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HOPEFUL APPREHENSION simmered in my stomach as I scanned the cafeteria for my new friend. He sat near the windows and double doors at the back of the room with headphones on.
I stopped in my tracks at the sight of the gross sophomore boys at the other end of his table. They packed their mouths full of meatloaf, chips, and sugar cookies and took turns trying to talk, sending half-chewed food into each other’s faces. They’d explode into laughter. Giovanni ignored their antics and ate his sandwich like a normal person. It was nice to know I didn’t have to dodge spittle from him. I hoped those boys didn’t aim and fire at us too.
I weaved around the long tables and fat tiled columns to Giovanni’s table, catching the eyes of the devious Mariah and her protegè Imani as they followed me around the room.
I plopped down across from him and rearranged the curly mane around my face. My morbid rise to fame was taking its toll on my still wounded spirit, though. And I was grateful I didn’t have to bear the burden of their staring alone. I had Giovanni. He was a much better-looking specimen to study than me any day.
“You go girl. Go get your man!” one of the dummies at the end of the table barked at me, inspiring his friends to join in with kissy noises.
Using my hand as a shield, I gave them my back and did my best to ignore their taunts.
“Wanna get outta here? It looks a little warmer outside,” I suggested, nodding toward the doors behind him.
“Hey, Giovanni,” Imani said out of nowhere, kneeling on a seat and resting her elbows on the table beside him.
“Uh, hi.” Judging by the look on his face, he had no clue why she was speaking to him. I didn’t either, considering the whole world knew she only had eyes for Kai—Mr. Life-of-the-Party-in-Every-Room-He-Walked-into. His table was on the other side of the room near Imani’s from where she could best admire him.
“So what? Are you guys like...together?” she asked, batting her wispy eyelash extensions at him.
“No, we’re not. So, you can go back to your table and mind someone else’s business.” I glared at her until she scoffed and went away.
I met Giovanni’s eyes. “Do you wanna go outside or not?”
A nervous smile tugged at the corner of his lips as he nodded, grabbed the remnants of his lunch, and trailed after me. I pushed through the door. A soft breeze blew the hair off my face, calming the uneasy flutter skipping through me after telling Imani off. We strolled along the sun-lit walkway.
“Giovanni, did you wanna hang out with me?”
He chuckled dryly. “I want to hang out with you. It is boring to eat alone.”
I let out a sigh, relieved he didn’t feel pressured to further endure my company.
As soon as we settled at the weathered picnic table, I delved into my turkey and cheese sandwich.
“I wanted to thank you for what you did for me this morning,” he said, unscrewing the cap off his Coke bottle.
I covered my mouth with a napkin. “You don’t have to thank me.” I swallowed my food. “It pissed me off how much of a jerk that kid was to you.”
With a furrowed brow, he said, “I was afraid for you. I saw a fight between a boy and a girl the other day. I never see that in Italy. The boy won, and the girl was on the ground, crying and bleeding. I did not want you to get hurt like that.” My insides turned cold at his words. “You should be more careful. It was not your fight.”
“I didn’t think about it, to be honest. I think I could’ve taken him, though. Don’t you?” I joked.
He forced a laugh and took a swig of soda. “I did not think you would talk to me again after the first time we met.”
I let the hair fall in my face and shrugged. “Me neither. You still make me nervous, ya know.”
He blinked at me in confusion. “Why?”
Diverting my eyes to my partially eaten sandwich, I took another bite.
Clearly, I remembered his first day of school better than he did.
He wandered the hall, lost and frustrated, muttering to himself. When none of the ten other people around us helped him, I did.
“I’m Joy,” I said with a wave and an intensely anxious smile—my I’m-getting-electrocuted smile, not the tummy-issues one. I could feel it, but there was no turning my stupid face off once it switched on.
No reply, unless a grimace counted.
At the time, I had no clue where he was from, who he was, or what he was accustomed to. So, I offered my hand, only to find out after another awkward pause how ridiculous I looked, but it was too late to take it back.
Giving my hand a limp shake, he watched me through wide, uncertain eyes.
“Hey, pretty boy!” a clan of juniors shouted at him. “She ain’t gonna bite you unless you want her to.”
Never once did Giovanni break his gaze from mine. With crimson cheeks and ears, tiny beads of sweat formed along his brow, glistening under the bright lights.
The boys burst out laughing at him. Their laughter continued as they sought something new to make fun of him for.
“Ha-ha-ha,” I mocked, copying their stupid donkey laughs. I knew it was immature, but at least it got them to shut up.
A teacher who had overheard most of their trash talk stepped out of her room to threaten them with a trip to the main office if they didn’t leave us alone.
I tried a second time with Giovanni.
“Are you lost?” I said, articulating each word.
The juniors’ laughter echoed louder in the space between his long pauses and my questions.
“What room number do you need?”
He stood there gawking at me like I was a dork for a full minute. He could talk to himself, but he couldn’t answer two little questions?
Snatching his schedule from his hand, I found the class number and proceeded to walk, giving him no choice but to follow me.
“Go in here,” I said, pointing to the closed door.
I didn’t even wait to see if he understood. All I cared about was getting to my own class.
I’d made it three halls away from where I’d abandoned him when his class schedule beamed like the Olympic torch in my hand. Stopping in my tracks, I cursed myself and him as I u-turned it and retraced my steps.
A looming shadow interrupted me from slipping it under the door. A girl eyed me with suspicion. Straightening up, I moved out of her way. She gripped the handle and opened the door for me, giving me a wary side-glance for not stepping into the room right away, as if bending over in front of a closed door to a class that wasn’t mine wasn’t weirder than that.
“Uh, hi. May I help you?” Giovanni’s teacher asked me.
I ignored the man.
With my autopilot setting kicked into gear, I had two goals and two goals only: return Giovanni’s schedule and change schools afterward.
I bee-lined for his desk and tripped in front of everyone, earning me a few giggles. My whole body tingled with embarrassment. I chucked his schedule at him from two feet away—another involuntary action—making the new kid feel all kinds of welcome as he fumbled to catch it—and left.
“Why were you nervous?” he inquired a second time.
I shrugged. “It was embarrassing. I kept tryna talk to you, but you stood there staring at me. It made me feel stupid for even trying,” I confessed, biting the crust-free corner off my sandwich to comfort myself over the memory.
His cheeks flushed. “You made me nervous too. That was why I could not think to speak to you. You were so nice to me and beautiful.”
I breathed in a crumb. Did he want me to choke?
“Are you okay?”
I sputtered a few more times mid-nod, trying to ease the food down my throat.
“You were nervous?” I swallowed some ginger ale. “Why?”
“I already told you why.” He smirked.
“Right. Because I’m nice and beautiful? Are you kidding me?” I laughed heartily at the thought.
“No one tells you this?” His fading smirk hinted at his seriousness.
“No.” I shifted in my seat.
“What do you call in English those tiny spots on your skin?”
“Freckles. How do you say it in Italian?”
“Lentiggini.”
I tried to pronounce it with a sorry imitation of his accent.
He laughed at my pathetic attempt. “Mi piacciono le tue lentiggini. I like your freckles.”
My cheeks burned hot. I looked away.
“You are embarrassed?”
“Do you want me to be?” I asked, mistrustful of his tone.
“No. I...”
Impulsively, I reached over the table for his hand, catching him off guard.
“Ya know, I’ve never seen anyone like you before. You’re perfect, just like your little fangirls say you are...and nice too.” I batted my lashes at him.
His ears glowed red, then his cheeks just like they did that first day.
“You are embarrassed?” I asked, mimicking his accent.
With a wag of his head and a bashful smile, he said, “If it is what you think, I am not embarrassed.”
Before I knew it, his free hand cupped mine, transferring their moisture and warmth in the process.
Who was this guy? On a normal day, I could read people like a book. Why couldn’t I read him?
Pulling my hand free, I picked at the little mound of bread crust on the wrapper. A little sparrow on the patch of grass nearby watched me toy with my food. I tossed my leftovers to him to have something to do.
Playing games wasn’t my style, especially when I was clueless about the rules, and I didn’t even know the name of the game to begin with.
“Do you think you’re perfect?” I asked.
He narrowed his eyes and frowned, disgusted by the notion. “No.”
Then again, with the steady stream of compliments he would receive daily, his confidence should’ve been in another galaxy.
“Nobody is perfect,” he said. “Do you think you are beautiful?”
I shook my head and downed the rest of my ginger ale. “So, what part of Italy are you from?” I asked, my last-ditch effort to drum out a comfortable rhythm with him.
“Milano. Have you ever been to Italy?”
“In my dreams,” I said. “My mom’s friend got to go three years ago. She still talks about the food and how gorgeous it is. I’d love to go. I’d eat everything I could and take a million pictures.”
He smiled. “You want to be a real tourist.” He sipped his drink. “Many tourists in Milano miss a lot of the good things. They think all of Italy is the same, but Milano is more modern than the other places. Many come to shop and see a few of the sights, but it breaks my heart to see how many leave and do not even try the best food.”
“That’s how it is here too. Everybody comes to see Manhattan and miss out on all the good stuff here in Queens and the other boroughs. They don’t know any better, I guess.”
“That was what I thought too,” he said with a sheepish grin. “When you go to Milano, you must try the panzerotti. It is so good.” He sighed. “Me and my friends used to ride skateboards in front of the duomo and stop at Luini’s to buy them.”
“What is a duomo and panz-otti?”
He smirked at my mispronunciation. “Il duomo is a famous church in Milano.” He pulled up pictures to show me on his phone. “And panz-e-ro-tti,” he sounded out, “is food. They take the pizza dough with the ingredients inside and fry it. They have baked ones too, but try the fried ones, and you will fall in love.”
My heart swelled with excitement. I was ready to move there after hearing him talk and seeing the pictures.
From that point, the awkwardness between us eased away.
As he spoke of his hometown and dream vacations to ancient hilltop villages and famous landmarks, jealousy consumed me. I’d never been on vacation in my entire life. I needed another job if I was ever gonna save enough to get outta this town.
The bell sounded. Locking eyes with one another, we smiled as the same thought passed between us. Following his lead, I slipped behind the massive oak tree, a place where no one would interrupt our afternoon chill session with orders to go to class.
GIOVANNI INVITED ME to his house. Since we skipped class, we figured we might as well leave school and avoid having to worry about being discovered. Plus, I was curious to check out where he lived.
Giovanni lifted the latch on a chain-linked fence bordering a simple, white house. I followed him up the concrete steps and listened to the traffic hum in the distance.
He turned his key in the lock and opened the door. The alarm beeped inside.
“Stay here for a moment,” he said. “I need to clean a little. I will be back.” He passed through the door and punched in the code to disarm the alarm, silencing the warning beeps.
Growing restless outside, I cracked the door. The faint aroma of freshly baked bread scented the air, one of the best smells in the world.
As I stuck my nose deeper inside, my jaw dropped. From the outside, it was impossible to tell that the interior would be this nice. The whole place gave off a retro 1960s vibe.
The hardwood floors shined under the recessed lights like they had been waxed and polished yesterday. The butterscotch-colored sofas complimented the exposed brick wall behind it. I wanted to dive right into their cushions head-first and feel them hug me back. Flowering and leafy potted plants and herbs basked in the sunlight on wicker plant stands by the large bay window.
We lived in a house when I was younger, but not in one quite this pretty. Standing here reminded me exactly how much I missed it—how much I missed my dad and the adventures we used to have together there.
Giovanni’s rapid movement stole my attention from my nostalgia. He dashed from one end of the living room to the other, tripping over his own feet to collect framed pictures from the glass oval side tables and the mantle over the fireplace. This was him cleaning a little? His house already looked more than ready for a house and garden photoshoot.
“You don’t have to go through all that trouble for me,” I told him from the doorway.
Flinching at the sound of my voice, he carried on with his task, his ears and cheeks glowing red.
“Please, come in. I will be back in a moment,” Giovanni called over his shoulder.
Bypassing me for the staircase, he gave me a quick glimpse of one of the four framed photos stacked in his arms. I smiled to myself at the sight of a chubby little boy grinning cheerfully and stopped myself from chasing him down to make him show me the others.
Why would he want to hide them from me? He was too stinkin’ cute.
The boy had no clue how lucky he was. I looked like a wild-haired orphan Annie in most of my childhood photos if Annie was half Brazilian-American and half Barbadian. My mom, who had a completely different hair texture from mine, was hopeless in taming it until Selena and Dad’s cousin, Brooke, taught her a few things.
I spun on my heels and studied the pictures he had left behind—shots of him with his family and friends before he came here.
A sad, bristly-faced clown painting hung adjacent to a happy clown painting on the wall above each end table. I looked closer at the joyful clown to realize it was an illusion. His eyes remained as sad as the first clown.
Giovanni thumped upstairs. He was taking forever.
I wandered from the living to the dining room to sniff out the fresh bread. Scanning the glass-topped table for the evidence, I drooled over the doughy pastries on a cake stand calling my name. Forget the bread.
I stood there, tearing apart the fruit-filled turnovers in my mind when Giovanni’s voice scared me into reality—payback from when I’d done it to him.
“My mamma makes them every morning. Do you want one?”
I looked him over.
He’d exchanged his collared shirt and khakis for a pair of dark jeans and a gray T-shirt with an electric-blue, circular insignia. I thought I liked him in blue, but gray complimented him every bit as well.
“Do you want one?” he repeated, giving me a wary glance.
“Uh, yeah,” I said, pretending I hadn’t zoned out for a minute to gawk at him.
Once he offered me a small plate with my pastry of choice, I decided our budding friendship could never come to an end, not when his mother had the touch of a pastry-making goddess.
I FLIPPED THROUGH THE photo album he placed in my hands, captivated by the beauty of his old city and especially the pictures of him with his friends and adorable grandparents. They looked so happy.
“It snows there?” I gasped at the image of his former wonderland neighborhood.
Beaming proudly, he collapsed onto the couch beside me and said, “Yes, but it does not last long.”
“But I thought Italy was hot all year round.”
“It depends on the region. It does not snow like it does here, but Milan is in the north. It gets snow and rain in winter.”
The lock on the door clinked, alerting us of his father’s presence. His long, pointy nose twitched, and his bushy brows shot up at the unexpected sight of the strange black girl alone with his son in his living room. Giovanni hadn’t gotten his parents’ permission for me to be there. My heart pounded in the base of my throat.
Hitching his keys on the hook by the door, Mr. Vitali hurried over to meet me with a vigorous shake of my hand.
“It is very nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too,” I said. “Uh. I really like these paintings.” I pointed to the clowns behind me. It was all I could think to say.
Raking his fingers through his thinning hair and blinking his large, brown eyes at me, he recalibrated his brain.
“Yes. They were a gift from an old friend. Please, sit. My wife will be home soon. She will love to meet you.” Mr. Vitali smiled kindly at me.
I nodded and sank into the cushy sofa again. He led Giovanni by the arm into the dining room for a private conversation. I fiddled with my phone like I had something important to do until his dad went upstairs and left us on our own.
Giovanni switched on the TV. The woman’s voice booming on the surround sound made me jump.
“Do you want to watch a movie?” he shouted, lowering the volume to a comfortable setting.
“Is your dad okay with me being here? Did I get you in trouble?”
“No.” His forehead creased. “He said you should stay for dinner.”
“I would love to.” I slouched into the sofa, finally able to relax, and stared at the giant TV mounted on the wall. “Are you sure he doesn’t mind me being here?”
“Oh, no. He said you are very pretty and that we look good together. That is all.”
‘We looked good together’? No, we didn’t. And we weren’t together.
Giovanni’s matter-of-fact delivery unnerved me, as if he was perfectly okay with his dad matching us up. Why were people so eager to jump to that conclusion anyway? We were only getting to know each other.
He scrolled through the menu on the TV and asked, “Which movie do you want?”
“Can you please go tell your dad that we’re just friends...like right now?”
“Why does it matter?” he asked, his eyes glued to the screen.
“I don’t like the idea of your dad thinking it. It’s too weird.”
“It is okay. I will tell him later.” Giovanni mashed the same button on the remote, all the while pretending my expectant stare was not fiercely aimed at him.
The door opened with a powerful thrust, scaring me out of my skin. Paper bags brimming with groceries came into view. His mother kicked out her leg to prevent the door from closing on her. As she hobbled in like a weary warrior, Giovanni and I rushed to help.
She spoke so fast that I would not have understood, even if it were in English. Giovanni answered her and she picked up where she’d left off, talking a mile a minute while walking us to the kitchen.
I turned to them to inquire where to lay the bags when I discovered she was speaking to me.
“Oh, but I–I don’t–know what you’re saying.” I tried to interject, but it was hopeless.
Giovanni did his best to interrupt her. She hushed his mouth with a finger to his lips and kept going.
Palming his forehead, he smiled in defeat, increasing my heart rate by a thousand.
Why didn’t he try again? And what made his mother think I could understand, much less, speak Italian? She had to have been the only person on the planet who would ever make that assumption.
So as not to appear rude, I nodded along to her one-sided conversation. Loud, angry words accompanied an agitated slap of the back of her hand into her palm. Her tone went from sweet to furious in an instant.
Assuming her words were a motherly scolding aimed at me for being there without their consent, I stared at the terracotta tiled floor in shame.
By the end of it, I dragged my eyes to her dark gray ones, only to find her entire demeanor and tone softened. Her hearty laugh resounded in the room, baffling me further. In my nervousness, I laughed too, much to her son’s amusement.
As Mrs. Vitali’s suspicion fell to Giovanni, he charmed her out of it with kisses to her cheeks before revealing her mistake to her in secret.
Sheer embarrassment marred her face.
The time to go had come.
I moved toward the glossy granite countertops to set down the heavy bags, desperate to get on my way before Mrs. Vitali felt compelled to send me home herself.
“Forgive me. I did not know,” she said, halting my steps and taking the bags from my hands. She set them onto the counter beside her.
Gripping my arms, she pulled me to her, gave me a tight squeeze, and air-kissed me while Giovanni introduced us.
Her little hoop earring snagged my hair as she tried to draw away.
“Ow!” I sang, trying to pretend the sudden jerk of my hair was less painful than it actually was, as if our meet and greet needed another dose of awkwardness.
Detangling her jewelry from my mane with difficulty, she said, “I am sorry.”
“My hair is dangerous,” I joked nervously.
Mrs. Vitali indulged her fascination by immersing her hands in my hair. “It is so soft. Come,” she urged her son. “Feel it. It is so nice.”
I’m not a sheep, I wanted to remind them. Instead, I politely stepped away from their reach, gathered my hair, and let it fall behind my back, knowing from touch alone how frizzy their heavy petting had already made it.
Disguising my annoyance, I faked a smile. “Can I help you with dinner?”
“No. No. No. No. No. Gian, Gioia, please, out of my kitchen,” she ordered us. “Gioia, will you eat with us?”
Relief washed over me. “I would love to, but I gotta call my mom first to see.”
Smoothing her dark chocolate tresses into a low ponytail, she unpacked the groceries to get started on dinner.
Giovanni and I returned to the living room.
“What was she saying to me when she got here?”
“She was talking about a rude man at the store.”
“Oh. Okay. Why’d she call you ‘John’?”
Giovanni cracked a smile. “My name is John in English, so it is close to what they call me,” he said. “She always calls me Gian and my papá too. You know, in Italian, the first two letters of my name sound like a j in English.”
“I know.”
He shook his head. “You say my name the same way the other Americans say it,” he clarified. “Gee-oh-vah-nee. That is how you say it. But in Italian, it is Joh-VAH-nee. I like the way you say it,” he admitted with a lazy smile, setting my cheeks on fire with his statement.
I sought a distraction, any distraction from being under his watch, and found it in my phone when Mom’s number flashed across the screen. Giovanni’s gaze bounced between me and the musical phone in my hands.
“Are you going to answer it?”
I hurried outside alone and glided my finger across the display.
“Where are you?”
Ignoring the stress in Mom’s voice, I recited my hastily improvised lie under the orange glow of the setting sun. “I’m right up the street. I’ve got a group project due tomorrow, so I came to work on it at my partner’s house. I thought we’d be done by now. Sorry.”
“Who do you think you are not checkin’ with me first? You know better than that!” she growled. “How much longer are you gonna be?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a couple more hours,” I said, mindlessly watching a kid ride his bike in broad circles on the street.
“And what about dinner?”
“They invited me to eat after we finish.”
I let her rant at me for two minutes and cut her off, using my imaginary assignment as an excuse. Still, I knew there would be no escaping the final dose of her wrath later on.
Crisis averted for now, but for how long could I keep Giovanni a secret from her?
My last best friend without fur was a boy—Elijah Moore. From our kindergarten years up to fourth grade, we were ballroom partners and inseparable, on and off the dance floor. Then, two months before our first national competition, I was forced to quit. I never dreamed that Elijah would blame me for everything, like I wasn’t heartbroken over the news already.
“You know how hard we worked, how hard I worked,” he screamed inches from my face as if Dad’s addiction problems were somehow my fault. “What am I supposed to do now? I hate you!” he shouted, restraining the urge to shatter the breakables in the china cabinet beside him.
Hot with grief and devastation, I put my head down and cried until his mom Lucy and my mom, hearing the commotion from the garden outside, rushed into the room.
Elijah yelled at the top of his voice, explaining to his mother about me. She’d heard it already. Our moms agreed that it would be best for me to tell him. They were wrong.
Lucy forced an inconsolable Elijah up the first three stairs toward his room to silence his hate speech, then saw Mom and me out. I couldn’t look at her. Instead, I let my tears pool onto the wood flooring near their fancy medieval style door.
“Give it a week, sweetie,” she said. “It’ll be okay. It’s just a shock.” Even as those words floated out of her mouth, Lucy knew that no amount of time could ever make it okay.
Elijah had to start over with someone else. When he couldn’t find a new partner in time, his misdirected hatred for me solidified.
I never hated my dad before that day because, like Mom, I’d adopted her excuses for the pain he would inflict on us. His addiction put an end to everything I cared about. Thanks to Dad, Mom lost friendships too, but none half as special as the one Elijah and I had.
Because of our horrible falling out, Mom projected all of her dislike and disgust for Elijah and how he treated me onto every male over the age of seven. Giovanni would have been no exception. Keeping our budding friendship a secret from her gave Mom one less subject to lecture me about.
I wandered through the front door into an empty living room and followed Mrs. Vitali’s laughter to the kitchen.
The knife stilled in her hand as she glanced at me from behind the island. Giovanni and Mr. Vitali sat on black cushy stools opposite her.
“Gioia, will you stay?” she asked with a ready smile.
“My mom said yes.” I looked at the food spread across the counter. “Are you sure I can’t help? I’m taking culinary arts too. I can at least cut some vegetables.”
“Thank you, but no.”
“Then, would you mind if I watch?”
She grinned broadly and directed me to a stool beside Giovanni around the island.
AFTER FORTY MINUTES, dinner was served: oven-roasted herbed potatoes, veal saltimbocca—veal chops stuffed with cheese, wrapped in prosciutto and herbs, then breaded—freshly baked bread, and a green salad. Mrs. Vitali let me help Giovanni set the dining room table, so I didn’t feel completely useless.
Throughout dinner, her husband entertained us with jokes, goofy facial expressions, and sound effects. He’d crack himself up until his wheezy laugh went silent, which was way funnier to watch than anything he could’ve said. His English was excellent, but the humor died somewhere in the middle of translation every time. I lacked the heart to tell him.
“Ma!” Giovanni whispered, annoyed by Mrs. Vitali’s endless fussing.
I hid my smile behind a napkin whenever she dabbed at his face to clear away any minor splash of sauce.
No wonder his table manners were so on-point. She never cut the kid a break. Swatting her away, he’d mutter under his breath and sip his sparkling water, increasingly embarrassed. I couldn’t help but wonder: would it have bothered him at all if I hadn’t been here?
“You like my Giovanni?” Mrs. Vitali inquired, raising her thinly arched eyebrows.
“Yes, as a friend.”
Without a word, she hopped from her seat. Her all-knowing grin made me uneasy, even after I had prepared myself for the slightest hint of disappointment. Instead, she set a dessert glass of zabaglione with fresh cut strawberries before each of us. Mrs. Vitali stroked my hair playfully and glided into her seat beside me. For as long as the woman wanted to feed me, she could glue her hands to my hair if she wanted to.
At the first bite of the sensationally creamy custard, I closed my eyes and danced gleefully in my seat. How could I not? It was absolute confection heaven.
“Mrs. Vitali, I think you should move in with me, so you can make me sweets every day. Giovanni, I’m so jealous.”
Sudden sadness engulfed me as I immersed the last spoonful of custard into my mouth, the look on my face inspiring their laughter.
“Come see me at my bakery some time,” his mom insisted, leaning over to pat my cheek. “Gian, you must bring her.”
“I would love to!”
Envisioning the vast array of delectable treats on display at her bakery and of me stuffing my face gluttonously with them while her customers watched in horror thrilled me. It was enough, at least until I could come close to it in reality.
“You want more?”
“I wish I could eat another bite, but I’m so full. Everything was amazing. Thank you.”
“I am happy you stay for dinner. My son does not have many fr‒.”
Giovanni stopped her mid-sentence, magically anticipating her intent to humiliate him. After another attempt to complete her thought, he rose from his seat abruptly, lecturing her in their secret tongue, desperate for her to keep it to herself.
“Gian tells me that you must go home soon. I hope you come again.”
“I would love to.”
As she stood to clear the table, I followed her lead until she sat me down and said with a smile, “You do not work when you come to my home.” She disappeared into the kitchen, carting a stack of clanking dishes with her.
Giovanni wiggled his eyebrows at me and grinned while I sat back to let my food baby stretch.
Yes. I would definitely be coming back.
GIOVANNI OFFERED TO walk me home, affording me the perfect opportunity to grill him about his curious behavior at dinner.
“I did not want her to talk about me.”
“Oh, please! Unless she was gonna tell me about how you used to pee the bed, what else could she have said? She loves you too much to embarrass you on purpose.”
His jaw clicked in agitation.
“Come on. Don’t be nervous.”
“I am not nervous. I do not want you to think differently about me,” he said defensively.
“I won’t. I promise.”
“Why do you not have friends in school? I never see you talk to anyone before.”
His diversion of the attention back to me to avoid my question, in effect, answered it for me.
“I talk to people,” I said. “But I keep my head down most of the time to avoid trouble, except for these last couple of days.”
“You got bullied before?” His eyes bulged in surprise.
“Really?” I asked. “You can’t look at me and figure out why?”
He shook his head.
“They used to make fun of my hair and how I’d wear my mom’s clothes. Now they’re stuck on my flat boobs, my freckles, and the gap between my teeth...but I don’t care about that. It was the crap they’d say about my dad that used to get to me. One time towards the end of eighth grade, he showed up out of nowhere tryna pick me up from school. I hadn’t seen him for months before that day. He was still high on meth, and he...hurt me.” I drove the memory away. “I’m sure the video is online somewhere if you wanna see it for yourself.”
His forehead wrinkled. “I do not want to. But you have seen it?”
“Oh yeah! You know how people are nowadays. Instead of helping anyone, they’d rather document it and see how many views they get. They sent it to me too. Nice, huh? As if living through it wasn’t enough.” I forced a smile. “Now it’s your turn. I promise I won’t tell anyone if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Giovanni toyed with a patch of hair at his temple. He cast his eyes to a stray kitten scavenging the leftovers on a sandwich wrapper tossed in the gutter. “She was going to tell you that I do not have many friends.”
I paused for him to continue, waiting for a grander reveal, but none came.
“That’s it? Seriously?”
He gulped and nodded. “Most of the friends I had here were older, but they are in college, have moved away, or are too busy now. And some of the kids in school that I talk to...they are nice, but they treat me weird sometimes.”
“I don’t have many friends my age either, but I’m not embarrassed about it.” I proceeded to walk, and he followed suit.
“I really miss my friends back in Italy. Sometimes I wish I lived there still so we could hang out like before.” He sighed. “Joy, do you really like me?”
“Yes, as a friend. And I like you even more now ‘cause of your parents. They’re super sweet.”
He beamed proudly. “I think they like you a lot too,” he admitted, stopping short at the main entrance of Selena’s apartment building.
“Hey, I was wondering...We’re gonna have a little memorial service for my dog on Saturday. Would you wanna come? It isn’t gonna be anything fancy or big. My mom’s friend Lucy already buried her. Will ya think about it and let me know?”
“Okay,” he replied, hesitant about making the commitment.
Was I too forward in inviting him to such a serious function so soon?
“Thanks for walking me home.”
As I fished through my bag for the key to Selena’s place, I came across the crumbled drawing I’d done of him that morning. I met his eyes and noticed he’d seen it too.
“So...I drew this for you on the bus earlier. It’s a little wrinkled, but do you want it?”
He held it up and grinned from ear to ear. “Thank you.”
I finally unearthed my key.
“It was nice today,” he said. “Do you want to walk together tomorrow?”
“I’d like that. I’ll see ya tomorrow, then.”
Giovanni closed the distance between us and then took a shaky step back. He repeated his awkward dance twice before leaning in to graze my cheek with his lips. I froze as he lingered inches from my face, his piercing gaze drilling into mine. My guard skyrocketed to the moon over his supposed intentions, helping to snap me out of inaction.
Broadening the gap between us, I said, “You know I was messin’ with you at lunch, right? When I held your hand before, I‒I was trying to make you feel the way you made me feel.”
Raising his chin, his smile broadened. “I make you feel good?”
“What? No!”
And away his smile went.
“I mean, yeah, you made me feel good about myself, but I thought you were trying to embarrass me. I was trying to embarrass you back. I thought you were playing with me.”
“I was not.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have tried to flirt with you in the first place. I’ve never done anything like that before and...”
Anxiety gripped me in the midst of my rambling; however, the way his eyes inspected my face disconcerted me even more.
“You should go. Goodnight,” I said, turning him around and forcing his feet to walk.
He shook his head like I was nuts and chuckled. “Goodnight,” he said back.
I scurried into the building and rode the elevator to the fourth floor, trying to ignore the heat of his kiss burning through the surface of my cheek.
I TURNED THE LIGHT on in the darkened apartment. Mom squinted at me from the wing-backed chair she’d dragged over to the window. With one hand shielding her eyes from the light, she balanced a glass of red wine in the other.
“Why are you sitting in the dark?” I asked. “Where’s Selena?”
“Turn off the light!” Mom commanded me.
I obeyed and used the orange glow of the street light from outside to navigate the room.
“Selena’s working at the club tonight.”
The light glared off her glass. “How’d your little project go?” Mom inquired through clenched teeth.
“Good. He’s finishing it up for tomorrow.”
“He?” Even in the dim lighting, I could see the suspicion in her glossy eyes. Still, she surprised me by not demanding more details right then and there. “So...you ate already?”
I nodded emphatically and perched on the sofa’s armrest. “And I’m gonna have happy dreams about it for the rest of my life.”
Mom couldn’t have cared less. Her primary concern was tormenting me for a full hour straight with interrogations about Giovanni and his family.
I held my ground in not breaking from my original story. As far as she knew, Giovanni was some random kid assigned to work with me, who happened to live up the street, and who I had nonchalantly invited to Storm’s memorial on Saturday. Unfortunately, that little detail undermined my original plan. Really, what choice did I have? Had I kept it to myself, she and Selena would have, without fail, made the occasion as torturous for me as they could have. There was no way I’d give them the satisfaction of swapping the focus of that day onto anything or anyone except Storm.