I hate the lights in here. They string across the center of the studio apartment, small and silver on a metal rope like showroom spotlights of a furniture store or a private art studio display. They cast an unnatural and staged glow across the terracotta tiles and wood detailing, a natural colorscape interrupted. It’s as if the kitchen and living space is a theater below and the lofted bed is where the stage crew would be, hiding out in darkness, toying with the ropes and lighting and curtains, an embodied metaphor of our relationship. 

But it’s a bachelor pad, so he doesn’t care. Yesterday’s lunch bowl is still out, as is yesterday’s used tissue and coffee cup. An array of clothing drapes over the backs of chairs, shoes shoved in a corner–it’s not dirty, but it’s inching away from tidy. A casualness has settled over the initial excitement of these meetings. Gone are the times when he’d apologize for the slight mess, when he’d make sure I didn’t lift a finger to tidy the table, when he’d come down to open the door and kiss me. Now I was buzzed up, welcome to enter at my leisure–what I see is what I get. 

We drink Chardonnay–it’s fine. I don’t know why I bought it; I don’t like Chardonnay, I’m a red girl–always have been, always will be. It accompanies the spliff he rolls that we smoke. He provides the tobacco, always Old Holborn. Ironic, as he’s barely over twenty; that tobacco seems to be for the older, the wise, the seasoned. It should have been my warning, a young man wanting to be more mature, but being entirely unprepared for the consequences of actions. He once told me I was his third lover, the third chapter of a classic Italian tale: first, his longtime girlfriend; second, a hookup, a rebound; third, whatever I am. 

I always bring the herb in my little bag of tricks–lighters, papers, filters, grinder. He wasn’t much of an herb smoker before this–at least I didn’t notice during all the aperitivi in town, or coffee breaks at school, even at friends’ house parties. With me though, he wants to smoke herb–and more often than I normally would. But it’s fine, we’re killing time as summer absorbs us into its stagnant social rhythm. 

I nag him about leaving the air conditioner on when he smokes inside. I shouldn’t nag, I’m not his mom–though I know his mom would say the same to him. I met her as a “friend” of his during Pasqua a few months prior. I helped teach her how to use Instagram, much to his chagrin. We aren’t so much friends anymore these days. There’s a shade of charm and desire, but a balance of normalcy and complacency. What is this dynamic that we’re in? It feels like a sparkler at the end of its time, when the flame is there but muted towards the end, weighed down by the burnt expanse of the previous shining moments. 

We spend too much time together, so much so that even my normally indifferent roommates have asked questions. It’s as if we’re in a relationship, but we certainly are not. He leaves soon, and I know it will hurt like a dry bandage being ripped off a scab, so I let it stay on, maybe too long, long enough that it starts to peel off itself. I think about everything over and over again. When I should have said no but my body said yes–yes to attraction, to need, to convenience. The night camping in the Apennine Mountains when wandering hands found sleeping bag zippers, the paddle tennis dates that preceded dinner and drinks, the times I skipped class to visit this crappy little hole of a home just for a few moments of attention. 

In my mind I grab my tongue, but words of doubt already escape my mouth. He expects this, though, and the spliff departs from his lips as an exasperated sigh of smoke. Annoyance curls out and around us. Here we go through the same conversation as before: We’re just spending time together, it doesn’t need labels… I never said it needed labels, we just spend too much time together… How is that true?… I want space, but I don’t want space…and so it goes on. 

The same cycle will repeat until he leaves for good, packing his car up and asking to stay his last night at mine. A quick and quiet morning shower and a hug at the car door was all I could give him, or really, get from him–he didn’t leave time for more. Not even a moment of eye contact. We have our space now.