I awoke today in a pretty decent mood. The sun was shining, I was up early and I even managed to fit in some exercise. And by some, I mean 7-10 minutes of walking lunges, squats, push ups and sit ups. Even though 7-10 minutes is not a long time, I am incredibly sore nonetheless.

After the first part of the morning passed, I was reading my magazine when I received an incoming call. “Unknown” was giving me a jingle. Now, “Unknown” can be any number of people, but I most often get that call from abroad… always from Brasil and now from Italy. So my heart started to beat faster as I answered the phone. I had been half-expecting this call, considering that yesterday, when I went to San Francisco to apply for my Italian study visa, I got a couple of missed calls from “Unknown” and so finally, the third time around, I asked C.R. to run outside and answer it while I was in line, in case it was important. She came back telling me it was Cazzatore and he would call me the next day. So when I got the “Unknown” ring, I was prepared.

“Hello?” I said, voice dripping with excitement, while trying to appear cool and collected. “Hey, it’s me” the familiar voice replied. We chatted and joked and laughed for a bit and then he said, “I tried to call you yesterday because I have some news”. Damn. Half of me jumped to the conclusion that it would be bad, and the other half reminded the first half to be calm. You can’t change the tide, you know.

“So, one of the roommates in our apartment will be gone from November to January, so if you want to take her room, you wouldn’t have to find a place so soon after you got here”.

 Okay. This was very interesting. A short while ago he was calling me in the middle of the night freaking out about the mere idea that I might expect him to commit. And not such a long time later, he is asking me if I want to live in his house. Again.

I may not have mentioned that I lived with him for the last two months of my first stay, in exactly the same situation. The same roommate left for a while, I took her room and it was fantastic. He asked me that time as well. I had not brought up anything about living together, and one night he offers me the room in a flurry of mixed signals. “I really want you to think about this”, I said after a pause, “because it really is not a problem for me to find my own place when I get there. There are places I can stay, with friends. You think about it and let me know”. He seemed fine with it. And not only fine, but excited. He said I already knew the people in the house, and they knew me, it was cheap, I wouldn’t have to rush to find a place, etc. Fair enough. I guess what he really needed was to know was that I wasn’t expecting anything from this. That seemed to be the moment that calmed him enough to allow him to let it happen. Either this is turning out very lovely, or it’s a sick little game that will twist the dagger into my heart. I’m rooting for the former, in case you couldn’t guess.

As more and more time goes by, I realize the importance of not putting my happiness in the hands of others. I know that things will happen as they will, and I try all the time to be a more relaxed and flexible person. Not every story needs to be a novel. There is a perfect place for short stories or poems. Our story could be like that. A mere chapter. A children’s book, perhaps. It could be an essay, or an article. Whatever it is, it will be fascinating and beautiful. It may be light-hearted, magical, funny or tragic. There is no telling how it will end, or, if like a Dickens novel, it goes on and on. All I know is this: when the pen falls off the paper, I would like to read it as it unfolds softly, slowly.