I wanted to go home. My real home. I wanted to be back in my room, with my stupid participation ribbons and the ukulele that Soraya played more than I did. But I couldn’t. That was the same room was where I had spent these last couple of months, miserable and depressed. It was the room where I had spent entire weekends with my door shut, scrolling through internet forums that were supposed to help me feel better but only made me feel worse. There are a lot of bad coming-out stories on the internet. I shouldn’t have read them all, but I did.

Going home wasn’t an option.

Then I remembered the hot bookseller’s list of recommendations, crumpled in my pocket. I unfolded it, smoothed the edges, and saw the bartender’s name he had written down. Jahan. It was an Iranian name, meaning “world” in Farsi. What were the odds?

So, just before midnight, I decided to leave the apartment and check out this bar. I was more than a little nervous to be out alone in a foreign country. But it was too good of a coincidence, this Iranian bartender in Rome, and besides, a real drink at a real bar sounded like an upgrade from the warm beer Jackson kept in his glove compartment.

It had gotten dark outside, but the streets of Rome still flaunted their effortless beauty. Like, they weren’t trying hard at all. The buildings were all worn and painted over in perfect creams and pastels, illuminated by the streetlights, and laundry hung outside the windows, wide sheets and shirts and bright little dresses. The colors all worked together in such a way that it felt like they were a part of the fabric of the neighborhood. And the streets themselves—yes, the cobblestones were uneven, but I was figuring out how to walk on them.

The bar was on a small, dark side street, where you had to ring a doorbell to get inside. Sitting at the bar, there were two women with short-cropped hair; one of them had a huge sunflower tattoo on her bare arm. And behind the bar was a short guy with a big smile and even bigger drunk eyes. Not the kind that were actually drunk—he seemed to be pretty composed, balancing two bottles and a shot glass—but the kind that were always a little red and had bags under them. The cute kind.

“I’m looking for Jahan,” I told the bartender.

“That’s me,” he said.

I looked at him again. Was this man messing with me? I don’t know how else to say it, but this man did not look like any other Iranian person I had ever met in my life. I mean, his name was more Iranian than kabob and Persepolis. But his skin was covered in tattoos. And quite a few shades darker than mine. Burnt caramel, versus my milkier caramel.

He finished the drink he was making and handed it to the sunflower tattoo lady. “Jah-han. You even pronounced it right. The Italians always manage to bastardize my name. You must be Persian. Are you Persian?”