“
It’s nice to see you.”
Stupid, silly, banal little words. Luca smiles, his dark blue eyes sparking.
“Nice?” he says, and he starts to take off his shoes. “This is a very strong word in English, non è vero?”
“No,” I say quickly. “It’s not a strong word at all.”
“Oh, peccato,” he says cheerfully, which means “what a shame.”
He’s pulling off his socks.
“What are you doing?” I ask, which is stupid too, as it’s obvious; he’s standing up now, his hands at his waistband, unbuckling his belt. The sight is incredibly disconcerting. I back away, into deeper water, on the tips of my toes now. “Luca--”
“I am hot,” he says. “That’s correct, isn’t it? Not ‘I have hot.’”
I know what he means: in Italian, you say you “have” hot or cold, not that you “are.” It takes a bit of getting used to. Especially with the double meaning, which I’m certainly not going to explain to him now.
“Yes,” I say even more feebly as Luca’s jeans drop to the ground and he steps out of them. Thank goodness he’s wearing boxers! His legs are long and almost too thin, a bit stork-like. I’m ridiculously glad to have found a defect in him. As he starts to unbutton his shirt, I take another step back and find myself treading water frantically, out of my depth now. I can’t look at his mostly bare body: I turn away, feeling a blush suffusing my cheeks. So I hear, rather than see, him dive into the river.
He surfaces next to me, shaking his wet hair back from his face. It plasters down to his skull, and that makes his bone structure much more pronounced, his cheekbones sharp as knives. I stare at him, tongue-tied, as he treads water easily next to me.
“Now you must be cross with me,” he says, a thread of laughter in his voice. “You must tell me that I’m wrong, that we must not be alone together.”
“We mustn’t,” I say, suddenly angry. “You know we mustn’t.” I can’t keep treading water; my legs feel too wobbly. I put my head down and swim away from him, a couple of strokes to the far bank, where I can stand.
He follows me; he swims right to me, and when he comes up, he’s so close, so tall, that he blocks out the moon. His bare chest is dappled with drops of water clinging to his skin. I can’t look anymore, so I raise my eyes, and then I’m looking into his, and oh no, that’s a really terrible idea, that’s the worst idea in the world…
“Se scorre un fiume dentro ad ogni cuore, arriveremo al mare prima o poi,” he says, looking down at me. “More Jovanotti,” he adds, smiling, as he sees me staring at him in confusion.
Jovanotti is Luca’s favorite singer; he’s quoted songs of his before to me. But I don’t know this one.
“‘If a river runs inside every heart, we will arrive at the sea,’” he translates. “I think of this because we are in a river.”
“It’s very pretty,” I mumble.
“The rest of the song is maybe not so pretty,” he says. “It is a love song, but Jovanotti tells the truth about love. That it is sometimes not pretty at all.”
I nod, even though hearing the word “love” spoken by Luca is enough to make me feel as if I’m blushing all over.
”
”