Italian for Beginners by Kristin Harmel

and shook myself. I had to go. I suddenly wanted to be as
     far away from this place as possible. I glanced at the hostess, who was still standing there staring at me.
    “Unbelievable,” I muttered to her. “He has a wife?”
    She looked at me for a long moment and nodded. “Duh,” she said noncommittally. Then she rolled her eyes, looked bored again
     and went back to snapping her gum. And why shouldn’t she? She was all of eighteen or nineteen. Her whole life stretched before
     her.
    Mine, on the other hand, seemed to be rapidly closing in on me, leaving me fewer and fewer chances for happiness every day.



Chapter Four
    T hat bastard!” my sister declared later that evening, her voice sounding closer and clearer than it should have given that
     she was thousands of miles away in Cozumel, on her honeymoon. She had called to say hello, but she had noticed right away
     that something about my voice sounded funny.
    I told her what had happened with Michael. “The worst part of it,” I said, “is that I can’t believe my judgment was so off,
     you know?”
    Becky sighed. “It’s not your fault, Cat,” she said. “You’re just in a bad place right now. And he took advantage of it. Or
     he tried to, anyhow.”
    I blinked a few times and tried to steady myself, even though I was sitting down at my desk at home. “It was just that he
     made me feel”—I searched my mind and then filled in—“hopeful. He made me feel hopeful, for the first time in a while. Like
     maybe I’d finally met someone who was different, you know?”
    “He was playing games with your head,” Becky said softly.
    “I know,” I said. “But it got me thinking. I just keep sitting around waiting for life to happen to me, don’t I? I mean, maybe
     I’m not meeting the right guys because I’m not out there living.”
    Becky was silent for a moment. “I don’t know if that’s it,” she said.
    “But what if it
is
?” I asked, suddenly feeling like time was sifting too quickly through the hourglass, even as we spoke, and I needed to do
     something right away to stop it. “What if I’m just sitting in my little cubicle every day and going to and from work and living
     in this routine that I don’t know how to get out of?”
    Becky sighed. “But Cat, that’s
you
,” she said.
    Her words stung. She was right.
    Becky tried to give me a few words of support, but I could hear Jay’s voice in the background, and I could tell she was distracted.
     I didn’t blame her. It was her honeymoon. She didn’t need to be counseling me.
    “Go have fun,” I said firmly. “And take lots of pictures.”
    “You got it, Sis.” I could hear her smiling through the phone. “And honestly, don’t worry about Michael. He’s a jerk. The
     world’s full of them. You just haven’t met the right guy yet.”
    For no reason at all, except maybe that speaking of Rome last night had reminded me of him, Francesco’s olive-skinned, chiseled
     face suddenly popped into my mind, as clear a vision as if I had seen him just yesterday.
    “Yeah,” I said vaguely, shaking my head. “Maybe I haven’t.”
    But as I wished my sister safe travels and told her to say hi to Jay for me and to make sure to have fun, I couldn’t shake
     Francesco’s face from my mind.
    Maybe I hadn’t met the right guy yet. Or maybe he’d been right in front of me all along, more than a decade ago, and I’d been
     too scared to take that leap into the unknown and find out.
    At midnight that night, I was still wide awake in my bed, tossing and turning. The later it got, the more distressed I felt.
     I hated nights like this. I had to wake up again at six in order to get in my daily half hour of yoga before showering, blow-drying
     my hair quickly, and leaving for work by seven fifteen. I knew I’d be miserable tomorrow if I didn’t get enough sleep.
    But that wasn’t the primary thing that was on my mind. What was really bothering me was that I couldn’t shake the