Chapter 5
SIMONE HAD BEEN TO A HANDFUL of queer bars before, but always as a “straight” girl—and never to belt show tunes in front of an audience.
“Er, what do I do with this, exactly?” Simone chewed on the straw of her vodka soda and contemplated the iPad Lucy had just dropped into her lap. It was Monday night, and they were at Dorothy and Friends, the queer bar with karaoke that Lucy had invited her to.
“You search for songs, pick whatever you want to sing, and add it to the queue.” Lucy quickly whirled back to the stage, where their colleague, Nina, had just belted out a high note in a song from the musical Wicked.
“Yessss!!!” Lucy cheered, clapping her hands above her head.
Simone could see why Nina worked in comms, and why she would have been the perfect Rainbow Museum spokesperson in Whistler.
Her confidence in front of a crowd was palpable.
Simone wished she could absorb it for herself by some kind of emotional osmosis, although she was pretty sure that wasn’t how confidence worked.
Lucy turned back to Simone. “Did you pick something?”
Simone shook her head, her knuckles white as she gripped the iPad. “Lucy, I don’t know if I can get up there.”
“Why not?”
“I’m a terrible singer.”
“So’s everyone! Well, except Nina. You just have to be confident.”
“I also have the worst stage fright ever.” She’d had panic attacks before every one of those cursed dance recitals as a kid, her legs shaking in her tights as she waited backstage for her entrance.
She didn’t want to disappoint her colleagues, but there was no way she was brave enough to go up there and perform.
Seth plopped down next to her on the banquette. The rose-gold highlighter on his cheekbones shimmered in the dim light of the bar. “What if we do it together?”
Lucy nodded along encouragingly.
Simone was still anxious. “What if I don’t know any of the songs well enough to sing them start to finish?”
“Simone, I’m about to do ‘Mamma Mia.’ There is no way in hell you don’t know ‘Mamma Mia.’ ”
He was right, but she was afraid to admit it.
“You don’t even have to sing if you don’t want to,” he added. “All you have to do is come up there with me.”
Before Simone could voice another objection, Seth had eased her drink from her grip and set it on the table.
Then he and Lucy each grabbed one of her hands and pulled her off the couch.
Her cheeks were a thousand degrees, and she knew her neck must be covered in hives, but she also had to admit how nice it was to be part of this little community.
This enormous community, she realized as she climbed up onstage, where Nina was taking a final bow.
The space had filled out since they’d arrived.
Didn’t these people have anything better to do with their Monday nights?
Why were they here, with their eyes on the stage, instead of literally anywhere else?
“GO, SIMONE!” screamed a chorus of voices over at the bar.
Lucy, that scoundrel, had rallied a group of strangers to cheer Simone’s name while she waited for another drink.
Nobody would be cheering when Simone anxiety-puked all over the stage.
She decided to keep her eyes on the microphone that Seth thrust into her hands.
The bouncy intro music started to play, and the crowd cheered some more.
Simone’s knees trembled the way they had when she was little.
Then Seth started singing—and Simone looked up in sheer disbelief.
His singing was awful. Atrocious. An honest-to-God crime.
And then there was his dancing: a frankly appalling combination of limb-flailing and hip-gyrating.
But the guy was enthusiastic. By the first chorus, Simone didn’t feel so afraid anymore.
Seth waved for her to mirror his movements.
Laughing nervously, she started to dance alongside him.
The crowd went wild; the strangers by the bar were chanting her name.
Then, right in time for the second chorus, Simone raised the microphone to her lips and sang the lyrics.
When the song was over, Simone looped her arm through Seth’s and stumbled giddily off the stage, her limbs vibrating with an electricity she never thought she’d experience from performing in front of a crowd.
Lucy was waiting nearby with open arms. She folded Simone in a hug, and Seth hugged Simone from behind, and Simone was pretty sure she could still hear strangers cheering for her.
Never in her whole life had she felt so safe—so loved.
And she’d only known these people for a week.
Simone started to laugh, and then she started to cry, and then she was laughing at the fact that she was crying and crying at the fact that she was laughing.
Lucy and Seth held her and let it all happen, despite the not-unlikely chance that Simone was getting tears and mascara all over Lucy’s blouse.
“My sweet, sweet baby gay,” Seth cooed.
“Baby bi,” Lucy corrected him.
Simone gently extricated herself from their embrace and wiped her eyes. “Oh my God, why am I like this?”
“Relief,” Lucy said. “You can just be yourself, do whatever you wanna do, without having to worry. Especially in a place like this.” She gestured at the bar around them.
Simone let her gaze rove freely across the sea of people.
She was used to keeping her eyes down in crowded bars and parties, lest they land on a woman she found attractive.
She didn’t have to worry about potentially confronting her queerness anymore.
She was out. This freedom, Simone realized, was a little like lucid dreaming.
It was liberating and terrifying all at once.
She could finally do whatever her heart desired, but also, oh God, she finally could do whatever her heart desired.
She could kiss a woman, or sleep with a woman, or—possibly the most intimidating option of all, because it was visible to the rest of the world—even date a woman.
But first, she needed to not be covered in splotches of tears and eye makeup. Simone waved a hand in front of her face. “I’m gonna go clean all this up,” she told her colleagues, before scurrying to the washroom.
She was standing at the mirror, dabbing her cheeks with a damp paper towel, when a stall door swung open behind her with so much force that it banged into the wall. Simone gasped.
“Whoa! Sorry about that,” exclaimed the woman who stumbled out in a pair of high-heeled boots. Suddenly, her face lit up, and she cried, “SIMONE!”
Simone felt the surge of dread she always got when she blanked on someone’s name, although in this case, she couldn’t even recall having seen the woman before.
She felt like she would have remembered her if she had.
She was striking in a queer goth sort of way, with bleach-blond hair, alabaster skin, and long, willowy limbs clad in an all-black outfit.
Wincing, Simone opened her mouth to apologize for the faux pas, when the woman cut her off.
“You don’t know me! I’m Kenzie. Your coworker told me to cheer for you when you were up there doing karaoke.” Her voice was loud and raspy, the latter quite possibly due to the former.
Simone let out a sigh of relief and smiled. “That was you?”
“And a bunch of my friends,” Kenzie boomed. “You were sensational.”
“Seriously?”
“Okay, actually, I don’t really remember, because my one friend keeps buying us all shots. But I feel like you were sensational. I can just tell. By your vibe.”
Simone laughed nervously. She’d exchanged countless gushing compliments with tipsy women in bar bathrooms, but never before in a queer bar bathroom. Was Kenzie just being friendly, like Simone was used to, or was she hoping for something more? And how was Simone supposed to tell?
Kenzie washed her hands and dried them on her jeans. “I’ll see you out there,” she said with a waggle of her fingers. “And don’t worry, your eye makeup looks hot as fuck.”
Heat rushed to Simone’s cheeks. “Oh—um, thanks,” she stammered, but the woman was already gone. Simone didn’t know what to make of the encounter. Shaking it off, she tossed the paper towel in the garbage and went back out to rejoin her friends.
Over the next two hours, Simone got onstage three more times—willingly.
She also drank one and a half more happy-hour vodka sodas, but she was pretty sure the karaoke and overall camaraderie had loosened her up even more than the alcohol had.
She was having the time of her life, and at a Monday-night work outing, of all places.
She couldn’t believe that in a few short weeks, she’d be partying at Whistler Pride.
Simone was making her way from the washroom back to her colleagues when a hand caught her by the shoulder. She spun around. It was Kenzie, of possible-flirting-in-the-washroom fame.
“Hey!” Kenzie yelled in her raspy voice. She nodded toward the stage. “I actually heard you the last time you sang, and I was right.”
Simone made a polite-but-confused expression. “You were right? About what?”
“You are sensational.”
That seemed like a stretch, seeing as she’d mostly swayed in the background while Seth performed a rousing rendition of “Lucky” by Britney Spears, but whatever.
She’d take the compliment. She knew, this time, that they weren’t having a tipsy platonic bonding sesh.
Okay: Maybe they were both tipsy, but Kenzie was definitely flirting with her.
She could tell by the mischievous smirk that played across her lips, the way her eyes lingered on Simone’s mouth.
Suddenly, Simone’s heart was at risk of exploding through her rib cage.
She knew she should say something in response to Kenzie’s compliment, but she quite frankly had forgotten how words worked.
She was saved by Taylor Swift. “Oh my God,” Kenzie gushed as the karaoke machine blared the opening bars of “Love Story.” “I fucking love this song.”