The days passed slowly and terribly upsetting for Chiara. The year at the college was over, and she was packing her suitcase to go back to Italy. Folding her clothes, she remembered all those meetings with Colin, so beautiful and unforgettable. She remembered Luca, how she had behaved with him, how he had behaved with her. But it was all over now. She had to leave as soon as possible so that the memories would not be thrown in her way again. She closed the suitcase and sat down on the bed. She looked around and sighed.
"But I will actually miss all this." She whispered smiling.
She stood still for a few minutes, then someone knocked on the door. Luca.
"Well I just wanted to say goodbye." He said as soon as the girl opened the door.
"I'll miss you."
"I'll miss you too, Luca." Chiara smiled at him, with her heart crying a little.
He looked her in the eye for a few moments, then as if pushed by someone he kissed her on the lips, and she did not push him away. She expected it from him. He was like his father, on one hand. Colin was a man of spontaneous gestures which were never out of place. So was Luca.
"Have a good trip then, I hope I can see you again ... I really hope so, it's a pity that I'm so far from you ..." he whispered, breaking away from her warm lips.
Chiara did not answer, she did not know what to say, she would have preferred to see Colin again, and it certainly did was not going to happen. She looked at him with tender eyes and whispered "Yeah .. so far away .."
She hugged him tightly and a tear fell down her cheek. She imagined she was hugging Colin and everything came back to her mind with a nostalgic feeling. She clung to the boy's body for a long time, to the point of losing track of it. She was in a tremendous delay, so she apologized to Luca, gave him a light kiss on the cheek and, taking his things in an uncoordinated and clumsy way, got out of the room waving. The boy sighed smiling, thinking about how much he would miss her. Chiara meanwhile, went downstairs and saw the door open. A taxi driver was waiting for her by moving the index up and down on the clock. Giulia and Clara were also waiting, both with sad smiles and crying eyes.
"We will miss you so much, Chiaretta," Clara told her, hugging her tightly and kissing her cheek.
"You too, I will miss you a lot, my dears. We'll talk when I arrive, ok?" She kissed Giulia's cheek too and hurriedly got into the cab.
"Miss, you know you could miss your flight , don't you?" The ironic taxi driver said.
"Please, instead of talking, move!"
It was a real rush to the airport, but it was worth it. Chiara arrived on time and got on the plane.
The flight went well, although it was without friends in the midst of so much, too many people that she did not know. She arrived in Italy in the afternoon. Her parents were at the airport and they looked forward to seeing her. When they saw her the emotions were so strong, she hugged her dad as she had never done before and kissed her mother with so much joy.
"I've been thinking about you every day, but tell me, how long is it that you did not eat some good carbonara? Ah! Granny has made lasagna at home, she cannot wait to see you again!" Her mum said, taking a suitcase.
"Ahaha it's exactly a year since I ate carbonara! I cannot wait to eat a lot of lasagna then! And to see grandma, my brothers, aunt ... How much time!"
They returned home serenely, made one of those traditional Italian lunches, one of those that Chiara dreamed of at night. They talked about this and that, except for what was really important that year. Colin and Luca. Two beautiful messes come together. She spent the evening with her childhood friends, it was a long time since she had spent such a beautiful and peaceful day. A few days later she enrolled in a summer theater course, so she could achieve a dream. She turned out to be really good, especially for imitations. But for the most serious roles she was thinking about how Colin would make them, what movements he would do or would rather not do. In some ways, she lived in function of him. She often wondered if he ever thought of her, maybe at night when he could not sleep or the rainy afternoons in the summer when he stayed at home maybe looking out of the window waiting for it to end. She always did it, continuously.
It happened that Colin in London worked hard for a new film, and so he was always tired and nervous, but he always found a little time to think of Chiara. He realized that he had behaved like an idiot once again, but he also understood that this was the right thing to do. He wanted to see her again at all costs, secretly of course, but he needed the complicity of someone who knew about them. Chiara's aunt, even if he had his fears that she would have considered him an asshole considering what he had lost without realizing it. But it was not like that at all. In any case, he decided he would still try to ask her about the girl. So, while Livia was not at home, he took his laptop and started writing an email for her. It was written like this:
'Dear Mrs. Anna,
Yes, it's me again, the one who fell in love with your niece and left her alone. But it was the only thing to do. In any case, I need to see her again, for better or for worse. I know that maybe she will not want to see me because she considers me an old asshole, excuse the term, but I still love her and I have to see her. Can you tell her about it?
Best regards, Mr. Firth. "
As soon as he sent it, he fell into the desk chair. He stared at the computer and thought that maybe he had made the right choice. Satisfied then, he got up and decided to go out for a walk. Meanwhile, Aunt Anna who had received the mail in record time, read it and thought it would be better for her niece not to see it. She filed it and, therefore, did not say anything to her.
From then on, time passed fast but full of hidden pains, like the wind during a snowstorm, blowing so quick as it was cold and malignant for the uncovered faces attempting to move on. Chiara turned eighteen on the day she read in the newspaper that Colin would be in Italy three days later for a conference about the new film that had come out. It was a magnificent day for her, so she was allowed to go to Rome, where the conference would take place and she considered it the most beautiful birthday present her family had given her. She waited anxiously for those two days before leaving, they were long and boring, since she thought only of him and of when she would see him again. But they passed. When the day came, she was accompanied to the station by her mother and then left immediately. She could wait no longer. She arrived very early, she already found some fans waiting for him and she got terribly jealous. She sat down in a seat in the large room waiting for the big moment. She waited three hours, in which she almost always slept. When she woke up she looked around and saw a lot of people standing and cheering on, so suddenly she got up too and saw him, she saw her man walking majestically along the corridor that dripped with avid fans and photographers. But something in his eyes had changed. There was something different about him, something bad had happened. She had understood it through the dull eyes he had. It was all confirmed when he went to sit on that sort of stage, since he did not make any kind of joke or remark as he usually did. She had another Colin in front of her, not the one she'd fallen in love with years ago, but a sad, defeated man.
