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“Oh for goodness’ sake.” He gets up off the sofa, puts his hands in his pockets, and paces to the other side of the room. “This is super uncomfortable.”
“Why? Why aren’t you at ease with hearing how good you are at things? And how appealing you are to people?”
He spins around to look at me. “No one is comfortable listening to how great they are.” He pauses for a second. “Well, other than Max, obviously.”
“You are not Max. You are an entirely different person. Stop comparing yourself to him.”
He turns away and looks out the window, where the warm evening sun reflects off the multistoried Midtown buildings.
I don’t often get a chance to gaze at Elliot, but with his back to me, I have a rare opportunity to study his silhouette. He has the physique of a long-distance runner. Tall and lithe, but muscular. Even if I didn’t know he always goes to the gym before work, his solid muscles are hinted at in his well-fitted suits. I’ve certainly seen his pants stretch across the firm shape of his thigh when he perches on the edge of my desk.
I pull my mind back to the mission—to get this man ready to face his demons and pull off the amazing launch his nonprofit deserves.
“If it makes you less uncomfortable, I can say it to your back.” He doesn’t move. “You are charming and engaging, and every person who’s ever met you thinks that.”
A quiver runs from my chest to my belly as it dawns on me that I’ve always known these things, but never truly processed them before. Not even when I had the idea for this presentation or when I was putting the slides together. But saying them out loud makes me realize these thoughts have been sitting in my head, unacknowledged, for years.
“Ha.” He spins around and points at me. “Kathleen in accounting hates me.”
Well, that brought me back to reality. “Is she the one you told me had been making the same error in the month-end figures for ages, until you found it and pointed it out to her?”
“Yup.” He strolls back toward me, a satisfied smile on his handsome face.
“Well, then that’s her problem. Not you. Her problem is that you found her error. So she doesn’t count.”
He leans forward, rests his forearms on the back of the sofa, and looks directly at me. “Are we done now?”
“One more.” I point at the words on the next slide and continue, “Five. Relatability.”
“Well, I sure as hell fail that one.” He straightens. “How is someone who owns a successful tech company and lives in a Manhattan penthouse relatable?”
Is that how he thinks people see him? As a rich guy living in an ivory tower?
“Because of your story, Elliot.” How can he not realize this? “Some of us here know your background. We know the five of you were raised in a not-big-enough apartment outside Boston, that your dad was a city bus driver, and your mom did cleaning jobs when she wasn’t running around after you hooligans.”
He drops his chin, leaving me looking at the short, dark hair slightly spiked with product on the crown of his head.
“We know you’re all self-made men. And Owen too. He had to work hard to get a scholarship to go to MIT with you too, right?”
“Yup.”
“Well, that, my friend, makes you very, very relatable.”
He looks up at me and scrunches his mouth into a grimace. “Now are we done?”
“You’ve sat through enough presentations to know the most successful format is to tell people what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you’ve told them. So, in summary?—”
“For the love of God.” He sits on the back of the sofa, swings his legs over, and slides down into the seat.
That was pretty damn cool. And hot.
I cough. “So, in summary, you don’t actually need me to teach you how to do a presentation. You just need to realize you can already do it.”
And he can. I know he can.
Why it didn’t register while I was putting this slide deck together, or at any point in the last four years, I have no idea. But this cute guy sitting on the sofa wanting me to shut up, really is all five of these things. He might hide his confidence, but he definitely has it. I knew the moment I met him that he’s smart, funny, and charming. And as we’ve become friends—well, just office pals I guess—I’ve learned how incredibly normal he is, despite his enormous success.
If I were looking for a dream man to introduce to a girlfriend, this would be him.
