He pushes me against the cold stone wall in a little cobbled alley off of piazza Signoria, his lips pressing against mine, his hand coming to my throat. Would you look at that? He’s not a bad kisser. Giovanni, was it? Or maybe Giacomo, Giuseppe. Those G names all blend together, I think, as I press my body back against his.
We met just minutes earlier, on my way home—the cool September night a break from the summer’s oppressive heat—when he asked me for the time. 2:30am. His ears perked up at my accent. “Where are you from?” switching to English. We started to chat—the usual questions, a bit of banter. Charming, with an easy smile and curly hair that flops onto his forehead the way I like. Was I in the midst of a meet cute?
“And you, what do you do?” He told me he’s a piercer, a timely answer considering my recent fixation with getting a nose ring, my Pinterest board peppered with various hoops and studs. “I’ll do one for you now if you like. My studio’s just around the corner,” he proffered. “For free.”
I enthusiastically acquiesced. Book smarts, I have. Street smarts, a little less so. In my defense (or perhaps to dig myself a deeper hole), my judgement was clouded by the Negronis I had at the bar down the road—the bartender, a friend with a generous pour.
We were “on our way” to his studio when he made his move.
He pulls away. “Just so you know, I have a girlfriend.” I take a beat. After a few years living in Italy, cheating is no longer a novel concept, no longer worthy of the gasps my friends from home take when I regale them, like you, with stories of my dalliances. But the previous adulterers I’ve experienced haven’t been so forthcoming, leaving me to puzzle the pieces together after. “And you’re telling me because?”
“So you know why I don’t text you tomorrow.”
Up from the depths of my subconscious bubbles my long-buried psychology degree. “Why do you cheat?” I press, steering him toward some reluctant introspection. “Don’t you love your girlfriend?”
They have been together for five years, I gather, and he does, very much so. It’s not a question of love. What it comes down to, he explains, is the “exhilaration of the chase” and the “thrill of the hunt”—lines that reek of overused metaphors and bad rom-coms. And that makes me feel like his pin-to-the-wall move leans more towards taxidermied animal than mysterious stranger.
He pushes me back into the stones, this time I push him away. “You have a girlfriend. I’m not interested.”
The droplets of Fontana del Nettuno glitter under the floodlights as I go to make my escape. Giovanni/Giacomo/Giuseppe calls after me. “Can I get your Instagram?!”
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