Chapter 2
ONCE UPON A TIME, SIMONE HAD been a straight person.
In high school, she really and truly believed it about herself.
Like all the other girls her age, she had genuine crushes on boys—crushes that made her knees shake, her palms sweat, and her chest ache with longing.
What more was there to say? Back then, it didn’t remotely occur to her that the intense, borderline-obsessive friendships she had with a couple of girls might fall into the same category as the feelings she had for guys.
But then, in university, something strange started to happen.
Every now and then, when Simone was drinking at a bar or a house party, she’d find herself making out with other girls.
Or switching her dating app settings so she could see women, too.
She never went further than kissing, and she never swiped right on any of the women; one thing might lead to another, and suddenly, she’d be forced to come out to her mother, crushing Kathy’s dreams of having a daughter who was just like her, only younger and full of promise.
And Simone wouldn’t dream of disappointing her mother.
At the urging of George’s parents—George, apparently, had opted to “stay out of it”—Kathy had reluctantly given up a budding career in law in favor of raising the couple’s three children.
Her youth was the next thing to go. Simone saw how these losses ate at her mother—saw it in her snide remarks about working moms; in her never-ending string of beauty appointments; in the lotions she kept in her medicine cabinet, promising to lift, firm, rejuvenate, boost, lighten, and other gravity-defying verbs.
Kathy had given up so much for Simone and her two brothers.
Simone knew she hadn’t asked for it, but somehow, the guilt still stuck.
The least she could do was try to be the daughter her mother wanted.
Which was why, the mornings after her forays into embracing her own queerness, she’d chalk up the previous night’s escapades to being “blackout,” even though she remembered everything.
And then, at her first job—working as a project manager at an educational technology start-up called Sharpe Solutions—she met Bree.
Bree Park was a software engineer who also happened to be an out lesbian.
Simone and Bree were friendly around the office, although Simone sometimes found her eyes lingering for longer than she cared to admit on Bree’s elbow-length raven hair, the delicate floral tattoos that climbed up her arm, and her plump Cupid’s bow lips.
In August, Sharpe Solutions was acquired by a British company and proceeded to lay off its entire Toronto-based team.
After they learned they’d lost their jobs in an all-hands Zoom call with the new owners, who hadn’t even bothered to break the news to them in person, Simone and some colleagues—Bree included—staggered to the pub across the street to drink away their sorrows.
It wasn’t long before Simone found herself taking whiskey shots with Bree.
Then, when she was pleasantly buzzed, she found herself touching Bree’s arm and playing with her hair.
Bree asked Simone if she wanted to come outside for a cigarette, and even though Simone didn’t smoke and wasn’t planning on changing that, she said she was happy to keep Bree company.
She followed Bree out to the empty back terrace, only to vaguely recall that smoking wasn’t allowed on restaurant patios.
“I think it might be illegal to smoke back here,” she said.
“I know,” Bree replied.
And then Bree was kissing her with those Cupid’s bow lips, which were as soft as they’d always looked, and Simone was kissing her back, a treasure trove of feelings set free at last. Bree cupped Simone’s jaw with one hand and caressed her hip with the other.
“I always had a good feeling about you,” she whispered.
Simone was used to abruptly cutting off her trysts with women—to blaming it on the alcohol and sweeping it under the rug—but that night with Bree was different.
Maybe it was the fact that she’d been low-key crushing on Bree for years, or maybe it was the YOLO mentality produced by the mass layoff.
Whatever the case, Simone accepted an invitation back to Bree’s apartment, where for the first time in her life she went below the waist with another woman.
Bree gently led the way. They started by making out on the couch, picking up where they’d left off at the bar.
While they kissed, Bree’s hand traveled under Simone’s skirt and between her legs, cupping Simone’s most sensitive spot through the barrier of her black nylons.
“You’re soaked,” Bree said with a satisfied smirk.
“I am?” Simone asked.
“Mm-hmm.” She took Simone’s hand and put it where hers had just been.
“Oh,” Simone gasped.
Bree tucked a fingertip into the waistband of Simone’s tights. “Can I feel?”
“Yes,” Simone breathed, her heart racing with fear and desire. The next time Bree kissed her, she slipped a finger inside Simone.
Simone had come right there on the couch, and it was good—so good that when Bree asked Simone to hang out in the light of day the following week, she nervously agreed.
They went for brunch at a hole-in-the-wall Egyptian place, where they shared a gooey grilled cheese with dates and honey, and fried cauliflower drizzled with tahini, before heading back to Bree’s, where Simone returned the favors from the other night.
The first couple of times they saw each other, Simone could still believe her own lies about what was going on between her and Bree.
Sure, they snuggled and watched travel vlogs on YouTube after fucking each other senseless, and Simone would drift off with her head on Bree’s chest, but it wasn’t as though she wanted to date her former colleague.
They were good friends who had sex sometimes.
It was no big deal. But the more they hung out, the more they talked and kissed and fucked and cuddled and fantasized about road-tripping in Norway together, the harder it got for Simone to deny that she might have real feelings for this woman—the same kinds of feelings she’d had for men she’d dated in the past.
And that was a problem.
Picturing herself with a girlfriend was as impossible as picturing a color she’d never seen before.
She couldn’t even bring herself to hold Bree’s hand or kiss her in public.
Maybe she’d feel more urgency to come out if she were gay and depriving herself of all pleasure by sticking to heterosexual relationships.
But Simone liked men, too. She had the option to go on pretending to be straight and still have a decent love life.
That was the path she decided to take on that fateful afternoon in early November, when she and Bree had been seeing each other—or rather, hanging out—for a couple of months. She had no idea how much she’d regret it.
Simone and Bree were lying in Bree’s bed, playing a game they’d invented and called Good Girl: Every time one of them applied to a new job, the other would give her an orgasm using the vibrator or body part of her choosing.
For all the shame she’d inherited when it came to sexual orientation, Simone had never been shy about sex itself—not since she’d discovered masturbation in her early teens and realized how good it felt.
Sex was less scary because it generally happened in private.
She was a thousand times more comfortable going down on Bree in bed than holding her hand as they walked down the street, or introducing her to any of her friends—let alone telling her friends the true nature of her and Bree’s relationship.
As far as Laney, Mira, and the rest of them knew, Bree was just another one of Simone’s Sharpe Solutions buddies—a former colleague she’d gotten close to through the shared ordeal of losing their jobs.
After Simone gave Bree a Good Girl reward with her tongue, Bree looked down as she wriggled back into her shorts and said, curiously, “I just realized I’ve never asked you: What do you consider yourself? Gay, bi…?”
Simone pushed herself up to her knees and crossed her arms protectively. “I don’t know,” she said with a shrug, only her shoulders didn’t fully drop from her ears.
“Well, do you like guys?” Bree asked kindly.
Simone nodded truthfully.
“Okay, then it sounds like you’re bi. Or pan, or fluid, maybe? Some people like those words better, but it’s totally up to you.”
Simone froze, knowing that if she admitted that she was bi—or pan, or fluid, or anything that wasn’t straight—she would lose control of the life she’d built.
That chaos would be way worse than any conflict she could possibly have with Bree.
Whatever their relationship was, it wasn’t worth turning her world upside down when she could just as happily be with men.
“Actually,” Simone told Bree, “I think I’m straight. ”
Bree snorted with laughter.
“No—no, I’m serious,” Simone stammered. She climbed off the mattress and backed into the dresser, putting as much space as she could between them. “We’re having fun, but I’m not, like, actually into girls.”
Bree jerked her head back as though the words had hit her in the face. “You seriously think you’re straight…”
Simone felt heavy all over, like she was buried in sand up to her chin. She managed to nod.
“… even though your mouth was on my clit about thirty seconds ago.”
“It’s just sex,” Simone said, refusing to think about the way they’d fallen asleep last night: Bree cradling her from behind, her lips on the back of Simone’s neck; their legs and fingers intertwined and their breathing synced as though they were one.
Of course, now it was all Simone was picturing in her head.
“Just… sex?” Bree asked slowly, her voice laced with hurt.