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"In Milan, it's not like this," he said, waving his hand around. "Not so hot."
"I can imagine," I said. "But I've never been to Italy."
"You must go," he told me.
"I always planned to. I took Latin for a few years, so I learned about Roman history. I've been to Roman ruins in Spain and France, but of course Italy has the most." Somehow, the geography of Italy hadn't been included in my education, even though I'd memorized the first seven emperors of Rome and learned about their empire-building.
"Yes," he said, inclining his head. "It's true."
I laughed a little. "My sister said that when she went to Italy and told people she knew Latin, everyone quizzed her. Please don't quiz me," I begged. "It's been a long time."
"I won't," the Italian said.
"I'm Celestine," I said, extending my hand. He shook it.
"Massimo. Mas."
"That's a very easy name to remember." I smiled. "You can't get more Italian than that."
"You'd be surprised," he replied, running a gigantic tan hand through his wavy brown hair. "Australians seem to have a lot of trouble with it. They think my name is Max."
"I promise I'll remember your name," I swore solemnly.
"Celestine from Florida," Massimo said. "I think I'll remember, too."
My heart skipped a beat when he smiled at me again. He had such a wide smile that it was impossible not to smile back. Tyra Banks had nothing on him. Even though he was wearing aviators, he smiled with his eyes with such good humor that the day seemed a little brighter, a little sunnier. After he ran his hand through his brown hair, it fell in sexy disarray. When I ran my hand through my hair, it turned into an utter mess.
"Can anybody use these?"
Both of us turned to see two teenage boys with a bag of groceries next to us.
"Yeah, of course," I said. "No worries." I'd picked up a little bit of Australian slang in the short time I'd been in Cairns.
The two teenage boys sat in the area that I'd avoided due to unidentifiable splotches. They started pulling out two boxes of cereal, bananas, spoons, milk, and bowls. I thought about warning them about the huge number of ants, but they started talking loudly about where they'd go drinking that night. I turned back to Massimo. He took one look at them and asked, "Do you want to go for a walk?"
"I'd love to," I said with a sigh of relief. The two boys had shouted at a third boy and now the conversation was about their current hangovers.
"Give me a moment, please. I need to put away these things."
"No worries," I said. "I'm not in a hurry." I put my laptop back into my backpack and made sure that all the little compartments were zipped.
He took his apple, water, iPod, headphones, journal, etc. and shoved them into a bag that I hadn't noticed sitting next to him. Then he walked into a parked car only a few feet away and shut the door. The windows of the car were tinted darker than was legal in the United States, but Australia probably had different laws. I looked over my shoulder at the hungover teenagers and shook my head. Australia's legal drinking age wa
s 18, which I still wasn't used to yet. The three of them were staring at me and my cleavage.
I felt my cheeks heat and turned back to look at Massimo's car. I tugged at the hem of my dress to make sure it wasn't caught in my leggings. Leggings protected my legs from a lot of things, such as brightly colored poisonous ants. The trade-off was that I was boiling in the Cairns heat.
I looked at the farmer's market that was next to me. There was a live band playing incredible music. They were alternating covers of stuff like the Beatles with their own original songs. The lawn in front of them was filled with people sun-bathing, or as they said here in Cairns, sun-baking. A lot of women in bikinis were stretched out in groups and talking to each other.
I felt a very gentle touch on my shoulder and jumped about a foot in the air.
"Sorry about that," Massimo said. I didn't know if it was for startling me or for going into the car. "I'm ready now."
"Great," I said, adjusting the straps of my backpack. "I have to warn you, I have plantar fasciitis. I'll walk pretty slowly." I turned to face him.
Then I lost the power of speech. When we first met, he was sitting down. I could tell he was a pretty big guy, although I had to admit that when I'd covertly checked him out, I was looking at the definition of his beautifully tanned and defined upper arms.
Now that he was standing right next to me, I had to tilt my head back to look at his face. I was about five feet tall. He was comfortable over six foot three, but I didn't know if I should ask how tall he was. I couldn't easily mentally convert five feet into centimeters. Strike two of the day for the American education system.
