Chapter 16 #2
“You want to know something I really like about you?”
He looked up, cocked an eyebrow. “What?”
“The way you appreciate tiny artistic details I would never even think to notice.” Ryan’s expression melted into a smile. “It’s why you’re so good at what you do.”
“That’s really nice of you.”
“It’s the truth,” she insisted. “How was school today?”
“School” was the new project Ryan had recently begun at a private school in the Beaches.
Between that and the custom furniture orders he’d been taking, Ryan’s carpentry business was booming, and she couldn’t have been happier for him.
They caught each other up on work that day and ordered a carafe of white wine.
They held up their glasses.
“To a delightful fucking sunflower,” he teased.
“Damn right,” she said, laughing.
They clinked glasses.
“So,” Ryan said, his voice becoming more serious, “there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk about.” Her heart jumped into her throat like it had been launched out of a catapult. “Something good,” he added quickly.
She watched the bob of his Adam’s apple and tried to swallow, herself. It was impossible.
“I really like you, Simone.”
“I really like you, too.”
“The past few weeks have been incredible.”
“I know.”
Ryan looked deep into her eyes. The candle that flickered between them made the green around his irises look more like gold. Every inch of Simone’s body pulsed with the beat of her heart. Ryan took one slow, steady breath. “I want you to be my girlfriend.”
Simone didn’t have to think twice about how to respond. She reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “YES. A thousand times yes.” She was grinning so hard that her cheeks hurt.
Ryan’s gaze lingered on her face. “You have the most beautiful eyes in the world.”
“In the world?” she teased. “What if there’s some girl out there with eyes like curly maple?”
He shook his head definitively. “In the world.”
At the end of the meal, when Ryan fished out his phone to calculate the tip, Simone noticed something on his screen. “Wait,” she said, grabbing his wrist, “did you change your wallpaper?”
Ryan smirked. “Maybe.”
He passed it across the table so she could take a closer look. Instead of the wavy, orangey wood she’d seen in Whistler, Ryan’s background was now a dark brown wood with the slightest hint of purple. “Is this…?”
He nodded. “Walnut.”
BY FRIDAY MORNING, SIMONE STILL COULDN’T get her dinner with Ryan out of her head. Not that she wanted to. She was a kaleidoscope of butterflies, floating a foot off the ground everywhere she went. Ryan was her boyfriend. She was his girlfriend. You have the most beautiful eyes in the world.
“Simone.”
Sitting at her desk, she looked up from her phone. She’d been swooning over Ryan’s good-morning text and apparently hadn’t heard whatever question Seth had just asked her. “Sorry, what was that?”
“I asked if you knew what this all-hands meeting with Frankie was about. The one at ten.”
She shook her head. “Not sure.” All she knew was that the meeting was titled “PRIDE!!!,” which was why she wasn’t freaking out about a mysterious all-hands meeting on a Friday.
That and the fact that the Rainbow Museum had been killing it since opening its doors to the public, and it seemed highly unlikely that anyone was about to lose their job.
Seth nodded at her phone. “You’re texting your boyfriend, aren’t you?
” Simone didn’t even have to respond out loud; when her cheeks went hot, she knew her fair-skinned ginger genes were doing it for her.
Sure enough, Seth flashed a triumphant smile.
“You’re blushing so hard right now. Are you sexting? ”
“NO.”
“Because if you are, let me just say, the lighting in the bathroom stalls is surprisingly—”
“Oh my God, we’re not sexting.”
Seth grinned again. “But you are texting him.”
Simone broke down and smiled, too. “He’s so sweet,” she said with a sigh. “He randomly woke up an hour before his alarm and went for a run on the boardwalk, and he took all these amazing photos of the sunrise over the lake.”
“I love this slightly chaotic artistic energy for you.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Are you saying I’m uptight?”
“I’m saying I’m pretty sure I’ve seen you get hives from not being at inbox zero.”
Simone laughed, and so did Seth.
“You’re bringing him to my party next weekend, right?”
She nodded. “I ordered him a floral-print T-shirt and everything.”
“Obsessed.”
A week from tomorrow, Seth and his roommate were hosting a house party in honor of the vernal equinox, and the dress code was “spring vibes.” Simone didn’t know much about astrology, but she did know that she was a Pisces and Ryan was a Scorpio, and according to Google, Pisces and Scorpio were “highly compatible signs.” Hmm.
Maybe she should get more into astrology.
“I’m meeting his moms tonight,” she told Seth, whose jaw dropped.
“Way to bury the lede,” he shot back. “Since when?”
“Since yesterday.” A bolt of nervous energy shot down her spine. “His moms wanted matching tattoos for their fortieth anniversary, and—”
“Oh my God, relationship goals.”
“I know.”
“I’m telling Claude. Sorry, I interrupted.”
She laughed. “It’s okay. This tattoo artist they like in Toronto had a last-minute cancellation, and said she could squeeze them in this afternoon. They don’t come into the city that much, so Ryan asked if I wanted to meet them, and I said yes.”
“Do you really want to?”
“I do,” she answered honestly. “I know it’s kind of soon, but… I don’t know. Everything just feels really good.”
Seth poked her in the arm. “You’re totally obsessed with him.”
Simone smirked back but said nothing. She couldn’t deny it.
At ten, they joined the rest of the management team around the conference table in Cher.
Frankie sat at the head, chugging a Red Bull and shooting off texts at the same time.
When everyone was seated, he put down his phone, shot the empty Red Bull can into the nearest wastebasket, and got down to business.
“Good morning, you wonderful people, and happy Friday. I wanted to get us all together so I could share some exciting news about a plan I have in the works for Pride Month.”
A current of excitement buzzed around the room.
“So, I think we can all attest to how important it is for queer people to present themselves in a way that matches who they are on the inside.”
Several people around the room nodded, Simone included. She’d never felt quite like herself in the preppy clothes she’d grown up wearing.
“Queer expression matters. That’s why, to kick off Pride Month, the Rainbow Museum is going to be hosting”—he drummed his index fingers on the edge of the table—“a queer makeover extravaganza! Picture this.” Now he waved his hands around like he was conjuring the event in midair.
“We’ll offer haircuts. Makeup tutorials.
Style consultations. Tattoos. Piercings.
Whatever we can do to help guests look as queer as humanly possible.
And then we’ll have photographers take their portraits around the Rainbow Museum, because there’s obviously no better backdrop than here.
I’ll be following up with each department next week to talk specifics.
In the meantime, start thinking about what we can do to make this epic. ”
They all replied with obedient nods, although Simone wasn’t exactly sure what it meant to “look as queer as humanly possible.” Someone made a joke that they should exclusively offer septum rings in the piercing department, and laughter rippled around the room.
Simone smiled along, but she was suddenly feeling uneasy, wondering if she herself needed some kind of queer makeover.
She pushed the thought from her mind and carried on with her day, focusing instead on how excited she was to see Ryan that night. He would be picking her up from the Rainbow Museum at six, and together they’d head to the Common Loon to meet his moms.
When six o’clock rolled around, the Rainbow Museum was still packed with visitors.
They stayed open until nine every day, thanks to the team of guest experience specialists who worked the late shift.
When Simone got outside, there was a line of guests stretching down the block, but her eyes went straight to one person.
Her boyfriend spread his arms, beckoning her in for a hug.
But Simone wanted more than a hug; it had been over twenty-four hours since she’d last seen Ryan.
She approached him at a run and then she leapt onto him, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist the way couples always greeted each other on The Bachelor.
Ryan caught her and held her there like it was no big deal, and Simone kissed him as a means of hello.
Then she heard faint voices coming from behind her:
“It should be illegal for straights to make out here.”
“Seriously. It’s, like, a hate crime.”
The words zipped through Simone’s chest like a laser beam.
She pulled out of the kiss and lowered herself to the ground, her body suddenly heavy with shame.
She heard the same people snickering and peered over her shoulder to see who it was.
A gaggle of twentysomething guys who were attractive in an identical Ken-doll kind of way.
As they sneered at Simone, they reminded her of the awful men on Crushr Seth had told her about—the ones who listed so-called sexual preferences on their profiles that were actually straight-up discriminatory, and who’d ultimately driven him off the app entirely.
(He and Claude had met the old-fashioned way: by sliding into each other’s DMs.)
“Why are those guys looking at us like that?” Ryan asked.
She turned back to Ryan. “I dunno,” she lied. “Maybe they’re weird about PDA.” Simone looped her arm through Ryan’s and tugged him down the sidewalk as quickly as possible, away from the line of Rainbow Museum visitors.
She pulled herself tight to his side as they walked to the next block, where his truck was parked.
Ryan steered one-handed, the other hand resting on Simone’s thigh.
His relaxed, confident driving posture usually turned her on, but right now, she just felt jittery.
Everything’s fine, she mentally hissed at herself.
“I’m excited for you to meet my moms,” Ryan said.
“Me, too,” Simone answered decisively.
She wasn’t going to let a few judgmental strangers ruin her night.