I smiled. “Have you always been like this?”

“Like what?”

“Confident in yourself,” I said. “In talking to others. In putting yourself out there, in a place where, you know, yourself isn’t exactly welcome.”

Valerio waved his hand. “It is not confidence. It is more like—what is the word in English? Ti costringi. You force it.” He scratched his head. “How do you say . . .”

“Fake it till you make it?” I offered.

“Yes. That.”

• • •

Signs kept pointing to the Sistine Chapel, but it was nowhere in sight. There was always another glittering exhibit. Another statue. A courtyard. A bathtub. We hit a breezy courtyard, with the jankiest fountain at the center. It was almost laughable. It was just a shrub with a tiny spurt of water coming out on top. I figured it had to be a significant shrub—some chunk of holy land—but I kind of preferred not knowing.

I noticed there were pennies in the fountain, so I tossed one in. Valerio popped up next to me.

“So, where’s the Sistine Chapel?” I asked.

“Is that the whole reason you are here? At the center of Catholicism, one of the most influential religions in the history of mankind?”

I pointed at Bulbasaur the Shrub. “You’re calling that influential?”

Valerio sighed. “Americans.”

We moved over to a statue of a strong body with curly hair, twisted in the most intricate, impossible body contortions. A snake wrapped between that statue and other figures, their elbows and arms, linking them all together.

Valerio explained the history of the sculpture—it was by three sculptors of Rhodes, it depicted a famous Trojan priest and his three sons being attacked by serpents, it was very famous—and I listened. I made sure to nod, but not too much. I wondered where Valerio was going with this. All of this. I wondered what exactly he was looking for, because even if some part of me was still traumatized from Jackson, how that had ended, I couldn’t deny that Valerio and I had chemistry. We were on a second date. Something was setting in, like the moment paint starts to dry.

We moved on to the next exhibit, a hall of marble busts lined up around the circlular room. I moved down the line, inspecting their faces. They all looked so calm, so at peace. It was as if the marble busts were saying, “Don’t worry, Amir. Everything will be fine.”

Easy for you to say, bust of Caesar. You didn’t worry and look where that got you. Stabbed by Brutus.

Valerio whispered in my ear, “We should totally just stab Caesar.”

My heart fluttered. “You’ve seen Mean Girls?”

He looked at me with a confused expression. “Of course. It is a classic. I am from Puglia, Amir; I did not grow up under a rock.”

I smiled.

“So you’re telling me they have movies in Puglia.”

“Oh, we had more than movies. We had scenes from the movies. The most beautiful coast in the world.” We exited the room of busts and followed another sign for Cappella Sistina, up a marble staircase. “It is still my favorite place. When I was younger, I would go and take a bag of plums—they were my favorite fruit—and sit and watch the ocean. Even when I was a teenager, I would leave my phone at home. I would go and think about life, how one day I would leave Italy.”