Italian for Beginners (11 page)

Francesco followed my eyes to the patch of sunlight and smiled. “That’s why I rented this
appartamento
,” he said. “The
terrazzo
. Wait until you see it.”

Francesco gestured toward the French doors and I walked toward them to peek out. He came up behind me, and touching my waist
lightly in a way that sent tingles shooting through me, he opened the doors to the terrace.

I stepped outside and breathed the ash-scented Roman air in deeply, falling in love immediately with the view, as he must
have the first time he saw it.

The terrace was longer and wider than I would have expected. It had two dark green reclining chairs and a small table between
them, on which sat a pair of overflowing ashtrays. A few steps away, a wrought-iron railing separated us from a steep, four-story
drop down the side of the building. But it was the sun-soaked view over the edge of the rail that made my breath catch in
my throat.

The scene was nothing extraordinary, and perhaps that’s what made it so beautiful. It was exactly the Rome I remembered and
missed every day. A cobbled street below gave way to several cream-colored buildings roughly the same height as Francesco’s.
Windows were open across the small piazza, and flowers in all colors spilled out of rust-colored window boxes and pots balanced
haphazardly on windowsills. A block down, a partially obscured dome rose up from behind another apartment building, its rounded,
slate-colored top glowing in the afternoon sun and ending in a narrow cross. Below, I had no doubt, Catholics had worshipped
for centuries. Perhaps my mother’s grandparents’ grandparents’ grandparents had even knelt beneath it. The sense of being
steeped in history—not just textbook history, but the history of the people themselves—was one of the things that I’d always
loved most about the Eternal City.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Francesco said. He had come up behind me as I stared out on the cityscape. He was holding two drinks
in his hand, both of them clear, bright red concoctions on ice, with thin, floating slices of orange.

“It is,” I said. I glanced at the drinks. “A spritz?” I guessed.

He nodded, handing me one.
“Sì, naturalmente. Cin cin.”

It was the Italian toast I remembered so well. I clinked his glass, looking into his eyes, then I took a long sip of the drink.
It was a Venetian classic that had become popular in Rome in recent years: two parts prosecco, two parts soda water, one part
Campari or Aperol Bitters, served over ice, with a sliver of orange just to sweeten it a bit. It had always been the drink
Francesco served, along with a small bowl of potato chips, on the afternoons when we’d sat by his window, trying to catch
a breeze, in the deepest days of that stiflingly hot summer.

“The river and the Ponte Sisto are just a hundred meters that way.” Francesco pointed after he’d taken a long sip. He smiled
at me. “Sometimes, I go run by the river now.”

“You run?” I asked, incredulous. Francesco had always prided himself on being a couch potato who stayed in shape only because
he worked hard on the weekends, helping friends lift furniture, mowing his mother’s lawn outside town, hiking with his buddies
in the hills nearby.

He smiled. “A lot has changed.”

I nodded. “But a lot has stayed the same, too.”

Francesco furrowed his brow, then nodded. He turned away and looked out over the city. Then he turned back to me. “So. Shall
we go to dinner after you freshen up?”

Francesco led me back inside, brought me a towel, and led me into the bathroom, where he turned on the shower for me, explaining
that sometimes it was tricky to get the temperature just right. I loved the feeling of being taken care of by someone else
for once, even if it was something as simple as someone turning on the hot water for me.

I rinsed off quickly, washing away the remainder of New York from my skin while I quickly sudsed my hair with the bottle of
Joico shampoo I found lying on the edge of the tub. I wondered for a moment, with a pang of jealousy, if it belonged to a
girlfriend of Francesco’s, someone else who had shared his bed much more recently than me. I had to remind myself that I had
no right to be jealous; I was the one who had walked away so many years ago, and I had certainly dated since then. Besides,
he was with me now, wasn’t he?

It took me about thirty minutes to blow-dry my hair with the travel dryer I’d brought (complete with a voltage converter plug)
and slap on some tinted moisturizer, cheek stain, and a swipe of mascara—my quickest get-pretty routine. I’d have more time
to dress up later, but tonight, I wanted to look effortlessly pretty and casual, like I wasn’t trying too hard.

When I stepped out of the bathroom in a pale pink sundress with a white cardigan thrown jauntily over my shoulders, Francesco
was sitting on the couch, one leg crossed over the other, reading a book. He had changed, too, into inky blue jeans that were
nearly black and a gauzy white shirt that he left unbuttoned almost to the middle of his chest, exposing his sleek, tanned
muscles and a little chest hair. I swallowed hard. He was gorgeous.

He looked up and smiled.

“You look beautiful,” he said. “Shall we go?”

I nodded and let him take my hand as he crossed the room toward the door. I didn’t know where the evening would lead, but
I had the feeling that it would be a decisive step away from my life of safety and security in the States. New York and all
my responsibilities there felt far, far away as we stepped out the door into the twilight and headed off down the street,
where all roads led to Rome.

A
fter a stroll around the neighborhood, down to the river, up the Via Arencia toward the Pantheon and back over toward the
Piazza Navona through a series of side streets and alleys, Francesco led me to a quaint, brick-walled restaurant just off
the busy tourist square on a street tucked away behind an apartment building whose facade was crumbling, exposing worn, chipped
brick underneath.

We’d run out of things to talk about by the time we reached the restaurant, which was more than a little worrisome. How had
we both been able to sum up the events of the past thirteen years so quickly? Surely more had happened to us than that, but
I found that once I’d skimmed over what was happening with Becky and Dad, what had developed with my job, where exactly I
was living and a brief, undetailed list of the major relationships I’d had since I left Italy, I was out of things to say.

Similarly, Francesco seemed at a loss after telling me that his mother was still living outside the city, that his sister,
Alessandra, had moved to Venice and had fallen in love with a gondolier (a big scandal, apparently), that he had decided to
leave his computer programming job to go out on his own and start a handyman business, and that he hadn’t dated anyone for
more than a few months since me. So we sat through our antipasto course in awkward silence, commenting only about the food
and the wine, which I noticed both of us were drinking quickly.

Sure enough, two glasses of chianti and fifteen minutes later, I was feeling bolder and less self-conscious about how uninteresting
I may have seemed, how lined my face was, how jiggly my thighs had become, and whether Francesco had noticed any of this.

“I see you like
il vino
, bella,” Francesco said in amusement as I started in on a third glass.

I raised an eyebrow. “You’re drinking just as much.”

He smiled, nodded, and beckoned for the waiter to bring us a second bottle.

Once we were halfway through our entrées—seafood pasta with a light cream sauce for me, and rosemary T-bone steak with a side
of alfredo pasta—we were talking comfortably again. All the edges of my self-doubt were softened now. I even told him about
Becky’s wedding and how Grandma had humiliated me in front of the congregation.

“But why is this the situation?” he asked, his face growing more serious after he had finished laughing about my admittedly
amusing humiliation.

“Why is what the situation?” I asked.

He seemed to struggle for words. “You. You are still single. Why? You are a pretty woman. I am sure a man would want you.”

I tried not to take his words the wrong way.

“I just haven’t found the right one yet,” I said. Then, seeing an almost wounded expression cross Francesco’s face, I backtracked.
“But maybe the right one isn’t in New York.”

We let the words dangle meaningfully between us. I noticed that Francesco didn’t argue, and I knew from the look on his face
that he understood exactly what I meant.

“Perhaps,” he said finally. He studied my face for a moment more and then winked at me. “Perhaps he is here in Roma.”

My heart leapt. He was definitely flirting with me. All of the awkwardness I’d felt earlier had been in my own mind, a product
of my own subconscious trying to defeat me with a barrage of doubts. I cleared my throat, smiled, and said in my sexiest voice,
“Maybe he is.”

We rushed through the rest of our meal and the remainder of the bottle of wine, taking long sips as we stared at each other
over the rims of our wineglasses. Francesco kept making
cin cin
toasts—to us, to the past, to the future, to Rome itself, to the good fortune that had brought me back to him after all these
years.

Still, something felt off, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. As I downed more wine, I resolved to chalk it up to the inevitable
discomfort of being lovers who had become strangers and were slowly finding their way back.

Francesco paid the bill quickly, and after we both downed a shot of ink-black Lavazza espresso, we stumbled out into the street,
Francesco’s strong right arm around me, pulling me close. I could feel his weight on me, and I liked it.

The walk back to his apartment was short; we had taken a roundabout, scenic way to get to the restaurant. Francesco fumbled
urgently with the lock to his door, then we fell inside together. Before he had even closed the door, he was all over me,
kissing me passionately, pulling me close to his taut body.

The next few minutes were a blur of murmured words of passion, shoes being kicked off and landing with loud thuds on the tile,
items of clothing flying almost cartoonishly into every corner of the room as we undressed each other frantically. I think
we both felt an urgency to the moment, a feeling of being given a second chance, a fear that if we didn’t take hold of it
quickly, it would slip away.

We didn’t even bother climbing up the ladder into the loft. I’m not sure we could have made it. Instead, Francesco pushed
me backward onto the couch, landing gently on top of me without separating his lips from mine.

“I want you,” he murmured in my ear, as if I couldn’t tell already.

“I want you, too,” I murmured back between kisses, feeling the power behind the words, still hardly believing that I was here.
Naked. In Rome. With him.

And then, just like that, he was inside me. I gasped, taking him in, adjusting my body. My head was spinning, and I wasn’t
sure whether it was from the chianti or from being with Francesco again. But it didn’t matter. It was amazing. For the first
time in years, I felt loved by a man again. I closed my eyes, pulled him closer, and let myself slide into the moment as he
whispered Italian endearments in my ear.

Afterward, as we lay sweaty and panting on the couch, Francesco traced a finger slowly down my face and tilted my chin toward
him. “That was good,” he said. “Very good.”

I laughed. Talk about the understatement of the year. “Yeah,” I agreed. “It was.”

We lay there for a while, catching our breath. His left arm was still around me, and I felt safe and protected as he pulled
me closer. I closed my eyes and tried to imprint the moment on my mind. I never wanted to forget the way his body felt against
mine, the way our breath rose and fell together, the way he was gently stroking my hair, almost absentmindedly, the fact that
we didn’t have to speak to be together; we were beyond words.

A few minutes later, he leaned over and kissed me again, tentatively at first and then more passionately. He pulled me on
top of him, and after a moment, he asked in a husky voice, “Shall we go upstairs?”

“Yeah,” I whispered. He scooped me off the couch, like a prince carrying his princess, and deposited me at the foot of the
ladder to the loft. I climbed up quickly, momentarily feeling self-conscious that he was behind me, getting a full view of
my cellulite-ridden thighs. But he didn’t seem to care. Seconds later, he was on top of me again, in his bed, kissing me everywhere.

I woke the next morning feeling strangely disconcerted. In fact, it took me a second to register exactly where I was. It all
came back in a flood of moments, though.

Francesco touching me.

Francesco’s lips on mine.

Francesco ripping my clothes off like he couldn’t wait to be with me.

Francesco holding me as we fell asleep.

I turned my head and smiled. His familiar form was beside me. He was deeply asleep, curled away from me on his side. I watched
his smooth, tanned back rise and fall for a moment, his muscles stretched taut. I shook my head in astonishment. How could
everything feel so perfect? It was like the past thirteen years had never happened. I was twenty-one again, waking up in bed
next to the man I was madly in love with.