Chapter 7
AFTER HITTING UP THE RENTAL SHOP first thing in the morning, Simone rode the gondola to the Roundhouse Lodge, where she’d be meeting up with her guide group at nine forty-five.
The temperature was a few degrees above freezing, and the sun was shining in a cloudless sky, bathing the mountains in light.
“It’s gonna be a spectacular day,” said an older man with a bushy white mustache who was riding the gondola alone and gazing out at the view.
“I hope so,” Simone said back to him, thinking of Margot.
She got off the gondola and put on her skis.
From there, it didn’t take long for her to spot Margot, who’d told Simone she’d be wearing a neon-orange ski suit.
She was standing next to her skis and her poles, which were planted vertically in the snow.
When Margot spotted Simone skiing over to her, she jumped up and down in her ski boots. “Oh, yay, you both came!”
Both? For a terrifying second, Simone wondered if Ryan had followed her up here to intentionally ruin her day. Then she looked to her left and saw that the friendly older man from the gondola was also making his way toward Margot. Phew.
Simone’s heart skipped a beat, then several more when Margot jogged over as gracefully as her ski boots made possible and wrapped her in a hug. “It’s great to see you again.”
“You, too,” Simone said, suddenly very nervous. Her heart had jumped into her throat, and it had taken some effort to squeeze her words out.
Margot released Simone and gave Gondola Man a clap on the shoulder. “C’mon, lemme introduce you to the rest of the group.”
As she turned and led them to the four other skiers who had already gathered, Simone made a mental note that Gondola Man hadn’t received a hug. Maybe she was reading too much into it—maybe he just hadn’t talked to her for as long as Simone had last night.
Her spine crackled with electricity all the same.
Gondola Man turned out to be Glen, a guy in his sixties from Toronto who gave her a high five that nearly knocked her over when she said she was from there, too.
Then there was Phoenix, a gangly twentysomething from Montreal who had a trans flag tucked behind the strap of their goggles like a feather in their cap; and Luis and Roberto, a middle-aged couple who’d traveled all the way from Ecuador.
Finally, Margot put her mitten on the shoulder of a woman with long black curls. “And this lovely sheila is Thea,” she said, “my girlfriend.”
“Oh!” Simone said brightly. “It’s great to meet you!” Meanwhile, her chest deflated like a balloon. She stealthily pulled out her phone and texted Lucy: “Update: Margot has a gf. Womp womp.”
As Margot put on her skis, Simone mentally replayed their interaction from last night.
Margot had seemed into her. She’d said she liked her silver pants!
Then again, when she’d walked out of the thrift store changing room and shown Lucy the silver pants, Lucy had thrown an arm over her forehead and pretended to faint from how good they looked.
Women gave each other pants-related compliments all the time, which on the one hand was really nice, but on the other hand made it feel like you needed the goddamn quadratic equation to know whether someone was flirting with you or not.
Putting herself out there was going to take practice.
Lucy texted her back: “Maybe they’re in an open relationship.”
Simone chuckled under her breath and replied: “Friendly reminder that I’ve been out for less than a month? I’m pretty sure this is not the right time to introduce polyamory.”
Margot led them to a green circle for their first run of the day. “We’ll meet at the bottom of that lift,” she said, pointing to their destination with her ski pole.
Adrenaline zipped through Simone’s body as she propelled herself over the edge.
She hadn’t been on the slopes since last spring, and it would take time for her to “get her ski legs,” as an instructor had once referred to that shaky first run of the year.
It helped that the snow here was buttery soft compared to the icy conditions she was used to back east. Simone felt like she was frosting a cake with her skis.
Margot and Thea crisscrossed the run in wide, graceful arcs, with Margot slightly ahead of her girlfriend.
Simone noticed how every few turns, Margot slowed her pace and glanced over her shoulder.
At first, Simone figured she was taking in the view, but then, when she saw her head swivel back and forth before landing in Thea’s direction, she realized she was checking to make sure her partner was okay.
It was so romantic, Simone could have melted.
She wanted a woman to love her the way Margot clearly loved Thea.
And Simone wanted to love a woman the same way.
The group circled up at the bottom of a three-person chairlift, where Simone grabbed a seat with Glen and Phoenix. Even though the Margot situation hadn’t gone the way she’d hoped, she was happy to be on the mountain, enjoying this perfect day with her soon-to-be new friends.
She chatted with Glen and Phoenix about how long they’d all been skiing.
She told them how growing up, she’d begged her parents to let her play soccer and baseball like her brothers, but Kathy had signed her up for dance instead.
Eventually, skiing had been the one sport her parents had caved for. They were Canadian, after all.
“I hated dance when I was little,” Phoenix said. “I’d literally sob on the way to ballet class. Turns out I actually like dancing, though. I just didn’t want to wear the fucking tutus!”
They all laughed. Then they chatted about their favorite skiing destinations in Ontario and Quebec, with Simone and Glen discovering that they’d both spent a great deal of time at Earl Bales, the ski hill in the city of Toronto, and both shared a nostalgic love for the hot chocolate they served there—which, they controversially agreed, came close to rivaling Tim Hortons’, if not surpassing it.
Even in the cold mountain air, Simone felt snuggly and warm.
Talking with Glen and Phoenix felt like tucking into a warm bowl of stew on a winter day.
She wondered what Ryan was up to—not that she really cared.
He was probably wallowing in his own misery by aggressively hammering nails into a two-by-four, or maybe sitting in his hotel room and staring at the wall.
With the lights off. Like the masochistic weirdo he was.
THAT NIGHT, SIMONE LIFTED HER CHIN and rolled her shoulders back before she strode through the doors of the nightclub.
That night’s event was a retro-themed dance party, and underneath her parka she wore a colorful disco-themed jumpsuit she’d ordered online.
She felt hot. Powerful. Ready to ignore the hell out of Ryan Foley.
For tonight’s set, Ryan had taken the staircase he’d built for the welcome party and placed it in front of a wooden arch with a giant disco ball dangling from the center.
She pictured him walking out of the nearest party store with the glittering ball in his arms and a scowl on his face.
Masochistic weirdo. True to form, he’d blatantly ignored the party’s theme and was dressed in another flannel shirt and jeans.
He turned around when he heard her wheeling the suitcase full of Rainbow Museum merch across the dance floor. “Simone. Hey.”
Go fuck yourself, she thought as she stalked past him without a word and went to set up the merch table.
She was trying to be engrossed with fanning out the tote bags when Ryan wandered over and interrupted her state of calm. “Do you have a minute?”
She looked up. Simone was used to his icy glare, but this was something different. Something softer. This had to be a trap, because Ryan Foley didn’t have a soft cell in his body. Also, he seemed to be unable to meet her eyes.
“Not particularly,” she snapped, turning back to the tote bags.
“Listen, Simone, I think we should talk.”
He really needed to stop using her name, because the more she heard it in his deep voice, the more it turned her insides to liquid and weakened her steely defenses. “Why would you want to talk to me? You think I’m oblivious and fake—”
“I was wrong,” he blurted out. Simone looked up again.
Ryan jammed his hands in the pockets of his jeans, but his shoulders stayed up by his ears.
His eyes were fixed on a random spot on the merch table.
He looked so uncomfortable, like whatever else he was going to say was costing him every ounce of energy he had left.
“And I wanted to say I’m sorry. For the way things have been between us. ”
Ryan’s apology, however stiff, had short-circuited her brain. Smoke was probably hissing out of her ears. She was trying to make sense of the words he’d just uttered, but all she could manage to do was blink at him.
“I’ve been going through some shit lately,” he said. “Stuff you don’t know about.”
When people apologized to Simone, she usually bent over backward to assure them that everything was fine.
That they didn’t have to worry one bit—that she barely had feelings anyway, even though she did.
She wanted to make people happy, no matter what it cost her.
Ryan was maybe the only person on the planet she didn’t feel the need to make comfortable.
“That’s not an excuse,” she hurled back, her voice gaining volume and momentum.
“You don’t think I’ve been through my own shit lately? ”
He hung his head. “I shouldn’t have started with that.”
But Simone was too fired up to stop now.
“I went through a breakup. I had a whole goddamn existential crisis and came out as bi, which my parents absolutely hated, but am I a miserable gargoyle like you? No. I’m a delightful fucking SUNFLOWER.
” Except for right now. With Ryan, she wasn’t a sunflower.
She was a five-foot-eight man-eating Venus flytrap.
“Do you know why I accidentally knocked your stuff over on my first day of work? I wasn’t just some naive little girl skipping through a fantasyland.
I was freaking out because my mom had just seen my coming-out post, and I was trying to find a quiet place to call her and get disowned, and yeah, I went for the room behind the tarp.
” Wow, this whole honesty thing was liberating.
So was the look on Ryan’s face: like she’d doused him with another vat of cold brew. Take that, Mr. Actual Hard Work.
“Can I say something?” Ryan asked.
“As long as it’s not another excuse.” Simone crossed her arms.
“I feel like the world’s biggest asshole for the way I’ve acted. I know you’ve been through your own shit. I listened to your call in the car the other day—”
“Oh, did you?”
He furrowed his brow. “You were talking out loud.”
“Jesus, Ryan, I don’t care that you listened,” she fired back. “I care that you apparently felt sooo bad, but didn’t feel the need to apologize until now. Frankly, I hate that I had to sink to your level and lose my shit for you to finally consider saying you were sorry.”
“I was going to apologize in the car,” Ryan insisted. “I was sitting there, trying to figure out how to put it all into words… and then you turned on the music.”
Now Simone felt like she’d been doused in cold brew. When she’d hung up with Matt in the car that day, she’d taken Ryan’s moody silence as a sign that he was annoyed with her—not that he was quietly toiling away on an apology.
“Last night,” he said, “I tried to bring it up again…”
She huffed out a sarcastic laugh. “When you accused me of being fake?”
“I know my delivery wasn’t great, but I was trying to say that you don’t always have to put up a positive front around me.”
Simone uncrossed her arms and transferred her hands to her hips. “Your delivery was abysmal, Ryan.”
“Look, I’m not all, I don’t know, sunflowery like you. You’re right about me: I’m fucking miserable and I don’t know how to get out of it.” At last, he made eye contact with Simone, and Simone knew with certainty that this wasn’t some kind of trap. This was a vulnerable man who needed help.
Not that it was on her to fix his problems. He was a grown-ass adult, and Simone had her own life to worry about.
But after speaking her mind so openly, she noticed she had a rush like a runner’s high.
Was this how it felt when you stopped trying to make everyone happy?
When you prioritized your own comfort? She wouldn’t have had the courage to test this new theory on someone she actually liked, but she had no qualms being honest with Ryan.
Her nemesis. Maybe they both had the potential to help each other.
There was also the fact that they still had to work together for the rest of the week, and getting along would certainly be easier than, well, whatever the hell they’d been doing until now.
What Simone was about to say was against her better judgment. She sighed, rested her palms on the table, leaned forward so she was closer to Ryan. God, how did anyone keep their scent so deliciously clean and woodsy after setting up a selfie station in a club that reeked of stale beer and sweat?
“I have a thought,” she said.
Ryan raised his eyebrows in another expression she’d never seen on him before. It looked a little like hope.
“D’you ski?”
“Yeah.”
“What level?”
“I’ve been doing it since I was a kid.”
Well then. It was the first thing they’d ever had in common besides working at the Rainbow Museum. Simone hoped that was a good sign, and that she wouldn’t come to regret this. She took a deep breath.
“Any interest in joining my guide group tomorrow?”