“So many,” he said with a dreamy grin. “So many beautiful women in Italy. So much food to eat, and wine to drink. Here, we understand that life is for the living. We dance, we party, we make love. Every summer, we fall in love.”

Keira jotted down everything Vanni said. “What about when it’s not summer?” she asked. “Are you still in love then?”

He shrugged, seemingly very nonchalant about the whole thing. “It depends. The women here might not want a relationship to last that long. Besides, they know the rules. They understand how it works with Italian men.”

Keira’s interest was piqued. “The rules?” she asked, curiously. “What are they?”

Vanni gave Cristiano a knowing look and Keira got the distinct impression that there was some kind of unspoken agreement between them, shared between Italian men in general. She frowned, a little uncomfortable.

“The women here know that the men are not exclusive,” Vanni told her. “They never can be.”

“You mean they cheat?” Keira replied, horrified, recalling the pain she herself had felt from Zach’s affair.

“Is it cheating if neither person expects fidelity?” Vanni questioned her.

Keira wasn’t sure what to make of his statement. She was reminded of the woman in the Internet cafe and what she’d so passionately told her. Did Italian men claim to be in love with women when they knew it was just going to be a short-lived fling, one during which they’d make no promises to remain exclusive? Or was everyone a party to the system? Did the women benefit just as much as the men, from being adored for a season, enjoying a fantasy love affair and all the intensity that came with it without any of the strings attached? She just couldn’t be certain.

“Maybe you could tell me a bit more about it,” she said. “It sounds very different from how we do things in New York. We date many different people too but we’re cautious about when we tell someone we love them.”

She thought of Bryn as she said it and realized that like most people, her sister approached dating in New York in the same way she did job-seeking. Her dates were more like interviews, the swipe-left or swipe-right selection process analogous to sifting through resumes.

Vanni dismissed her comments with a wave of his hand. “Nonsense. We are all doing the same thing. We just accept that love is not forever. It can last a short moment, maybe just a month, maybe no more than a weekend. But why pretend it is not love? Why not dive into the pleasure all the way?”

Keira thought about her short-lived relationship with Shane. Had he had the same attitude as Cristiano and his friend, that love didn’t have to mean forever? Maybe she’d misinterpreted their whole relationship.

“You must experience a lot of heartache,” she noted.

Vanni shrugged, seemingly as nonchalant about heartbreak as he’d appeared about the ease with which he could fall in love.