Page 10 of Rome with Dad's Best Friend

“Want to share a pizza?” Marco asks. He reaches over and taps a spot on my menu, a giant-sounding pizza with so many toppings I have trouble visualizing them all on one slice.

“That sounds good,” I smile. It does. It really does. Sharing food – it makes this feel almost like a date. I decide, that it wouldn’t be too awful if I allowed myself to pretend that it is.

“I’ll order,” Marco says, waving a waiter over. He speaks to the man in rapid-fire Italian, and I know that we’re about to eat something special. Marco seems to have that effect, wherever we go. Either it’s because he knows this city so well that he can always find his way to the best, or it’s because he has that presence about him that makes people want to do better – I can’t tell. But the effect must be wearing off on me, too, because I’m still lamenting the state of the suitcase I brought with me and the utter lack of anything I could wear that might possibly be deemed sexy.

The food comes before long – another aspect of the Marco effect, I’m sure – and I can’t help my eyes going as large as saucers.

Marco laughs at me, and I meet his gaze before gesturing down at the pizza. “It’s enormous,” I tell him.

“I know,” he says, a twinkle in his green eyes still visible even in the dim, candle-accented lighting. “Bigger than both of us, I think.”

I shrug, snapping a quick picture of it with my phone. “Is that a challenge?”

Marco’s face lights up with what I’m sure is excitement. “It could be,” he agrees. “You know, I always love a woman who knows how to eat.”

I feel a flush lighting my face again and am thankful that at least it’s dim in here. He called me a woman. Not a girl. And more than that, he said the word love in the same sentence. Could this mean that he’s beginning to see me as more than just a kid?

We eat our way through the pizza, laughing and joking, talking as we go. The conversation makes the meal longer, and I think this is what makes the huge amount of food more manageable. Surprisingly, even though Marco is in good shape and I’m not, he keeps up with me, slice for slice. We chuckle at the floppy slices that want to deposit their toppings back down on the oversized slate, groan at the thud of green peppers that do slide free, and even compete to draw out the longest string of mozzarella from our mouths to the pizza.

Finally, we rest – and look down in despair at the four slices of the pizza left on the slate.

“I don’t think I can do it,” I sigh. “At least, not before this place closes.”

“We need a break,” Marco agrees, in what I’m beginning to recognize is his habitual no-nonsense manner. Within moments he’s summoned the waiter and asked the man to box up our remaining slices for us, and even settled the bill.

“What now?” I ask. I check my watch and then wish I hadn’t. The evening is already growing old.

“Let’s decide that in a moment,” Marco says. He nods towards the back of the room, where a sign indicates the direction of the restrooms. “I will be back shortly.”

I watch him go, then settle back down into my seat, looking at my hands. I don’t want the night to be over, but I know it probably will be. When he comes back, he’ll take me back to my hotel – and leave me there alone, again.

At least I might have a few more slices of pizza to keep me company.

“Ciao, ciao, ciao bella!”

I look around in surprise, with the instinct that tells you when you are being spoken to, even if you don’t know the language. At the next table over are three Italian boys, around my age if not a couple of years older, all with curly, dark hair cut in fashionable styles. They also all wear grins, which for a moment remind me of jackals.

One of them, the one who addressed me, says something in Italian. I shake my head in confusion, trying to show them that I have no idea what they are saying. He gets up, then, and moves closer to me, standing over me.

“What you doing with that old man, huh?” he asks me, his English heavily accented. “You looking miserable. You should get a good time, huh?”

“A… good time?” I repeat, looking up at him uncertainly. His two friends get up, and they stand around me, uncomfortably close to my chair. I don’t think I can get up without walking right into one or the other of them.

“Yes, come with us,” the ringleader says. “We show you good time. Good Rome time, huh? You want to have fun? We know a place.”

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