Chapter 25
IT WAS THE LAST DAY OF May, a Sunday, and Simone had just returned from her Loving Minds support group meeting, which had evolved into post-support-group brunch.
Full of love, hope, and an exceptional stack of pancakes, she dove back into the project she’d been working on for the past six weeks.
With the help of Lucy, Seth, and Glen and his team, she was throwing a charity karaoke night to benefit Loving Minds and kick off Pride Month in the best way possible.
She was emailing back Barista Joe, whose coffee shop was generously donating desserts, when her phone rang. It was Letty, the woman who owned Dorothy and Friends. Simone hit send on her email, then picked up the phone. “Hey, Letty.”
“Simone—hey.” Letty didn’t sound like her usual laid-back self. “We have a bit of a problem.”
Letty explained what had happened that morning.
She’d arrived at Dorothy and Friends to open the bar, turned on one of the taps, and noticed something strange about the water.
It was brown, and not in the way a single faucet sometimes coughed up a bit of rust from the old pipes.
It was brown in the sense that every single plumbing fixture in the dive bar—including the toilets—was spewing water that looked like a medium-roast coffee.
“I realized we’re probably dealing with a water main issue, so I called my plumber, and she’s on her way.
I figured I should let you know as soon as possible, since we’re supposed to be hosting your event tomorrow night. ”
“Supposed to be”? Simone didn’t like the sound of that. “How long do you think it’ll take to fix?” she asked Letty.
“I’ll have a better idea once the plumber gets here… but you might want to start thinking about potential contingency plans.”
“What kind of contingency plans?”
There was a long pause on Letty’s end, during which, Simone googled “how long do water main breaks take to fix.” She scanned the top result: “A simple water main repair can be completed in six to eight hours, but large or complicated repairs may take several days to a week.” No, no, no, no, NO.
Simone’s heart shot into her throat as Letty finally answered: “Contingency plans either for rescheduling the event or finding a different venue. I’m so sorry, Simone. ”
“Okay,” she said numbly, then remembered Letty was having just as bad a day as she was. “I’m sorry you have to deal with this, too.”
“I’ll update you as soon as she checks it out, but again, I just wanted to keep you in the loop.”
“Sounds good,” she said before hanging up, even though everything sounded very, very bad.
For the past six weeks, she’d spent nearly every minute of her spare time planning this charity event to help queer Torontonians access mental health care.
She’d come up with the karaoke night concept; she’d booked the venue; she’d found local businesses to donate food and prizes; and she’d developed a whole marketing plan to get the word out.
Over a hundred people had RSVP’d. She couldn’t reschedule the event this last-minute.
It was Pride Month, and people were busy.
Plus, she knew for a fact—from the blissfully ignorant emails she’d just been exchanging with Barista Joe—that her donated food was already being prepared.
If she postponed the event, she could lose sponsors.
Simone felt like Ryan would know something about water main breaks.
Even if he couldn’t personally fix it, he could at least give her a helpful prognosis.
But Ryan still hadn’t reached out since the breakup, and Simone certainly hadn’t reached out to him.
Not even to try and return his clothes, which annoyingly still smelled like him.
As for the fundraiser, she would just have to look into finding another venue. That could hold over a hundred people. And support a karaoke machine… which she would also have to buy. All with one day’s notice.
Simone saw the past six weeks of her life sliding down the drain.
Sure, she’d also been spending her working hours planning the Queer Makeover Extravaganza, which was slated for the following weekend, but her heart wasn’t tied to Frankie’s Pride-themed money grab the way it was tied to this charity event she’d put together.
With a sickening mix of panic and dread, Simone messaged her group text with Lucy, Seth, and Glen, relaying the bad news about the water main break at Dorothy and Friends.
They all agreed their best course of action was to immediately start asking around about alternate venue possibilities.
Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that. Hopefully, it would turn out to be the simple kind of water main break you could fix in six to eight hours, and not the extremely rude kind that took several days to a week.
Letty called back later that afternoon with the verdict. “It’s gonna take several days,” she said. “Maybe even a week.”
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO.
They wished each other good luck and hung up.
Simone, who was sitting on the couch, grabbed the pink velvet throw pillow she still hadn’t replaced and screamed into it for old time’s sake.
Except today, she allowed herself no more than a minute to wallow in despair before grabbing her phone again, alerting the group text, and getting to work.
They drafted a message explaining their plight, which they posted on social media and sent to anyone in their contact lists who might be able to help, or at least point them in the right direction.
It wasn’t long before Glen heard back from an old classmate with a huge backyard, and Lucy got a lead from her cousin who worked at a progressive Jewish community center.
They were briefly hopeful, until they found out the old classmate lived close to an hour outside the city—not ideal—and the Jewish community center had a strict maximum capacity of a hundred people, which would mean they’d have to turn away guests who’d already RSVP’d yes.
Also not ideal. Simone half wondered if Frankie would grow a heart and offer them space in the Rainbow Museum, but her boss remained silent.
Simone and Seth decamped to Lucy’s, where they’d set up a war room at the kitchen table.
Holly supplied them with tea and snacks while they desperately sent messages and made phone calls.
Cheddar, Gouda, and Blue wandered beneath them, rubbing their furry faces against their ankles as if for good luck, but by early evening, it was starting to seem like all the luck in the world wouldn’t solve their problem.
They had no more leads. It didn’t help that it was now Sunday night, and a lot of businesses were closed until tomorrow.
“Just throwing this out there: Maybe we should just do it in Glen’s friend’s backyard,” Seth ventured.
“Maybe people won’t mind driving to Ajax…
on a Monday night… to sing karaoke in some guy’s backyard…
okay, fuck, nobody in the world is gonna want to do that.
” With a groan, he scooped up another handful of the pretzels he’d been stress-eating.
Lucy held up her phone to show them the weather app. “It’s also supposed to rain in Ajax tomorrow.”
“We’re so screwed.” Simone flopped over and put her forehead on the table, her curls going everywhere.
They’d have to email their sponsors and say thanks but no thanks.
Then they’d have to email everyone who’d RSVP’d, saying the event had been postponed indefinitely, and they were very sorry, and they hoped people would still find it in their hearts to donate to Loving Minds.
How incredibly disappointing. How incredibly humiliating.
“What even is a water main?” Seth grumbled. “Why do you only ever hear about them breaking? What good are they doing for the world?”
Partway through his grumbling, Simone’s phone rang. She lifted her head. The call was from a Toronto number she didn’t have in her contacts. It didn’t look familiar, either. Normally, she’d assume a call like this was spam, but tonight she was willing to risk it. She picked up. “Hello?”
“Hey! Um—is that Simone?”
The man’s voice was stilted. She recognized it, but couldn’t quite place it. “This is Simone—who’s this?”
“It’s Dom.”
“Dom!” Simone instantly went from dead to alert, but also a little flustered. She hadn’t heard from him since the breakup.
“I, um—I saw you’re in need of a venue. And that it’s urgent.”
The pounding of her pulse intensified. She waved to get Seth and Lucy’s attention.
“Yes, but more like extremely urgent,” she replied, fumbling to put him on speakerphone.
“It would be for tomorrow night, at seven, for like a hundred and fifty people? The bar in the Village where we were supposed to host our Pride fundraiser had a water main break.”
“Oh, damn.”
“It’s a mess.” Simone exchanged wide-eyed, desperate looks with Seth and Lucy, who were currently clutching each other’s hands like two finalists at a beauty pageant.
“So, yeah. The reason I called”—they all leaned closer to the phone—“was to see if you wanted to host your event at the Common Loon. We’re usually closed on Mondays, but I’d be down to open up and let you—”
He hadn’t even finished speaking before Simone screamed, “YES!” and started thanking him profusely. Seth and Lucy shrieked with glee, which made the cats bolt from the kitchen in terror, and Holly went chasing after them, shouting their names.
“What did you say?” Dom asked Simone. “It just got very loud on your end.”
“Quiet,” Simone hissed at her friends, but her grin was as wide as theirs. “I said thank you, and we would absolutely love that so much. You have no idea. Dom, thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said casually. “Oh, no—Loonie, get out of there! That was my water cup. Bad brewery cat. Sorry, you know how Loonie loves making himself at home on the bar.”
Simone’s smile faltered. For a second there, it had felt like old times. “Yes, I’m well aware.”
Dom cleared his throat. “Anyway, I’m just about to close up for the night. Can I call you back when I’m home to talk logistics?”
“Of course,” Simone said. She unleashed a string of thank-yous before they said goodbye.
The moment she ended the call, she, Seth, and Lucy leapt to their feet and cheered.
Holly skipped back into the room doing a celebratory dance with the grumpy-looking cat she was holding in the air.
When they finally calmed down, they called Glen to deliver the good news, and proceeded to freak out all over again.
Which was why it wasn’t until later, when Simone was driving home and waiting at a red light, that she thought about Dom’s phone call and realized something that made her breath catch in her throat.
“I saw you’re in need of a venue. And that it’s urgent,” Dom had said.
But Dom didn’t have Instagram. He paid one of his bartenders to manage the Common Loon’s account, but it wasn’t as though that person would have seen her post and sent it to Dom.
Wasn’t there only one mutual friend between them?
Only one person who could have seen her plea on Instagram, passed it along to Dom, and given him Simone’s number?
There was a part of her that still hoped they could make up. It was the same part of her that still reached for his T-shirt underneath the bed to smell it every so often. Maybe sending the post to Dom was Ryan’s way of signaling that he was ready to try again, too.
But she refused to get her hopes up. As far as she knew, Ryan was still irrationally angry at her.
The light turned green. She shook off the ridiculous thought and hit the gas.