He's Italian // Mattia Polibio

1️⃣ The Jacket

I'd always thought that I'd make it through secondary school before I made any big moves such as America but I guess life doesn't always go the way you'd expect.

My Mam and her friend had decided to become business partners as they were both realtors. Only thing was that her friend lived in New Jersey.

Don't get me wrong, I was buzzed about not having to do the leaving cert back home in Ireland but I was going to miss my friends an unbelievable amount. My Dad was another person to be incredibly missed, my parents had split while my sister and I were young and he'd remarried.

He said he'd visit as often as he could and that we'd come home for holidays but it was still a big change from being able to just drive to his house whenever life felt like too much.

—

Standing in the airport saying our goodbyes was tough, my friends cried as did I. Tommy, my Labrador since childhood, was definitely the hardest goodbye. That probably sounds bad considering I'm leaving a literal parent to live thousands of miles away but Tommy was a major comfort throughout everything. Dad would take good care of him though.

The food on the flight over was awful as usual. Who even cooks that stuff? Hospital food and airplane food are the most atrocious things on Earth, prove me wrong.

It was 6:20pm once we'd landed. By the time we'd gone through baggage claim, met my mam's friend Donna and got back to her house it was almost 7:45pm.

Mam said we were to stay in Donna's until she got the keys for our place which would take about a week.
I won't lie, Donna's house was massive.
She had two garages, TWO!

We would be staying in the basement which I thought was awesome so when mam told me our house had a basement too, I immediately called dibs.

—

"You guys hungry?" Donna asked
"Starving" I sighed with a smile.

"Lee won't eat plane food, thinks it's poison" Mam huffed
"I don't think, I know....it's the Devil's work" I shrugged,
She smacked me in the arm
"Owww" I pressed and rubbed my arm where it hurt.

"Don't be talking like that" she said as she blessed herself and proceeded to bless me.
"Di- did you just bless me?" I giggled
"I'll do a lot more if you keep speaking like that, I don't want that juju in our new house" she waved her hand at 'juju'.

Mam, being the Irish catholic mammy she was, had always been very adamant on us not mentioning those things or using the lords name in vain, so I did it to piss her off.

"There's this great Italian restaurant like five blocks down that my friend owns if you guys wanna try it?" Donna suggested.

Before Donna had even finished her suggestion, my little sister Ciara was already eagerly tugging at my jumper.
"We're in"

—
I wanted to make a little bit of an effort for dinner considering I'd been travelling in a tracksuit all day with my hair up.
I took a quick shower, let my hair down and threw on my favourite jeans with the new top my friends had bought me from our favourite boutique as a going away present;