Everything was against a backdrop of green, a green so deep and gentle it was almost blue, like an old glass bottle.

As always, I felt my fingers take on an imaginary brush, a piece of pastel, even a colored pencil, itching to sketch a landscape as pure as this was.

Vaguely I was aware of Marcello and the cabbie chatting in rapid Italian, my ear getting more attuned at picking up entire phrases now. Restaurant recommendations, which gardens to tour. I might not be able to answer back yet, but I was picking up more than I’d thought in just a short amount of time.

Driving up along a high ridge, we turned down an almost hidden driveway surrounded by wrought-iron fencing and fat palm trees. And there was the villa.

“You’re kidding,” I said, my jaw hanging open.

“Kidding?” Marcello asked, curious as he held my door open. I scrambled out of the cab, eyes wide as I gazed at the home that would be ours for the weekend.

“This just doesn’t even seem real anymore,” I muttered to myself, my senses overwhelmed at the beauty that completely surrounded me. The home was cream colored, flanked by tall cypress trees and pure magic. Marcello paid the cabbie, took my hand, and led me through an outer door made of intricately woven copper, tarnished green with an ageless patina. While I marveled at the mosaic-tiled floor, he worried the key into a lock set into a massive mahogany door, which creaked open, affording me the first peek into old-school Italian luxury.

I saw miles and miles of travertine floor, intersected with black veined marble. I saw room after room of beautiful furniture, priceless antiques mixed with modern comfort. I saw a kitchen that any chef would have given their eyeteeth to get to cook in once, just once. But what I couldn’t really take my eyes off was the water.

The house opened up onto terrace after terrace, built into the hillside and situated perfectly to highlight the main reason this region had been famous for centuries, the beautiful lake. I walked to the edge of the main terrace, just off the dining room, and headed straight for the white stone railing, warmed by the late-afternoon sun and exactly the right width for sitting. I flung both legs over the side and perched right on the edge, laughing as the wind kicked up my curls and made me 1,000 percent glad I’d decided to take Daisy up on her offer to get my ass to Rome.

“This just doesn’t seem real,” I repeated as Marcello’s footsteps across the terrace behind me reminded me that yes, this was real and yes, this really was my life and yes, I deserved this gentle happiness that was creeping into every corner of my life.

That gentle happiness was compounded only seconds later when he wrapped his arms around me from behind, rested his chin on the top of my head, and together we watched the sun begin to set.

I HEARD THAT HE AND the wife live here most of the year. Is that true?” I asked, flipping through an Italian gossip magazine that I’d made Marcello buy me when we stopped for groceries.

He laughed, pulling it from my hands and tossing it onto the counter. “I don’t know. I don’t care.”

“Sure you do, she’s hot. He’s hot. They’re stiflingly hot together. They could be here right now. Maybe next door. We can borrow sugar from them,” I teased, stepping over to the wide kitchen window to peer outside.

The house was literally on the lake. Or LAKE, as I was calling it in my head. Everything about Lake Como was amplified. Italy by default was gorgeous, but Lake Como was Italy 5.0 and that wasn’t just because we may or may not run into (become best friends with) George Clooney.

It was something magical. Something out of a fairy tale with stone villas blanketed in flowers and the shimmering water surrounding you. The crisp air ignited every sense in my body and commanded attention.

I was lost in my daydream about potential Hollywood neighbors when Marcello came up behind me at the counter. His arms reached around mine to turn on the faucet. With his lips on my neck, he washed his hands before drying them on a tea towel on the side.

It was such a domestic thing to do. Cuddled up against each other to do something mundane, but there was nothing simple about it. It felt like more. More comfort, more openness. More like a couple.

But I was still legally a part of a couple with Daniel and the comfort melted away, allowing sadness to creep in.

“What happened just then? Your warmth, it faded,” Marcello said, rubbing his hands along my arms.

I turned and rested my head to his chest. I’d wondered when this topic would come up. Frankly, I was surprised I’d avoided it as long as I did. But as patient as Marcello had been while I got my mental Daniel ducks in order, the conversation was beyond overdue.

“Take me out to dinner tonight, okay?” I asked, reaching up on my tiptoes to kiss his chin. My lips moved down, chin to Adam’s apple, to the little hollow at the base of his throat that made him shiver.

“Then I will ravage you under the stars with the lake air as our blanket.”

Now see, an Italian can get away with saying something like that . . .

* * *

THERE WASN’T EVER GOING TO be a right time for this conversation, but it was time to bring it all out in the open.

And it was here, at a lovely lakeside restaurant, that I finally felt ready to share my life, such as it had been, with him. Sitting across from me, his eyes liquid chocolate in the warm glow from the candlelight, I realized that this could have been my life. Had I made other choices. Had I listened to my heart and not my head. Had I—

“You have murdered your breadstick.”

“Hmm?” I asked, snapped out of my reverie by Marcello’s voice. He gestured to the pile of crumbs that had once been a crispy breadstick before my nervous hands got ahold of it and reduced it to so many crackery crumbs. “Oh, whoops.”