Page 121 of Enzo

I won't go back to New York and we won't be working together.

He just doesn't know it yet.

***

ENZO

Despite telling Molly I wasn’t working today, I realized I still needed to check if I had meetings on this week. Sitting on her couch, I quickly check for emails on my laptop.

“Let me show you something.” Molly comes and sits next to me, causing a dent in the seating cushion so that we’re almost pressed together. The heat of her body where she touches me makes it difficult for me to focus.

“It’s here … somewhere.” She angles her cell phone so I can see the screen, What I see is thirty notifications and a plethora of tabs.

Is it really thirty-four?

What I see is utter chaos, and I can’t deal with that. My world has to be neatly ordered. Molly swipes through and I catch a brief glimpse of her calendar. More messages. Photos. Something that looks like a grocery list. The weather. A screenshot of a bank statement. Five missed calls. All I can do is watch quietly, and try not to be triggered by the mess.

“It’s here … somewhere.” She taps again.

I watch, mesmerized. I find it amusing, endearing, and so different from how I operate.

Not the phone, but Molly.

She isn’t stressed or flustered. She’s happy. Calm. Like this is normal.

A phone screen like hers would have me pulling my hair out. But I’d never have a phone screen like that. Too many open loops. Too many things that needed addressing, reading, responding to.

I could never handle that.

“Molly !” I exclaim, because now, even my patience has worn out. “This is chaos.”

“It's organized chaos.”

“There’s nothing organized about chaos!”

“Do you remember dancing outside the Doge's Palace?” she asks, absent-mindedly.

My heart gives a stupid little leap. “You've been thinking about that?”

“Not usually, but it just popped into my head now, because you're here.”

Because I’m here.

“What about it?” I ask, curious to hear her take.

“It was so nice, wasn't it?” Her eyes search mine again, giving me hope. “It was like a fairytale.”

She starts scrolling again.

“Things like that don't happen to people like me, but this time, they really did. I went to Venice, to a masked ball, and met you, and we danced outside.” She turns to me again. “Imagine how bored we would have been if we'd stayed inside.”

I would have died from boredom. I would have probably gone home hours before that. Maybe even missed dinner, had Molly not approached me when she did.

“You saved me,” I murmur.

She did. Not just in Venice. In many ways. She’s introduced chaos into my ordered life, and I’m starting to discover that I like it.

She's swiping again. “Oh no.”