Chapter 21
SIMONE PACED ON THE SIDEWALK AS she waited for the eastbound Queen streetcar, whispering the truth that had dawned on her as she’d pulled away from Bree.
“I love Ryan. I… love… Ryan.” She even loved the way it sounded, loved the way it felt as it passed through her lips.
She knew she needed to take the same advice she’d just given Bree. She had to tell him how she felt.
She boarded the streetcar and grabbed a pole by an empty chair.
She was too antsy to sit. As they trundled east, she took out her phone and pulled up Ryan’s number.
They were supposed to be no-contact, but she figured that didn’t matter now that she knew exactly what she wanted.
She would see if he was free to meet up. Then she would tell him how she felt.
The phone rang… and rang… and rang. It dawned on Simone that maybe Ryan didn’t want her—that he’d used their time apart to reach the opposite conclusion. Simone was about to give up when she finally heard the deep rumble of his voice. “Simone?”
“Ryan.”
“Are you okay?”
Through the phone, she heard the ticking of a turn signal. Ryan must have been in his truck. What if he was driving up to Barrie? What if he wasn’t free to meet up all weekend?
“I love you,” she blurted out. “I don’t need another week to think about it. I love you and I want to be with you and I—”
Ryan cut her off mid-sentence. “Where are you right now?”
“On the streetcar. I’ll be home in about fifteen.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
Ryan must have been downtown already, because Simone had only just taken off her shoes when there was a knock on her apartment door.
The urgent rap sent her heart shooting into her throat, and she lunged for the handle like it was her husband returning from war.
She yanked open the door, and there he was—all six glorious feet and two inches of him—dressed in that gray crewneck that made her ache to cozy up with him on a normal day.
Tonight, she couldn’t keep her hands off him for another second.
She didn’t even wait to say hello. Still in her jacket, Simone leapt into Ryan’s arms, wrapped her legs around his waist, and pressed her lips against his, like it was their very first kiss in Vancouver.
In a way, this felt like a first kiss, too.
He squeezed her ass and pulled her close, anchoring her to his body.
Normally, he was a strict no-shoes-in-the-house sort of person, but he could apparently make an exception for carrying her into the kitchen in his work boots and setting her down on the peninsula.
Simone didn’t want to stop kissing him, but she had to say it in person, so she pulled back and looked into his eyes—gray and green, like moss on a rock.
“I love you,” she said, the words electrifying every cell in her body.
“I love you, too,” he said back.
They kissed some more, the heat of Ryan’s tongue matched only by the heat between Simone’s legs.
Maybe today, she’d finally take him inside her.
She shifted to the very edge of the countertop, craving as much contact between their bodies as she could get.
She wriggled out of her jacket, too, so Ryan could run his hands along the contours of her body in her tight black dress.
As he teasingly traced the sides of her breasts, Simone could feel his erection straining against his jeans.
“I know we should probably be talking,” he whispered in her ear, sending shivers down her spine, “but I really, really want to make you come right now.”
She nodded desperately, moaned the word “Please.”
“One sec.” While Ryan washed his hands in the kitchen sink, Simone attempted to shimmy out of her nylons without getting off the counter.
Ryan saw her struggling and darted over.
“Lemme help you.” Simone lifted herself up so Ryan could roll the nylons over the curve of her ass and down her legs.
He moved slowly, like he was savoring every newly revealed inch of her skin.
“Jesus. I didn’t know I had a thing for stockings until right now. ”
She smirked. “Oh yeah?”
“I don’t think I’ve seen you wear them before.” He bent and kissed her bare inner thigh, sending a shiver down her spine. “Where were you tonight, dressed up like this?”
Simone froze. She reminded herself for the millionth time that she hadn’t done anything wrong by meeting up with Bree.
It still felt that way, though—because she loved him.
And she didn’t want to hurt him. But she didn’t want to lie to him, either.
Doing everything in her power to keep her voice from wavering, she said: “I met up with Bree.”
Ryan froze, too. He was kneeling on the tile floor, trailing kisses down Simone’s calf. Her skin was sensitive there, and she could feel the exact moment when his lips stiffened, then drew back. “Bree?”
“Yeah.”
“Which Bree?”
There was only one Bree and they both knew it.
“Bree Park. The woman I sort of dated last year.” The countertop under Simone’s bare ass cheeks felt unbearably cold all of a sudden.
Her nylons were still around her ankles, binding them together.
Sensing that she and Ryan weren’t going back to sex anytime soon, Simone slid off the counter and tugged them back up.
She did it clumsily, and her thumbnail pierced the fabric, creating a hole and a massive run up her shin. She swore under her breath.
Meanwhile, Ryan sat back on his heels, a deep crease down the center of his brow.
“You met up with Bree.” He didn’t phrase it as a question, but rather as a statement he was still trying to process.
Simone didn’t say anything as Ryan slowly got to his feet.
His eyes were pointed at the floor, but they had a faraway look to them.
With a sickening lurch, she imagined the worst-case scenarios that might be playing through his mind.
Scenarios as bad as what happened with Victoria and Travis.
“It really wasn’t a big deal,” she said quietly.
He walked out of the kitchen and into the living room with no indication of having heard her.
Panicked, she followed in his wake, looking pathetic in her ripped nylons. “Ryan?”
He stopped walking when he reached the coffee table. Folded his hands behind his neck. Seemed to stare out the window at the pitch-black sky for a long time without breathing.
“Ryan, say something.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m trying not to freak out.”
“Ryan.”
When he finally turned around, his eyes were glassy. She’d known that it would be hard to tell him the truth, but she hadn’t predicted that it would be this hard. “Why did you meet up with her?”
Simone took a deep, steadying breath. “She reached out a few weeks ago after seeing my coming-out post—”
“You’ve been messaging her for a few weeks?!”
“No!” she cried. “No. I didn’t even reply to her until the other day—when we were on a break.”
“Because you wanted to date her instead?”
“No!” she cried again. He hadn’t even let her finish explaining. “She saw my coming-out post and asked if I wanted to catch up.”
His wounded eyes scanned her little black dress, her now-ripped nylons. “You were on a date tonight. With your ex.”
“I was not. But even if I had been—Ryan, we decided together to officially break up for two weeks, so I don’t need to justify who I saw during that period.” Her panic was morphing into frustration.
“Did anything happen?” he asked.
Simone answered him honestly. “After I apologized for the way I treated her last year, there was a point where she was leaning in to kiss me, but before anything happened, I realized the only person I love—the only person in the world I want to be with—is you.”
He didn’t speak, letting a bone-deep iciness pass between them instead. Simone could tell right away that her words had meant nothing to him—that he’d effectively stopped listening as soon as she’d said the word kiss.
“Fuck,” he growled, pinching the bridge of nose as tears finally sprang from his eyes. He swore again, louder this time, and spun around to face the window.
“Ryan, listen to me—”
“Oh, I’m listening.” His harsh, sarcastic tone made Simone want to scream and cry at the same time. It was his Mr. Actual Hard Work voice—the voice of someone who wanted absolutely nothing to do with her, despite having declared his love for her mere minutes ago.
She gathered whatever strength she had left and continued. “I didn’t do anything wrong, Ryan. I’m not Victoria. I’m not Trav—”
“Will you stop talking about them?”
“I don’t know what you want me to say right now!
” She threw her arms up in the air. Now she was screaming and crying at the same time.
“I don’t know what you want from me at all.
When I act like everything’s all sunshine and rainbows, it makes you miserable, but when I’m totally honest with you—like right now—you’re miserable, too. I can’t win. It’s not fair.”
Ryan sank into the armchair, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.
A part of her wanted to go over there and comfort him, but a larger part didn’t want to take one step closer to a man who might never be able to trust her.
She’d dated insecure men before: men who always wanted to know who she was texting, and talking to, and hanging out with.
She didn’t want to repeat those experiences with Ryan.
With a lightning bolt of clarity, she remembered something else—something Lucy had helped her realize that night at the Rainbow Museum’s launch party: that queerness was all about freedom.
“I feel trapped,” she murmured, more to herself than to Ryan.
He glanced up at the sound of her voice. “What?”
“I said I feel trapped.” Simone crossed her arms and backed farther away from him.
Ryan watched, his face crumpling—but then it hardened, like water becoming ice. Gripping the armrests, he abruptly pushed himself to standing. “If that’s how you feel, I’ll leave. You never have to see me again.”
“Ryan, wait. I never said I—”
“You said I make you feel trapped.”
“No, I didn’t say you make me feel trapped. I said I feel trapped, and I meant right now, in this argument. You’re not being rational.”
“How am I supposed to be rational when I find out and you and your ex—”
“—did nothing wrong, Ryan. You have trust issues! And if we’re ever gonna make this work, you need to deal with them. I know you’ve been talking to Dom, and Dom’s great, but I feel like you might need a little extra support…”
Ryan narrowed his eyes at Simone. “I know what you’re doing.”
“What am I doing?”
“You want this break to go on longer so you can keep hooking up with your ex.”
Simone jerked her head back. “Are you kidding me right now? If that’s what you think, then you don’t understand me at all. I’m not over here trying to ‘hook up with my ex.’ I met up with her because I was genuinely struggling with my own identity.”
“Oh, sure.”
“I’m not bullshitting you, Ryan. You don’t know what it’s like to be bi. You just don’t.”
“I know what it’s like to be loyal to someone you love.”
She was starting to second-guess whether she was actually in love with the man standing before her. How had she been so sure of it less than an hour ago? Their passionate reunion seemed like it had happened in another lifetime, to different people.
“You don’t love me,” Ryan muttered. When Simone didn’t respond right away, he let out a harsh laugh, like the gust of an ice storm. “No one fucking does.”
She thought about countering the absurd claim, but what good would it do to keep arguing?
“There you go,” scoffed Ryan, who’d seemingly registered her silence. “Glad we’re finally on the same page about something.” He patted his pockets, checking for his wallet and keys. “I’m gonna leave,” he said, shattering every piece of her already-shattered heart before he made for the door.
He was gone before she could say goodbye. He hadn’t even taken his boots off when he’d carried her into the kitchen.
When Ryan was gone, and she was alone in the quiet apartment, she collapsed onto the couch and sobbed.
She should probably get a new throw pillow, given how much she’d been using the current one as a Kleenex lately.
Then, when she’d run out of tears, she went to her bag and took out her phone to message Lucy, who always knew what to say when Simone was falling apart.
The first thing she saw when she tapped the screen was a message from Bree.
It was a slightly blurry selfie of her and a gorgeous bronze-skinned woman, both of them grinning deliriously, with splotches around their eyes like they’d been crying happy tears.
Simone read the message underneath: “We’re doing long-distance!
!! Thank you for helping me see the light!
!!” Simone hearted the message, but really, she wanted to throw her phone through the wall.