See You at the Summit
Autor Jordyn Tayloren Limba Engleză Paperback – 12 mar 2026
“There are so many queer readers who need this story and See You at the Summit delivers with heart and heat.” —Alison Cochrun
A heartfelt and sexy romance novel following one bi woman’s messy journey through coming out—and reluctantly falling for a straight man. From the USA TODAY bestselling author of Wicked Darlings.
Girl comes out as bi. Girl falls for a straight guy.
Simone Whittaker has spent the first three decades of her life pretending to be straight. But when the girl she never dared call her girlfriend walks away, she decides she’s done living in fear. Her uptight parents don’t take the news well, but a viral coming-out post and a new job at Toronto’s Rainbow Museum offer a fresh start—and a crash course in queer adulthood.
That is, until her first day of work, when Simone ruins a project designed by Ryan Foley—the museum’s gruff and annoyingly hot carpenter—earning her the top spot on his enemies list. When they’re forced to take a work trip to the Whistler Pride and Ski Festival together, Simone vows not to let a grumpy straight guy ruin her first Pride. But Ryan keeps surprising her—thoughtful, vulnerable, and impossible to ignore. As sparks fly on chairlifts and by crackling fires, one snowstorm—and one bed—changes everything.
Back in Toronto, however, reality sets in. Dating a guy—and being mistaken for straight—weren’t exactly part of Simone’s coming-out plan. As the pressure builds between the identity she’s just beginning to explore and the relationship that wasn’t supposed to happen, she starts to wonder: What if claiming one part of herself means erasing the other?
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781668203293
ISBN-10: 1668203294
Pagini: 352
Ilustrații: 1 B&W author photo
Dimensiuni: 135 x 210 x 18 mm
Greutate: 0.25 kg
Editura: Gallery Books
Colecția Gallery Books
ISBN-10: 1668203294
Pagini: 352
Ilustrații: 1 B&W author photo
Dimensiuni: 135 x 210 x 18 mm
Greutate: 0.25 kg
Editura: Gallery Books
Colecția Gallery Books
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Notă biografică
Jordyn Taylor is the award-winning and USA TODAY bestselling author of the young adult novels The Paper Girl of Paris, Wicked Darlings, Don’t Breathe a Word, and The Revenge Game. She is a former executive editor at Men’s Health and an adjunct professor of journalism at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Jordyn was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, and now lives in New York. See You at the Summit is her adult debut.
Extras
Chapter 1CHAPTER 1
SIMONE FELT LIKE HER CHEST WAS going to implode from the enormity of what she’d just posted on the internet. Was it possible to die of sheer panic? She could have googled it, except that would mean looking at her phone, and that would only increase her chances of a panic-induced death, if such a thing were indeed possible. Also, her fingers were frozen.
She could have taken the streetcar to the Queen subway station. Realistically, she should have taken the streetcar, if only to avoid showing up to work on her first day looking like she’d just come off a ski run. But on this particular morning, she hadn’t wanted to cram herself in with other commuters any more than she needed to. Too claustrophobic.
Tugging the zipper of her parka as high as it would go, she leaned into the frigid January wind whipping down Queen Street. The icy gusts had already frozen her damp ginger curls solid, and while the cold definitely stung, it wasn’t the only reason her eyes were watering.
Simone pictured her parents learning the news. They were currently doing the snowbird thing and spending the winter at their condo on Florida’s Gulf Coast. She had just been down there over the holidays with them, as well as her two older brothers and her brothers’ wives and children. Simone, who was turning thirty this year, had been the only unpartnered adult—as her mother had pointed out numerous times.
Right now, Kathy Whitaker was probably perched on her balcony in a matching loungewear set, sipping green tea with lemon and nibbling a slice of toast with a translucently thin layer of cream cheese. Simone’s recently retired father, George, was likely on the driving range already, warming up for today’s round of golf with his buddies. George didn’t have an Instagram account and could barely be counted on to see text messages, so he’d hear Simone’s news through Kathy, who perused the app daily to keep tabs on her social circle. When Kathy saw the post, she’d be absolutely mortified, but the only signs of her disapproval would be narrowed eyes, a clenched jaw, and a sharp, sucked-in jet of air through flared nostrils. Hardly a dramatic shift from her typical demeanor—at least to the untrained eye. She’d take a sip of tea to force down her distaste, which would stay inside her forever, festering, and lash out when Simone least expected it.
Simone remembered when she got her ear cartilage pierced in university. The first time Kathy saw it in person, she cloaked her disgust in a sort of compliment: “You don’t think it distracts from your natural beauty, darling?” As if Kathy really cared about promoting “natural beauty.” Once Simone hit puberty, Kathy would bring her along to get their legs waxed, their eyebrows threaded, their curls straightened, their fair skin spray-tanned before vacations and special events. When it came to the cartilage piercing, Simone suspected she knew Kathy’s real concern, the one her mother hadn’t expressed aloud: that Simone had deviated from the narrow road Kathy had paved for her, from the version of womanhood that was considered acceptable at the family’s country clubs in Toronto and Naples. Case in point: When the piercing got infected six months later and Simone was forced to take it out, Kathy let out a sigh of relief and said, “Oh, thank God. I always thought that thing was so trashy, Simone. Men won’t want to date you with all that crap hanging off your ears.”
Simone gritted her teeth. No one had wanted to date her with or without the cartilage piercing, and she couldn’t blame them. She’d been the one with the secret buried deep within her bones.
That is, until now. Now, her secret was live on Instagram. Uncontained. Spreading.
“New year, new me,” she whispered into the wind, somewhat deliriously, before boarding the subway at Queen, riding it two stops north to College, and walking the rest of the way to the Village. She’d workshopped the post until two in the morning, then lain awake spiraling about it until her alarm had gone off at six thirty. Simone desperately needed caffeine. On Church, across the street from the large rainbow-striped building that was her new place of work, she ducked into a coffee shop and ordered enough cold brew to kill a horse.
“Big day today?” asked the guy who’d made her drink, nodding at the cup.
Actually, yes! I just came out as bisexual after a lifetime of pretending to be straight! Besides the fact that it would have been a massive overshare, Simone still wasn’t used to saying the word out loud: bisexual. Just thinking it made her equal parts excited and downright terrified. “First day of work,” she told the barista.
“You got this,” he said.
Simone wasn’t sure about that, but she thanked him anyway.
She’d been so nervous about coming out that she’d barely given thought to her new job as marketing project manager at the soon-to-open Rainbow Museum. In her interview, the founder, Frankie Marlow, had explained, “We’re not so much a museum as we are an immersive, multisensory museum experience—dedicated to celebrating, amplifying, and giving back to the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.” Simone quickly gathered that “immersive, multisensory museum experience” was fancy start-up-speak for “an array of fun photo ops with loose educational tie-ins and an expansive gift shop,” but she hadn’t chosen the Rainbow Museum for its cultural prestige. She’d chosen it because a) she’d just been laid off from her project manager job at an educational technology start-up and required money in order to live; and b) she’d been determined to come out, and starting a job at Toronto’s new Capital of Queerness in the heart of the historic Gay Village seemed like an effective way to hold herself accountable.
Cold brew in hand, she crossed the street. She’d interviewed for the job over Zoom, since the building had been a full-on construction zone before the holidays. Now that they were just one month away from the Rainbow Museum’s grand opening, Simone was able to walk through the front entrance and see the space in real life.
She smelled warm, earthy sawdust with sharp notes of wallpaper glue and fresh paint, and she was instantly transported to the scene shop in the theater where she’d been forced to perform in dance recitals as a girl. She didn’t know the first thing about carpentry, but she’d always wished she could work backstage instead of performing in front of an audience. That was the reason she’d gone for a career in project management: She wasn’t a big ideas person, but she was great at making sure other people’s big ideas were executed smoothly.
Simone was surprised to find no color at all in the lobby, the walls and ticket booth plastered with black-and-white shots of the city. The only clue to the magic that lay beyond was a jet-black sliding door with a blinking neon sign that said ENTER HERE in delicate rainbow letters. She approached the sign, and with a smooth whir, the door slid open for the dramatic reveal.
Wide-eyed, Simone stepped into a dazzlingly bright and colorful atrium. In the center of the room was a ball pit with rainbow-colored balls, and shiny plastic slides that looked like rainbows arcing out of fluffy white clouds. There seemed to be other rooms branching off the atrium, but the archways were hung with thick sheets of plastic that blocked her view. Apparently, there was still plenty of work to be done.
Frankie—who in addition to being the museum’s founder was also its CEO… and her new boss—had said he’d meet her here at nine o’clock to give her the tour. She was early, as always. No matter how hard she tried to be on time, she was inevitably the first one to show up to dinner parties, the friend who held down the spot at the bar when everyone else was running late.
Unable to wait any longer, she pulled out her phone and tapped the screen. There was a whole stack of text notifications. Cautiously, she scrolled through them. Two of her childhood friends, Laney and Mira, had said they’d seen the post and were proud of her; they wanted to celebrate at their next catch-up brunch. Her university friends had revived their long-dormant group chat with a slew of celebratory memes. There was even a “Congratulations!” from her favorite Pilates instructor at the gym.
Relief rippled through her—until she saw the text message from Kathy. It was only two words, but they were arguably the most ominous two words a parent could text their child: “Call me.”
It could only mean one thing:
Her mother had seen the news.
Simone glanced at the time in the corner of her screen. She still had fifteen minutes before she had to meet Frankie. She could call Kathy now, get through the first of what were sure to be many excruciating conversations about her newly revealed identity, and have a ready-made excuse to wrap things up early. She frantically looked around for somewhere private, her eyes landing on the nearest archway covered by a sheet of plastic. She hurried over and flung out an arm to sweep the plastic aside.
Simone’s hand collided with something hard on the other side of the sheet—something that gave way, making her gasp. She heard the creaking of wood, followed by a deep male voice shouting, “NO!”
Then came an earsplitting, ground-rattling crash. Followed by another creak, and another crash. On it went, like dominoes falling, until finally the cacophony stopped, and all Simone could hear was the deep voice letting out a roar of fury and frustration.
It would have been easy to skitter away and avoid blame—no one had seen her, after all—but she couldn’t just ruin someone’s day and then leave them to pick up the pieces. Though she dreaded what lay on the other side, she swept the sheet back and surveyed the damage she’d caused.
She’d assumed it would be bad.
But not this bad.
The room was designed like a larger-than-life garden out of Alice in Wonderland, with spindly metal flowers that stretched up to the high ceiling. The walls were covered in artificial moss, the concrete floor painted a rich forest green. In the center of the room—the star of the show—was a supersize dragonfly made of wood, its slender abdomen at least ten feet long. Only one of its wings was attached: a work of art in and of itself, with intricately carved veins. The remaining three wings, which had presumably been leaning against the wall next to the archway, were now lying in pieces at Simone’s feet. A man wearing brown canvas pants and a tool belt stood at the other end of the wreckage, wincing as he clutched his wrist with the opposite hand.
“I am so, so sorry,” she squeaked. Then she noticed the rivulet of blood trickling from his wrist to his elbow and gasped. “Here, take this.” Frantically, she yanked the damp napkin off her cold-brew cup and raced toward him. Simone was so focused on the man’s injury that she failed to pay attention to her own feet, and she stepped on a piece of wing. Delicate wooden veins that had miraculously survived the fall now crunched and snapped under the heel of her boot. Simone stumbled. As she stumbled, she squeezed her plastic cup. As she squeezed her plastic cup, the lid shot off. And as the lid shot off, her entire vat of cold brew arced through the air, landing squarely in the center of the man’s white T-shirt.
“WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!” he yelled, lunging backward and wrenching the front of the soaking-wet shirt off his skin. His glare hit Simone as she staggered to a stop. He was a few inches north of six feet, and he looked to be in his early thirties, with hazel eyes and tousled mahogany-brown hair that spilled onto his forehead and curled around his ears. His nose and cheekbones were lightly dusted with freckles, his square jaw cloaked in stubble. The fact that he was objectively very attractive made Simone even more embarrassed than she already was. At this point, she would have gladly welcomed death by panic-induced chest implosion.
“Let me help you,” she insisted, rushing over and dabbing at whatever she could reach: his bleeding wrist; his cold-brew-soaked shirt—
He jerked his arm away from her. “Jesus Christ! What is wrong with you? Can you not put that filthy napkin on my open cut?”
“Sorry,” she said quickly, crumpling the paper and shoving it in her pocket. She let out a shaky laugh. “I’m useless.”
“Yes, you’ve made that abundantly clear,” he said. Instead of being offended, Simone was relieved they had something to agree on.
She launched into another string of apologies, until the man silenced her with a stare that could have cut glass. Up close, Simone noticed that his eyes were strikingly unusual. His irises were gray around the outside, with a burst of greenish gold in the center. Like moss on a rock. Simone would have appreciated them more if they weren’t smoldering with so much dislike. She desperately wanted to smooth things over. “Please, tell me what I can do—anything.”
His glare became even sharper than before. Meanwhile, his wet shirt was clinging to his abs—yet another part of his body she would have appreciated more under different circumstances. “You can leave me alone so I can deal with the month’s worth of work you just ruined.”
“A… month?” Simone felt like she was going to be sick (although she’d definitely reached the quota of fluid she could expel in this man’s vicinity).
“Believe it or not, some people put actual hard work into the things they care about.” His gaze faltered for a second before hardening again. “Why don’t you go back to your fancy desk job and leave the lowly manual labor to me?”
The words hit Simone like a slap in the face. What did he think, that she was waltzing through life? That she’d pushed through that hanging tarp without a care in the damn world? Little did he know that she was on the verge of potentially being disowned by her mother. Mr. Actual Hard Work didn’t realize that she was going through her own personal hell, and that if he just made peace with her, he could take her morning from horrible to… well… slightly less horrible. But it would still be something. Simone’s bottom lip trembled. Not only had she wrecked his project, but apparently, she’d also come off as an elitist asshole without realizing it. She didn’t trust herself to say another word, and crying in front of him would only make things worse. Before she could break into tears, she turned on her heel and hurried back into the atrium. He didn’t call after her, and she certainly didn’t look back.
Her new boss, Frankie, was standing next to the ball pit, waiting for her.
“Having a look around?” he asked brightly. He was young for a CEO—twenty-eight, according to the Globe and Mail profile she’d read before her interview—with a slim build and a patchy beard and moustache that didn’t quite connect at the sides of his mouth. In that same Globe article, she’d learned how Frankie had started the Rainbow Museum as a series of pop-up events where guests could learn about queer history, pose for photos on elaborate rainbow-colored sets, and shop retail items from queer-owned companies. Photos from the pop-ups had gone viral, which had led to visitors lining up around the block, which had led to Frankie raising twenty million dollars in venture capital to open a permanent brick-and-mortar location in the Village, with plans to open more locations nationwide. The Globe had called Frankie a “wunderkind”—and here was Simone, about to look like a total fool in front of him.
“I accidentally knocked over some pieces of the dragonfly sculpture,” she confessed immediately. She didn’t want to keep quiet and have Frankie learn about the incident from Mr. Actual Hard Work.
“Oh no, do we need to go pick them up?”
We need to not go anywhere near that man ever again, Simone thought. “The guy who was working in there—I didn’t catch his name—he said he could handle it on his own.”
“Ryan Foley,” Frankie supplied. “Our head carpenter. He and the rest of our production team have been working their asses off to get the place done by the end of the month. They’re almost there.”
They were almost there, she amended in her head. She still would have felt guiltier if it hadn’t been for his asshole comment at the end—his apparent assumption that she’d never struggled a day in her life. Men. They could be so self-centered. It was a good thing she didn’t have to date them anymore if she didn’t want to.
“You’re sure he doesn’t want our help?” Frankie asked.
“I tried,” Simone said, balling her hands into fists in the pockets of her coat. “He wouldn’t let me.”
Frankie chuckled and shook his head. “Straight people are such a mystery to me,” he said conspiratorially, as though he also assumed Simone found straight people to be a mystery. She felt a swelling in her chest, counteracting the pressure that had been there all morning. Then Frankie clapped his hands. “Anyway, welcome to the Rainbow Museum! Allow me to give you the grand tour.”
SIMONE FELT LIKE HER CHEST WAS going to implode from the enormity of what she’d just posted on the internet. Was it possible to die of sheer panic? She could have googled it, except that would mean looking at her phone, and that would only increase her chances of a panic-induced death, if such a thing were indeed possible. Also, her fingers were frozen.
She could have taken the streetcar to the Queen subway station. Realistically, she should have taken the streetcar, if only to avoid showing up to work on her first day looking like she’d just come off a ski run. But on this particular morning, she hadn’t wanted to cram herself in with other commuters any more than she needed to. Too claustrophobic.
Tugging the zipper of her parka as high as it would go, she leaned into the frigid January wind whipping down Queen Street. The icy gusts had already frozen her damp ginger curls solid, and while the cold definitely stung, it wasn’t the only reason her eyes were watering.
Simone pictured her parents learning the news. They were currently doing the snowbird thing and spending the winter at their condo on Florida’s Gulf Coast. She had just been down there over the holidays with them, as well as her two older brothers and her brothers’ wives and children. Simone, who was turning thirty this year, had been the only unpartnered adult—as her mother had pointed out numerous times.
Right now, Kathy Whitaker was probably perched on her balcony in a matching loungewear set, sipping green tea with lemon and nibbling a slice of toast with a translucently thin layer of cream cheese. Simone’s recently retired father, George, was likely on the driving range already, warming up for today’s round of golf with his buddies. George didn’t have an Instagram account and could barely be counted on to see text messages, so he’d hear Simone’s news through Kathy, who perused the app daily to keep tabs on her social circle. When Kathy saw the post, she’d be absolutely mortified, but the only signs of her disapproval would be narrowed eyes, a clenched jaw, and a sharp, sucked-in jet of air through flared nostrils. Hardly a dramatic shift from her typical demeanor—at least to the untrained eye. She’d take a sip of tea to force down her distaste, which would stay inside her forever, festering, and lash out when Simone least expected it.
Simone remembered when she got her ear cartilage pierced in university. The first time Kathy saw it in person, she cloaked her disgust in a sort of compliment: “You don’t think it distracts from your natural beauty, darling?” As if Kathy really cared about promoting “natural beauty.” Once Simone hit puberty, Kathy would bring her along to get their legs waxed, their eyebrows threaded, their curls straightened, their fair skin spray-tanned before vacations and special events. When it came to the cartilage piercing, Simone suspected she knew Kathy’s real concern, the one her mother hadn’t expressed aloud: that Simone had deviated from the narrow road Kathy had paved for her, from the version of womanhood that was considered acceptable at the family’s country clubs in Toronto and Naples. Case in point: When the piercing got infected six months later and Simone was forced to take it out, Kathy let out a sigh of relief and said, “Oh, thank God. I always thought that thing was so trashy, Simone. Men won’t want to date you with all that crap hanging off your ears.”
Simone gritted her teeth. No one had wanted to date her with or without the cartilage piercing, and she couldn’t blame them. She’d been the one with the secret buried deep within her bones.
That is, until now. Now, her secret was live on Instagram. Uncontained. Spreading.
“New year, new me,” she whispered into the wind, somewhat deliriously, before boarding the subway at Queen, riding it two stops north to College, and walking the rest of the way to the Village. She’d workshopped the post until two in the morning, then lain awake spiraling about it until her alarm had gone off at six thirty. Simone desperately needed caffeine. On Church, across the street from the large rainbow-striped building that was her new place of work, she ducked into a coffee shop and ordered enough cold brew to kill a horse.
“Big day today?” asked the guy who’d made her drink, nodding at the cup.
Actually, yes! I just came out as bisexual after a lifetime of pretending to be straight! Besides the fact that it would have been a massive overshare, Simone still wasn’t used to saying the word out loud: bisexual. Just thinking it made her equal parts excited and downright terrified. “First day of work,” she told the barista.
“You got this,” he said.
Simone wasn’t sure about that, but she thanked him anyway.
She’d been so nervous about coming out that she’d barely given thought to her new job as marketing project manager at the soon-to-open Rainbow Museum. In her interview, the founder, Frankie Marlow, had explained, “We’re not so much a museum as we are an immersive, multisensory museum experience—dedicated to celebrating, amplifying, and giving back to the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.” Simone quickly gathered that “immersive, multisensory museum experience” was fancy start-up-speak for “an array of fun photo ops with loose educational tie-ins and an expansive gift shop,” but she hadn’t chosen the Rainbow Museum for its cultural prestige. She’d chosen it because a) she’d just been laid off from her project manager job at an educational technology start-up and required money in order to live; and b) she’d been determined to come out, and starting a job at Toronto’s new Capital of Queerness in the heart of the historic Gay Village seemed like an effective way to hold herself accountable.
Cold brew in hand, she crossed the street. She’d interviewed for the job over Zoom, since the building had been a full-on construction zone before the holidays. Now that they were just one month away from the Rainbow Museum’s grand opening, Simone was able to walk through the front entrance and see the space in real life.
She smelled warm, earthy sawdust with sharp notes of wallpaper glue and fresh paint, and she was instantly transported to the scene shop in the theater where she’d been forced to perform in dance recitals as a girl. She didn’t know the first thing about carpentry, but she’d always wished she could work backstage instead of performing in front of an audience. That was the reason she’d gone for a career in project management: She wasn’t a big ideas person, but she was great at making sure other people’s big ideas were executed smoothly.
Simone was surprised to find no color at all in the lobby, the walls and ticket booth plastered with black-and-white shots of the city. The only clue to the magic that lay beyond was a jet-black sliding door with a blinking neon sign that said ENTER HERE in delicate rainbow letters. She approached the sign, and with a smooth whir, the door slid open for the dramatic reveal.
Wide-eyed, Simone stepped into a dazzlingly bright and colorful atrium. In the center of the room was a ball pit with rainbow-colored balls, and shiny plastic slides that looked like rainbows arcing out of fluffy white clouds. There seemed to be other rooms branching off the atrium, but the archways were hung with thick sheets of plastic that blocked her view. Apparently, there was still plenty of work to be done.
Frankie—who in addition to being the museum’s founder was also its CEO… and her new boss—had said he’d meet her here at nine o’clock to give her the tour. She was early, as always. No matter how hard she tried to be on time, she was inevitably the first one to show up to dinner parties, the friend who held down the spot at the bar when everyone else was running late.
Unable to wait any longer, she pulled out her phone and tapped the screen. There was a whole stack of text notifications. Cautiously, she scrolled through them. Two of her childhood friends, Laney and Mira, had said they’d seen the post and were proud of her; they wanted to celebrate at their next catch-up brunch. Her university friends had revived their long-dormant group chat with a slew of celebratory memes. There was even a “Congratulations!” from her favorite Pilates instructor at the gym.
Relief rippled through her—until she saw the text message from Kathy. It was only two words, but they were arguably the most ominous two words a parent could text their child: “Call me.”
It could only mean one thing:
Her mother had seen the news.
Simone glanced at the time in the corner of her screen. She still had fifteen minutes before she had to meet Frankie. She could call Kathy now, get through the first of what were sure to be many excruciating conversations about her newly revealed identity, and have a ready-made excuse to wrap things up early. She frantically looked around for somewhere private, her eyes landing on the nearest archway covered by a sheet of plastic. She hurried over and flung out an arm to sweep the plastic aside.
Simone’s hand collided with something hard on the other side of the sheet—something that gave way, making her gasp. She heard the creaking of wood, followed by a deep male voice shouting, “NO!”
Then came an earsplitting, ground-rattling crash. Followed by another creak, and another crash. On it went, like dominoes falling, until finally the cacophony stopped, and all Simone could hear was the deep voice letting out a roar of fury and frustration.
It would have been easy to skitter away and avoid blame—no one had seen her, after all—but she couldn’t just ruin someone’s day and then leave them to pick up the pieces. Though she dreaded what lay on the other side, she swept the sheet back and surveyed the damage she’d caused.
She’d assumed it would be bad.
But not this bad.
The room was designed like a larger-than-life garden out of Alice in Wonderland, with spindly metal flowers that stretched up to the high ceiling. The walls were covered in artificial moss, the concrete floor painted a rich forest green. In the center of the room—the star of the show—was a supersize dragonfly made of wood, its slender abdomen at least ten feet long. Only one of its wings was attached: a work of art in and of itself, with intricately carved veins. The remaining three wings, which had presumably been leaning against the wall next to the archway, were now lying in pieces at Simone’s feet. A man wearing brown canvas pants and a tool belt stood at the other end of the wreckage, wincing as he clutched his wrist with the opposite hand.
“I am so, so sorry,” she squeaked. Then she noticed the rivulet of blood trickling from his wrist to his elbow and gasped. “Here, take this.” Frantically, she yanked the damp napkin off her cold-brew cup and raced toward him. Simone was so focused on the man’s injury that she failed to pay attention to her own feet, and she stepped on a piece of wing. Delicate wooden veins that had miraculously survived the fall now crunched and snapped under the heel of her boot. Simone stumbled. As she stumbled, she squeezed her plastic cup. As she squeezed her plastic cup, the lid shot off. And as the lid shot off, her entire vat of cold brew arced through the air, landing squarely in the center of the man’s white T-shirt.
“WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!” he yelled, lunging backward and wrenching the front of the soaking-wet shirt off his skin. His glare hit Simone as she staggered to a stop. He was a few inches north of six feet, and he looked to be in his early thirties, with hazel eyes and tousled mahogany-brown hair that spilled onto his forehead and curled around his ears. His nose and cheekbones were lightly dusted with freckles, his square jaw cloaked in stubble. The fact that he was objectively very attractive made Simone even more embarrassed than she already was. At this point, she would have gladly welcomed death by panic-induced chest implosion.
“Let me help you,” she insisted, rushing over and dabbing at whatever she could reach: his bleeding wrist; his cold-brew-soaked shirt—
He jerked his arm away from her. “Jesus Christ! What is wrong with you? Can you not put that filthy napkin on my open cut?”
“Sorry,” she said quickly, crumpling the paper and shoving it in her pocket. She let out a shaky laugh. “I’m useless.”
“Yes, you’ve made that abundantly clear,” he said. Instead of being offended, Simone was relieved they had something to agree on.
She launched into another string of apologies, until the man silenced her with a stare that could have cut glass. Up close, Simone noticed that his eyes were strikingly unusual. His irises were gray around the outside, with a burst of greenish gold in the center. Like moss on a rock. Simone would have appreciated them more if they weren’t smoldering with so much dislike. She desperately wanted to smooth things over. “Please, tell me what I can do—anything.”
His glare became even sharper than before. Meanwhile, his wet shirt was clinging to his abs—yet another part of his body she would have appreciated more under different circumstances. “You can leave me alone so I can deal with the month’s worth of work you just ruined.”
“A… month?” Simone felt like she was going to be sick (although she’d definitely reached the quota of fluid she could expel in this man’s vicinity).
“Believe it or not, some people put actual hard work into the things they care about.” His gaze faltered for a second before hardening again. “Why don’t you go back to your fancy desk job and leave the lowly manual labor to me?”
The words hit Simone like a slap in the face. What did he think, that she was waltzing through life? That she’d pushed through that hanging tarp without a care in the damn world? Little did he know that she was on the verge of potentially being disowned by her mother. Mr. Actual Hard Work didn’t realize that she was going through her own personal hell, and that if he just made peace with her, he could take her morning from horrible to… well… slightly less horrible. But it would still be something. Simone’s bottom lip trembled. Not only had she wrecked his project, but apparently, she’d also come off as an elitist asshole without realizing it. She didn’t trust herself to say another word, and crying in front of him would only make things worse. Before she could break into tears, she turned on her heel and hurried back into the atrium. He didn’t call after her, and she certainly didn’t look back.
Her new boss, Frankie, was standing next to the ball pit, waiting for her.
“Having a look around?” he asked brightly. He was young for a CEO—twenty-eight, according to the Globe and Mail profile she’d read before her interview—with a slim build and a patchy beard and moustache that didn’t quite connect at the sides of his mouth. In that same Globe article, she’d learned how Frankie had started the Rainbow Museum as a series of pop-up events where guests could learn about queer history, pose for photos on elaborate rainbow-colored sets, and shop retail items from queer-owned companies. Photos from the pop-ups had gone viral, which had led to visitors lining up around the block, which had led to Frankie raising twenty million dollars in venture capital to open a permanent brick-and-mortar location in the Village, with plans to open more locations nationwide. The Globe had called Frankie a “wunderkind”—and here was Simone, about to look like a total fool in front of him.
“I accidentally knocked over some pieces of the dragonfly sculpture,” she confessed immediately. She didn’t want to keep quiet and have Frankie learn about the incident from Mr. Actual Hard Work.
“Oh no, do we need to go pick them up?”
We need to not go anywhere near that man ever again, Simone thought. “The guy who was working in there—I didn’t catch his name—he said he could handle it on his own.”
“Ryan Foley,” Frankie supplied. “Our head carpenter. He and the rest of our production team have been working their asses off to get the place done by the end of the month. They’re almost there.”
They were almost there, she amended in her head. She still would have felt guiltier if it hadn’t been for his asshole comment at the end—his apparent assumption that she’d never struggled a day in her life. Men. They could be so self-centered. It was a good thing she didn’t have to date them anymore if she didn’t want to.
“You’re sure he doesn’t want our help?” Frankie asked.
“I tried,” Simone said, balling her hands into fists in the pockets of her coat. “He wouldn’t let me.”
Frankie chuckled and shook his head. “Straight people are such a mystery to me,” he said conspiratorially, as though he also assumed Simone found straight people to be a mystery. She felt a swelling in her chest, counteracting the pressure that had been there all morning. Then Frankie clapped his hands. “Anyway, welcome to the Rainbow Museum! Allow me to give you the grand tour.”
Recenzii
“There are so many queer readers who need this story and See You at the Summit delivers with heart and heat. You will find yourself instantly rooting for Simone and her found-family. Taylor has crafted a romance that reminds us of the beautiful diversity within queer stories.”
"The bi romance of your dreams"
"Taylor has not only written a swoon-worthy romance, but a heartfelt exploration of identity and the ways we show up for love. See You at the Summit is sweet, sexy, and wholly relatable."
“A steamy and sweet ode to bisexual chaos and the complexity of the queer experience—See You at the Summit stole my heart! Humor, heat and hope radiates from the pages. Taylor’s whip-smart prose wraps you up in a rainbow blanket and makes you believe love will win in the end!”
"Simone Whittaker is a bisexual icon! If you believed all the heteronomative messages growing up and are a late bloomer, this book will make you feel more seen than you ever have in your entire life! Jordyn Taylor's debut adult romance is a real and raw look at what it means to come out as bi later in life. Love with a capital L!"
"The bi romance of your dreams"
"Taylor has not only written a swoon-worthy romance, but a heartfelt exploration of identity and the ways we show up for love. See You at the Summit is sweet, sexy, and wholly relatable."
“A steamy and sweet ode to bisexual chaos and the complexity of the queer experience—See You at the Summit stole my heart! Humor, heat and hope radiates from the pages. Taylor’s whip-smart prose wraps you up in a rainbow blanket and makes you believe love will win in the end!”
"Simone Whittaker is a bisexual icon! If you believed all the heteronomative messages growing up and are a late bloomer, this book will make you feel more seen than you ever have in your entire life! Jordyn Taylor's debut adult romance is a real and raw look at what it means to come out as bi later in life. Love with a capital L!"
Descriere
For fans of Alison Cochrun and Abby Jimenez, a heartfelt and sexy romantic comedy following one bi woman’s messy journey through coming out—and reluctantly falling for a straight man. From the USA TODAY bestselling author of Wicked Darlings.