Charlie messaged me in the morning, as I knew he would. Despite the thousand kilometers between Paris and Verona, he stirred my guilty conscience, even though I hadn’t felt guilty when I went to bed.

What did you get up to last night?

Cola had dragged me to the cinema with Cinzia, and along the way, we picked up her younger brother in Castel d’Azzuno. “This is Salvo,” she said as the young boy got into the back of Cola’s car. “But we call him Bianchi, and he doesn’t speak much English.”

Bianchi turned out to be eighteen, but his small size made him look much younger. Cola had been right; there was no doubt that he was beautiful, with a delicate face, inquisitive dark eyes, a dainty nose, and thick black hair. He nodded, sat beside me without saying a word, and put earbuds in to listen to music on his phone.

We drove to the UCI multiplex on Via Monte Amiata to see Caught Stealing, or as it’s known in Italian, Una Scomoda Circostanza, starring Austin Butler, whom I found both weird-looking and handsome at the same time.

Cola and Cinzia sat together while I was between Cinzia and her brother. I tried to make small talk with Bianchi, but the language barrier proved difficult, and we both fell into awkward silence before the movie started.

Caught Stealing had been dubbed into Italian, which put me at a disadvantage because I struggled to follow the narrative. Cola had suggested we go to a smaller cinema where it was being shown in its original form with subtitles, but I thought this would be unfair to them.

The tradition of dubbing English-speaking movies into Italian dates back to a time when most of the population was illiterate and struggled with subtitles. Mussolini’s government saw dubbing as an opportunity to control foreign content, and the rise of the industry with skilled voice actors has persisted ever since.

I cast furtive glances at Bianchi, who seemed distracted, disinterested, and perhaps even guarded. Once or twice, he looked my way and smiled with embarrassment, but for the most part, he looked away.

He was a beautiful boy, but Cola’s sly yet playful attempt at matchmaking was never going to work because of the age difference.

Afterwards, we went for coffee. Cola and Cinzia spoke in English, and Bianchi listened and smiled as though he was part of the conversation. There were fleeting glimpses of curiosity and connection. What had begun as a seemingly casual setup gradually revealed the possibility of a deeper attraction, or at least a moment of recognition between us.