Chapter 11
THERE WAS GOOD NEWS AND BAD news when it came to Simone’s phone.
The good news: Whistler Village had a tech shop, and the guy there could fix her shattered screen, no problem.
The bad news: It would cost her a sizable chunk of change.
The worst news of all, of course, was that Simone had to spend even more time with Ryan Foley today than she’d planned for.
With a sigh, she handed over her credit card.
The guy behind the counter told her to give him a few minutes, gesturing to a chair against the wall.
Simone trudged over, followed by Ryan, and slumped into the seat. “You don’t have to stay here,” she said, looking up at him. Their hotel was within walking distance of the store.
“You want something to eat?” he asked, ignoring her suggestion.
At the mention of food, Simone felt the emptiness in her stomach. They’d missed today’s lunch with their guide group. She took out her wallet to give him some cash, but he waved her off. “It’s on me.”
Why did he have to be so hot and courteous?
“Thank you,” she said, and Ryan ducked out of the store.
When her phone was ready, Simone went outside and found Ryan waiting for her on the sidewalk. He held up a flat cardboard box with a cartoon beaver on the lid. She felt a grin creep across her face. “Wait, is that…?”
He cracked the lid of the box, releasing a plume of steam that smelled like sugar and maple and fried dough. It was.
“How did you know I love beaver tails?”
“You mentioned that you used to get them at Mount St. Louis as a kid,” he replied matter-of-factly.
“I can’t believe you remembered that.” It had been one of about three billion random things she’d said to him over the past few days.
“Should we eat this thing before it gets cold?”
At the end of the street, they came across a crackling bonfire in front of a tourist information center housed in a cozy log cabin.
“We’re tourists, sort of,” Ryan said with a shrug.
“And we love information,” Simone added.
They claimed the two empty Muskoka chairs next to the fire. After a cloudier morning, the sun had finally come out, giving them a stunning view of the mountains: white and gray against a cornflower-blue sky.
Ryan placed the box on the armrests between them.
When he opened the lid, they both leaned in, breathing in the warm scent of fried pastry topped with a drizzle of sweet maple cream.
It was the smell of Canadian winter. For the second time in twenty-four hours, Simone realized that if she leaned in a few more inches, she could kiss him.
She straightened back up in her chair. “So, how should we eat this?”
“Shit, I forgot forks.”
“I’m okay with hands as long as you are.”
He paused. “I’m good with my hands.”
She remembered the sex dream again, and suddenly she was crossing her legs to relieve the ache that had sprung up.
It took a second for Ryan to realize how he’d phrased his last statement, but when it hit him, a flush crept up his neck.
“I mean I’m good with using my hands—on this.
Uh, here. Do you mind?” He pulled out his travel-size hand sanitizer, and they passed it back and forth.
They ripped off pieces of the beaver tail and placed them in their mouths.
“Mmmm.” Simone couldn’t help but moan as the sugar touched her tongue.
Oh God, she sounded like she had in her dream this morning.
She covered her mouth and fell silent, but not before Ryan’s neck had turned an even deeper shade of pink. Why did everything seem so sexual?
Ryan looked at her and smirked. “Simone.”
“What?”
“You have maple cream on your nose.”
“I do?” she asked, mortified. She instantly tried to wipe it off. “Did I get it all?”
“There’s a bit more…”
“Where?”
“Here, let me help you.” Ryan reached forward and took her hand, steering it to where the remaining maple cream was.
Somewhere between the bridge of her nose and the corner of her eye, which, how?
Whatever. She couldn’t think straight: Her head felt fizzy at Ryan’s touch. “There you go. You got it.”
Simone instinctively put her finger to her lips and licked off the sugary residue.
Why was Ryan looking at her mouth? And why was it making her stomach clench to be watched like that?
“Are you horrified?” she teased.
His eyes darted back up to hers. “What?”
“That I just ate icing off my own face. Seems… I don’t know. Germy.”
“It wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”
The fluttering in her chest made her cast around for something not remotely sexy to talk about.
Maybe now was the right time to ask the question she’d been curious about for the past few days—even if it meant deepening the conversation.
She’d do anything right now to ease the ache in her core. “So, random question…”
Ryan arched an eyebrow.
“… you know this ‘funk’ you’ve been in?”
His eyebrow dropped. “What about it?”
“Did something… cause it?”
Frowning, he turned to the flames dancing just beyond their feet. “You really want the whole story?”
Yes. No. Maybe. “Only if you want to share it,” she said.
Ryan let out a long sigh. “My ex, Victoria—the person I thought I was gonna marry—she cheated on me. I found out at the beginning of December, but it was happening for at least a year.”
That explained the Adele in the car. “Oh, Ryan, that’s horrible.”
“Yeah. The guy was a Bay Street finance bro. A total piece of shit, but he’s loaded. When I found out and confronted her, she basically said it was my fault she’d wanted to be with this guy, because I just started my own business and it’ll be a while before I’m making a halfway decent salary.”
“What?” Simone objected, jerking her head back. “Starting your own business is really impressive.”
He gave a humorless smile. “She never liked what I did for work anyway. There’s good money in carpentry, but it’s still blue-collar.”
Simone was feeling defensive of Ryan all of a sudden. “What does she do, cure cancer?”
“She’s actually training to be a brain surgeon.”
“Oh.” Simone sat back in her chair, defeated.
“And I guess she wanted an equally impressive partner to show off to all her friends.”
She thought of her phone call with Kathy the day she’d come out.
She knew how shitty it felt to disappoint someone you loved.
And in that moment, she didn’t care that it was intimate: She reached out and touched Ryan’s wrist. “I happen to think you’re very impressive,” she said.
“Every time I’ve complimented your work, I’ve meant it from the bottom of my heart. You’re talented, Ryan.”
He shrugged.
“Also, can we talk about how hard you’ve been working at the Rainbow Museum?
” She remembered his shadowy, bloodshot eyes.
“You were so close to being done, and then I come along and smash this thing that took you weeks, and Frankie’s demanding you design a bunch of selfie stations, and still, you get it all done.
Like, hello? That’s also very impressive. ”
“I’m just a perfectionist.”
“Not when it comes to accepting praise, apparently.”
A smirk crept onto his face. “Apparently not.”
She was enjoying teasing him again. “We’ll have to work on that.”
“Will we?”
“Say, ‘Thank you.’ ”
“Thank you.”
For what felt like a long time but might have only been a few seconds, they looked each other in the eyes.
Was she imagining it, or had his pupils dilated?
Black inside green inside gray. She would gladly have fallen into them headfirst. Warmth swirled in her belly, growing until it spread across her chest, into her cheeks, down to the tips of her fingers and toes.
When she realized she was still holding on to his wrist, she abruptly let go.
“You want the last little piece?” she asked, nudging the beaver tail box in his direction.
Ryan blinked at it, like he’d forgotten it was there. “You don’t want it?”
“Nah, I’m full,” Simone answered. The truth was that the tidal wave of heat had been followed by a thunderclap of anxiety, and now the thought of stomaching food made her queasy.
He picked up the last morsel of sweet fried dough and placed it in his mouth, closing his eyes and chewing slowly to savor it. “God, that’s good.”
Great, now I’ll probably dream about him uttering those words with his eyes closed. “Well, anyway, I appreciate you sharing all that with me.”
“Thanks for listening.”
“Now I get why you were in such a bad mood when we met—you know, besides the fact that I destroyed your work.”
“I still shouldn’t have been such a dick.”
She waved her hand in the air dismissively. All their animosity felt like water under the bridge now. “Hey, I was pretty annoying, too. When you refused to accept my apologies, I made it my personal mission to kill you with kindness, which I guess made you even more miserable.”
Ryan shook his head with a wry smile. “Yeah, you were annoying. It was… effective.”
She teased him back, hoping it didn’t sound flirty. “Super toxic pairing right here.” She gestured between the two of them. “There should be caution tape or something.”
Ryan chuckled. But as he walked her back to the store to pick up her phone, guiding her around a puddle on the way, Simone couldn’t help but think they might not be so toxic for each other after all.
AFTER EVERYTHING SIMONE HAD DONE TO rescue her phone, it turned out Bree still hadn’t liked her coming-out post. So much for having that to distract herself from the dreamy straight guy riding the gondola with her the next morning.
As they carried their equipment to a clear spot on the snow, Margot hiked over to them in her ski boots. She had a six-foot-tall Pride flag strapped to her backpack. “Can I talk to you two for a sec?” she asked. There was a note of urgency in her voice.