Chapter 1 #2
It would have been easy to skitter away and avoid blame—no one had seen her, after all—but she couldn’t just ruin someone’s day and then leave them to pick up the pieces. Though she dreaded what lay on the other side, she swept the sheet back and surveyed the damage she’d caused.
She’d assumed it would be bad.
But not this bad.
The room was designed like a larger-than-life garden out of Alice in Wonderland, with spindly metal flowers that stretched up to the high ceiling.
The walls were covered in artificial moss, the concrete floor painted a rich forest green.
In the center of the room—the star of the show—was a supersize dragonfly made of wood, its slender abdomen at least ten feet long.
Only one of its wings was attached: a work of art in and of itself, with intricately carved veins.
The remaining three wings, which had presumably been leaning against the wall next to the archway, were now lying in pieces at Simone’s feet.
A man wearing brown canvas pants and a tool belt stood at the other end of the wreckage, wincing as he clutched his wrist with the opposite hand.
“I am so, so sorry,” she squeaked. Then she noticed the rivulet of blood trickling from his wrist to his elbow and gasped.
“Here, take this.” Frantically, she yanked the damp napkin off her cold-brew cup and raced toward him.
Simone was so focused on the man’s injury that she failed to pay attention to her own feet, and she stepped on a piece of wing.
Delicate wooden veins that had miraculously survived the fall now crunched and snapped under the heel of her boot.
Simone stumbled. As she stumbled, she squeezed her plastic cup.
As she squeezed her plastic cup, the lid shot off.
And as the lid shot off, her entire vat of cold brew arced through the air, landing squarely in the center of the man’s white T-shirt.
“WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!” he yelled, lunging backward and wrenching the front of the soaking-wet shirt off his skin.
His glare hit Simone as she staggered to a stop.
He was a few inches north of six feet, and he looked to be in his early thirties, with hazel eyes and tousled mahogany-brown hair that spilled onto his forehead and curled around his ears.
His nose and cheekbones were lightly dusted with freckles, his square jaw cloaked in stubble.
The fact that he was objectively very attractive made Simone even more embarrassed than she already was.
At this point, she would have gladly welcomed death by panic-induced chest implosion.
“Let me help you,” she insisted, rushing over and dabbing at whatever she could reach: his bleeding wrist; his cold-brew-soaked shirt—
He jerked his arm away from her. “Jesus Christ! What is wrong with you? Can you not put that filthy napkin on my open cut?”
“Sorry,” she said quickly, crumpling the paper and shoving it in her pocket. She let out a shaky laugh. “I’m useless.”
“Yes, you’ve made that abundantly clear,” he said. Instead of being offended, Simone was relieved they had something to agree on.
She launched into another string of apologies, until the man silenced her with a stare that could have cut glass.
Up close, Simone noticed that his eyes were strikingly unusual.
His irises were gray around the outside, with a burst of greenish gold in the center.
Like moss on a rock. Simone would have appreciated them more if they weren’t smoldering with so much dislike.
She desperately wanted to smooth things over.
“Please, tell me what I can do—anything.”
His glare became even sharper than before. Meanwhile, his wet shirt was clinging to his abs—yet another part of his body she would have appreciated more under different circumstances. “You can leave me alone so I can deal with the month’s worth of work you just ruined.”
“A… month?” Simone felt like she was going to be sick (although she’d definitely reached the quota of fluid she could expel in this man’s vicinity).
“Believe it or not, some people put actual hard work into the things they care about.” His gaze faltered for a second before hardening again. “Why don’t you go back to your fancy desk job and leave the lowly manual labor to me?”
The words hit Simone like a slap in the face.
What did he think, that she was waltzing through life?
That she’d pushed through that hanging tarp without a care in the damn world?
Little did he know that she was on the verge of potentially being disowned by her mother.
Mr. Actual Hard Work didn’t realize that she was going through her own personal hell, and that if he just made peace with her, he could take her morning from horrible to…
well… slightly less horrible. But it would still be something.
Simone’s bottom lip trembled. Not only had she wrecked his project, but apparently, she’d also come off as an elitist asshole without realizing it.
She didn’t trust herself to say another word, and crying in front of him would only make things worse.
Before she could break into tears, she turned on her heel and hurried back into the atrium.
He didn’t call after her, and she certainly didn’t look back.
Her new boss, Frankie, was standing next to the ball pit, waiting for her.
“Having a look around?” he asked brightly.
He was young for a CEO—twenty-eight, according to the Globe and Mail profile she’d read before her interview—with a slim build and a patchy beard and moustache that didn’t quite connect at the sides of his mouth.
In that same Globe article, she’d learned how Frankie had started the Rainbow Museum as a series of pop-up events where guests could learn about queer history, pose for photos on elaborate rainbow-colored sets, and shop retail items from queer-owned companies.
Photos from the pop-ups had gone viral, which had led to visitors lining up around the block, which had led to Frankie raising twenty million dollars in venture capital to open a permanent brick-and-mortar location in the Village, with plans to open more locations nationwide.
The Globe had called Frankie a “wunderkind”—and here was Simone, about to look like a total fool in front of him.
“I accidentally knocked over some pieces of the dragonfly sculpture,” she confessed immediately. She didn’t want to keep quiet and have Frankie learn about the incident from Mr. Actual Hard Work.
“Oh no, do we need to go pick them up?”
We need to not go anywhere near that man ever again, Simone thought. “The guy who was working in there—I didn’t catch his name—he said he could handle it on his own.”
“Ryan Foley,” Frankie supplied. “Our head carpenter. He and the rest of our production team have been working their asses off to get the place done by the end of the month. They’re almost there.”
They were almost there, she amended in her head.
She still would have felt guiltier if it hadn’t been for his asshole comment at the end—his apparent assumption that she’d never struggled a day in her life.
Men. They could be so self-centered. It was a good thing she didn’t have to date them anymore if she didn’t want to.
“You’re sure he doesn’t want our help?” Frankie asked.
“I tried,” Simone said, balling her hands into fists in the pockets of her coat. “He wouldn’t let me.”
Frankie chuckled and shook his head. “Straight people are such a mystery to me,” he said conspiratorially, as though he also assumed Simone found straight people to be a mystery.
She felt a swelling in her chest, counteracting the pressure that had been there all morning.
Then Frankie clapped his hands. “Anyway, welcome to the Rainbow Museum! Allow me to give you the grand tour.”