Chapter 12
TEN MORE HOURS.
Simone was sipping a coffee and eating a bagel from the hotel’s breakfast buffet while she waited for Ryan to come downstairs with his luggage.
Matilda and Thea’s engagement had had a profound effect on her, as had yesterday’s Pride parade.
The night had culminated in a party called the Snow Ball, where Simone had been empowered to strike up conversation with more women than she had all week.
She’d even managed to get a few people’s Instagram handles.
Unfortunately, she hadn’t managed to get Ryan out of her head, but that problem would be solved soon enough.
While she ate breakfast, she checked the news on her phone.
That’s when she read about the blizzard.
According to CP24, a storm was about to dump an ungodly amount of snow on the greater Toronto area.
She swore under her breath and checked her flight status.
It was still showing up as “on time,” although a lot could change between now and when they were scheduled to take off.
Then again, planes could still fly in weather, couldn’t they?
This was a Canadian airline. They had to be accustomed to operating in snow.
Simone decided she wouldn’t worry until she actually had a reason to.
Ryan came downstairs in the same gray crewneck he’d worn to pick her up from the airport. It was the cozy kind of sweatshirt that made you want to cuddle with the person wearing it. She wished he’d worn something else. Chain mail, perhaps.
“How’s it going?” he asked with a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. She had no doubt Ryan had sensed her pulling away in the past day.
“Hoping our flight’s still on time. Did you see there’s a blizzard hitting Toronto?”
He blinked. “Shit, really?”
“Yeah. It sounds pretty bad.”
In the car, Simone’s veins buzzed from the surprisingly strong hotel coffee, but she leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes, claiming to be tired from their late night at the Snow Ball.
“You mind if I put on some music?” Ryan asked.
“Go ahead,” she murmured, fake-sleepily.
“Any requests?”
“Whatever you feel like.”
“Maybe something depressing by Adele, for old times’ sake?”
Biting her tongue to keep from laughing at his joke, Simone kept her eyes shut.
She stayed like that, pretending to sleep, for the next two hours, missing the scenery she’d enjoyed so much on the trip up.
Oh well—at least she’d seen it once. Better to keep her eyes shut than to spend the drive talking to Ryan, who was liable to say any number of things that were inconveniently endearing.
An hour into the drive, her neck was screaming from the angle at which she was leaning against the window.
The chiropractor from the viral back-cracking videos she sometimes watched before bed would probably have a field day with her.
Oh well, Simone thought again. She’d picked up some good stretches in Pilates that she could try.
When the car stopped, she felt his hand on her arm, as gentle as a leaf landing on the surface of a stream. “Simone?” he whispered. “We’re here.”
“Oh!” She fluttered open her eyes and sat upright, shrugging his hand off and her parka on.
“You were out the whole time?”
She nodded. “I think this week’s finally catching up with me.”
As Ryan settled into a chair at the airport gate, Simone announced that she wanted to get some steps in between the two-hour drive and the five-hour flight.
She took her time buying water, snacks, and the latest issues of Women’s and Men’s Health, then wandered aimlessly around a bookstore, a tacky souvenir place, and a duty-free shop.
When she couldn’t smell another perfume sample without gagging, she finally made her way back to the gate.
While most passengers were hunched in their chairs looking at their phones, Ryan was sitting by the window, gazing out at the airplanes. She walked over to him, trying to ignore how good he looked in that goddamn sweatshirt.
Not long after she’d sat down, they both got text message notifications from the airline. Simone swore. Their flight was delayed by an hour.
“It’s never a good sign when they’re delaying it this far in advance,” Ryan said.
“Maybe it means they’re super on top of it,” Simone said, her voice laden with false hope.
As they waited at the gate, they tracked flights to and from Toronto to see if any were having luck. Simone had to admit the prognosis was looking grim, but on the bright side, they now had a way to pass the time that didn’t involve any more flirting.
The hours went by. Their flight was delayed three more times.
They took turns watching each other’s stuff as they went to the washroom and bought more snacks—all of which they ended up sharing on the duffel bag they’d converted into a makeshift picnic table.
Ryan was trying to split a granola bar in half without it crumbling into dust when they both received the message Simone had been dreading. Their flight was canceled.
“Oh no!” Simone cried.
“I had a feeling,” Ryan said.
“It says I’m rebooked on a flight that leaves tomorrow.”
“Me, too.”
Simone tipped her head back and groaned at the ceiling. “Ugh. This is so inconvenient.”
“No kidding.” He stretched his arms above his head and his legs out as far as they would go. The tip of his boot touched hers, and a bolt of lightning traveled up her leg to her heart. With a sigh, he reached for the granola bar again and held out half. “You want some?” he asked.
“Thanks.” Their fingers brushed when she grabbed it. “Well, I guess I’m gonna call around to see if any hotels have rooms available.”
“Same here,” Ryan said.
Simone put on her headphones. Nibbling her granola bar, she started reaching out to the nearest hotels.
A few had last-minute rooms available, but the prices were exorbitant.
Although she knew the Rainbow Museum had money, and that Frankie would reimburse her, she didn’t want to accidentally overstep a boundary, and five hundred dollars for a single night in Vancouver seemed like a lot.
Her boss would appreciate her keeping spending to a minimum, especially with what he’d already invested in this trip.
Another hour went by. It was late afternoon, and the sky outside the airport was already darkening.
She was supposed to be halfway to Toronto by now.
Finally, she spotted something: a deal on a halfway-decent hotel chain offered through her credit card company. She wanted to smash the button to book it, but there was a problem: Apparently, there was only one room left at that price, and she felt bad leaving Ryan out in the cold.
She took off her headphones. Ryan saw and did the same.
“Any luck?” she asked him.
“Everything’s so expensive,” he said, frowning. “I might have to camp out here.”
“Really?” Her chest twinged at the thought of Ryan sleeping on the airport floor. Who knew how much hair, dead skin, and potato chip dust was embedded in the grimy gray carpet?
“It’s just one night.” His gaze lingered on the used Band-Aid dangling from the seat cushion a few chairs down from Simone.
She tried not to picture him here as the moon rose in the sky. Who would watch his bags when he needed to use the washroom? Would he be able to sleep with the fluorescent lights overhead? The next thing Simone knew, the words were tumbling out of her mouth.
“I found an affordable room, but there’s only one left at this price,” she said. “Do you want to share it with me?”
SIMONE CHEWED HER BOTTOM LIP AND tapped her driver’s license on the surface of the check-in counter.
She tapped it three times, twirled it between her thumb and middle finger, then tapped it three times again.
The receptionist probably thought she was a married woman who was nervous to be there with her side piece.
Nope, just a bisexual woman nervous to be here with an incredibly sexy straight guy.
The receptionist punched some data into his computer. “So, Ms. Whitaker, we have you in a basic room with one queen bed. Is that correct?”
“Wait—there’s just one bed?”
“Is that not what you booked?”
She’d been so eager to snag the room that she’d missed the detail about the bed. “I’m curious, do you have any rooms with two beds instead of one?”
“Let me see…” He clicked around on his computer. “Aha. It looks like I could put you in our deluxe Captain’s Suite, but it would be an extra seven hundred dollars for the night.”
Simone balked at the price, and Ryan waved his hand. “It’s okay, I’ll just sleep on a cot. We can do a cot, right?”
The receptionist winced apologetically. “Unfortunately, our basic rooms aren’t large enough to accommodate a cot.”
“Ah,” Ryan replied. There was nary a drop of blood left in Simone’s face.
“Would you like to stick with the basic room?”
“Do you have any other basic rooms available? Like, if I wanted to book my own?” Ryan ventured.
Another apologetic wince. “Not at the basic level, I’m afraid.”
Ryan looked at Simone. “I’ll go back to the airport.”
“Are you kidding? I offered to share my room; you’re not—”
“I don’t mind. Seriously.”
“The dangling Band-Aid,” she said under her breath. Simone turned to the receptionist.
“We’ll take the basic room,” she announced. She turned back to Ryan and, in a lower voice, said, “We’ll figure something out.”
What that “something” would be, Simone had no idea.
“Fabulous.” The receptionist slid two plastic cards and two small slips of paper across the table. “Here are your room keys,” he said, “along with vouchers for twenty dollars off your order at Bar Burrard, since you booked through Capital One. You’ll find it just behind you.”