Problematic Summer Romance (Not in Love, #2)(93)

An overwrought sigh. “Sure. Let’s climb more stairs.” But he loves the ivy-curtained walls as much as I do, the colorful pots full to the brim with firecracker peppers and prickly pears. His happiness sits at the corner of his mouth. Crinkles in the fine web of lines splitting from his eyes.

Because I am wearing his sunglasses.

“We don’t have to. If your knee joints are too fatigued, old man—”

He pulls me in, under his arm. Even though my skin is tacky and I can’t recall if I put on deodorant, I let him.

“What?” he asks halfway through the staircase, when he notices me grinning up at him.

“Nothing, just…”

He stops. Bends in to kiss me, first on the tip of my nose, then, lingering, on the lips.

And I think: Just.



* * *





“Try it,” he tells me in the middle of exploring the bustling market, after overpaying a local seller for a single branch of cherry tomatoes.

“No way.”

“Try it,” he repeats.

I pout. His knuckles are right there, brushing against my lower lip. “How did my life go from a traditional Sicilian gelato breakfast to this?”

“This kind of attitude toward fresh produce won’t get you far in life.”

“What? I love fresh produce. Some of my best friends are fresh produce! All I’m saying is, it has a time and a place.” But he’s holding it out to me, the red a vivid scarlet, inviting, tempting. Maybe my body could stand some nutrients.

“Fuck me,” I grunt, chewing. “Are you kidding me?”

“What did I tell you?”

“I hate you.” I pop another one in my mouth. “It’s so sweet.”

He pushes a strand of hair behind my ear. Watches me polish off the rest of the branch with a satisfied, smug expression that has me poking his flank.

“And what have we learned?” he asks.

“That we should respect our elders?”

His eyes narrow. “That it’s always a good time for fresh produce. Trouble.”

I laugh. If someone came to me and pried my chest open, they would see light beaming out of it.



* * *





I’ve always liked sex. Kissing…Too variable. Inconclusive. Above all, it’s much harder to instruct a man on how to kiss properly than on how to fuck. That’s probably why I used to be on the fence about it.

Conor convinces me otherwise in just a few hours. Then we have lunch on the second-floor balcony of a restaurant just off Corso Umberto. It’s a nice place, a little fancy, and I’m worried that the strawberry embroidery will get me kicked out, but they must not care. Or maybe Conor has worn so many pairs of cuff links in his life, it’s paying forward.

“So,” I say at the end of the meal—cantaloupe and prosciutto and soft cheese, arugula, crispy focaccia, Aperol spritz. “Is this our first date?”

That’s the thing of sitting across from each other: No kissing. No turning away. No way for him to ignore my signature difficult questions.

Not that he would have, at least going by how laid back his posture remains, hand relaxed on the table.

“I don’t know,” he says, sounding just as curious as I am. “Would you like this to be our first date?”

“Would you like it to be our first date?”

He mulls it over. “Honestly? No.”

I wait for my stomach to start churning, but it doesn’t happen. I feel remarkably secure about all of this. He said he loves me, which means that an explanation must be forthcoming.

“It’s a very American concept,” he continues.

“What is?”

“Dating. I’m sure it’s popularized in Europe, too, by now. Apps and media. And I know that at this point I’ve lived longer in the US than in Europe, but my formative years were here, and the idea of a formal framework to guide people as they attempt to assess whether they are a good fit romantically is…A little too much like a corporate deck.”

“Says Austin’s Entrepreneur of the Year.”

He shrugs. “It’s awkward, too. People try to put forward their best traits, but a lot is at stake, and they are nervous, which is counterproductive. It’s the trial-run nature of it. Like there’s something to prove, a new level to graduate to. The need to discover whether a subeffective dose of someone you barely know might be compatible with your system, then slowly increase the intake, see if your organism tolerates it…it’s the kind of shit you do to get accustomed to poisons.”

“Okay, so…how do you do it, in Ireland? Or did, anyway?”

“Get to know people at work, or school. Within a friend group. Develop an organic attraction with someone. By the time you’re going out for drinks, you already know that you like each other. You do it because you want to spend time together.”

I pull up my knees, distrustful. Hug them to my chest. “What you are saying is that you’d like for us to go on several outings with multiple chaperones, following which we might be able to do something that sounds like a date—but may not be called a date, to spare your fragile European millennial sensitivities.”

He laughs, full of warmth. “I’m saying that I already know I’m in love with you, and that I have little interest in being apart from you. I don’t need you in small doses, because…I want it all.”