Chapter 9
“HEY THERE! ANY CHANCE I CAN interest you in a free tote bag?”
Simone had just wandered over to a cluster of people at the selfie station who were waiting for their pictures to print.
She was particularly interested in the purple-haired woman on the edge of the group, whose possibly homemade fairy wings had caught Simone’s eye from the moment she’d joined the line.
The woman didn’t seem to have heard her. Simone took a deep breath, rolled back her shoulders, and said at double the volume: “Hey there! Want a free tote bag?”
Visibly startled, the woman turned to Simone with raised eyebrows. Great: Simone had just scared the shit out of her. Way to make a winning first impression. She was almost as bad as Ryan. “Sorry, what did you say?” the woman yelled, straining to make herself heard over the thumping music.
“I was asking if you wanted a tote bag from the Rainbow Museum. We’re an immersive experience in Toronto dedicated to celebrating, amplifying, and giving back to the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. We’re one of the sponsors of Whistler Pride.”
“Oh! Cool!”
It was unclear whether she’d heard anything Simone had actually said. Simone thrust a tote bag at the woman’s chest. She accepted it reluctantly.
“You should come check us out the next time you’re in Toronto,” Simone yelled.
“Totally!” The woman flashed her a pinched smile before turning back to her friends, and Simone backed away, her cheeks blazing.
Why had she thought her Rainbow Museum marketing spiel would be the best way to win over a cute stranger?
As she watched the woman and her pretty purple hair disappear onto the dance floor without so much as a glance in her direction, Simone was forced to confront a painful truth: Now that she was out, she had absolutely no idea how to flirt with women.
Flirting with men, as a woman, came easy to Simone.
A lot of the time, you just had to exist in their general vicinity.
But if that was how women tried to flirt with each other, they’d be standing around like bowling pins, waiting to be knocked over by a ball that would never come.
Simone figured she’d have to take some sort of action if she wanted to flirt with women, but she didn’t want to come off like the men who sent her winky faces on dating apps or eye-fucked her in bars—the men who made her feel like a juicy slab of meat in front of a hungry dog.
That said, she couldn’t keep things too PG, either, because then she’d end up repeating what she’d done with the tote-bag girl.
She closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips into her temples, wishing there had been more queer love stories for her to study in the movies and TV shows she’d watched growing up.
She felt so stupid, so awkward, like at the party in high school when she French-kissed someone for the first time, and the hot South African exchange student pulled back and said, “Simone, you’re making out with my nose. ”
“Are you okay?” It was Ryan. When Simone opened her eyes, she found him peering at her with concern.
“I’m terrible at flirting with women,” she groaned.
“Everyone sucks at first,” he replied. “You just have to practice with more people.” He turned to the writhing mass of bodies on the dance floor.
Simone could still feel the sting of the woman’s tight smile after she’d pitched her on the Rainbow Museum.
“I don’t know if I can talk to anyone else tonight.
It’s too stressful. Uggghhh.” She felt so behind, being twenty-nine years old and having no clue what she was doing.
She was a tragic Victorian spinster. She suddenly felt the urge to cry, and pinched the bridge of her nose to stem the tears.
“Hey, it’s okay. This stuff takes time.”
“I don’t want to be in my thirties and still figuring out how to flirt,” Simone said, distressed.
“Okay, well, what if you practiced on me?”
“What do you mean?”
“Pretend I’m a woman you’re flirting with.”
“Seriously?” she asked.
“Only if you want to.”
She didn’t. Not with him. But she also desperately wanted to get better at this. “All right,” she said tentatively.
“Okay, then go for it.”
“You’re the best wingman ever,” she said, reinforcing their strictly platonic relationship.
“I’m not your wingman. I’m a cute girl at the bar.” Ryan waved his hand over his face, miming a transformation.
Simone snorted. This was totally ridiculous, but she did need the help, and it was definitely more fun to be laughing with Ryan than spiraling about her lack of romantic skills. “Hi,” she said sweetly. Then she winced. “Oh God, I don’t even know how to start besides saying hello.”
“Maybe you could compliment her—I mean, me,” Ryan stammered, which made both of them laugh. She liked the way his sounded: deep and rich, like dark chocolate.
“Okay.” Simone shook out her shoulders and slipped back into character. “Hi! I really like your… flannel?”
They both stifled another laugh at how absurd they were being. Ryan didn’t bother trying to alter his voice when he replied to Simone. “You’re into it? I know it’s a little out of place at a club, but I tried to pack light.”
“The green and gray match your eyes.”
Ryan broke character as a genuine grin appeared on his face. “Whoa, Simone, that was actually a good line.”
“Was it, though?” She remembered the way she’d misread Margot’s signals the other night. “I feel like some women would say the same thing to their friends.”
Ryan stroked his chin. “Hmmm. Maybe it’s how you say it.”
Simone dropped into a deep, sultry voice. “The green and gray match your eyes.”
They both erupted in laughter again. Ryan fought to regain his composure. “Right, so you totally could do whatever that was…”
“I’ll be sure to only talk in that voice from now on.”
“… or,” he went on, “you could say the same thing, but make it a little more intimate—like, with your eyes.” He angled himself so he was facing her head-on and fixed her with a determined gaze. It cracked her open and sent the air whooshing from her chest.
She tried not to let her reaction show on her face. They were just joking around.
“Then,” he said, “you could touch her arm, like this.” If not for the calluses on his fingers, she might not have felt his hand at all; that was how gently he grazed her elbow.
Shivers traveled up and down Simone’s arm.
He kept his eyes on hers as he repeated her initial line back to her. “I really like your flannel.”
Simone was fairly certain that never in the history of humankind had anyone made flannel sound so goddamn sexy.
It was somehow even sexier that he hadn’t actually been trying to seduce her, as far as she knew, but rather to genuinely help her embrace this new side of herself. Ryan was just that hot naturally.
“Thank you,” she breathed, forgetting who was playing which role at this point.
She felt heat and pressure building up inside of her, the same as she had while she’d watched him onstage at drag bingo.
A wild thought crossed her mind that she could just give in to the tugging in her core, could let herself close the gap and kiss him in that flannel shirt that really did match the colors of his eyes.
“Do you want to try?” Ryan asked.
Her heart skipped several beats before she realized what he’d actually meant: that she should try delivering a compliment again.
Right. Stay on task, Whitaker. She shook out her shoulders and regained her focus—only to have it slip away again the moment she touched his arm.
“I really like your flannel.” She didn’t have the slightest urge to laugh as they replayed their previous exchange.
“You’re into it? I know it’s a little out of place at a club.”
“The colors bring out your eyes.”
He fixed her with that determined gaze again—then blinked. “Sorry.”
“What is it?”
“Your eyes. They’re stunning.”
Was he saying that to keep the scene going, or did he really mean it? “They’re just plain brown,” she said.
“Plain?” He raised his eyebrows. “No. They’re like walnut. Chocolate brown with the tiniest hint of purple.”
“Purple?”
“Yes.”
“No one’s ever said that before.”
“Then no one’s looked closely enough.”
A stranger’s voice sliced through the silence that followed. “Excuse me? Is there a way to get more copies of our photos?”
A guest was calling to them from the printer, while their friend inspected the buttons on the side of the machine.
Simone and Ryan blinked at each other as though they were both coming out of a trance.
Ryan was the first to pull himself together, striding to the pair of guests and helping them print more copies.
Simone shook her head to clear it of the ridiculous idea she’d had a few seconds ago.
The idea that she should kiss Ryan Foley, when one of her goals in coming to Whistler was to kiss more women.
Ryan slowly wandered back to Simone. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Got that sorted.”
“Thanks,” she said, trying not to look at his eyes, his lips. It was all too dangerously tempting.
He paused. “Did you want to keep practicing?”
She didn’t want to make things awkward with a vehement no, but she needed to turn her attention back to the women in the room. “I super appreciate it, but I’m not sure I’ll actually get better at flirting with women unless I do it for real, you know?”
“Yeah, totally.”
She thought she detected a hollowness in his voice, but then again, he was Ryan: notoriously moody.
With that, Simone crossed her arms and scanned the room for someone else who made her heart skip a beat.