Page 29 of Some Like It Hot

“What other people?”

She laughs. “Everyone, Simon. Everyone. My parents. My ex-boyfriend. Luna, though she won’t say it. Definitely you.”

I step toward her again. “This is at least the third time you’ve mentioned me. Where is that coming from?”

“I worked for you. I saw your desk, your calendar, your office. Sonia made sure that I knew we had to keep everything neat and organized. You like things a certain way. Even your coffee order.”

I relax. Now I understand. I step close to her again. “Doesn’t everyone have a particular coffee order?”

She nods. “Sure. But Sonia made it sound as if it was the end of the world if we messed it up.”

I lift my hand and brush the back of my knuckles over her cheek again. I cannot wait till I can fully touch this woman. She’s soft and warm on the inside and out.

“Everything you said, about the way that Sonia approached my daily schedule and my office and my desk, came from Sonia.”

Elise frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I am…untidy, Elise,” I confess. “I am unorganized. I hate calendars. I hate having my schedule dictated down to the minute. My desk was a disaster when Sonia came to work for me. I drove her nuts. It helped her do her job as my assistant to keep my desk neat and tidy, my calendar perfectly organized, and my office meticulously clean. She was a minimalist. And hiring her was the best idea I ever had. Because she did help me function better. Because I’m not like that at all.”

Elise seems to take a moment to process that.

“I want you, Elise. Messy, late, unorganized. I don’t care.”

“You don’t even know me,” she protests, though her voice is soft.

“You always bought an extra coffee for one of the other assistants, Marci,” I say, ready to put my heart right in her hands. “She was a single mom and was always rushed in the morning and didn’t have time to get her own. You always had an extra sweater at work because one of the girls, Holly, was always cold and never brought her own. You wore different earrings every single day for a month before starting to repeat them.” I look down at the box at my feet. I realize what I’m really looking at. “You collect jewelry?”

She nods, looking like she’s so stunned she doesn’t remember to argue with me or push back. “I love to shop in vintage shops. I also make some of it.”

I smile. “You had three different perfumes. One that smelled like lilacs, one that smelled like lemons and vanilla, and a spicy one that was musky, maybe amber or something?”

She nods again, slowly, as if she can’t believe what I’m saying.

“I would call you into my office sometimes for no real reason, just because I wanted to have the scent of you linger for a little while.”

“Simon,” she says softly.

“I like you, Elise. From all the little things I noticed, to the big things like how funny and sarcastic you are. I think you’re special and I want to get to know you better. Where’s the harm in that?”

She takes a deep breath, then says, “I have ADHD. I spent my life in a house with two parents who I drove crazy. My mom was a lot more loving and understanding about it, but my father was a perfectionist, and he hated how messy and scatter-brained I was. It took a while to get a diagnosis, but even when we did, he didn’t believe in medication for it. He said I just needed to pay more attention and try harder. So I’ve had to cope and adapt as best I can. I’m medicated now, which helps a lot, but there are just things that are a part of who I am.”

I frown. The ADHD makes sense. I can’t imagine a parent understanding something like that about their child, but refusing to pursue every avenue for help. But if that’s what she grew up with and dealt with, then her inability to believe other people can want to be close to her adds up.

She swallows hard and continues, “I will be late for things. I will forget dates and anniversaries. I will forget to text back. And none of that means that I don’t care, I just forget. And then feel terrible and beat myself up. I’ve lost a lot of friendships. I’ve lost a couple of serious boyfriends. I don’t even have a great relationship with my parents honestly. All because of that. People don’t like coming over. I don’t like having people over. My place is a mess, but it makes me happy. I know where things are. I not only need to have all my stuff out, I like having my stuff around me. And I can’t do jobs like being your assistant. I quit because I was terrible at it and I didn’t want you to find out because I didn’t want you to have any negative thoughts about me. I stayed longer than I should have because I liked being around you. I was afraid of getting in too deep.”

I give her a few seconds to be sure she’s finished. Then I say, “Thank you for telling me all of that.”

“I used to try to hide it, but that never worked in the end. I can’t compensate for long enough to really make relationships work, so I decided to be upfront with people from the start.”

She’s telling this to turn me off. To convince me we can’t work before we’ve even started. But she’s also showing me a very vulnerable side. She’s opening up and letting me in and it makes me want to take care of her and prove that everyone who didn’t stick around, who made her feel like there was something wrong with her, and that she messed everything up, was not worthy of her.

“I hope this means that you are going to give me a chance. Because we absolutely were, and are, going to get in too deep,” I tell her, my voice husky.

She wets her lips, then takes a tiny step closer to me. “I’m sorry in advance for missing your birthday.”

I huff out a small laugh. “Do you really think that a guy like me, with an ego like mine, won’t remind you a million times?”

I see her shoulders relax, and she smiles, which makes the tightness in my chest loosen slightly.

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