Chapter 3
AS HE LED HER AROUND THE ball pit, Frankie flashed Simone a knowing smirk. “I saw your Instagram post this morning. Epic.”
“Oh—thanks,” she stammered. That explained why he’d made the joke about straight people being a mystery; he’d already known she was bi.
It felt strange to be perceived as queer by someone other than Bree, and the fact that it felt strange made her wonder if she’d made a mistake.
What if she actually was straight? No, that was another absurd thought brought to her by her own crushing anxiety.
Straight people didn’t cry literal tears of relief after finally coming out to themselves in the shower.
“You must feel so free,” Frankie said.
“And terrified,” Simone admitted. Kathy’s text message flashed through her mind. “Call me.” With a period and everything.
“Fair,” he said. “But the good news is, there’s no need to be terrified here. Our team is the best.”
Except for Mr. Actual Hard Work, Simone thought.
She understood why he hadn’t wanted her anywhere near the wreckage she’d caused, but he could have at least accepted her countless apologies instead of glaring at her with those eyes of his.
Her morning had been just as tumultuous as his, if not more so.
“Guests will exit through the gift shop, which is gonna be through there.” He nodded at the plastic tarp on their left.
Sweeping aside another tarp, he led her into a long hallway painted with bright rainbow stripes, plaques lining the walls.
Simone glanced at the first one on her right: “1918: Canada’s (and North America’s) first known queer publication—a literary magazine called Les Mouches Fantastiques—is founded in Montreal by poet Elsa Gidlow and journalist Roswell George Mills. ”
“It’s a whole timeline of queer history in Canada,” Frankie explained.
Before Simone could move on to the next plaque, he steered her through a doorway to another photo-friendly space, this one circus-themed, with swings suspended from the ceiling.
The next space looked like a psychedelic trip with giant neon mushrooms and butterflies.
Then they took the elevator to the second floor, where there were even more themed rooms, including one with an underwater mermaid aesthetic, and another with a rainbow picket fence and artificial grass dotted with pink flamingos, garden gnomes, and pinwheels.
Finally they took the elevator up to the management floor. “Our conference rooms are named after queer icons,” Frankie explained. “That’s Ru Paul, Cher, Freddie Mercury, Lil Nas X, and Elsa.”
“Elsa?” Simone asked.
“From Frozen,” he replied.
Simone raised her eyebrows. “Elsa’s queer?”
“I mean, not officially, but the vibes are there. Her parents force her to hide who she really is, she ends up isolated from the rest of society, she doesn’t end up with a dude at the end…”
“Whoa.” Simone had watched the movie multiple times with her niece and never once put that together. “My mind is blown.”
Frankie grinned. “Right?”
What she didn’t tell Frankie was that the revelation also stressed her out.
Not because she was some diehard Frozen fan, but because now she was wondering how many other queer symbols she was oblivious to.
What if Frankie secretly suspected she wasn’t really bi?
She had an absurd impulse to blurt out that she’d had sex with a woman before—many times, in fact!
Simone bit her bottom lip to prevent herself from getting fired for sexual harassment on her first day.
She needed to get a handle on her anxiety.
She also needed to rewatch Frozen and probably every movie she’d ever seen.
Frankie took her around the office to meet the museum’s twenty full-time employees, starting with the creative team, whose desks were scattered with mock-ups of the rooms she’d seen downstairs.
Then came the operations team, the guest experience team, the finance team, and finally, the marketing team—Simone’s people.
As she shook her new colleagues’ hands and surveyed their workspaces, Simone was struck by just how out they all were.
Nina Gómez, the communications director, was a fortysomething woman with a long, slicked-back ponytail and a handshake that almost crushed Simone’s metacarpal bones.
On her desk was a lesbian flag sticking out of a pencil cup with stripes in the same colors.
Seth Li, who ran the company’s social media accounts, was dressed in billowy pleated pants and an oversize neon windbreaker, and was sipping from one of those giant Stanley water bottles with the words GAY AND TIRED emblazoned on the side.
She smiled and complimented it, while wondering if she looked queer enough to fit in here.
How did one go about looking more bisexual, anyway?
When they reached her barren new desk, Simone decided she’d need to peruse Etsy for some blue, purple, and pink bisexual decor.
Frankie left her to get settled, and she plopped down at her desk.
Seth, who sat next to her, slid over in his rolling chair and offered to get Simone set up on the Rainbow Museum’s Slack.
“This is the main room, for company-wide stuff, and then we have separate rooms for specific departments,” he explained as he clicked away on her laptop.
His nails were painted purple, a similar shade to his windbreaker.
“Okay, that’s probably good, work-wise. Now let’s do the main event: the fun rooms.”
Simone watched as he proceeded to add her to a dozen more Slack rooms that had nothing to do with the Rainbow Museum.
One room was simply called “queer animals,” and was entirely devoted to sharing links about, well, queer animals.
Most recently, Frankie had dropped in a link about a giant tortoise in Ecuador who’d been in a bisexual love triangle for seventy-five years.
People had responded with messages like SAME and ICON.
Seth returned her laptop with a warm smile, and Simone spent the next little while clicking from Slack channel to Slack channel.
A few colleagues sent private messages welcoming her—again—to the Rainbow Museum.
Her anxiety got the message to lay off her for a bit.
Simone’s new coworkers—minus Mr. Actual Hard Work—were friendlier and more welcoming than she ever could have imagined.
A grin crept across her face as she sat there staring at her laptop, not just from the Slack memes, but from relief.
For the first time in her life, she wasn’t hiding.
She was exposed—and still, she was safe.
Simone looked up when Frankie rapped his knuckles on the edge of her desk. “Have a second to chat? I have super exciting news.”
Simone wasn’t sure anything could be more exciting than having found her way to this queer oasis, but she was eager to hear what Frankie had to tell her.
She followed him into a conference room—Ru Paul—where they sat down opposite each other on beanbag chairs.
Frankie leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees, and steepled his fingers.
“So,” he said, “how do you feel about Whistler?”
“As in, the ski mountain?”
“Correct.”
“I’ve never been, but I’ve heard it’s amazing, obviously.
” It was the most famous ski destination in Canada.
Simone had been skiing since she was three or four, but mostly in Ontario and once in Quebec.
She’d been dying to ski out west at some point, where the mountains were massive and the snow was powder-soft.
“How would you like to go?”
Simone raised her eyebrows as her jaw dropped open. “Seriously?”
“Have you heard of the Whistler Pride and Ski Festival?”
Simone shook her head, although the word Pride gave her a general idea of where this was going. Adrenaline coursed through her veins, made her hands shake. She clamped them between her thighs as Frankie continued talking.
“It’s basically a week of skiing and snowboarding during the day and Pride parties at night,” he explained. “I’ve been a bunch of times before, and it’s epic. Seriously, some of the best weeks of my life.
“But anyway, this year, I made a deal with them that the Rainbow Museum would provide selfie stations at all their events in exchange for a week of amazing publicity.” Based on the look he gave her, he clearly thought he’d gotten the better end of the deal.
“We’ll get someone local to build the sets, but I also want one of our team members to be there in person repping the brand and getting people pumped about visiting us the next time they’re in Toronto.
And the plan is to open a Vancouver location at some point, too.
Nina, who you met earlier, was supposed to go, but she has a family wedding or something.
” He waved his hand dismissively. “I know it’s not quite in your wheelhouse, but I did hire you to focus on marketing projects, specifically.
And we’re a fairly small team—more like a family, really—so I rely on people to wear different hats sometimes. Whaddaya think?”
She wasn’t going to give her new boss the honest answer, which was that (a) as much as she already loved the Rainbow Museum, the thought of being an outspoken brand rep had her stomach in knots; and (b) the prospect of attending her first Pride festival while out was exciting, sure, but also made her long to be swallowed whole by the squishy beanbag chair.
She’d spent *checks watch* approximately three hours as an out bisexual.
That morning’s Instagram post had been the first time she’d declared her sexuality outside of her own shower.
Was she really ready to put herself out there at a Pride festival? Was she even qualified?
“Oh, and you’d be totally free to ski or snowboard or whatever during the day,” Frankie added. “You’d only really be working in the evenings.”