A Home for Another
A Decision.
Three paper flyers offered three entirely different destinations for my choosing. I shuffled through each option: London, Barcelona, Italy. Speaking English and Spanish came as second nature, and I wanted to test myself. Tests are good. A test like this felt like a vacation, even though the study abroad program’s deadline was next week.
The London and Barcelona flyers were just paper in my hand. The Italy flyer, however, promised something more. It would take me away from California and into an apartment with the best view in the city, a classroom where I could comfortably settle into a routine, and a temporary home filled with laughter and long conversations between young adult academics.
Home in California had become quiet.
After class, I would drive into streets that weren’t the way home in a car with no air conditioning. I would sit in my small, loud car with no A/C, afraid that if I tried to use it, it would finally break and I would have no way to escape an unlivable home. The car would give up on me after 10 long years. My only means of traveling trudges on and takes me to my home. Little fuzzy creatures greet me as I drag my shoes to the front door. They run to chase the cool air in the lonely home. I bent over to reach the boy cat, wincing at the ache in my shoulder from carrying a heavy bag in the California sun. I stroked his soft fur and relished the steady purrs he offered in return.
I followed a routine to keep the place clean; I picked up after the messes I hadn’t made. They became proof that someone indeed did occupy the home when I was not around, but different schedules cause dull mornings and long conversations with my own being. But at least the chores reminded me that someone did, in fact, still live in the house with me. A spotless home allowed my weary body to sink into the couch; the constant stillness meant a day lost to sleep.
In my dreams, there were parties. There were long walks through the mountain desert and even longer drives to the beach with working A/C. There were philosophical conversations shared among friends. Even less intelligent ones that led to shared laughter. Some souls checked on me, asked about my day, and understood why I was so exhausted.
I woke at midnight to the front door opening and footsteps beelining upstairs.
“Hey! Did you just get home?” I called.
No answer.
I pressed my lips together and extended my arms to the armrest to push my feet onto brown carpeted floors. Productivity must be forced onto my unmotivated anatomy, or else I will fall and waste the day again. My legs move one after the other, drowsily, to the largest cave in the house. I peeled off my sweat-soaked clothes, changed into softer sleepwear, and faced a familiar choice: my hard mattress or my desk.
The desk won. The day was wasted sleeping, so I had to catch up on work. Internship assignments, emails to build my professional experience, my beloved senior thesis.
I opened my laptop and saw a blaring light that showed off the university’s Italy study abroad program.
The day had been wasted, but the next three weeks in Italy stretched before me like a promised land, a chance for routine, meaningful conversation, and a brief escape from the loneliness that waited for me at home every single day.
Open Blinds
The jet lag made me miss the first night out. I woke up in my new room with my new roommate, Evelyn, sleeping a twin bed away from me. This twin bed was a miniature of the queen back home, and light shone in through the large windows facing it. (I wouldn’t find out until the second week that the windows had blinds, but on that second night, the city lights against the night sky were enough to strain my eyes.)
The time on my phone read 4:06 a.m. Messages sent to me at 10 p.m. were from the new friends in my program. Outgoing people around my age who had the same ambitions I did. They sought conversation and moments outside the classroom.
Hey girl, were you still down to go out tonight?
Are you sleeping???
We’re heading out around 11:30 p.m. if you would like to join! :)
I blink once. I blink twice.
“Shit.” I sit up and toss my phone onto my new bed, only for it to bounce onto the shiny, clean floorboards. It makes a loud clatter that sends my limbs scrambling to check on it. My roommate groans in her sleep. She was one of the first friendly souls to take time to converse with me, and I would lose her if I took up too much space in this wondrous apartment. I could lose these new friends on my phone as well since I unwillingly ignored their invitations to Italian nightlife.
“Sorry, sorry,” I whisper, but my eyes stay fixed on my phone.
If I could make any wish, it would be the ability never to sleep again. My brain could deteriorate from the lack of it, but at least I could last long enough for the sun to go down. A night of potential new friendships and philosophical conversations was lost. Plus potential free drinks and loud music to distract from the pain in my heels. I rub the crust from my eyes and push myself off the bed. The pads of my feet are cold against the floor, and the AC makes me sneeze. Evelyn groans again, and I mentally kick myself for not being any quieter. The drowsiness is scared away, and I am left in a room trapped with noises that could wake up and disturb the new friend, a twin bed away from me. I will ensure her peaceful rest by leaving the room and escaping through the glass door next to my bed. I push on to my feet and freeze.
Through the glass, my eyes land on apartments stacked on top of one another and sparkling balcony lights belonging to the residential neighborhood of Trastevere, Italy. Back home, my view was a lit-up backyard with a palm tree and a mountain in the distance. The balcony had a heated floor and a couple of neglected decorations that hadn’t been watered. It wrapped around the corner apartment, offering views of hilltop churches, apartment buildings in six distinct architectural styles, tiny cars squeezed into even tinier parking spaces, and squawking seagulls despite there being no beach in sight.
I step out into the early morning barefoot, my hands gripping the railing. The humidity of Italy hugs my skin, and the view keeps me awake. I spend the next three hours sitting there, watching the sky transform from darkness into a pink sunrise. Cotton-candy clouds ease the city from nightlife into day. They give me a second chance on day two of my program. Relief fills my lungs, and the cliché of a “good day” fills my mind.
Until the pink skies turn gray and lightning strikes.
I didn’t know it could rain in Italy.
The air turns fresh, and droplets of water sprinkle onto my arms. After battling the heat of Rome the entire day before, this is like a million kisses from the Italian sky, a million small comforts saying good morning and checking in to make sure I was okay.
When the rain goes, Evelyn is awake. I get ready for my official first day, opening large, loud closets and turning on the waterfall showerhead. My chest fills with a weight caused by the inability to predict the day. Checking the weather could tell me it would no longer rain, but there is no guarantee. I breathed thoroughly and shook my head.
“Don’t assume the worst, Itzel.” I recited the meekest pep talk known to man. “Be alive and be present.”
The Second Encounter
“Do you know what the Trevi Fountain is? I just saw it!” I exclaimed, clutching my phone tightly in one hand. Every travel guide I had read warned about pickpockets, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that the people weaving through the crowd could spot an overwhelmed American from a mile away.
“I think we do. When do you see the Vatican?” they asked.
“Uh… soon, I think,” I said, wiping the sweat from my brow as the relentless Roman sun beat down. Distracted by the conversation and the sea of tourists flowing around me, I caught my foot on an uneven brick that resembled St. Peter’s Square and stumbled forward before quickly regaining my balance.
“But there are all these other places I’m going to see,” I continued with a laugh, glancing around at the towering columns, bustling streets, and centuries of history surrounding me. “I’ll send photos. I promise. I am going to see the Colosuem next!”
“¡Qué bien, Itzy!” they exclaim over the video call, and a warm glow settles in my chest. Their excitement travels across the ocean, filling me with a quiet sense of pride that makes every step feel lighter. Suddenly, my adventure has a new purpose. I have been given a mission: bring this side of the world to my parents through WhatsApp.
“Disfrútatelo mucho, mamá. Estamos muy orgullosos de ti.” Enjoy every moment. We’re so proud of you.
Their words become my reward, and I make it my personal challenge to outdo every sight with the next. The winding alleys that had enchanted me only moments before become ordinary streets once I stand beneath the Pantheon’s soaring dome. The Pantheon, magnificent as it is, becomes just another stop after the dazzling spectacle of the Trevi Fountain. And the Colosseum- that has to be the cherry on top of the day, a monument so immense that it seems impossible for anything else to surpass it.
Back home, the house usually falls quiet once everyone’s schedules pull us in different directions. Most evenings end with me eating dinner alone, the TV humming in the background just to fill the silence. But here, thousands of miles away, my phone buzzes, and suddenly I’m spinning my camera around, trying to fit another fountain, another church, another cobblestone street into the frame before the call lags. Every laugh from my parents makes me turn the camera back for a better angle. Every gasp sends me searching for another detail I almost walked past. “Wait, look at this,” I keep saying, holding my phone up as if they were standing beside me instead of an ocean away. “Are you seeing it? Tell me if you can see it.”
When the call ends, the streets don’t feel quite as unfamiliar anymore. I slip my phone back into my pocket, smiling to myself, already thinking about what I’ll show them next. Which is the next spot on our class program tour.
“Are you not entertained?!” some tourist screams from the top of their lungs, quoting Gladiator. I daydream about the night my family watched that movie for the first time. My mother fell dead asleep after her early morning shifts, my brother grew antsy watching a drama with less action than his rhythm games upstairs, and my father became immersed in the scenes with Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix, asking his history-major daughter questions she really didn’t know the answers to. We were all in the same room on a late night, and it was paradise.
That was my first encounter with the Colosseum. There aren’t many people on this earth who don’t know what it is. Before departure, the Colosseum was a wondrous structure with a vast story that told visitors that, yes, Rome was not built in a day. It was a grand, hierarchical structure that moved a nation to its brink. It makes people in the modern day think and constantly gawk about the Roman Empire. A thousand years into the future, however, it was not actually so grand. According to locals, it became a marketplace, a piece of stone you could casually pass through on your way to class. A few more years later, it became a paid attraction with no shade and missing pieces.
Roman gladiators once battled at the center of this grand, once-sonorous arena. Now it is a crowded monument filled with tourists and their small children, who play among the bricks and towering architecture as though it were a playground on a Sunday morning. A place of free, gory spectacle has turned into a learning opportunity for travelers, but no one seems to be paying attention. They rush for their photos, walk past the translated informational signs, and move on. With practiced poses and sneering smiles, photos are snapped and stored away to show off years later whenever the conversation turns to Italy.
“Isn’t Rome so beautiful in the summer?”
That isn’t the case for me, or for those who pace themselves, who took classes on the Roman Republic, read the signs, and understood the political spectacle and brutality endured by the hierarchy and fanfare of Roman citizens. My father and I would have taken our time to smell the nonexistent violent flowers and squealed about it, but there was an issue. I dissected the area, stripping the levels of the Colosseum as though calculating its worth. My eyes fixated on the missing seats, the piles of rubble, the absent walls, the vanished marble. All removed over time without a second thought, igniting a curiosity that could never truly be fed.
“Oh wow.” I nod, fixing my polite smile. “Where’s the rest of it?” I deadpan.
I’m told it was taken over time. Marble was recycled during the Middle Ages, when precious building materials were repurposed to construct new buildings. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. plays like a mocking tune in my head. Did no one in the Middle Ages think that this girl from California might enjoy this monument a little more if it still had its original marble? Or perhaps the arena floor where those intense, ferocious battles to the death once took place? What am I supposed to show my family back home if half of it is missing?!
Perhaps it is an overreaction.
The arena is a dull brown. It stretches before me, vast, with the floor at its center long gone. My eyes linger on it for so many moments. Historically, I know what lies underground. It was the behind-the-scenes machinery of those gladiatorial fights, the technical workings of a masterfully violent performance. Almost like the backstage of a theater production. The inner workings of the Colosseum are right in front of me, a labyrinth of ancient stage technology built to elevate gladiatorial combat into spectacle. That strain in my muscles releases, and I conjure up an angle for a good photo. The best one would be taken if I could stand in the underground world. The urge to get lost in that maze is overwhelming. My fingers would grip the rough stone, and my heart would pound when I thought of the reactions I would get. As though I were preparing for my own fight. All of Rome would have its eyes on me as the mechanics of the ancient world launched me into the arena to face lions. People in the modern age wander beneath the Colosseum, and I am an impatient child desperate to explore that playground. I will wander. I will vanish from my group and pretend I didn’t know any better. I will lose myself in it.
“Can we at least see the bottom part? I want to get a good photo for my dad,” I ask.
“Oh, that’s only reserved for hotel packages. It’s included in one of the premium tours you have to pay extra for,” our tour guide tells us.
Everyone sighs in disappointment, but they can’t possibly know what was taken from me in that moment. I am denied. I am not a gladiator; I am a tourist. A tourist without a luxury hotel package and with far too many ambitions. My weary feet carry me toward the exit, and my sunburned body accepts defeat. I am limited to the knowledge of multilingual signs. This was a battle I couldn’t win.
Until I video call my mother just outside the Colosseum. My thumb hovers over the call button longer than it should. What if she’s disappointed? What if it looks smaller through a phone screen? What if none of this feels as incredible to her and tells me I was better off at home? The questions pile on top of each other until my stomach twists into a knot. She answers from a small breakroom, fluorescent buzzing over her perfect brown hair.
I don’t greet. I don’t prepare her or myself. “Ready?” I ask, turning the camera away from my face and letting the ruins of the Colosseum fill the screen.
“Oh… my god.” Her jaw drops, a reminder she is also human.
“I know.” I feel the tension in my body transform into a shaking excitement.
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“Oh. My. God.” She repeats, almost jumping out of the small chairs in her break room. This time she pushes herself up from her chair, one hand covering her mouth as she leans closer to the screen, as if getting an inch nearer could somehow bring her to Rome.
“I know.” I can’t help the childish giggle that leaves me, but it quickly fades when her voice wavers off.
“This is amazing, Itzy. I am so happy for you.” She sniffles. My throat tightens, securing a sudden lump that would like to escape. It arrives uninvited before I can answer. I turn the camera back toward the Colosseum, pretending I just want her to have a better view. Really, I need a second to blink away the sting behind my eyes.
“Do you like it?” I feel meek, feeling way younger than I am. The question slips out before I can stop it. For a moment, I don’t feel like a college student halfway across the world. I feel like a little kid holding up a drawing from school, waiting for it to be taped to the fridge.
“Sí, Itzy, make sure to call your dad to show him too.”
“I will, mama.” I keep the camera pointed at the ancient stone as we sit together in silence, separated by an ocean but sharing the same view.
Martini and a Shot of Champagne
A night walk in Venice gives the best views. The pavement is wet from the sprinkles of hot rain. My curls are frizzing up in protest, but the warmth in my chest from a sweet lychee-flavored Hugo Spritz guides my steps to the waiter’s best recommendation. Barcaro Jazz. On our way to the bar, my pocket rings with a song I only recognize as my ringtone. Upon grabbing it, I can see that my parents are calling me through our group chat. The Mars. A name my dad made because of our last name Mar. The picture of the planet makes me jump in place as I answer. My fingers slip, and I answer before I can even process that it is a video call.
“Mami, guess where I am!” I recklessly run away from my group of six to show my mother the closest canal of water. A perfectly timed boat rides off into the sunset underneath a bridge. She gasps. My father, next to her, eyes bulge out of his head. “Itzy, that’s wonderful.” I scan the view, ensuring they get the full Venice experience. A warmth fills my chest, but eventually the time zone kills it. We’re both busy people, even across the globe. They kiss me goodbye through the phone, and a black screen is all I see on the phone. My eyes look up and around for my group, and I find myself far from them.
Eventually, the six of us make it. The bar is filled with people, and brassieres hang alluringly from the ceiling. An odd decoration. Different cup sizes that make my eyes widen and my hand clutch onto my own chest. At first, the six of us can’t get in. We could only gaze at the neon lights inside, the nightlife that awaits behind a single glass door. The bouncer guards this magical land of dizzy conversations and expensive, pretty cups of liquor. Once the pearly gates open, I am shoved into a world of swaying bodies, slurring laughs, and sweaty touches. The stench of cigarettes invades my nostrils. Everyone is older and taller. I am younger and out of water. I am starting to believe no one my age really goes to bars. This would be my only reference. My first bar.
A sticky menu is placed in my palms. It is a jumble of words and flavors that sound too sweet to try. I order a sweet, tacky Porn Star Martini for the first time. A daring name for such a scandalous spot. This distraction is something I always wanted to order. Saying its name to the bartender gave a forbidden sensation. “One Porn Star Martini,” I state intelligently, my lips form the ‘Oh’ sound, my teeth the start of the next. He swipes the menu without a word to my brave declaration. I sit and wait.
My martini arrives in this tall square glass. It is dirty brown and yellow water with a sparkly passion fruit and a shot. I nurse the drink, but I don’t see rules on how to drink this with a shot of I don’t know what. I glanced around left and right to see if someone had the answer to this. Is this somebody else’s shot? Am I supposed to drink it first and then slurp on the martini? Why exactly is it called a porn star martini? I down the shot in fear and quickly sip on the drink, expecting a sour note of tequila. The shot is sweet and not anything I recognize. The tall, dirty liquid is the most delicious sweet passionfruit-flavored potion I have ever had in my life.
Moments later, a slight buzz began. The other five began to socialize with the older people. They were so different. One age group was so drawn to the youngsters. They cornered so many with a bright delight. The younger generation came to stop by, and the older generation had an opportunity. What was there possibly to talk about with them? I am sure it’s the drink that makes my stomach churn. Even more so when I was asked where I was from. A deafening male voice. My eyes met a tall American in a shirt that barely fit him. His eyes were crinkled at their sides. Playing it safe meant lying, and that would make the churning worse.
I vaguely mumbled Southern California. Even in this state, I have to clarify I was a beach Californian, not a forest or bay one. Beach and Desert Mountains. Where mom and dad were now. “No way! My boy is from California too! You have to meet him!” The man drags another man by his shoulders right in front of me, the one I just had to meet. I immediately noticed the drowsiness of his eyes, his drunken sway, his happy daze. The conversation starts slurred, and I manage to keep up. Socal had many cities, and I grew up moving around, so I explain that I am from “Many places.” Not a good enough answer. The slurring man asks me to specify.
“I go to school in Riverside. I was born in OC and yeah…”
“Oh, really, where in Orange County?” He scoots in close, his occupied hand pushing my back against the glass of the bar, my butt literally pressed against it for all passers-by to see. My breath constricts when I am enclosed. His body is hot, and I can see the liquid sweat on his aged forehead.
“I am from around. I kinda moved around places and then ended up in MoVal. I study history.” Ah, yes. I love history. I go off on my successes because in a ‘cool girl jazz bar’, my university accomplishments grounded me, even if my butt was on glass. What comes out naturally is my inspiration. My parents and my passion for Mexican and Immigration history
“That’s real firme. I always gotta stick with mi gente.” He nods approvingly. “My family, my ancestors, my family worked hard in the fields too.”
“No, my parents weren’t farm workers.” I press my lips together. This martini made me snark that. His brows arch and his drunken eyes look down. His shoulders hunch, and my fingers tap on my tall glass. “My dad works at a radio station. My family is pretty big on music. Like.. you know Sonideros?” He shakes his head like a scolded child, despite our ages.
“Okay, you know cumbia?” I say heuristically, knowing every Latino knows what cumbia is.
“Oh yeah! Like the guys who talk over the music in deep voices! I listen to it all the time.” He nods excitedly.
“Right.” Right.
The conversation follows suit as he explains he is third-generation. His left hand stays gripped to his bottle while the other is waving on and on as he explains why he is here. Geuardo, I learned, came from the U.S to work in Italy for a water purification company. The man was also in the military. He talks about the use of AI, how it wastes natural resources, and what living in Italy feels like. He tells me he is doing it for his family as the oldest of three. His pursuit is something I have heard so many times before, but this was different. There was a sadness lingering on him, and it was infecting me and my confined body.
“I will never marry someone from a different country.” He slurs. I nod absently and wander off into my head. He and I are similar, but so different. “I miss my family. I can never be away from them for so long ever again. I video call them as much as I can, and I just know.. I am afraid it is going to be so different when I get back.” He hiccups. He has been working to keep water clean for four years, and he has another two left. I was two weeks into my program, and limited phone calls were killed by a lack of reception. Geuardo was so pressing on and on. I was aware of my body. My limbs and my weak legs. My knees are pressured from exploring the labyrinth of Venice, careful not to fall into canals; my skin is tanner from when I first arrived from the burn of the sun, and all I think about is sandy hot beaches and even hotter mountain deserts. California has canals, I bet. It has spaghetti and bars. California has everything Italy has. My body was ready to head back. Like Geuardo, who has been here for four years, I am ready.
With the help of the dirty movie drink in my hand, I realize another difference. Geuardo works in water purification in Italy to support his family back home. My family came to the United States for the same reason, and Geuardo worries me. Is he the future? Am I destined to move myself like a board game piece to collect Monopoly money in another country? Will I, too, end up talking up young people and cornering them in bars?
“What if you can’t do it?” I ask, a little bold and somewhat defensive, of this version of future me. “What if you can’t go back?”
“There’s no way I am not going to make it back.” He states deliberately. I swallow and down my drink. Its sweetness makes its way straight to my stomach; its effects ease this pressure on my lungs. I think I hear my musical ringtone, but it’s just the commercials between soccer matches on the TV. Oh, how would my mom thrill at this spectacle? This isn’t an experience I can quite share with her. Guardo drunkenly asks for my contact info.
“So I have people to hang with once I get back home.” He states, and I know I am not hanging out with this man in two years when he gets back.
“I don’t do social media.” I deadpan.
“What do you do then?” He persists.
“I do video calls on WhatsApp.”
“Let’s do that! I have WhatsApp!” He gleams, and I have to shut down the tall child again, and he finds it unbelievable that a girl my age doesn’t ‘do social media’.
“I have a boyfriend, Gueardo,” I state firmly, and he says he could respect that. His sad eyes land on a girl next to me. One of the six is also my age. Maybe a little younger.
“What’s your name? I’m Gueardo, but people call me G.” He starts over with her.
I drift back into the sea of laughing strangers and familiar faces until I find a few of my classmates. Arelene, sweet and kind, catches me in my great escape.
“Wanna finish it? I am sick of the taste.” A Blue Hawaiian is a treasure in my hand. I wrinkle my nose at the sour scent of pineapple, but the drink is syrupy enough that I barely taste it, no sweeter than the Porn Star Martini from earlier. I drink to please and catch up on conversations I promised myself I would have. From Arelene I hop to conversations with Sonia, Esha, James Omar, and then find a stool with my name on it. The stool gives me rest and a moment to gaze at the glowing bar and flushed faces. Jazzy, a new drinker, and Devon, a taller peer, are near and bring comfort. Jazzy and I talk about how little time we have left in the program. Three weeks. It had sounded endless when I packed my suitcase. Now it felt like I had blinked.
My mind wanders back to the video calls home. Rome always looked beautiful through my phone, but the walks afterward felt quieter. Every time I slipped my phone back into my pocket, I caught myself wishing the connection reached farther than the screen could. Still, when I looked around the crowded bar, I realized these nights were mine too. They weren’t meant to be replayed over a call. They were meant to be lived.
Three weeks would end. It had to. And unlike the years waiting for everyone back home to share the same schedule, this countdown was measured in sunsets, train rides, and cities I had never imagined seeing. Home would still be there when I landed. Italy would not. So I slid onto the bench beside Jazzy and Devon and let myself stay in the moment outside California. The music swelled, another round of drinks appeared, and conversations overlapped until they blurred into one loud, happy hum. Then a sharp crack split through the room.
Glass exploded across the floor. The music stopped.
Someone shouted. Chairs scraped backward. A fight had broken out between Geurdo’s friends, and within seconds the crowded bar unraveled into chaos. My classmates scattered toward the exit, and all of us spilled into the rain-soaked streets of Venice, the downpour washing the sweetness of the cocktails from the night as we ran. Adrenaline filled my veins, and a laugh of relief hit me when I sensed we were all safe.
A Going Away Party
“You look like someone’s tía on Facebook Live,” Arlene says as I pan my phone across the apartment, capturing everyone in my apartment with the balcony that wraps around it. She takes another sip of her drink while I lower my phone and glance around. My classmates fill every corner of the apartment. Someone is shouting over a game of Slapjack in the living room. Another group debates the rules to a word association game. The kitchen is packed shoulder to shoulder, where chicken is fried on the stove beside bowls of chopped vegetables and three tubs of melting ice cream, the closest thing our potluck has to dessert and dinner combined.
“Do I really?” I laugh, my face warming.
She nods, grinning. I lock my phone and slide it into my pocket.
“Are you enjoying this little get-together, Arlene?” I ask as I drop onto the couch beside her. Our eyes drift to the empty bowl that had held Hope’s fruit salad less than an hour ago. The only proof it ever existed is a sticky serving spoon abandoned inside.
“Yes,” she says with a shrug. “I’m just hungry.”
“Yeah, we did not prepare early enough to feed these college kids.”
She laughs. “Are you enjoying it?”
I look around before answering.
Hope is stirring another pot in the kitchen while Evelyn sneaks pieces of bread to anyone who wanders by. Esha is convincing someone to come out with us later, the same way she and many had been convincing me for weeks to stop staying in and experience Italy after dark. Devon and Victoria are competing spectacularly at cards. Someone else reminiscing about the bar fight and downpour from our free weekend in Venice. Without realizing it, these people had become part of my routine. There was always a knock on my bedroom door asking if I wanted dinner. Someone texting to see if I wanted to wander the city after class. A seat saved for me on the train. A joke waiting whenever the room got too quiet that made Evelyn and Hope laugh to the point of tears.
Three weeks ago, they were strangers. Now the apartment felt loud in the way home sometimes did.
“Mhm,” I finally answer. “I’m just hoping the food’s ready soon. I’m starving too.”
“Yeah,” Arlene says, eyeing the cannoli pasta I made. The veggie option was calling to me, and the non-dairy was waiting for anyone to enjoy. “Yours looks really good.”
I laugh. “Unfortunately, it’s store-bought.”
She nudges my shoulder. “That doesn’t matter. As long as it makes the hunger go away.” When dinner is finally over, our program’s quiet hours send us searching for somewhere else to keep the night alive. We settle on a karaoke bar.
I can’t sing, and that doesn’t stop me.
Song after song, I keep walking back to the stage, grabbing the microphone with both hands while everyone cheers before I’ve even started. I miss half the notes, laugh through the lyrics I don’t know, and bow dramatically after every performance. Even if I was not the best singer, I kept going and going. I picked out my favorite songs and relished the cheers from my friends in Italy.
