That should have scared me more than it did—the idea of permanence, of a new life in Rome—but I was drunk. I just giggled. “I think maybe I should learn Italian first,” I said, “before I become an expert on divas.”

Jahan scoffed. “Nonsense,” he said. Then he peered at Neil. “But if you’re serious about learning Italian, Neil could help you. He’s a tutor, you know.”

Neil and I started to object. “I’m sure Amir would prefer an actual Italian to tutor him in Italian . . .”

“Yeah, no. I mean, it’s not that, I just—”

“I’ll ask Francesco if he has any friends who can tutor him,” Neil said. “Maybe we can even find him a hunky Italian tutor.”

“Francesco?”

“His amore,” Jahan said.

“My partner,” Neil clarified. “‘Amore’ means ‘love.’”

“Amore,” I said, turning over the word, attaching it to Neil and his partner. I remembered what Jahan had told me last night, that Francesco was planning to propose to Neil on his birthday. “Amore,” I repeated, giggling this time.

“Look, you’re already teaching him Italian!” Jahan squealed. “So it’s settled. Neil will teach you Italian and I’ll teach you divas. And thus begins your education at l’università degli omosessuali italiani.”

I couldn’t even look at Neil. The prospect of studying Italian with someone that attractive just seemed too much. I wouldn’t learn a thing; I would spend entire lessons trying not to stare at his face. If Jahan was the sun, then Neil was a solar eclipse; I was afraid if I looked directly at him, I might go blind.

Neil, however, just shrugged. “Hey, Jahan, how about you enroll at this university, too, instead of leaving us for the States?”

“You’re going to America?” I asked.

Jahan rolled his eyes and went, “In a month, so they say.”

“Like, to visit?” I asked.

“No, for good,” Neil said, frowning.

I frowned, too; I was immediately filled with dread. I felt sad. More than that, I was confused with myself, with how I was capable of feeling loss before I had actually lost the thing itself. I’d felt this way before, when things ended abruptly with Jackson.

Jahan must have noticed, because he went, “Oh, don’t look so dreary, Amir. Odds are looking slim right now. It depends entirely if I can pass online algebra. I never graduated from college, yet somehow they accepted me into a poetry MFA, and somehow that means I need to take baby math to enroll. It doesn’t make any sense.”

We stepped back into the apartment, and I eased into the party. I remember it had felt so aggressive at first: aggressive with the tank tops and muscled biceps, aggressive when I collided into the meatball tray and made a mess. At what point did I just let myself breathe? I think it was before the YouTube dance party, when Giovanni was parading me around. One of the Italian boys taught me this phrase, “Che cazzo dici?” which basically translates to “What the fuck are you saying?” That was when I accepted the absurdity of my situation, the WTF of it all, of being around all these older gay men, and eased right in. I think that’s when the party stopped feeling aggressive.