Between Two Mountains - 2. Chapter 2

“Try this,” Marco said, holding up first three fingers, then seven, then eight.

They were surrounded by the gentle, sociable buzz of a Friday evening in the cathedral square. The streets and bars were quieter than he was used to, but it beat the eerie silence of lockdown. The steady scraping of the cicadas in the pine canopy above them helped too: after the strangeness of the spring, the sound was reassuringly familiar, welcoming… normal.

Beside him on the bench, Sami rolled his eyes. “Trecentosettantotto. I knows how to count, Marco.”

Marco snickered slightly. What else do you ‘knows’, Sami?

“Sorry, il mio piccolo amico,” he replied. “I forget how big you’re getting, sometimes. I bet you know lots of stuff, now.”

The young refugee boy puffed his chest out proudly. “I’m nine. Nex’ year I’ll be ten, then I’ll show you.”

“Show me what, Sami?”

“I’ll beat you at Scarabeo.”

Marco raised an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah?”

Sami nodded defiantly. “Yes!”

Marco stuck out a hand. “It’s a date.”

“I’m too young to go on dates, Marco,” Sami replied with exaggerated patience, as if he were explaining something very simple for the third or fourth time.

“I guess you are,” Marco replied, lowering his hand with an awkward smile.

“You’re not,” Sami observed, looking up at him, all big brown eyes and soft black hair.

“Not what?”

“Too young.”

Marco nodded warily. “No, I guess I’m old enough.”

Sami frowned thoughtfully. “So, why don’ you?”

Oh, we are SO not going there!

Marco shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about my love life, Sami. I’d rather talk about you. How’s school going? I remember you had some trouble making friends when you first started.”

Sami folded his arms. “I got friends now. There’s Federico… he says the boys who were mean to me when I started were stupidi. Then there’s Amin…” his eyes grew wider, and he pointed excitedly to his own face, indicating his dusky complexion. “He’s like me!”

Marco blinked. “You mean he’s from Africa…? That’s great, Sami. How did he end up in Ravello?”

Sami shrugged. “I dunno,” he replied in an endearingly matter-of-fact way. “I ent asked yet.” His interest in the subject apparently exhausted, he glanced casually around the square for a while, focusing for a moment on a group of pigeons that were pecking for crumbs around one of the bar tables, then he lurched into a new subject in the sort of effortless non-sequitur that young children always seemed to make best. “How’s Gianni ’n’ Angelo?”

Marco thought for a moment. Lockdown hadn’t been easy for his foster parents, but then it hadn’t been easy for anyone. There had been very few cross words between them; Gianni and Angelo seemed to know when to give each other space, and they had been very careful to avoid crowding Marco either. Having regular video calls with their friends had helped them all, too. But now their freedom was restored, there was a fresh excitement in the air in the Fortuna-Rossi home. The summer, even the mundane necessities of life, suddenly seemed rife with possibilities.

“They’re great,” he said. “They’re both glad to be out and working again. Why do you ask, Sami? Do you miss them?”

“Sometimes,” Sami said, “but I got Reza and Tiz now.”

Marco sighed slightly. And when they’re too busy to look after you, they ask me.

But it hadn’t been too bad. When they adopted Sami, Reza, the good-looking property developer from England, and his wife and business partner Tiziana had vowed to step back a little from their hectic work lives to focus on him, and by and large they had been good to their word.

As if summoned by his thoughts, the man himself appeared from the ground floor unit on the corner of the square that he and his wife used as an office and studio, ready to head home from his day’s work.

Sami leaped up at once. “Papà!” he yelped excitably, running over to greet him and leaving Marco abandoned on the bench. More slowly, Marco got up to follow him.

“Ciao, sport,” Reza laughed, bending down to embrace his son with a bunch of architect’s plans rolled up under one arm. He looked up, and his eyes found Marco. “Hey, thanks for taking care of the little terror here. We’ll send some extra cash your way.”

Marco nodded. “Thanks, signore.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets and watched as they retreated down the narrow, tree-lined street that led towards the top of the valley road, passing beneath the ruins of a grand old stone palazzo as they went. Suddenly at a loss, he dawdled for a moment, and he was just thinking of returning to his bench when he heard familiar voices approaching. He looked up, wondering how long it would take his friends to notice him this time.

Two boys were walking across the square together. They were a good match in terms of height and build, but their presentation couldn’t have been more different.

Giacomo was turned out in his usual fashionable way, in a pair of skinny jeans and a varsity bomber jacket open over a fitted white t-shirt. His black hair was softly spiked, and there was a mischievous glint in his dark eyes; he was busy whispering something in the other boy’s ear that was making him blush.

As was his custom, Daniele had a much softer look entirely. His gentle eyes were light blue under his mop of mid-blond hair; as he grew up, it had darkened a little. He was wearing beige chino shorts and a lavender tie-dye t-shirt; given how much he had grown since Marco had known him and how many times he had got into clothes-shredding and occasionally life-threatening scrapes, it must have been his third or fourth t-shirt in the same style, but Daniele knew what he liked. And, apparently, Giacomo liked it too.

More than he ever liked me…

Marco wondered how many people really knew the exquisite pain of having your first boy-crush and your second boy-crush end up getting together, right under your nose, while you tried to maintain friendships with them both. Cosmo may think that they had things in common, but even he could have no real understanding of this.

As far as Marco knew, Giacomo had never shown the slightest interest in boys before he met Daniele. Marco wasn’t sure whether that made it better or worse, but Daniele had long since supplanted Giacomo in Marco’s affections anyway. At a time when Marco felt he had lost everything, Daniele was the one who had reached out and worked with gentle persistence to break down his deeply entrenched defences.

Once the damage was done, and Marco had finally let his guard down, he was lost. For a time, he had hoped that Daniele might feel the same way… but, in the end, it had turned out that they were just destined to be friends.

And who could blame Dani for choosing Giaco over me? I only need to look in the mirror to know that.

Giacomo’s commitment to style sometimes seemed to defy the seasons. Maybe he was just one of those lucky people who didn’t sweat much, but, looking at them both now, Marco had to think that Daniele had the better idea of how to dress for the summer.

Seriously… it’s WAY too hot to be wearing layers.

And those skinny jeans Giacomo was wearing looked way too difficult to take off.

Marco flushed guiltily. The thought had given him an unwelcome mind picture of Daniele doing exactly that. He ran a hand roughly through his hair in an attempt to disperse the image, feeling both angry and sad, and strangely hot under the collar at the same time.

Yeah, they might claim that they were still just at the kissing and cuddling stage, but Marco had his doubts.

I mean, just look how at how they’re walking. Their freaking SHOULDERS are touching. How can they even do that without tripping over each other’s feet…?

And where had they just come from? An innocent afternoon at the panoramic Villa Cimbrone gardens, up on the outermost crag where Ravello looked out over the sea? Or from Daniele’s bedroom in his house on the hillside below town, while his parents were both out at work? In the privacy of Daniele’s empty house, they could have got up to all sorts of secret stuff.

It’s not fair. Dani and Giaco, even Emilia and Luca, they’ve had all sorts of opportunities to explore what two kids can do together. Me…

He thought of Sami.

…I’m just the babysitter.

Cosmo was right. Marco’s stock defence, that ‘boyfriends are overrated’, was wearing thin.

Giacomo and Daniele were drawing closer, and they still hadn’t spotted him. Now, he started to hear a few snatches of their conversation.

Giacomo, laughing. “…in the open air…!”

Daniele, a little shocked. “No way! That’s so…”

“…hot?”

“…icky! And, well… maybe a little bit hot.”

Giacomo put his arms cheekily around the other boy. “You know you’d get off on it…” he whispered. Daniele snickered and brushed his arms away.

Looking on in horror, Marco began to edge out of sight. This seemed like a terrible moment to be noticed. But then…

“Marco!”

Giacomo had finally spotted him. He stumbled forwards, almost tripping over in his mirthful haste to greet him, and grabbed both Marco’s arms for support.

“The most awesome thing just happened!” he exclaimed. “Luca called me. He said he and Emilia were hiking up on Monte Brusara this afternoon, looking for birds, when they saw Toto and Michele, and they were… they were…”

Marco stared at Giacomo in incomprehension as he dissolved into uncontrollable giggles for several seconds. When he’d regained some control of his body, he straightened up, leaned forwards, and whispered something into Marco’s ear that brought a furious heat to his cheeks at once.

“Euww!” Marco exclaimed. “That’s…” he floundered, wrestling with a whole new set of unwelcome mind pictures. “I don’t think you should have told me that, Giaco! I mean…”

He broke off and exhaled slowly, lost for words.

“Hey,” Giacomo replied with an annoyingly disarming smile. “We couldn’t let you be the only one who didn’t know.”

Daniele closed the gap between them, swatting Giacomo gently on the arm. “You’re a bad boy,” he said.

Giacomo snickered. “It’s why you love me,” he replied. “Always has been.”

Daniele squared up to him. “Is not.”

Giacomo leaned a little closer, with the gleam of a playful challenge in his eyes. “Is too.”

And just like that, I’m back to invisible.

Marco rolled his eyes skywards, staring up into the trees once again. The last thing he wanted was to witness another kissing session. But then there was the sound of a brief scuffle with a certain amount of giggling, and he glanced back down to find that the other two boys had separated again.

“Toto’s going away in a few months,” Daniele said reasonably. His hair was looking slightly mussed, but he didn’t seem to care. “They’re probably just making as many memories as they can before he leaves.”

The corner of Giacomo’s mouth twitched. “That’ll be one heck of a memory,” he said, and then they were both off and giggling again.

Marco stared at them incredulously. If having a boyfriend made you this goofy and lame, maybe it wasn’t so bad to be single after all.

“Bleurgh…” he remarked, “someone fetch me a bucket!”

Daniele made a valiant effort to straighten his face.

“Sorry,” he said. “Are we being too much?”

“Oh,” Marco replied sardonically. “Never.”

Giacomo smirked. “You’re just jealous, Marco.”

It was a little too close to the truth, perhaps, but he said it without malice. Marco shrugged.

“Maybe,” he replied. “But what are you going to do about it?”

“We need to find you a boyfriend,” Giacomo replied. He frowned curiously. “What about Cosmo? You two have been hanging round a lot lately, and he’s sort of good-looking… when he washes his hair, I mean.”

Marco rolled his eyes and shook his head. “You know I don’t crush on him!”

It was true. Theirs was a friendship born of mutual alienation, not attraction.

“Too bad,” Giacomo mused. “Well, we’ll keep looking out for one, won’t we, Dani?”

Daniele shrugged. “Sure,” he said neutrally. He seemed a little less comfortable with this line of conversation; mentally, Marco thanked him for it. “Anyway…” he tugged Giacomo on the arm. “We’ve got to go, right? Places to be.”

Giacomo nodded. “Important places,” he said seriously. “Right.”

Daniele flashed Marco a quick smile as they moved away. “Ciao, Marco.”

Marco sighed. Those little smiles of Daniele’s had always caught him by the heart. He wondered if the other boy knew how easily he could still reel him in if he wanted to.

“Ciao, guys,” he replied, but they were already heading off on whatever secret boyfriend business they had in mind, leaving him alone in the square once more.

* * *

Summer in Ravello meant an endless succession of hot, sunny days, whether you wanted them or not. The sun would rise early, often with a faint haze in the air and, for the first few hours, you could kid yourself that maybe today would be different, that maybe it wouldn’t be punishingly, sweat-inducingly hot by midday.

Occasionally, the humidity would begin to intensify, and the days would become ever more swollen and sultry until the weather finally broke with the inevitable thunderstorm, often after dark. The great rolling thunderclaps would echo around the mountains and valleys and, if you were lucky, you might see a fork of lightning touching down over the sea or on one of the surrounding peaks. And the rain… however short-lived, the rain would be epic.

Perhaps it was these rare events that kept the streams running and the mountain landscape verdant and green. One of the worst nights of Marco’s life had unfolded during such a storm: an ill-fated kiss with Daniele in a barn halfway down the hill to the sea, as they sheltered from the torrential rain.

Sometimes Marco wondered what it would be like to live somewhere where the weather changed more from day to day; where you could get up not knowing whether the day would bring sun or rain; where not every day was the same. His foster father Gianni had grown up in London, and often talked about his time there with equal parts nostalgia and regret.

“Sometimes we’d go through the summer with hardly any sun at all,” he had said once. “The year before I came here, Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’ topped the charts and it rained for ten weeks straight. People began to say she’d jinxed the weather. She even apologised for it on national radio.”

Marco doubted that was exactly how it had gone, but it was a nice story all the same.

Yes, there was a whole world out there, but Marco had never left Italy. He had never even left the coast until the year before, when Gianni and Angelo had blown his mind with a trip to Rome. He had never seen so many cars, buildings and people, let alone all the famous monuments and Roman remains he had only ever seen on the television.

Just another thing to be grateful for, I guess.

If he went back in time and told his twelve-year-old self about all the changes that lay ahead of him, what would piccolo Marco say? That small, sad boy, trapped in his birth parents’ dingy house with its oppressive atmosphere of weariness, bitterness and repressed rage.

He’d probably say that he could never be so lucky.

Summer. Even back then, it had lifted his spirits. He could spend all day and most of the evening outside if he wanted to, even if it meant passing the time on his own, and nobody would worry. But he had also learned that the key to surviving the hottest hours of the afternoon was to get out of the sun and do as little as possible.

However, on this particular, fine Saturday afternoon, he had failed to follow his own advice. It was scheduled hang time with Emilia and Luca, and all good sense had gone out the window.

Marco lay sprawled in the dry grass under a young chestnut tree, waving one dextrous hand above his face, mimicking the shapes its blade-shaped leaves made against the vivid blue sky. Whatever paltry shade its nascent canopy could cast, he had done his best to find, and the sun cast dappled patterns over his bare arms and legs, his light shorts and his favourite yellow and black check shirt, which had been a birthday gift from Daniele last year.

Still wearing it as if it meant something special, even though he was already taken. Real cute, Marco.

Their mountain bikes lay discarded a few metres away. Emilia, Luca and Marco had gone cycling together along the upper reaches of the Valle del Dragone, and they had ended up in this field full of newly planted chestnut saplings, somewhere between Monte Brusara and Monte Candelitto, the highest peak of the mountain range behind Scala. Marco knew it was one of those hidden places you could cross the valley to reach the upper hamlets of Scala. Maybe that’s what they’d do later, when they could be bothered to move again… or when they got too thirsty to stay.

We should have brought some water. Didn’t plan this very well, did we? So much for the clever college kids.

Of course, Marco wasn’t at college like Emilia and Luca. He was slumming it with Giacomo and Daniele at the ordinary technical school, learning how to become a well-behaved cog in the local tourist machine. Or, at least, he had been, until the sudden lockdown had torn them all away from the place when they were really only starting to get their feet under their desks.

Daniele had told him once that he should be going to art college. Marco would have loved to, but the nearest such institute was in Salerno, and Gianni and Angelo had been unable to find a practical way for him to study there.

Marco didn’t mind that much. At least he was with his friends… when they tore their eyes away from each other for long enough to remember he was there.

“Yes! Got it!” A voice, raised in triumph. “Now… gently does it…”

It was Luca. Marco shuffled up onto his elbows for a better look. Somehow, the other boy had managed to spear a large, juicy fly on a stick, and he was creeping ever so slowly towards a lizard that was basking on an exposed rock, shuffling along the ground a lot like a gecko or a snake himself. Emilia watched from a couple of metres away with a sort of bemused curiosity.

He’s sort of like Gerald Durrell. A really BRUTAL Gerald Durrell.

Gianni was fond of the childhood memoirs of the budding naturalist, who had been dragged away from his dreary life in England to spend several of his formative years among the wondrous wildlife of Corfu. Marco supposed the comparisons with Gianni’s own experiences were obvious. The most recent television adaptation had become a regular fixture in the Fortuna-Rossi living room during the lockdown, and it had been a great way for Marco to keep practicing his English.

In the series, while Gerry lost himself in the animals, bugs and birds of his Greek paradise, his eccentric family always seemed to be bickering, especially his two older brothers. But even they seemed to come through for each other when the chips were down. Marco wondered whether the same would ever be true for Luca and Cosmo. Their reunion had been far from easy-going, and he couldn’t imagine there being any pat dramatic resolutions for them. Some things, once broken, could never be put back together cleanly.

“It’s never going to work,” Emilia said sceptically.

Marco wasn’t so sure. In his experience, Lizards normally scarpered the moment they saw you, vanishing into the walls or undergrowth in a flash of green or blue. But this one was standing its ground, watching the approaching fly beadily, its throat pulsing steadily. Luca’s outstretched stick was only inches away.

“Shh…!” Luca whispered. He was almost there. The lizard hesitated, seemed about to backpedal for a moment, then flashed forwards, plucking the fly off the stick with the speed and precision of an experienced surgeon. The lizard chomped at it contentedly, is dinosaur-like jaws seeming to grin in satisfaction.

“You did it!” Emilia exclaimed, giving her boyfriend a congratulatory punch on the arm.

Luca laughed delightedly. Throwing caution to the wind, he dropped the stick and reached for the lizard, but it was a step too far. The reptile vanished into the long grass before his hand was even halfway there.

“Oh, well,” Luca sighed. He looked up, and his vivid green eyes found Marco. “Just for once I’d like to hold one. Without, you know, its tail falling off or anything.”

Marco smiled. “Maybe you should build a trap full of flies. Something they’d find truly irresistible.”

“I already have one of those,” Luca replied.

Marco frowned. “Huh?”

Luca shrugged. “It’s called my brother’s mouth. The way he goes about, he must catch twenty flies a day.” He mimed walking around with his knuckles dragging and his jaw hanging agape. “Derr, I’m Cosmo Neri,” he brayed. “I like rich boys with fast cars. I’ve all the brains of a maggot and I’m twice as selfish.”

Marco shook his head in frustration. “What’s your deal? He’s not that bad.”

Luca folded his arms stubbornly. “He’s such a disease. He’s got no ambition, no focus… he’s not interested in anything.”

“It’s not his fault he’s not as clever as you,” Emilia reminded him. “You’re the brains of the family, not him. And… maybe he just hasn’t found his passion, yet.”

Luca rolled his eyes. “Apart from the oh-so-dreamy Vincenzo Colomba. Jesus, what a meathead that guy is. And I have to share a room with the idiot.”

Marco stared at the other boy in disbelief. Usually, Luca was a pretty cool guy. Okay, he could be tactless sometimes, but he meant well. But when he talked about Cosmo… you could almost see the thunderclouds forming around his head.

It wasn’t jealousy. Marco was no stranger to that feeling, and in the early days of Giacomo and Daniele’s friendship he had hardly covered himself in glory. But, Cosmo… he had nothing for Luca to be jealous of. If anything, it ought to be the other way round.

So, what was it…? Resentment? Resentment for coming back into his life, or for leaving it in the first place?

“If I had a brother, I’d share my room if it kept us together,” Marco said.

Luca uttered a mirthless laugh. “Says the boy who’s never had a brother.”

“That’s not my fault,” Marco replied stiffly.

Luca shook his head wearily. “Whatever.”

“C’mon, Luca,” Emilia interjected quietly. “You know you’d be cut up if anything happened to him.”

That seemed to hit home. The anger in Luca’s eyes faltered a little, and he gave her a faintly injured look. “That’s not fair, ’milia,” he protested. Then he rallied, an echo of the same bitter spite flickering back into his gaze. “Anyway, nothing is going to happen to him anymore, is it? Not now he’s living among the happy folk of Ravello, with two new guardian angels in Luisa and Mario Verdi.” He scowled, picked up the stick he had been using to feed the lizard, and ground it into the dry grass and dirt. “They were my parents first. We were doing just fine without him.”

Okay, maybe there’s a LITTLE bit of jealousy, then.

Marco shrugged. “I just think if I’d experienced everything Cosmo has, I might have ended up making some of the same choices.”

Luca glared at him. “Okay, soul boy. You’ve made your point. Now drop it, okay?”

Marco backed down; perhaps he had gone far enough. “Sure. Okay.”

There was a slightly uncomfortable silence. Discomfited by the other boy’s eyes boring into him, Marco glanced at Emilia and saw that her agile mind was already at work, trying to find a way to defuse the tension.

“I know,” she exclaimed at length. “I know why Luca’s so cranky. He hasn’t had his protein today.”

Distracted from his mood, Luca gave her a sidelong glance. “What?”

Emilia took hold of his upper arm with one hand. Luca gave her an even more suspicious look, but he seemed reluctant to struggle free from her grasp.

“Hold him down, Marco,” Emilia said calmly, summoning him over with a determined toss of her head. Smiling slightly, Marco shuffled over and took hold of Luca’s other arm.

“Wait a minute…” Luca said warily.

With her free hand, Emilia was rootling in the dry grass beside her. Moments later, she came up with a small brown cricket squirming between her forefinger and thumb.

“Now’s your chance to get closer to nature than ever,” she beamed, moving the cricket closer to her boyfriend’s mouth. “Eat up!”

Luca blanched. “No way!” he protested. “You’re pazza! I’m not eating that!”

For a second, Marco thought she might actually go through with it. So did Luca, it seemed, judging by his sudden, violent squirming. But then, at the last moment, her hand turned aside, and she popped the insect into her own mouth instead. Both boys watched, horror-struck, as she crunched and swallowed it with apparent relish.

“That’s some party trick,” Marco said hollowly.

“That’s…” Luca said falteringly. “I mean, I can’t even…”

But he tailed off and shook his head, apparently lost for words.

“Hmm…” Emilia said thoughtfully. “Not bad, but I’m not sure about the aftertaste. What do you think?”

And before the other boy could react, she leaned down and kissed him on the mouth.

If Marco had ever wondered what it would sound like to scream with your mouth full, now he knew for sure.

* * *

When Marco got home, the house was empty. But that was alright; he knew Gianni and Angelo would be back soon.

Okay… not quite empty.

“Hit me,” he said, crouched on the terracotta floor tiles, placing the palms of his hands together and holding them out in front of him.

Right on cue, Ennio batted them with one furry paw. Marco felt a brief impression of his rubbery paw pads and the faintest suggestion of sheathed claws.

Marco giggled faintly. “Clever puss. Hit me again.”

Up came the other paw for a precision smack of the back of his hand.

So, was Ennio left-pawed or right-pawed? It was hard to tell.

“One more time,” Marco urged, holding his hands out once more.

Ennio’s broad tabby face opened out in a disdainful yawn which sent his ears right back and left his whiskers and rough pink tongue quivering. Marco was quickly enveloped in a cloud of fishy cat breath.

“Okay,” Marco replied, pretending to cough. “I guess you’re bored already. Fair enough.”

He opened his hands to reveal the cat treat within. Ennio plucked it carefully from his outstretched palm and dropped to his haunches to eat it. He crunched it enthusiastically, leaving a few flecks of drool on the tiles. Once he had gulped it down, Marco reached out and scratched the cat gently under one furry cheek. Ennio leaned into it, purring enthusiastically, and shedding yet more moisture onto Marco’s fingers.

“Gee, thanks, Ennio,” Marco murmured, rubbing his slobbery fingers together and examining them in the evening light that shone diffusely through the two east-facing windows.

Gianni and Angelo’s cosy place felt more like home than his birth parents’ house ever had. The house had once belonged to Gianni’s late grandmother Marina, and still retained much of its traditional feel, from the big old family dining table to the shrine embedded in the wall over the breakfast bar, and the old church pew, loaded with cushions, that sat beneath the windows. The old brass lantern still glinted over the table, and the walls were still covered with framed family photos, albeit Gianni and Angelo had added several of their own.

Elsewhere, the couple had done a lot of work to bring the place up to scratch, from the new farmhouse style kitchen to the snug downstairs, carefully converted from what had once been a bleak and drafty basement storage area. Now, it was a place where Marco could curl up on the corner sofa with his foster fathers on a cool spring night and watch mindless television. A lifeline during the lockdown.

The peace was shattered as the front door clattered open and Gianni and Angelo stepped inside, preceded by Alfredo the dog, who puttered in enthusiastically, his tongue lolling beneath his beardy face. He came trotting over to Marco and the cat, his black button eyes examining them both with polite interest.

Ennio gave the dog a withering look and stalked off to his usual perch on the old church pew.

“Ciao, boy,” Marco said, scratching Alfredo ruefully behind the ears.

Both of Marco’s foster fathers must have had the day off work, because they were each wearing casual clothes.

“Okay,” Angelo announced, “now Alfredo’s had his daily constitutional I’d better get on with the ragù.”

He ran a thoughtful hand through his spiky black hair, washed up at the new Belfast sink and began to rummage in the kitchen cupboards in search of vegetables.

Gianni surveyed Marco with his keen blue eyes and favoured him with a smile.

“Three months locked down together and we can still stand each other’s cooking… it must be love. How was your day out with Emilia and Luca, Marco?”

“Good,” Marco replied distractedly, getting to his feet to clear a path through to the dining area. “We weren’t eating bugs, I swear.”

Gianni and Angelo exchanged a slightly confused laugh.

“Ah… I don’t think I’ll ask,” Gianni replied.

Marco nodded. “Probably wise.”

In truth, although it had all been fun and games, his recent exchanges with his friends had left him troubled. On the one hand, you had Emilia and Luca, Giacomo and Daniele: couples so in tune with each other, so in sync, that they could share everything, joke around and take the mickey with no real fear of causing offence…

…and, on the other hand, you’ve got me… and Cosmo.

Cosmo, who seemed so lost, so without hope… whose sole preoccupation seemed to be his doubtfully requited crush on the ‘meathead’ next door.

Is that where I’m headed…?

He hoped not. Surely he would never sink so low? Not now. Not now he had people around him to help pick him back up.

All the same, maybe it might be nice… just once… to have someone special to share his thoughts with, and… maybe experiment a little…

Gianni was busy extracting a couple of drinks from the fridge, but Marco turned his back anyway to hide the flush that had suddenly warmed his cheeks.

An image swam before his mind’s eye of Daniele, leaning forward to kiss him for a second and final time on that immortal day last summer.

If only it had gone better. If only I had been more…

He gave himself a mental shake. That was a dead end, and he knew it. It was time to move on. Well… he thought he had already, but the end of lockdown seemed to have made everybody a little crazy, especially lovers. Young as they all were, even his friends hadn’t been immune. And to have it shoved in his face, day after day…

Trying to break the useless spiral of thought, he moved to one of the windows and concentrated on the view for a while. At the back of the house, a scattering of small villas tumbled steeply down the terraced hillside below town until they were surrounded by olive groves and lemon orchards as they descended into the leafy Sambuco valley. Hundreds of metres below, glinting waves lapped at the grey sandy shores of the twin resorts of Minori and Maiori, encircled in the protective grasp of the Capo d’Orso, the rugged rocky peak beyond Maiori. A local on a Vespa scooter trundled along the main Naples road, heading into town.

It was pretty, but he had spent his whole life looking at it. It was all he had ever known. Now… he was starting to want something more. A new adventure.

He turned back to his foster fathers and drew in a deep breath.

“What was it like, to fall in love?” he asked. “And to know that you both felt the same way?”

Gianni and Angelo stopped what they were doing and stared at Marco in surprise. Angelo set down the knife he had been using to dice a couple of carrots and wiped his hands distractedly on a scrap of kitchen paper.

“Wonderful, terrifying, frustrating, exciting…” Gianni replied.

“…slow,” Angelo added playfully, knocking his partner on the head with the knuckles of one hand.

“Is there someone you’ve been thinking about, Marco?” Gianni asked. “Someone special?”

Marco shook his head. “Just the opposite. It feels like everyone else has someone… but not me. Am I doing something wrong, or am I…”

…or am I always just going to be the mousy kid? Someone so plain and unremarkable that nobody will ever notice me.

“It’s not a crime to be single,” Gianni said gently, “least of all at your age.”

Angelo nodded. “And it doesn’t reflect on you in the slightest.”

“But…” Marco countered, “all my friends…”

…except Cosmo…

Angelo shook his head. “At fourteen, fifteen, you’re all just getting started. You probably don’t even really know who you are just yet. Emilia and Luca have been going out for a while, it’s true. But Dani and Giacomo… who even knows if they’re in it for the long haul? Two years ago, Giacomo was dating Laura. It might be serious, or it might just be another phase they’re going through. The important thing is that it’s right for them now.”

Marco blinked. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that. “So… you think they might break up?”

Angelo shrugged. “They could end up growing old and grey together… or they could be over by next week. They might live parallel lives or end up following totally different paths. The point is that nobody knows. A lot can change in a few years… especially when you’re a teenager.”

“You were only fifteen when you met,” Marco observed.

Gianni nodded. “True, but not everyone meets the person they’re supposed to spend their lives with when they’re still at school. I mean… even for Toto and Michele, we don’t really know what the future holds. They’re pretty committed to each other, but only time will tell if their relationship survives once Toto goes off to university.”

“The right guy for you is out there somewhere, Marco,” Angelo assured him. “It… just might take him a bit longer to appear.”

“In the meantime…?” Marco murmured.

Angelo smiled. “In the meantime, you carry on… and remember that there’s more to a person than whether or not they’re in love with someone.”

Does it even have to be ‘love’? Right now, I think maybe I’d settle for…

Marco abandoned the thought. He wasn’t sure what he’d settle for.

“Thanks,” he mumbled.

He wasn’t sure he really believed what Angelo had said…

I mean, who’d want ME?

…but he felt a little more cheerful all the same. After giving Ennio one last chuck under the cheek, he turned and retreated up the wooden stairs to his bedroom.

The little room was warm, but shaded from the evening sun by the enclosed courtyard outside and the creepers that grew around the edges of the one small window. He glanced out into the street, where a few cheerful locals passed by on their way up and down the hill, then flopped down on his bed, which was presently made up with the thinnest summer sheets Gianni and Angelo owned.

He opened one of the drawers in his bedside table and pulled out a handful of his most recent drawings. Among them were his best attempts at portraits of his friends: Daniele, all gentle eyes and soft hair: and Giacomo, all carefully curated style and barely concealed mischief.

He sighed. So, maybe they’d last or maybe they wouldn’t. He only knew one thing for sure.

He missed them.