I was nervous to meet Luca. I had never seen his photo and I didn’t know his age. We texted a bit and he told me he had just moved to California from Naples. I chose to meet him in a wine bar called Satellite where my friend worked. It was a trendy, modern downtown space, with naked dangling light-bulbs and metal barstools that made you want to leave after 15 minutes of sitting on them in front of a hallway that led to shared offices for rent. My friend was talking to customers while I sat nervously with my back to the door. I had never been on a blind date or dated online in any capacity. I sort of wished it had been a date instead so then I could at least know he was around my age. I was 24. There was a very specific age range I didn’t want him to be. That range was between 35 and 70. Younger than 35, ok fine, you’re sort of still in your twenties and we can be friends. Over 70, well, that might be cute—to do a language exchange with an old Italian man.

It was the summer of 2018, and I had just returned home to California from Italy, where my relationship exploded after we had lived together for only four months. Since I was going back to Italy to go to graduate school in the fall, I needed to practice Italian. So I signed up for a language exchange website. The website looked like someone’s Xanga profile in 2001.When I narrowed the search to ‘Santa Barbara’ and ‘Native Italian Speakers’ only two results popped up. My options were Giorgio, whose profile declared in italics under his photo that he hadn’t logged on in six years, and Luca, who had logged on one month ago but had the gray anonymous face photo and nothing written on his profile. I clicked ‘send a message’ and took thirty minutes to write a paragraph. When I pressed send I was notified that I would have to pay $3.75 per month in order to become a gold user. Only gold users are allowed to message people. So I got out my credit card and typed all of my information into the blurry yellow blog. I spent twenty minutes writing a new message. Then I canceled my subscription.

 

‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ mouthed my friend behind the wine bar after Luca walked in and asked if I was my name. I stood to greet him before we walked toward a table for two in the corner. He was beautiful. It felt like I’d won a prize for a contest I didn’t enter. His eyes were relaxed and golden hazel, almost matching his tanned skin. His hair was thick and Armani messy, his stature tall and lanky, his smile white and Crest commercial. He was always talking through a smile, it’s hard to remember his face without teeth. Except for the fifth time we met, which was the last time I ever saw him.

 

“A break-up?” he said looking up from a huge bite of his burrito at Los Agaves. It was our third meeting. “But how much time ago?”

            “Three weeks,” I said.

He gasped and some rice fell out of his mouth. He wiped his face with a napkin, “No. Three weeks? I would be in bed crying watching Netflix.”

            Every time we met I sat with my back to the door, hoping my ex-boyfriend might walk in and see us. It would be perfect because if he saw us, he would be devastated and exit. However, I would be completely unaffected because I would never see him walk in.

            “Yeah. I feel fine,” I said.

            “And how long did you stay together?”

            “One year. Almost one year. We broke up the day before our one year anniversary.”

            “Wow. Yeah, I would not leave my house for weeks if I were you.”

            “I think I’m just happy that it’s over. It was a long and dramatic ending. It made everything all the more dramatic to live in a foreign country together and break up there.”

            “Oh, yes, I imagine. Italy makes things more dramatic for sure. My last break up was with a girl I dated for a year. We also lived together.”

            “In Naples?”

            “No, in Rome,” he said.

            “Ah, I love Rome. The neighborhood, Rione i Monti, is it called? Beautiful.”

            “No! Rione Monti? That’s where we lived!”

            “Really? I love the street that has all the vines hanging.”

            “We lived on that street! But you have to imagine that street is not always so perfect, because that street is where we broke up and she threw all of my clothes and stuff out the window right onto that place under those beautiful vines.”

            “That sounds like a scene from a movie.”

            “Yes, because Italian break ups are always cinematic like that. Especially with Southern girls.”

            “Why was she so mad at you?”

He shrugged, “She was just jealous.”

            “Isn’t that a female stereotype in the south? Being jealous?”

            “Oh, no, not at all. I am also very jealous.”

            “Are you?”

            “Once in high school my girlfriend was at a party and I was at home, sick. She texted me to say that her ex-boyfriend just walked in. I immediately got up, got dressed, sent her a message to come outside, and I sped to the house where the party was. I told her she better be standing outside when I got there. She was trying to explain something but I just yelled at her to get in, and once she was in I sped away.”

            “Oh. Yikes.”

            “Yeah, so it is for the males, too. We also are very jealous. By the way, this burrito is amazing.”

The prior Friday night we had gone to a taco truck on Milpas that he didn’t think was very good. But since we switched off paying for each other every other week, I had spent over $80.00 on this dinner while last week he had spent under $10.00. I remember asking my roommates: is taking turns paying a part of modern romance? I didn’t know anything about casual dating culture in Italy, I didn’t know much about casual dating culture in the U.S. either due to being a serial monogamist. But we met every Friday night for a little over a month. Are Friday nights more romantic? I would ask. Sometimes he initiated, sometimes I did. It was supposed to be a language exchange, but my Italian was horrible, so it mostly ended up being us speaking in English while sitting on my yellow blanket in the grass, then walking to dinner, talking more over entrees, drinks, and dessert, with him eventually fitting in an “Italian lesson” as some forced five minute nugget in our five hour stretches.

            During our fourth Friday night together he brought his film camera and showed me how to use it, deciding to teach me the Italian words for the parts of the camera. Words I’ve never used since; words I’m pretty sure I don’t even know in English. We were sitting in the rose garden in front of the mission just before sunset when he took some candid photos of me that I’ve still never seen. I brought my yellow blanket and a book in Italian I wanted to read, even though it was nowhere near my level.

            “Let’s just start at the beginning,” I said.

            We opened the first page. It was Lalla Romano’s Le Parole Tra Noi Leggere.

            Things were going ok for the first few sentences. Then we got to the second paragraph.

            Quando succhiava il mio latte, mi sembrava feroce. Come se allattassi un leoncino (infatti mordeva).

            “I don’t understand this part,” I said.

            “Uh,” his face turned red, so mine did, too.

“It’s like, he’s a little lion when he takes his mother’s milk,” he said.

            “Takes her milk?” I asked.

            “Yes, like a little lion he’s taking a bite of the breast.”

            “Oh.” I said.

            “Yes,” he said. “But maybe we can just talk.”

            “Okay,” I said, “let’s just talk.” I put the book next to me on the grass where my ex could see it in case he entered the scene. We also used to read there, so it was an important prop.

            Almost as if he could read my one track mind, he asked, “So how is the break up?”

            “It’s fine,” I said. “It feels like it happened a long time ago.”

            “Do you still talk?” he asked.

            “Not really, no.”

            “And what do you think about dating? Do you think you’re ready to date?”

            “I don’t know,” I said.

            “I think the most important thing with love is timing,” he said.

            I hugged my knees in and tilted back, balancing on the tip of my spine. I had no idea what he meant. “Yeah,” I said.

He hugged his knees in.

“Maybe like a book,” I said, “Sometimes you have a book you want to read but it’s not the right time in your life to read it.”

            He tilted back, balancing on the tip of his spine.

            “Yes,” he said, “Exactly.”

I looked at him. I thought it was weird that we were doing the same pose. So I let my heels touch the ground and I crossed my legs.

 

For our fifth and final meeting we went to the courthouse where we sat on my yellow blanket again. We were talking about what growing up was like when he started telling me stories about how he and his friends would race each other in their sports cars. He would usually choose his Lamborghini, he said.

“When you were younger?” I asked, as if that might make the situation more understandable.

“Well, yes, but also now every time I go home. It’s a thing we like to do. I’ve almost killed myself many times though and we always go on the roads where we know there won’t be so many police. Actually, do you want to see the car?”

“Oh. Sure.”

He took out his phone and opened an Instagram profile dedicated to his parents’ Lamborghini. He raised his eyebrows toward me.

“Ah. Very nice. Isn’t that dangerous? Like, for other people on the road?”

He waved his hand in the air and made a dismissive frown.

I realized then, to my very great dismay, this needed to be the last time I ever saw him.

We got up and walked to the week’s restaurant, the most expensive yet, and his turn to pay, where we talked some more. After our usual five hours were almost up, he asked if I wanted to get gelato. Something was different. He was walking slower, his questions were more intentional. It was almost as if the more I got to know him, the less I liked him, and the more he let me get to know him, the more he liked me. After we finished our gelato he asked if I wanted to go on a walk.

“Maybe we should just walk back to the car,” I said.

To get back to the car we had to pass under the courthouse tunnel, which was lit with soft yellow lanterns. We walked below the magnolia trees and down the stone steps to cross the dark lawn. The stars were clear in the sky, and he was meandering. He stopped in the middle of the wet lawn.

“Wait,” he said. We were almost to the car. “I just saw a shooting star,” he said. “Do you know what those mean in Italy?”      

It was time to dissolve whatever this was.

“No, I don’t,” I said, stopping with him. “But, I do know what they mean here. Legend has it, if you see a shooting star,” he looked at me in the dark, his white teeth hidden behind serious lips, and I made eye contact with him in the soft glow of the night, and said, “it means you’re gay.”