving back to the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.

” Simone quickly gathered that “immersive, multisensory museum experience” was fancy start-up-speak for “an array of fun photo ops with loose educational tie-ins and an expansive gift shop,” but she hadn’t chosen the Rainbow Museum for its cultural prestige.

She’d chosen it because a) she’d just been laid off from her project manager job at an educational technology start-up and required money in order to live; and b) she’d been determined to come out, and starting a job at Toronto’s new Capital of Queerness in the heart of the historic Gay Village seemed like an effective way to hold herself accountable.

Cold brew in hand, she crossed the street.

She’d interviewed for the job over Zoom, since the building had been a full-on construction zone before the holidays.

Now that they were just one month away from the Rainbow Museum’s grand opening, Simone was able to walk through the front entrance and see the space in real life.

She smelled warm, earthy sawdust with sharp notes of wallpaper glue and fresh paint, and she was instantly transported to the scene shop in the theater where she’d been forced to perform in dance recitals as a girl.

She didn’t know the first thing about carpentry, but she’d always wished she could work backstage instead of performing in front of an audience.

That was the reason she’d gone for a career in project management: She wasn’t a big ideas person, but she was great at making sure other people’s big ideas were executed smoothly.

Simone was surprised to find no color at all in the lobby, the walls and ticket booth plastered with black-and-white shots of the city.

The only clue to the magic that lay beyond was a jet-black sliding door with a blinking neon sign that said ENTER HERE in delicate rainbow letters.

She approached the sign, and with a smooth whir, the door slid open for the dramatic reveal.

Wide-eyed, Simone stepped into a dazzlingly bright and colorful atrium.

In the center of the room was a ball pit with rainbow-colored balls, and shiny plastic slides that looked like rainbows arcing out of fluffy white clouds.

There seemed to be other rooms branching off the atrium, but the archways were hung with thick sheets of plastic that blocked her view.

Apparently, there was still plenty of work to be done.

Frankie—who in addition to being the museum’s founder was also its CEO…

and her new boss—had said he’d meet her here at nine o’clock to give her the tour.

She was early, as always. No matter how hard she tried to be on time, she was inevitably the first one to show up to dinner parties, the friend who held down the spot at the bar when everyone else was running late.

Unable to wait any longer, she pulled out her phone and tapped the screen.

There was a whole stack of text notifications.

Cautiously, she scrolled through them. Two of her childhood friends, Laney and Mira, had said they’d seen the post and were proud of her; they wanted to celebrate at their next catch-up brunch.

Her university friends had revived their long-dormant group chat with a slew of celebratory memes.

There was even a “Congratulations!” from her favorite Pilates instructor at the gym.

Relief rippled through her—until she saw the text message from Kathy. It was only two words, but they were arguably the most ominous two words a parent could text their child: “Call me.”

It could only mean one thing:

Her mother had seen the news.

Simone glanced at the time in the corner of her screen.

She still had fifteen minutes before she had to meet Frankie.

She could call Kathy now, get through the first of what were sure to be many excruciating conversations about her newly revealed identity, and have a ready-made excuse to wrap things up early.

She frantically looked around for somewhere private, her eyes landing on the nearest archway covered by a sheet of plastic.

She hurried over and flung out an arm to sweep the plastic aside.

Simone’s hand collided with something hard on the other side of the sheet—something that gave way, making her gasp. She heard the creaking of wood, followed by a deep male voice shouting, “NO!”

Then came an earsplitting, ground-rattling crash. Followed by another creak, and another crash. On it went, like dominoes falling, until finally the cacophony stopped, and all Simone could hear was the deep voice letting out a roar of fury and frustration.