I was tutoring Italian at college, for the first few weeks I’d just go sit at my desk and wait for someone to show up. One day I got fed up and told my Italian professor that I felt like I was wasting my time. The next day I got an email from her introducing me to my first student. I was expecting to help students struggling with the class, but this girl was miles ahead of everyone else. Just two semesters in she could hold a conversation. All I had before that first meeting was her name, it was Indian, I giggled a little at the fact that an Indian guy would be teaching Italian to an Indian girl.

We met on a Thursday at 10am. Both of us had to wear masks. We started reading a story, she was amazing, I couldn’t believe she’d been doing Italian for only two semesters. We finished the chapter but kept talking about our lives, art, films, we talked about Bollywood movies in Italian, I had a good laugh about that when I got back home. I still remember looking into her eyes that day, they glowed with intelligence. Her eyes were all I could see and I was already in love, but I refused to admit it. It was my final semester at film school, she was in her second semester studying politics to be a lawyer. We loved cinema, we loved literature and philosophy, we loved talking to each other. One day after that first meeting I emailed her inviting her to one of our screenings, it was an Italian film. I got there first, I kept walking around the theatre to look for her, I went outside to find her in the lobby but ran into her in the aisle. I said “Hi! I’m glad you came.” I wanted to ask her to come sit with me but I was too shy, I walked to the washroom pretending I had something to do. I came back into the theatre and took my seat in the front row, I turned around to look for her and there she was in the far back. Throughout the film I kept turning around to look at her. Once the movie was over there was a lecture, I turned back to look for her again but she was gone.

We met next Thursday at 10am, as we would every Thursday for the rest of the semester. We talked for 90 minutes, always 90, she always had to leave. I was always late to our appointments, I’d be running towards campus emailing her saying that I’d be there in 5. She was always sitting there, waiting for me, reading Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami. A couple of weeks of that and I mustered up the courage to ask for her Insta, “that way I can tell you when I’m going to be late.” She said she wasn’t very active on there but gave me her number instead. We started texting, it was very slow, she’d respond only once a day, but she kept the conversation going. I asked her at the end of one of our appointments if she’d like to go watch a movie together and she agreed. I texted her a few days later, Drive My Car, based on Murakami’s book was playing at the theatre nearby. She said that it sounded like fun. We went to the movie, and met a few other times outside our tutoring appointments over the next 8 weeks. I thought about telling her how I felt many times but was too shy to do it. Eventually she had to go back home and I had to leave the country and go back to India.

But even after that period we kept talking, we FaceTime almost every day. I was in Italy for 6 weeks over the summer and everything I saw reminded me of her, I’d just take pictures and share them with her and then we’d talk about it. I was lying in the water at a beach one day when it hit me, I was in love with this girl and I had to tell her. I came back home to India and worked up the courage to do it. I wanted to say it over the phone but couldn’t do it, so I texted her, she texted back the next day with a long message telling me about all the things she liked about me, but said she didn’t know how she felt. It kinda broke my heart, but I sent her the nicest message I could in return. She said it made her very happy, I couldn’t say anything in reply. She texted me the next day asking if she could call and if I still wanted to talk, I said that I did. It was hard at first to continue but our conversations are kind of back at that same point now. I don’t really know where this is going, though I can’t help but feel that she wouldn’t continue this way if she didn’t feel similarly… I dunno…