Light of Heart (LGBT+) ✔

Touchy-feely

When I meet the love of my life, I am hopelessly lost and she shows me the way.

I'm in a narrow, clearly-not-touristic alley, peering at my free map of Firenze, nowhere a street sign in sight. She taps on my shoulder, just like that, startling me since I didn't see her coming. She has bronze skin and almost black hair curling around her face.

She points at a street in the periphery of my map. I gesture to our surroundings. She nods, then points out Piazza della Signoria. I nod, smiling gratefully, and retrieve a pen from my handbag. She grips both my map and the pen as if asking: Can I? I hand them over and she quickly draws which way I should take. Not once does she try to speak, which slightly surprises me after a few days of overly friendly Italians ranting in Italian, not understanding I can't hear a word of it.

Before she can give my pen and map back, I sign Thank you in Norwegian since I don't even know the beginnings of Italian sign language and I certainly can't speak Italian – technically, I can't even speak Norwegian. If it is hard to learn a foreign language, it is even harder to learn a foreign sign language since there are barely any teachers.

Except, instead of confusion or whatever emotion I expected, her face lights up, she pushes my map and pen in my hands and in gestures and facial expressions that are too confident to be anything but sign language, she responds what I can only guess means: You're welcome.

I point at my ears and she nods fervently, reaching out to touch mine and continuing to let her hand glide down my hair. Up close, I notice a few acne scars and her eyes are a warm brown. She's really attractive, a bit on the plump side, but I love people who are soft enough to hug properly.

When she steps back, I grab her hand. She smiles and squeezes my fingers, before letting go and signing something. She repeats a drinking gesture. I blush and nod. She takes my hand and starts walking.

One drink becomes three and all the while we keep signing, each in our own language, giggling and trying to break down what we are saying to more universal gestures. Her name is Azzurra – she writes it down and I write Agnes under it. She draws a heart in between and I could swear her cheeks are rosier than before – mine are scarlet.

We sit next to each other and she keeps playing with my hair, touching my shoulder, my back, my hip – to pull me closer – my leg. In turn, I touch her just as much, bump our feet – the clasp of her sandal bites – and when we part after a late dinner, it is with phone numbers, kisses on the cheek and a hug. She is just as soft as I imagined.

***

Author's Note: This one is for the Multicultural (language barrier) prompt from Aim to Engage 2019. I'm not sure about all the telling at the end, but if I work things out more, I won't be able to tell everything I do here since I have to stay under the 500-word count.