Chapter 4
ANOTHER VAT OF COLD brEW IN hand, Simone dragged her weary corpse past the rainbow ball pit the next morning and jabbed the button for the elevator.
She should have been excited to go upstairs and plan her trip to Whistler, but instead, the thought of attending the Pride festival made her want to face-plant into the ball pit and never resurface.
Instead of letting her sleep last night, her brain had graciously played her conversation with Kathy on a loop for seven straight hours.
By the time her alarm had gone off, she wasn’t going to lie: She was tempted to quit her job, post on Instagram that she was actually straight after all (“whoops, jk!!!”), and spend the rest of her life lying to herself but making her parents happy.
If only she didn’t need an income in order to live.
Moments later, the doors opened with a ding to the last person she wanted to see.
Ryan Foley, Mr. Actual Hard Work, was in the elevator, where he was busy straightening a pile of boxes and power tools that were balanced on a dolly.
When he looked up and saw her, he frowned.
And he’d already looked pretty miserable to begin with. Perfect.
Simone slapped on a smile. Given that she felt like a pile of rotting garbage today, she figured the least the universe could do for her was grant her a fresh start with Ryan. “Morning!” she said a bit too cheerfully, sweeping her arm as she made room for him to step out.
Instead of returning her greeting, he just glared at her. What the hell?
“Er, do you need any help with that?” She nodded at the dolly. Then she remembered that offering to help Ryan had historically not gone well for her.
This time was no different. “I’m not getting off,” he said in that deep voice of his. She felt it reverberating inside her chest—or maybe that was just the tremendous amount of caffeine she’d already consumed this morning.
“Oh!” she yelped. He must have gotten on in the basement and been headed to an upper floor.
Without thinking, she darted into the elevator.
It wasn’t until the door slid shut behind her that she realized how cramped it would be with the two of them and the dolly in here.
Though she was able to extend an arm and press the button for the third level, she wasn’t confident she could fully turn around without her bag bumping one of Ryan’s boxes.
Since that was a risk she was very much not willing to take, she opted instead for keeping her nose mere centimeters from Ryan’s sternum.
He cleared his throat but didn’t say anything.
With less than a foot between their bodies, she couldn’t help but notice his clean, earthy scent, like pine needles on a forest floor.
Ryan was dressed in worn leather boots, brown work pants that were snug around his quads, and a plain gray T-shirt.
His bare arms were lightly freckled and had a natural heft to them, unlike the meticulously sculpted bis and tris she saw on the weightlifting fanatics at her gym.
What a waste of resources that someone so physically attractive had such a foul personality.
She would try for that fresh start anyway. She damn well deserved it, after everything she’d been through. She peered up at him—more at his chin, really, given how close she was. It was a very nice chin. Prominent, with a shallow dimple.
She hadn’t yet opened her mouth when Ryan looked down at her, unprompted, and their eyes met unexpectedly in the cramped space. Heat rushed to Simone’s cheeks, and Ryan quickly averted his gaze to the dolly at their sides.
Awkward, but she pressed on. “Hey, Ryan? I’m Simone, by the way. About yesterday, I just wanted to say, again…”
Ryan closed his eyes and grabbed a fistful of the dark brown curls that spilled onto his forehead.
With a pang of guilt, she noticed the bandage on his wrist. Why did it seem to be so unbearably painful for Ryan to be in her presence?
Was he like this with everyone, or was there something about Simone, specifically, that pissed him off to the point of wanting to rip his hair out?
“… I’m really and truly sorry,” she finished.
When he opened his eyes, she caught a glimpse of softness before his steely glare made a comeback. “I really and truly couldn’t care less.”
Scratch feeling guilty about the bandage.
It was official: Mr. Actual Hard Work was one of the biggest assholes she’d ever met.
In fact, he was rivaling the guy who’d laid her off via Zoom for the title of asshole in chief.
There were some sadistic people out there who were allergic to making peace—who thrived on conflict and chaos.
Ryan must be one of those people. A twisted part of him probably liked that she’d broken his precious dragonfly wings.
Simone would simply have to avoid him going forward. She looked down, pretending he wasn’t there, until the doors opened on the second floor. She hopped out of the elevator to let him pass, and he pushed the dolly past her without a word.
I hope you have a wonderful day, too, she thought bitterly. Dick.
His pine-needly scent lingered in the elevator after he was gone, which Simone found annoyingly pleasant.
She was not in a pleasant mood. She trudged to her desk, flopped into her chair, opened her laptop, and checked her calendar.
She, Frankie, and Phillip, the Rainbow Museum’s creative director, were meeting in a few minutes to review Phillip’s designs for the Whistler Pride selfie stations.
How was she supposed to focus on plans for a Pride festival when she was second-guessing ever having come out?
Lucy arrived in the office a few minutes later. “Happy second day!” she trilled with a wave.
“Morning,” Simone replied, trying her best to sound cheerful.
Lucy dropped her coat on the back of her chair and took a closer look at Simone’s face. “Hey, are you okay?” She hurried over to Simone’s desk.
Simone shook her head, knowing that if she tried to explain what was wrong, she’d burst into tears.
Lucy was perceptive. “You talked to your mom,” she said—not as a question, but as a statement of fact.
Simone nodded.
“It could have gone better.”
Simone nodded again, this time closing her eyes.
“Ah, so it was a total fucking shit show. Got it. Do you want to go somewhere and talk?”
She did, but she didn’t have time. “I have a meeting with Frankie in a minute. Maybe after?”
“Of course.” Lucy gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Come find me.”
In the conference room—Elsa this time—Simone found Phillip, a slender fiftysomething guy with a pointy gray mustache and a pencil tucked perpetually behind his ear. He was busy laying out a dozen different mock-ups for the selfie stations on the table.
“Wow,” Simone said, impressed by the sheer quantity of options.
“Not my best work, but it is what it is,” Phillip muttered.
“Are you swamped?”
“Beyond.”
“I’m sure these will be okay.”
“They’ll have to be, because I have about six billion other things to do before we open.
” Simone didn’t envy Phillip, who had the massive job of designing the whole Rainbow Museum.
She’d gathered from their introduction yesterday that he came up with all the creative concepts for the production crews to execute, which also meant he managed all the contractors: people like the painters, the lighting technicians, and Mr. Actual Hard Work.
Another reason Simone didn’t envy Phillip.
But the number one reason she wouldn’t trade places with the creative director was what happened when Frankie came into the room and surveyed his designs.
Nearly thirty years as Kathy Whitaker’s daughter had trained Simone to recognize her boss’s tight-lipped expression as he peered down at the mock-ups.
After an agonizing minute of silence, Frankie looked up at Phillip. “They’re all step-and-repeat banners?”
Phillip sounded cautious when he answered, “Yes.”
“I see.”
“I think they’ll work great. I have a guy out there who can print them, they’re easy to put together, they won’t break the bank…
” Phillip trailed off. There was a long pause from Frankie.
Simone wondered if they even remembered she was there, and kind of hoped they didn’t. The tension in the room was palpable.
“We’re the Rainbow Museum,” Frankie said at last. “We don’t make decisions because they’re easy or because they’re cheap. We make decisions because they’re great.”
It was all very dramatic for a discussion about selfie stations, but Simone wasn’t surprised that Frankie had an inner shark concealed beneath the laid-back vibes he’d greeted her with yesterday.
How else could he have grown the Rainbow Museum from a pop-up to a multi-million-dollar company by the age of twenty-eight?
She made a mental note not to get on Frankie’s bad side.
Meanwhile, things were getting heated between Frankie and his creative director.
“Look,” Phillip argued, “I know you probably wanted something more elaborate, but I’m busy trying to give you that downstairs, okay?
I’m not just phoning it in. We’re still building out the gift shop, we’re sourcing props for all the rooms, we have a lighting issue on the second—”
“Okay, okay, I don’t need to hear your whole to-do list.”
“If I had one more full-time designer on my team—”
“That’s enough.” Frankie pinched the bridge of his nose. “You can both leave. I need to take a beat and think about what to do.”
Scowling, Phillip swept his mock-ups into a pile, while Simone slipped from the room without another word.
She’d never been so relieved to be dismissed from a meeting.
She went to find Lucy, who was lying in a hammock in Freddie Mercury, squinting at a spreadsheet on her laptop.
When she saw Simone, she sat up, draping her legs off the side of the hammock.
She patted the fabric, motioning for Simone to come join her.