At 4:00 a.m. in the parking lot of a Milan hotel, my friend Max asked, “Do you want to do this?” I wasn’t sure what he meant. Have breakfast? Date? I was very tired from our night out with his friends. But he kissed me, and then I knew what he meant.
“How?” I asked. “We will find a way. Leave it to me,” he said.
I fell into my bed and had many problems that morning. My coworker called to ask if I was coming to breakfast; my clothes were everywhere; I couldn’t find my passport. When I boarded the plane, the flight attendants whispered and I realized I looked so sick that they might kick me off the flight.
But I got home. I turned 40 and found out that Max would be moving from Milan to Boca Raton.
In April, I had a car collision and broke my hip and wrist. Max took me to Florida, where he cared for me.
The lush, seductive tropicality of Boca and West Palm startled me after the flat Texas landscape. I smelled Plumeria for the first time. Max bought a house, and we furnished it. Every afternoon, its upper clerestory windows filled with clouds moving in and then, the rain pouring over the Traveler Palm trees.
In the Summer, problems began. He often wanted to go out, and I wanted to stay home. One of his friends often disparaged me in Italian. I began going back home to my Texas apartment and visiting less frequently. My hip bones had slowly knit together, and the wrist was mostly working. In the Fall, I began work again in Texas after 6 months off.
At Christmas, I was devastated when I wasn’t asked to come to Florida, and I cried through Christmas at my parents’ house. The bloom was gone.
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