Chapter 15 #2
She knew Lucy wouldn’t back down. Simone could either talk to her friend or avoid the conversation and live in a toilet stall for the rest of her life. She flushed and opened the door. Lucy was facing her, leaning against the counter with her arms crossed. “Hi,” she said pointedly.
“Hi,” Simone murmured as she slunk to the counter and turned on the faucet.
Lucy ducked to make sure the other stalls were empty before she carried on.
“With all due respect, what is going on with you? You were acting weird before you went to the bar, and now I have Erica telling me you’ve been in the washroom for a long time, and she doesn’t know what’s up.
” Lucy turned around so she could see Simone’s face in the mirror.
Their eyes met in the glass, and Lucy lowered her voice.
“Erica also said the two of you had a super awkward interaction with Ryan.”
Simone peered down at her soapy hands. Her neck and ears were on fire, which meant she must be turning red.
“Is this about Ryan?” Lucy asked.
Reluctantly, Simone nodded.
Lucy sighed. “I thought you guys had been getting along.”
“We have.”
“Then what’s going—”
“Luce, we hooked up.”
When Simone found Lucy in the mirror again, her friend’s jaw was hanging open. “Excuse me? You hooked up? Where? When? How was it? Oh my God, I have forty gazillion questions.”
“Isn’t Erica wondering where the heck I am?”
“She was, but then she and Holly started nerding out hard on pet sweaters, so I feel like she’s probably okay for a little while longer.”
“Okay, that’s good.”
“So, you and Ryan.”
“Me and Ryan.”
“I need to know everything, please.”
Simone hoisted herself onto the counter, legs dangling off the edge, the way she and her friends would sit and gossip in the washroom between classes.
She told Lucy everything—or almost everything, sparing her the more graphic details of their night in Vancouver.
“It was the best sex I’ve ever had in my life, Luce,” she whispered, “and now I can’t stop thinking about him. ”
Lucy clutched her chest. “Simone Whitaker, why are you only telling me this now?”
She gazed up at the ceiling and sighed. At this point, she might as well be honest. “I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“I didn’t want you to think I was secretly straight.” When she looked at Lucy again, her friend was staring at her like she’d just said something utterly absurd, which—now that Simone had spoken the words out loud—maybe she had.
“Believe it or not, I’m aware that ‘bisexual’ means ‘attracted to multiple genders,’ which includes men.
” Lucy smiled sympathetically and squeezed Simone’s shoulder.
“I know you, Simone, and I know you’re queer.
I’d never question that for a second. I mean, look at you, torn between a hot guy and a gorgeous woman at the same party. Pure bisexual chaos right there.”
Simone let out a laugh that was closely followed by a groan. “Luce, Erica’s amazing, and I wanted it to work out with her. I really did.” She paused. “But I don’t think I’m done with Ryan yet.”
“Oh, Simone.”
“I don’t know what I should do, though. I just came out. My whole mission was to be with women—not a straight guy.” She slumped against the wall.
Lucy put a hand on her knee. “If Ryan feels the same way, you should go for it.”
“You think so?” Simone was more tentative. “I literally just came out—”
“Simone, the magical thing about being queer is that you don’t have to follow the rules. You get to invent them. You get to follow your heart.”
Simone laughed weakly. “Even if my heart wants a straight guy?”
“Yes, Simone: even if your queer little heart wants a straight guy.”
ERICA AND HOLLY WERE DEEP IN an animated conversation when Simone and Lucy returned to the party.
At least Erica got a new friend out of tonight, Simone thought, but it still didn’t ease her guilt.
When Erica noticed her making her way through the crowd, she frowned, as though she already had a sense of what was about to transpire.
“There you are,” Erica said.
“Can we talk for a minute?” Simone nodded to the side, indicating they should go someplace quieter than the lively atrium.
“That sounds like a good idea.”
Simone led her to the hallway with the rainbow stripes and the timeline of queer history on the walls, stopping in front of the plaque for the Brunswick Four, a group of lesbians who, in 1974, were kicked out of a Toronto bar and eventually arrested after they performed a song at amateur night called “I Enjoy Being a Dyke.” What a place to be breaking things off with a woman so she could go and pursue a straight guy.
It seemed absurd to be doing this, after everything she’d been through to get here—like she was coming up on the finish line of a marathon, and she was randomly deciding to peel off the path.
But it also felt like the right thing to do—like she would always regret not exploring what was down this way, even if it led her nowhere.
Simone took a deep breath. “Sorry I disappeared for so long back there. I’ve been going through some emotional stuff and I feel really bad for dragging you into it.”
Erica crossed her arms. “Is everything okay?”
“It’s been really nice getting to know you, but I don’t think I feel that romantic connection I’m looking for. I’m so sorry.”
“Simone, it’s fine.” She shrugged. “I mean, yeah, it sucks, but it’s okay if you’re not into me.”
“You’re an awesome person,” Simone said reassuringly.
“I know—and you’re missing out,” Erica fired back. But then she cracked a smile, and Simone realized she wasn’t mad. “Seriously, it’s okay. I’m still happy I came tonight. I think Holly and I are gonna meet up and knit together.”
“I love that.”
“One door closes, another opens, right? Anyway, good luck with finding what you’re looking for.”
“You, too.”
They exchanged a polite hug goodbye, and then Erica was gone.
Simone breathed a sigh of relief, only to tense up again as she pulled out her phone.
The most nerve-wracking part of her evening hadn’t even begun.
She called Ryan’s number, praying he was still at the party.
She hadn’t spotted him since she’d emerged from the washroom, and Ryan Foley was hard to miss.
He answered on the first ring. “Simone.”
“Are you still here?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Can we talk?”
“About what?”
“I want to do it in person.”
He paused. “I’m in the workshop.”
“I’m coming.”
She made a beeline for the elevator and jabbed the button for the basement. When she got off, she was briefly disoriented by the fact that the lights were off, but she remembered where she’d gone that one day with Frankie, and hurried around the corner to the workshop.
It was dark in there, too, but a single lamp cast a warm circle of light over the wooden table in the center of the room.
Ryan leaned back against the table in his crisp white button-down, his jacket cast to the side, with his head hanging low and his hands clasped behind his neck, like he couldn’t bear the weight of his own thoughts.
“Hey,” she said.
Ryan glanced up, moved his hands from the back of his neck to the tops of his thighs, then looked back down at the floor. She could see from the doorway that his quads were braced—that every muscle in his body was taut. “Hey.”
“What are you doing down here?”
“Nothing. I just needed space.”
“Can I… come in?”
“Sure.”
With shallow breaths, she treaded lightly toward the table, stopping an arm’s length from Ryan.
“What did you want to talk about?” he asked.
“I have a problem,” she said.
“What is it?”
“I can’t stop thinking about you.”
Ryan was quiet, and it was hard to read his expression in the dim light of the workshop.
Shit. She was probably making him uncomfortable.
“Actually, never mind,” she backpedaled, flailing her hands as she talked.
“I shouldn’t have even brought it up. We agreed to make this a one-night thing ’cause it’s better for both of us and—”
He caught one of her wrists in midair. “Simone.”
“What?”
She heard him swallow. “There is no world in which seeing you on a date with someone else is ‘better’ for me.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, her voice raspy all of a sudden.
“I mean…” Ryan paused. “I can’t stop thinking about you, either.” For a moment, they stood there in charged silence. He was still holding her wrist. “Your heart,” he whispered.
“I know.” Every cell in her body throbbed for him, begging for release. With her eyes locked on Ryan’s, she took a step closer, silently daring him to do the same.
“Simone.” His voice was deeper than she’d ever heard it. A warning. “I’m not going to do this with your date upstairs.”
“She isn’t here anymore. I told her I didn’t think we should keep seeing each other.”
“What? When?”
“Just now. I didn’t want to lead her on when the truth is, I can’t stop thinking about you.”
She inched forward again, and now she was close enough to hear his ragged breathing, to know for certain that he was as desperate for her as she was for him. “I don’t know if this is a good idea,” Ryan said, and Simone froze.
“Why not?”
Now that she was closer, she could see the helplessness in his eyes, too. “Because the more I’m with you, the more I fucking want you. I can’t have another—another life-changing fucking night and just go back to normal.”
She’d never ached for him the way she did on the word life-changing. “And what if you could have me?” she whispered. She moved closer again. “What if we didn’t have to go back to normal the next day?”
He furrowed his brow. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying… what if we actually tried seeing where this goes?”
The lines in his forehead disappeared, and he blew out a long jet of air. Her own breaths were quick and shallow, like rocks skipping on the surface of a lake.