18

I’ll admit it: I don’t really remember meeting him. It was halfway through my sophomore year of college, when I’d taken to wearing belly shirts in the winter and drinking plastic cups of Diet Coke and cheap vodka just a little bit too quickly.

I do know it was a Friday night, and I was talking too loudly, cheeks flushed by a tiny room tightly packed with international students. I was the stupid American girl, but at the time — I didn’t care. I was getting more attention than I’d ever gotten at a normal frat party, handing out warm PBRs and coyly demanding to be the “DJ.”

I remember briefly sitting next to him on the bed — because that was what dorm parties were then. Crammed into someone’s personal space for lack of better location, spilling beer on the pillow they’d lay their head on a few hours later. Pretending we didn’t see their contact solution and pile of boxers under the nightstand.

I may have pretended to speak Italian, pronounced “arrivederci” incorrectly, and then turned to a deeply tanned boy on my other side and done the same thing. I recalled it afterwards through someone else’s Facebook photos.

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The second time we met was in the library. Even the international students knew that at a small liberal arts school like ours, the library was the place to be at night. It was easy: make writing your essay last all night, giggling, bleary-eyed through the stacks of books. A place to catch up with the guys that were too cool for you at parties, the not-so-secret “in” if you could sustain yourself on stale bagels and 1,000 calorie Frappuccinos.

We shared a table with another Italian guy and my roommate, who’d grown up in Spain and already dazzled the large majority of the international students with her exceptionally large breasts and ability switch between five different languages flawlessly.

I didn’t remember much about him, just that he was funny in a way a lot of people didn’t understand — as I felt I was, only he’d managed to translate our humor into a goofy ease that made him extremely popular on campus.

As he greeted almost everyone who passed our table, and we bantered over our laptops — his so tinily European he had to hunch over the screen — I tried to mimic the easy drunk confidence I’d had upon our first meeting. I showed him a picture of my family on my phone.

Later that night, outside my dorm, he actually asked me: “Can I kiss you?” I couldn’t believe things like that happened in real life.

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The twelfth time we met he changed his return flight home, and came to meet my family over Christmas break.

In our living room, my sister curled on the couch with her high school boyfriend of three years, and I remember feeling just as close to this boy who’d just pronounced “kitchen” as “chicken.”

My mother served us homemade soup, and we laughed at a man with a strange accent on 60 Minutes. I wondered if we were laughing at the same thing — but it didn’t seem to matter.

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The fifteenth time we met, I waited for his bus to come in a dirty station in downtown Philadelphia. I tried to will the tears back into my head — it seemed too dramatic as he joked about the long flight — but I couldn’t help it. “Ebby,” he kept saying, and the accented pronunciation I’d grown so used to actually hurt.

When the bus pulled up, he gave me a firm hug and stepped defiantly on. Always so much surer than I was of what lay ahead.

I remember walking back to my car with that feeling you’ll get the first few times you feel loved by someone. That you’ll never find anyone again; this was the one time you were allowed to feel good. I sobbed into the steering wheel of my father’s car.

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The sixteenth time we met was over a year later. I was studying in France — young and hypnotized by the bitter old ladies scolding me on the subway, shovelling 15 extra pounds of croissant down my throat. So close.

We’d agreed to meet in October; I’d go with my roommate. It felt like a cool little secret that I had, as we booked our tickets. An authentic European experience.

The day we left, I realized I hadn’t packed enough clothes, and ended up wearing an American Apparel bandage dress tucked into jeans. I hoped I looked as chic as the French girls with the skintight buns, but the dress bunched at my waistband.

When we landed, it was late and he was late and I was nervous — I laughed to my friend about belly shirts and PBR and then suddenly, he and his friends pulled up on Vespas. She ran to him before I did.

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The seventeenth time we met was the night before we were to leave back to Paris. We visited his parents’ apartment, where his mother had lain out endless bowls of pasta. He whipped up bruschetta as if it were a bowl of cereal, and I tried to memorize the kitchen.

After dinner, my roommate traipsed to the family room, buoyed with spaghetti, and fell asleep on the couch. He and I kissed by the sink, and for once, I thought simultaneously I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else and This will never happen again.

We lay in his bed until my bus came, both suspended from our separate worlds for a few hours, sharing something that, like a cliché, didn’t need to be spoken. I didn’t think.

Hours later, we walked to my bus, roommate in tow, the sun not even creeping over the horizon yet. The driver cranked open the door earlier than I’d wanted him to. I turned back to hug him, and saw a flash of the dirty station in Philadelphia we’d been in just a year earlier. Only this time, I wasn’t crying. Only this time, I let go, climbed up the bars stairs sleepily, and didn’t look back.