Lorenzo’s office is an exact copy of the one Lin and I are sharing, except that it’s twice as big, the desk is wood instead of metal, the chair looks as if it came off a Star Trek set, and there’s a window that overlooks a park strewn with blooming cherry trees. I growl on the inside.

Lin pushes me through the doorway and escapes back down the hall before I can protest.

“Ciao,” Lorenzo says. His voice is the same, and different. Still low and musical, with the same softened consonants that bring me back to southern Italy, to a slower life. But there’s a weariness in that single syllable that matches the lines in his face, deeper now after only two months. I can’t help but stare into his dark eyes, and when I do, I see every word trapped inside him.

All of a sudden, there’s a lump in my throat the size of a beach ball. I try to say “Ciao” around it, and what comes out has all the force of a mouse fart. My knees give way as the room spins around me, multiple Lorenzos and coffee makers and bookshelves, all swirling in a whirlpool of color and texture.

He catches me on the way down and props me in the large leather chair behind his desk, taking the smaller visitor’s chair for himself. “Nice to know I still make you weak in the knees, Gianna.”

In one reality, I recover completely from what women used to call la petite mort, stretch my neck to meet Lorenzo’s face, and wrap both arms around him. We kiss, slowly at first, then furiously. Then all hell breaks loose and I’ve got him on the desk or he’s got me on the desk or we’ve got each other under the desk. It’s fantastic and loud and wet and sweaty and perfect.

Then there’s the other reality, the one that’s actually happening, the one where I have precisely enough time to drag the plastic-lined wastebasket from its corner, line it up under me, and lose my breakfast into it with a very unsexy slosh.

All Lorenzo says is, “Wow.”

“I’ve gotta go,” I say, pulling myself up, using the desk for leverage. “Ladies’ room.”

I think the true test of a man is how he acts when a woman pukes in front of him, in his office, into his wastebasket. What Lorenzo did, right before he walked me to the door of the women’s restroom at the opposite end of the hall from my office, was smile. A “wow” and a smile, nothing more.

I love him for that.