Chapter 22 #2
She looked up to make sure no one was waiting to claim the conference room.
She wanted to sit here, alone, until she was confident that she wasn’t about to burst into tears.
One of the promotional graphics for the event was still blown up on the monitor.
Though her point about the event title hadn’t occurred to her until she’d been put on the spot, she still stood by it.
Not everyone had reclaimed the word queer, and sure, while younger people accounted for the vast majority of their paying guests, she still thought they should be as inclusive as possible, especially given how hard the previous generations had fought for 2SLGBTQIA+ rights.
The Brunswick Four and the Operation Soap protesters in Toronto; the Stonewall Uprising leaders in New York City; all the HIV/AIDS activists—the Rainbow Museum never would have existed without the very people Frankie had just dismissed.
Simone was getting more and more upset about this, when she realized that Frankie hadn’t remembered to disconnect his laptop from the conference room monitor.
She could see his cursor moving around. He must have just gotten back to his office.
She watched as he closed the presentation deck and opened Slack.
Oh no. As upset as she was with her boss, she still felt uncomfortable spying on his private conversations.
She scrambled to reach the iPad in the middle of the table so she could disconnect Frankie from the display.
How is it that we can shoot rockets into space, and yet we can’t make conference room technology that doesn’t require a PhD in electrical engineering to figure out?
She was jabbing the iPad and watching the monitor when suddenly, she froze.
Her own name had just appeared on the screen…
in a private conversation between Frankie and Seth.
Frankie: Ummm can we talk about Simone trying to change the event name lol
Frankie: Don’t tell me I’m not allowed to use the word queer when you’ve been out for like 5 minutes
Frankie: and you’re dating a guy lmao
Frankie: girl, you are basically straight
Seth: bv
Seth: I think they broke up though
Frankie: RIP
Frankie: whatever, she’s still bi, aka 50% straight
Seth:
Simone watched the conversation play out, the blood rushing from her head.
Her boss and one of her new best friends—they were both making fun of her behind her back.
She ran over to the monitor, groped around back for anything that felt like a power button.
At last, she found it. She quickly snapped a photo of the screen, then turned it off.
The monitor mercifully went black, but her body still trembled with shock.
She looked out at the office, wondering what she should do—where she should go.
Certainly not back to her desk, where Seth would be sitting right next to her.
She could tell Lucy what happened, but Lucy was dealing with her own Frankie-related issues today.
Nina was there too, but the thought of approaching her made Simone feel embarrassed.
What if she secretly harbored the same feelings as Seth? What if everyone did?
So much for trying not to cry. As pressure mounted behind her eyes, she grabbed her laptop and darted to her desk, head down.
Without a word to Seth, she deposited her computer, snatched her jacket off the back of her chair, and bolted for the elevator.
She needed space. Fresh air. Possibly a whole new life.
Simone stumbled outside, randomly picked a direction, and walked.
She tried to appreciate that it was finally feeling like spring in Toronto.
The trees had leaves again, and the air smelled faintly of grass and dirt and other things that came from the earth.
The temperature was cold in the shade but warm in the sun.
She couldn’t have cared less about the weather. She was still crying.
She walked past the spot on the sidewalk where the strangers had made fun of her for kissing Ryan.
She thought she’d been ashamed then, but that was nothing compared to the vortex of emotions she felt after seeing her boss’s words on the monitor.
With all his press appearances in recent months, Frankie had become a recognizable figure in Toronto’s queer community.
Something of a leader, even. And he thought of Simone as a fraud.
She walked down Church Street, past Dorothy and Friends, the dive bar where she’d gone to karaoke night with her colleagues.
Where she’d danced onstage to “Mamma Mia” with Seth—back when she thought Seth was her real friend—and Lucy had gotten strangers at the bar to chant her name.
She remembered the electrifying feeling of fitting in for the first time in her life.
Now she had the sickening hunch that everyone in her newfound community saw her the same way Frankie did: as a queer imposter.
Even Lucy probably thought so. Simone replayed their stilted interaction from earlier, when Lucy had seemed to be distracted by work.
What if the real reason for her standoffishness hadn’t been Frankie, but Simone?
What if on Friday night, on the other end of the phone, Lucy had secretly been rolling her eyes at the supposedly queer woman who couldn’t stop sobbing over a guy?
She imagined what Lucy must have told Holly when she’d gotten off the phone.
Oh God, they were still friendly with Erica, too.
The three of them had probably sat in a knitting circle, making pet sweaters and talking about how annoying that queer wannabe Simone Whitaker was.
She walked past the Toronto Metropolitan University campus, all the way down to Queen Street, where she paused at the corner.
The Rainbow Museum was back the way she’d come, but the thought of returning to the office today was unbearable.
Instead, she turned left, toward Leslieville.
She could do her job from her personal laptop.
If Frankie had an issue with her working from home, that was fine. He was already fed up with her.
Lately, it seemed like everyone was: Frankie, Seth, Lucy, probably the rest of her colleagues, her mother, maybe her father, too, since he bore the brunt of Kathy’s moods.
And then there was Ryan, who’d stormed angrily out of her apartment Friday night, after an argument that had been worse than any of the ones they’d had when they were still nemeses.
She’d blamed their fight on his trust issues, but what the hell did she know?
Maybe Simone had been the problem all along, the way she’d always been the problem with Bree.
The way she’d always been the problem in every goddamn relationship in her life.
She used to wish for a seemingly simpler life as a lesbian.
Now she wished for a life where she was straight—not closeted, but really and truly straight, where she could have Ryan, but none of the weird identity issues that came with being bi.
She crossed the bridge over the Don River, remembering the split second she’d once contemplated how it would feel to let the water claim her.
That had been the day she’d come out, after her phone call with Kathy.
Three months later, why did she still feel hopeless?
This wasn’t how coming out was supposed to work.
Somehow, she’d screwed up, and the worst part was that she didn’t even know where, which meant she had no idea how to fix what was wrong.
Lucy had tried teaching her to knit one time: a basic square, with thirty stitches per row.
Simone thought she’d gotten the hang of it, until she realized her square looked more like a lumpy trapezoid.
Because she couldn’t pinpoint where the problem was, the only way to fix her square was to unravel the whole thing.
That’s what Simone was doing now. Unraveling.
She picked up her pace as she entered Leslieville, hoping to make it back home before she fully came apart.