Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Alberto was the first one to realize his crush. But, come on, it's the 90's and being gay isn't exactly something the sea monsters accept. Just like humans.

The thing is, he might have realized it right after Luca left for Genova to study. Or, well, a little bit later. Like, a year or two later. But hey, he might have, right? It's just that he hasn't.

In any case, his first year was as good as it could have been. He didn't have the slightest wish to go to school, especially after finding out that he'd have to go there every day and sit there for several hours. He was good at what he was doing — being free. So staying with Massimo was the best choice for him...

Until it wasn't. He woke up the next day and was uncomfortably surprised to see Luca is not by his side. The whole following day, he was grumpy and sullen yet couldn't quite figure out why. It took some time to come to terms with Luca's absence, but eventually, he stopped turning around — Luca, look at this!.. — only to be reminded that his best friend is not there.

He went fishing with Massimo, tried making friends among other kids, learned how to properly cook and get on well with Machiavelli. The father figure he used to long for turned out to be a fantastic experience, if you don't mind all the "Alberto, no," "Alberto, don't go there," "Alberto, don't put that in your mouth," and "Alberto, put that knife back" -s. After all, Massimo was perfectly capable of physically stopping him and, what's more important, explaining the reason behind all the "don't"s.

So after all, it was nice.

But he couldn't help but feel incomplete. Something was nudging at the bottom of his chest, like a part of him was missing. He tried not minding and actually did quite well on that.

Until one day a letter from Luca came. Several letters, in fact. Letters from Giulia — one for her father and another one for Alberto; they were siblings now, after all. And letters from Luca — for Massimo, for his parents, and for Alberto.

And Alberto had trouble reading.

Well, he knew the basics. But it was difficult for him to read words quickly, and most importantly, he knew he was terrible at writing.

So he didn't open his letter right away. He read the letters with Massimo, looked at the pictures attached, and laughed at his friends' antics. Then he went to bring the letter to the Paguro family. The paper, of course, didn't last underwater for long (as Massimo told him beforehand knowingly), so he left the letter on the beach and then swam to Luca's home and back, this time with his parents and grandmother. They sat there on the warm pebble, enjoying the soft breeze and quiet sound of the waves coming and going, and read the letter. It was a bit different from what Luca wrote to Massimo. He described the school in more detail, as well as the city of Genova and the ways of life there. He even said hi to his Uncle Ugo.

He stored his own letter in his room while Massimo taught him to read and write quickly and correctly. And when he was done with the alphabet (Like two days later) and found out he could read signs and some notice papers just by looking at them (maybe like two more weeks later), he finally opened his letter.

"Alberto,

What's wrong with you, stupido?

Just kidding. You know it's not a proper greeting, right? I hope you do; otherwise, it makes me friends with an idiot. It's incredible here in Genova! I guess you've already read my letters to my parents and Massimo, so I won't repeat that. If you haven't, for some reason, I give you my permission to read them.

The school is really cool, just like I was writing, but it's also tiring. Giulia made homework look so easy! But it's actually really hard. I also am very behind other kids. I know basic maths (it's a subject in which you learn to count) and I can write and read, but I know very little about humans' history, or geography (I only know Portorosso is in Italy... They have to study all the countries in the world! There are tons of them!), and they study all kinds of stuff we don't even know exist underwater! Like, they know all about the land animals, but they actually never studied a sea monster's anatomy and were very interested in me. It's gotten a bit creepy, though — I'm pretty sure our biology teacher wants to cut me up and look at my organs...

The kids are also great here! But... I didn't say that in my other letters—"

Alberto felt his heart jump at this. Luca's sharing the things with him and only him!

"...Not all of the kids are nice to me. I suppose they don't have that many sea folk in Genova, so some kids are scared of me  and some are calling me a freak and keep shooting water at me with water guns. Oh, one day, they set up a trap in a boy's restroom — they put a bucket of water above the door. I still wonder how they did it, but it was annoying and... ."

He felt his teeth grind. If only he was there with him, he'd show those assholes...

"But most of them are okay! So don't worry, okay? Giulia is always there for me! She scares the bad kids off, and she shows me all the things I should know! And we study the stars! Did you know the Sun is also a star? It's gigantic, and it's on fire! Like, all the time! And it's very hot, but we're very far away, so we're out of harm's way. But if you fly close to it, you'll burn! I thought you'd find it awesome."

He was right. A Sun — a gigantic burning star? Sounds dope as hell!

"Oh, and it's really better not to look at it for long. Your joke was actually true, haha.

I'll write more when I have time, but now I gotta do homework... I have extra because I'm behind everyone" — Luca drew a crying face there.

"Please write me back! I miss you.

Caro Luca"

By the time he finished reading, he had found himself being on his bed with his legs up against the wall.

****

Massimo taught him to properly fish since Alberto had never done it in its conventional meaning. He still needed to go hang out with the fish sometimes, however, to make sure they're following the same routes and don't find another "cursed fish cemetery" or something. So that day, he was coming back home from his weekly swim-around-the-bay-and-a-little-bit-more raid. He got out of the water and sat on a massive boulder to rest and watch the sunset.

"I don't think he likes me," he heard a girl's voice saying.

"But his friends say he's smitten!" another girl's voice said.

Alberto was too tired and too lazy to look around. In fact, he didn't even move. But the girls didn't seem to notice him, neither did they plan on leaving the beach.

"He won't make a move," the first girl complained. "And you keep saying he wears weird clothes!"

The second girl laughed.

"Because he does! I can't believe you can fall for such a dingus."

The first girl huffed.

"I don't care what he wears. It's not his clothes I like; it's his personality..."

"And his eyes," the second girl added.

"And his eyes," the first agreed readily.

"And his abs," tried the second.

"...well, it's a nice bonus."

They laughed.

"Look, his friends know him better. If they say he likes you, they're probably right."

"I guess. It's still scary!"

"You can ask him out as friends first and wait for him to make a move?"

The first girl seemed to consider this for some time.

"What if I ask him to help me with basketball? Pretend I'm interested in getting on the team."

"...I don't think pretending is a good option. But again, you could discover a new passion in the process..."

"Basketball  is  fun, don't get me wrong. I just don't want to play it professionally."

"Then, technically, you're not lying," the second girl concluded.

"It's settled, then."

Silence fell once more. The sun was about to touch the horizon and left a beautiful reflection tail on the water. Alberto remembered what Luca said about the sun being constantly on fire. Usually, it looked more like a lamp, but it was easy to believe it really was burning during sunsets. Just a few more minutes and the sun would turn the sea red, and it would look like a wildfire.

He wondered if Luca could look at the sunsets like this in Genova.

"Hey," he suddenly heard the first girl very close.

He turned to see, and sure enough — the girl was standing next to him, smiling.

"Hey," he replied.

"Can I sit here?" the girl asked.

He stared at her blankly, then moved.

"Sure, sure."

"Thanks."

She climbed onto the rock and sat next to him.

And they sat there in silence, watching the sunset.

"I'm Sofia," the girl spoke after a while. "You must be Alberto?"

"Yeah..." he replied absent-mindedly. "Wait, what? How do you know my name?"

The girl, Sofia, chuckled.

"Ever since you guys won the Portorosso cup, everyone kind of knows you."

"Oh."

Silence fell again. This time, not for long.

"What are you doing here?" Sofia asked, not looking at him.

"Watching the sunset," Alberto replied, also not looking at her. "And you?"

He asked mainly to be polite, but some part of him was, indeed, interested in the conversation.

"Same. But I came here to talk to my friend."

"Where is she?" Alberto just remembered about the second voice and looked around searchingly.

"Went home," the girl drew her knees to her chest. "So I saw you and thought you might be lonely. Like me."

Alberto felt weird warmth in his chest at these words.

"But you don't seem lonely?" he asked, confused. "You were with your friend. And I couldn't help but overhear your conversation, and it seems like you have some other friends, too?"

He looked at Sofia from the corner of his eye and saw her smile sadly.

"I still feel like I'm out here all alone. My friend is helpful and supportive, but she doesn't understand."

"What doesn't she understand?" Alberto was still confused.

Sofia sighed.

"I like this boy," she started. "He's sweet and charming, but he's not the popular one. So my friend makes jokes all the time and calls him "dingus" and other things... And I feel embarrassed and sad, but she doesn't notice."

Sofia looked down, saying that, and Alberto felt bad for her. Even though it was weird. Like he was overhearing the secrets he wasn't supposed to hear.

"Did you tell her how you feel?" he asked.

Sofia chuckled sadly.

"What part of "embarrassed" don't you get? I don't think I can tell her outright; I can only hint. But she's dense," she sighed.

"If you don't tell her, she won't understand, will she?" Alberto wondered. "You're hurting for nothing."

Sofia looked him in the eye very seriously.

"You're right," she said. "But it's harder than you make it be. Do you tell your friends everything about how you feel all the time?"

Alberto suddenly remembered being jealous of Giulia and scared Luca won't need him.

"...No," he finally said.

"See," Sofia turned back to the sea. The sun was already halfway down, and the water was red, just like Alberto'd expected.

They stayed quiet for some time. Then Alberto remembered something.

"What about the boy?"

"What about him?" Sofia didn't understand.

He thought about what exactly he wanted to know.

"How do you know you like him?" he finally asked.

Sofia looked puzzled.

"...I guess, I just do?" she said, after thinking for a bit. "When I look at him, I feel my heart beating faster, and when he looks at me, my heart leaps happily and anxiously. I act stupid around him because I get flustered and overthink everything. I sometimes don't know what to say because I want us to be more than friends, but I'm afraid he doesn't feel the same way. I think of him when I don't see him, and I miss him when he's not there. I guess this is how I know I like him."

Alberto thought about it. Wasn't it what friendship felt like? She was just describing friendship, wasn't she?

"How is it different from being friends? Except for "wanting to be more" part."

Sofia raised an eyebrow at him.

"Well, for starters, when I act stupid with my friends, I don't get flustered. And I'm definitely happy when I see my friends, but it's more of calm happiness. No heart leaps or anything. And you can be stupid together, and you do stupid things and share almost everything with each other."

She thought for a while. Alberto thought that what she described was accurate.

"But maybe you're right. It's better when you like someone you can be friends with; otherwise, it's just fangirling."

"Reasonable," Alberto agreed.

They watched the sunset until the sky turned completely dark, and then Sofia stood up.

"Let's go home," she suggested as if she lived next to Alberto.

She didn't. They had to part ways five minutes later.

He was walking home thinking about what she said. About friendship, and about liking someone. He wondered if he could ever learn the difference.

While it was warm, Alberto was sleeping outside on the wooden platform, which could hardly be called a treehouse. Now, however, it was getting cold, and he couldn't sleep in such weather, even in a winter sleeping bag. So he had to move inside, to the room now his. It was a good thing Massimo had a spare room. They just had to clean it up a bit — it was filled with fishing nets, old paddles, a broken engine for a boat, some instruments, and wooden boards and bred, apparently left from building the "treehouse." There was also a corkboard which they left in the room, a lifebuoy, and an old anchor which Alberto found cool and "creating an atmosphere."

It took some time to get it all out and clean the room, which had been used more of as a garage without a car before. It had a bed, however, and a desk, and even a small wardrobe. Alberto didn't tell Massimo where he used to live because at first he wasn't sure he had to, and later he decided it could be a fun little hideout for him. It was perfectly safe, right?

He had a quick swim to the island and back with Massimo's boat and took some things to his new house. What little clothes he had, a poster of Vespa lying on the floor since summer, some of his drawings, and a gramophone. He left the instruments and everything else on the island, thinking it would feel great to visit again and have fun with Luca when the boy comes back.

So he now had his room. It was also on the second floor, next to Giulia's room, but it had windows facing the road instead of their backyard. It was okay, although he sometimes imagined sleeping outside and needing to get back inside and having to go through the whole house. It would be genuinely inconvenient, but he had no way of fixing that.

The Christmas season came with snow. Alberto hated winters. Usually, when winter came, his dad told him to stay underwater, where he didn't need any winter clothes or a warm place to stay. So he did — under the island, there was a nice cave to live in when it was too cold. As soon as the weather was above 10°C, he was out again, though. His father might have been a dickhead, but he was the only relative he had, and Alberto wanted to be close to him whenever he could. However, as he grew older, he realized more and more how bad his father actually was at parenting and was less and less eager to spend time with him.

This year was different. Massimo bought him a nice warm jacket, boots, and pants and didn't send him away to the sea. He even gave him mittens and earmuffs for the snowy weather. It was amazing to make a very muddy snowman with other kids on New Year's eve and to watch the soft snowflakes in the air from his window.

It turned out, people give gifts on Christmas. After the small family feast, Massimo stood up from the table and went out. When he came back, he had a package in his hands. It was a cap, just like his. Alberto was confused as to why he'd done it, especially when he already gave him all these clothes, and Massimo had to explain the tradition, surprised at the boy's ignorance. Alberto felt awkward not giving a present back, so he swam to the island, looking for something he could give back. He found a watch with two small clock faces inside a big one. He had no idea why'd people need three clock faces in one, but it looked cool.

On New Year's eve, he gave Massimo the watch ("Where'd you got these?.." — "Professional secret"), and he gave Machiavelli a new toy: a plastic candy wrapping on a thread. The cat was lazy at times but played happily with Alberto and his new toy for like, 15 minutes. Then he got back to watching everyone lazily from the top shelf.

He met Sofia quite a few times since their talk. The girl got to ask her crush out, and they were now regularly spending time together, but she still came to the beach sometimes to find Alberto on the spot, which became "theirs." They would talk for an hour about how life is hard and about the future and about the past. Then the sun would go, and the moon would rise, and they would go home.

They met during the Christmas season, too, and Sofia gave him a gift for Epifania. It was a calendar with different fish. "So that you don't miss home," she explained, knowing perfectly well his home was like ten minutes from there.

He gave her a sketchbook — a little worn out but with a pretty leather cover and a lock. He didn't know if Sofia liked to draw but figured she'd find the use for the sketchbook anyway.

He sent Luca the only book he had on the island — some kind of a mystery story with a lighthouse drawn on the cover. Luca sent him a book about some boy's adventures and travels.

He sent Giulia the binoculars, and she sent him a small bag that you can hang over one shoulder and which was perfect for keeping the fishing essentials in.

Luca and Giulia called them on Epifania to share blessings and news. The Christmas season was just as festive in Genova as it was in Portorosso, but it was nice to hear about it from them anyway.

Alberto called for Luca's family to come talk over the phone, and they sat all together, trying to be quiet to actually hear what their loved ones had to say.

Come to say, Alberto didn't hate winter anymore.

****

He was passing by the fountain when he heard a saw and a hammer making noise like something was being built. Curious, he turned to the noise and walked right into Sofia.

"Alberto! What are you doing here?"

"I was wandering around and heard the noise," Alberto shrugs. "Did you come to look what it is too?"

"No," Sofia laughed. "I think it's our noise."

Alberto looked at her strangely.

"Can humans make saw noises?.. " he asked warily. Sofia snorted.

"My parents are going to open a restaurant. They're renovating the insides now," she grinned. "Wanna look at the plan?"

"Sure," he said, intrigued.

They went to the future-to-be restaurant, and Alberto saw what she meant: the room full of buckets of paint, wooden crates, some instruments, and tons of building waste. A man in shaggy clothes covered in lime and dust was standing on an aluminum stepladder and scrubbing the ceiling, and a woman was standing next to him in an apron also covered in lime and dust and old paint. She was holding the ladder and looking up to tell the man when he wasn't doing his job properly.

"Mamma!" Sofia called. "Meet Alberto!"

The woman turned and smiled widely.

"Buongiorno!" she dusted off her apron and came closer. "Sofia told us about making friends with you. It's nice to talk to you in person. I'm Mrs. Bianchi."

She extended her hand. Alberto blushed and shook it, smiling shyly with his teeth.

"Alberto Scorfano. Piacere di conoscerla."

It was a good thing he'd learned proper greetings. Wouldn't want to get into an awkward situation like the first time he came to Portorosso, would he?

"Mamma, I wanted to show Alberto the plan for our new restaurant! Can we look at it?" Sofia tugged onto the woman's apron.

Mrs. Bianchi looked around searchingly.

"Sure, just let me find it..." she turned to her husband, who was still on the stepladder. "Mio amato, where is our blueprint?"

Mr. Bianchi didn't even look down, just yelled:

"In the other room, mia amata!"

So she went into a side room and came back a minute later with some papers in her hands.

"Let's go outside to breathe some fresh air," she said, walking with them to the door.

There was an old wooden table outside with two equally old wooden benches to the sides of it. That's where they sat.

"Need to renovate and paint them later..." Mrs. Bianchi mumbled as she put the papers down on the table.

Alberto looked at them curiously. It had several squares drawn and some other geometrical shapes, and some text in a tiny, hardly legible font.

"This is where the counter will be!" Sofia pointed at one of the smaller rectangles inside a big square. "And these are the tables!"

Mrs. Bianchi leaned back, closed her eyes, and breathed in the fresh air. Sofia kept babbling about the plans, but Alberto lost interest in squares and rectangles pretty quickly. He'd look at the restaurant when it's done, he decided. He let Sofia enjoy herself, however. She had a pretty voice, and it was pleasing to hear her going on and on about the interior and exterior designs of the future "dream," as she called it, making Mrs. Bianchi snort.

The sun was already down, and the sky was dark on one side and turned first to turquoise and then to pinkish-orange on the other. The mosquitoes and flies showed up to annoy the living hell out of everyone who decided to come out this beautiful spring evening. Alberto didn't mind waving his hands from time to time to shove the insects away, but their buzzing was kind of disturbing. And it was getting rather chilly. He shivered.

Soon enough, Mrs. Bianchi opened her eyes, stretched her arms, and said,

"It's getting late. I would invite you for the tea, Alberto, but we still have to finish some things with the renovation before going home..." she apologized. Thought a little bit, looking at both of them. "You  could  wait here, though. When we're done, you could come over for dinner? What do you say?"

Alberto almost jumped in his seat. Finally, some entertainment! Today was kind of dull. Nothing happened since morning, and coming to a new place was definitely exciting.

"Sure! I'd love to!"

Mrs. Bianchi beamed.

"Great."

Sofia jumped up and looked at Alberto. He could swear her eyes were star-shaped.

"Oh, 'Berto! That's amazing! I'll show you my room and everything!"

He smiled back at her. She took his hands and shook them excitedly. Her mom stood up and headed back inside but stopped halfway.

"Would Massimo let you?" she asked worriedly.

Alberto thought about it for a moment. Going home and asking for permission sounded more like  just going home . It was safer to just go and hope Massimo doesn't notice how late it is. And deal with it later, if he does anyway.

"Of course!" he grinned and waved his hand in a "no biggie" gesture.

Mrs. Bianchi breathed out, relieved, and walked inside. Sofia sat back down and leaned onto the table, resting her chin on her folded arms. Alberto did the same.

"Since when do you call me "'Berto"?" he asked, articulating lazily. It felt funny, having to open his mouth kind of upwards instead of lowering the jaw.

"Since I'm excited, and you're my friend," Sofia said equally lazily.

They sat there in silence (only broken by the mosquitoes) for a while. Then Sofia looked at the papers left on the table. There was also a pen lying next to them (previously attached to the papers, and Sofia used it to show the different parts of the blueprint). She sat up.

"Wanna play a game?"

Alberto turned his head so that he could look at her and have his cheek on his arm.

"What game?"

"I will draw a picture on your back, and you will have to repeat what I draw on another paper. Mom and dad certainly have other copies of the plan, and we will only draw on the backs..."

He also straightened. They had nothing better to do anyway.

"Yeah, okay."

Sofia smiled widely and took a paper and a pen. Stood up and put a paper on Alberto's back.

"...But we only have one pen," she mumbled, puzzled.

"You can give me yours when you're done?" Alberto suggested.

"You're a genius."

She started drawing. It felt like... a circle? And then some waves on the sides... And two lines in the middle and down? Oh, it's going upwards now, and there is an arrow somewhere to the right... What is it? And there go several horizontal lines... Two smaller circles, a wave below the circle and above it... Oh! Maybe, an axolotl? Alberto had never seen one, but his dad told him about this creature and showed him pictures.

When Sofia was done, he repeated what he felt: it  did  look like an axolotl. Except, he didn't understand the arrow part. Was the axolotl holding a harpoon? And why was Sofia giggling?

"Okay, now show me your axolotl!" he demanded.

"What's an... akso...lemon?.." Sofia asked, confused.

"Axolotl. An amphibian from Mexico," he looked at her condescendingly. "Like a pretty fish, like this!"

He showed her his drawing. If Sofia knew what axolotls were, she'd recognize it. The resemblance was truly uncanny.

"Okay..." she said, however, clearly not believing a word he says. Then she gave him her drawing. "But I didn't draw an... asco... low... til."

The drawing was of a sea monster. Clearly, it was Alberto: the wave on top of the circle was his hair, the arrow — his tail. And he got all the proportions wrong! Why? How? Is it really that hard to draw what you feel? It couldn't be.

"Let me try now!" he said. "I bet you can't repeat what I draw."

Sofia laughed.

"That's literally the purpose of the game."

She didn't elaborate on it. Was the purpose in confusing your opponent? Or in helping them draw the picture as accurately as possible? Oh, human games were confusing.

They played until it was dark, and Sofia's parents came out and took them both to a house nearby where the Bianchi family lived. They ate pasta and some vegetables, Sofia showed Alberto her room, and they talked about everything. Not for long, though: soon Sofia's parents called for him to go home. Mr. Bianchi walked him home, and they met Massimo on their way — very worried and very angry with Alberto. He didn't show it in front of Mr. Bianchi, but Alberto  was  told off at home. Since then, he knew better than visiting friends late in the evening without notifying his new father first. For now, he had to clean the house for the whole of the following week. And Machiavelli looked so smug about it! It seemed that this cat still hated him sometimes. Well, just wait to see when Alberto doesn't give him belly rubs. Who will be smug then?

And still, it was nice. It was nice to have a friend in Portorosso when his two best friends were away in Genova. As he drifted off to sleep, he felt warmth spreading in his chest.

****

He'd marked May in the calendar "days until I see Luca." And today is the day.

Luca is a bit taller and looks more tired but happy. Luca bubbles about school and Genova, Giulia's mom's dog, his schoolmates, and bookstores.

They walk home from the station, have dinner all together: the three kids, Luca's family, Massimo, and Machiavelli. Giulia's been missing her cat so much Alberto is worried she'd squish him to death. They eat pasta and talk till very late in the evening.

Luca's staying at home for the summer but promises to visit often and stay overnight sometimes. Alberto doesn't want him to go away again but knows it'd be rude to go underwater with him or ask him to stay.

He can't sleep. He tries to, but his bed is not comfortable enough; there is little air in the room, and overall he just  can't fall asleep .

He thinks about how happy Luca looks. How his eyes light up when he talks about all the new stuff he learned and all the new friends he made. Alberto feels happy for him, but something in his stomach sinks uncomfortably.

Suddenly, he hears a knock on his door, and Giulia comes in.

"Alberto?" she whispers, unsure. "Are you sleeping?"

"No," he whispers back and sits up on his bed. "What's up?"

Giulia sighs, relieved, and comes to sit next to him.

"I can't sleep," she explains. "Too excited."

Alberto hums understandingly.

"I can't sleep too. Too hot."

Giulia sighs.

"I'm happy to be back. But I'm a bit worried."

Alberto raises an eyebrow but doesn't say anything. Giulia waits a bit and then suddenly says,

"We're like, siblings now, right?"

Alberto didn't think about it often, but it was true. Weird.

"I guess so. Why?"

Giulia looks at him.

"Siblings are supposed to share everything with each other."

"So are friends, Giulia. What's wrong?" Alberto isn't sure if he wants to know.

Giulia looks away shyly.

"It's Luca," she admits. "It's nice and everything, we're friends, and I care for him, of course... But it's too much sometimes. In Genova, everything was new for him, and it was dangerous to let him go to places alone. Genova isn't exactly a... sea monsters-friendly town yet. You know what I mean?"

He nods. He can imagine.

"So I had to be everywhere with him. In school, on the streets, downtown... Well, he could go places familiar by spring... But before that, I had to be with him  all the time . It's like  he's  my step-brother, not you. Giulia, go help Luca with his homework, Giulia, walk with Luca to the store, Giulia, show Luca our park... It was cute for a while. Him being the "baby" and me teaching him stuff, but... It gets old pretty quickly, you know?"

Alberto feels confused. Why would it get old? He spent the year missing Luca and Giulia (mostly Luca). If he had a chance to spend every day with him, he'd never get tired of it. They'd go swimming or riding a bike or a Vespa, he'd even look at his stars and books and everything... No, they'd never get tired of each other.

So he shakes his head.

Giulia sighs.

"I was afraid you wouldn't understand. But it's okay. I wanted to ask you..." she looks at her hands awkwardly. "If you could spend some time together... Just the two of you, when I want some time to myself, it'd be great."

She looks back at him with a question in her eyes.

He thinks about it. Spending time together, Luca and him? Sounds nice. Like old times.

"Sure, no problemo."

"Ah, thank you, Alberto!" Giulia smiles. "I really needed to get that off my chest."

It really was no big deal. It's somewhat confusing how Giulia wants to be alone. He was almost alone for a whole year and some more — didn't like the experience, wouldn't recommend. But it's nice if him being with Luca without her helps.

So he smirks smugly and nods.

"That's what brothers are for, right?"

"And friends," Giulia adds.

"And friends," he agrees.

****

The following day Alberto wakes up earlier than usual.  Funny , he thinks,  now I slept less because of falling asleep late and because of waking early . He smiles to himself.  I wonder where Luca is...

He gets down to find out he's the only one awake. Even Machiavelli is out of sight — probably sleeps in Giulia's legs.

He makes a caffè latte and goes outside to drink it. Kids are supposed to drink caffè d'orzo, but Alberto is not a kid anymore, so he can drink adult drinks. He enjoys feeling like an adult in these small things.

The morning is lovely. The summer has just begun, and it's not sweltering hot, and Alberto enjoys a nice breeze and sunshine on his face.

Where is Luca? Is he awake? What are his plans for today? His parents would probably want him to stay home. Or maybe help them out with something. Perhaps he'd go out with a fish herd? He used to be their shepherd before he left for Genova, after all.

He walks out and closes the gate behind him. Goes to the seashore and walks into the water. Enjoys the sunlight on his face for a minute and then dives in.

It's not hard to make Mrs. and Mr. Paguro let Luca go, but he did have to do some chores first. Alberto helps him collect some seaweed for grandma Paguro and bring some stuff to their neighbors, and after that, they're as free as the ocean.

They sit on a concrete groyne and eat gelato, talking about everything in the world they can think of.

"Let me teach you something I learned at school," Luca says smugly.

Alberto eyes him doubtedly.

"Don't they just teach you numbers and stuff?" he asks as he bites into his gelato.

"Ew, 'Berto, you really should take care of your teeth with those," Luca shivers. Alberto doesn't care.

"My teeth don't work like human teeth, you know," he assures him, "I'm a fish."

Luca rolls his eyes.

"You're in just more danger, then," he counters. "Stop shoving that thing in your mouth!"

He tries to take the gelato from Alberto's hand, but he bites half of it at once and immediately regrets it. His face must have been a clear enough indication of that because Luca bursts out laughing and almost falls into the water.

He shakes and opens his mouth, trying to melt the ice cream more quickly. They sit in silence for a while, Alberto adjusting to his frozen mouth and Luca giggling and slowly eating his ice cream. Then he remembers.

"Sho wha' jid you wan'ed 'o show me?" he asks, moving his mouth as little as possible.

Luca laughs still more.

"It's called a tin phone," he finally manages to say. It's like a telephone we could make ourselves.

Alberto is skeptical. He'd never heard of such a thing. If they teach this at school, why hadn't Sofia shared such a gem with him?

"...It works a bit worse than a real one, of course," Luca continues. "But it's a fun experiment. We could do it if you want."

Alberto feels a tad bit of interest sparkling. A phone that they make themselves? Awesome much?

"So how do we do it?" he asks, once his mouth is recovered from the horrors of half a gelato in one bite.

"We'd need two paper cups and a thread," Luca instructs. "And some tape. Any idea where to get them?"

Alberto contemplates it for a bit.

"We could borrow some cups at Mrs. Bianchi's restaurant," he says hesitantly. "And I'm sure Giulia must have some kind of a sewing kit. I saw her patching her jeans the other day, but she also might have borrowed the needle. As for tape, I have some."

Luca beams.

"Great! Let's go, then."

He stands up and offers Alberto a hand. His heart leaps happily; he takes Luca's hand and gets up too.

Giulia didn't have a sewing kit, but Massimo did. Mrs. Bianchi did not mind in the slightest, and so with all the items acquired, they sit down outside the restaurant and start crafting. It is a simple construction, really. Luca suggests a short thread for starters, but Alberto decides to go full-psycho and make it at least so long that they can communicate if he has a cup up in his room and sways the other one out to the street. Luca hesitantly agrees to try but warns him that it will be more challenging to make it work.

"Okay, now say something into it!" Luca says rather loudly as they're standing several meters from each other. "But don't yell!"

Alberto thinks about what to say.

"Ercole is a douche," he finally speaks into the cup. Luca, who was listening to his cup, laughs into his hand.

"Come again," he says into the cup. "I didn't hear you the first time."

Alberto is game, despite knowing he heard it well enough.

"I said Ercole is a douche!!!" he practically yells into his cup.

"Hey!" an offended voice comes from behind him.

Luca is almost rolling on the ground, laughing. Alberto turns and sees Ercole, looking rather scandalized. He can't hold back a chortle.

"Sorry," he says without a trace of an apology in his voice.

"Come again, and I'll make you meet my fist," Ercole scowls but rides his bike past them. He must be in a hurry. In any other situation, they'd really get into a fight for this. Not like it happened before. Not at all.

When he's out of sight, they laugh so hard their stomachs hurt.

****

The sun is so annoying sometimes. It gets into Alberto's room without his permission when he's still asleep, it sheds its light onto his closed eyes, and it wakes him up to a stuffy room. He winces and rolls over closer to a cold wall, trying to hide from the inevitability of what promises to be an immensely scorching day. He can't stand even two minutes of it, sits up, and rubs his eyes. It's time to get up.

He shoves the curtains aside and opens the window, letting a little bit of fresh air to break in. He breathes in. As usual, it smells of sea and summer.

He gets dressed and walks downstairs. Massimo is up already and preparing breakfast.

"Morning," he greets the man sleepily. He hums in response.

"Morning, figlio."

Machiavelli jumps down from the table and hurries closer to Alberto to get patted on the head. Alberto sits on the floor, pats the cat gently, and takes him onto his lap.

"You need help with breakfast?" — he asks Massimo's back.

"It's almost ready," the man replies. "You can make coffee."

So Alberto does.

Soon, Giulia comes down and joins Alberto at the table with her cup of latte.

Today will be busy: Massimo'd asked the kids to help him with fishing while he does some work in the future garage. Recently he was working very hard to earn some money, and Alberto's guess is he wants to get a car. He doesn't know how much a car costs, but he figures it'd be awesome to have one.

He and Giulia go to the shore and sail the boat out. When they're out far enough and Giulia starts preparing the net, Alberto has an idea:

"Giul," he calls.

"Mm?" she replies, not looking up at him.

"Let's call Luca."

She sets the net down and turns to him. Raises her eyebrows and twists her mouth in a comic "let me think" expression.

"...If you want him here, of course," he starts. "It's been a week since the three of us hung out together, so I thought..."

"Alright," she smiles. "You're right. I already kind of miss Luca. He's like our little brother, isn't he?"

She laughs amiably.

Alberto beams and jumps into the water. Then remembers that he needs to say more and swims back up to the boat.

"Wait for us here, okay?" he makes sure. Giulia, who already sat comfortably and even closed her eyes to the warmth of the sun, doesn't even look at him. Just waves her hand and mumbles something along the lines of "yeah, yeah, just go already."

So he swims down to Luca's home.

The Paguro family must be late fish because they appear to be just finishing their breakfast when he reaches their cave.

"Alberto!" Luca jumps up from the table and swims to hug him. Alberto hugs him back, and his heart flatters.

Mrs. Paguro takes Luca's plate up from the table.

"Alberto, tesoro, good morning!" she says. "Did you want to ask Luca out?"

Alberto blushes and doesn't know what to say for a moment before he realizes she really means if he was here to ask if Luca could come hang out. He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly.

"Si, Mrs. Paguro. Can Luca come help us with fishing?" he manages to say.

The woman chuckles and nods. Suddenly, Mr. Paguro stands up from the table.

"Hey, why'd you just let him go without asking me, too?" he asks his wife somewhat sulkily. "Maybe Luca and I had plans for today."

Luca sighs deeply, rolls his eyes, and starts pushing Alberto to the door. Mrs. Paguro looks at her husband skeptically.

" Did  you have plans for Luca today?" she asks tiredly.

"No," Mr. Paguro says. "But I  might ."

Grandma Paguro swims to the boys and also pushes them out.

"Go, ometti," she smiles kindly at them before swimming back inside.

Luca immediately swims up. Alberto looks at his silhouette in the underwater sunlight, back at his home, and follows.

Giulia seems to be fallen asleep in the boat — they can see her from several meters away.

"Hey Luca," Alberto turns to his friend, a mischievous grin playing on his face.

Luca looks at him suspiciously.

"Alberto?.."

"Let's scare my dear sorella," he whispers, giggling.

Luca raises an eyebrow.

"You do you, but I'll happily watch," he says.

"Oh, Luca, you're no fun. Come on, you'll touch her shoulder, and then I'll jump at her from behind. She's gonna piss her pans, I'm telling you!"

Luca seems to contemplate his proposal.

"I doubt she'd do that," he shakes his head, doubt clear in his eyes. "So I'll do that just to prove you're wrong."

Alberto looks at his friend's smug face and bites his lower lip.

"I'll show you," he says. "Let's go."

They swim up to the boat but stay underwater: Luca on the right and Alberto on the left.

"Okay," Alberto says, "ready?"

Luca just smirks and swims up.

"M-mh," Giulia's sleepy voice says from above.

Alberto jumps out and screams as scarily as he can:

"A-a-a-a-a-a!!!"

"A-a-a-a!!!" Giulia shrieks back at him, and he feels a punch going right in his nose.

"Ouch!!" he winces. The light flickers in his eyes. He feels as if his nose was demolished, and in its stead, there is a pool of pain on his face. He tries to keep afloat. He hears Giulia gasp and Luca laughing closer and closer. He blinks, disoriented, and feels Luca's wet hands cup his face. Apparently, the boy realizes it's not very convenient and moves one hand to Alberto's waist instead to help him stay above the surface.

His nose hurt but his heart flutters.

"Jesus, Giulia, you're the best," he hears Luca saying in between laughter.

"I'm gonna murder you, Marcovaldo," he says in a hoarse voice.

"I'm sorry-y," Giulia apologizes, giggling. "But you shouldn't have swum up to me like a maniac!"

Luca bursts out laughing even harder.

"Now he also looks like one," he wheezes but doesn't let go of Alberto's face.

Alberto doesn't know if his cheeks feel hot because of pain, the sun violently murdering everything today, or...

He wavers his hands and blinks some more. His vision is restored to normal; he looks at Luca laughing right before his eyes and feels his heart skip a beat.

He quickly swims from him, shaking his head and managing to construct an angry facial expression. He looks at his sister, still giggling in the boat, and splatters water to her side. She squeaks, surprised.

"Oh, you just wait, Scorfano!" she splashes water back at him, and he laughs at her weak attempts to attack him.

"That's for my nose!" he yells and waves his open and rigid hand to create a massive wave that splashed all over the boat.

Giulia screeches again, and all three of them laugh. Luca splashes water at Alberto, yelling, "and this is for Giulia, you jerk!"; and Alberto dives down, leaving a bloody trace underwater — so it's no surprise when he swims up and splashes Luca from the back.

They end up playing together almost more than actually fishing. And even while busy, there is very little silence as they're constantly chatting and babbling and joking over Alberto's damaged nose. When they come home with a cart full of fish, Massimo is horrified.

"Did no one of you three idiotis think that Alberto needs help?!" he yells at them. They just look at their feet, embarrassed. Alberto feels embarrassed, too, but he can't quite figure out why: he was the victim, after all.

Massimo treats his nose, still going on about their irresponsibility, but thanks for the fish. After that, they go with the cart to get the fish to everyone in town who needs it. The sun is at its peak; it's so hot it's hard to breathe. Alberto feels his hair sticking uncomfortably to his forehead. How Luca manages to actually ride the bike with a cart attached, he'd never understand. He must have a superpower or something.

They go all around Portorosso and come back home only an hour or two later. Since neither of them bothered to look at the clock the last time they saw one, the time remains a mystery. They burst into the house, tired and out of breath, and flop down at the table. Massimo smiles at their exhausted faces, shakes his head at Alberto's band-aid on the nose, and puts three bowls of soup onto the table. They are hungry and tired, and eating seems like too much work, so Alberto takes the bowl and just sips the soup from it instead of using a spoon. Massimo pretends not to see it, and Luca and Giulia do the same after a moment of hesitation.

After lunch, they thank Massimo and go upstairs to their rooms. Luca stays with Alberto, and they flop onto the bed together. The window is open, and the curtains sometimes waver because of the breeze, but it's not enough to make the air feel cool. Alberto closes his eyes and breathes out.

For several minutes, he can only hear the noise of the seagulls and some people passing by occasionally. Then, Luca suddenly speaks up.

"I think I like Giulia."

He feels his heart skip a beat and sink somewhere to his stomach. He feels like someone just punched him under his ribs, and it's hard to breathe, but not because of the stuffy air. He keeps his eyes closed and prays he misheard.

"'Berto?.." Luca moves on the bed. He must be looking at him.

"Mm?.." he plays dumb.

"You heard me," Luca mumbles.

He opens one eye and squints at his friend.

"What do you want me to say?" he gives in.

Luca looks flustered. He looks away and nibbles at his shirt.

"I don't know," he admits. "Is it okay that I like her?"

Alberto feels anger grow in his chest. He doesn't understand it, as well as why he feels that way, so he tries his best to stay calm. After all, he wouldn't want to hurt Luca with his bursting emotions over such trivia as his crush. No, it's not even trivia — he knows he must be excited and happy, so why is he not?

"Why wouldn't it be?" he asks. It sounds cold despite his efforts.

Luca winces.

"Last summer, you didn't even like us hanging out together..." he starts. "And we're friends now. Is it weird?"

Alberto lets out a shaking sigh. Rolls to the side and props his head on his hand.

"You can like whoever you want, Luca," he says sincerely. "I was being a dick last summer. I thought you'd leave me for her. But now she's my sister; if you like her, you won't physically be able to leave me."

He says that mostly to convince himself, but his heart is still clenching uncomfortably.

Luca turns to him with a hopeful smile.

"So you wouldn't make me choose or whatever?"

Alberto snorts.

"Where did you get  that  idea from?"

He really doesn't want to know.

Luca laughs and lies on his back. Stares at the ceiling.

"She's just... So cool. She always helps me with homework, and she knows so much stuff. I literally think she's the smartest person I know."

There it is again. That ugly feeling, so similar to anger.

"...And she also has so many books, and she protects me from those bul—" he looks at Alberto out of the corner of his eye. Alberto flushes and moves to look at the ceiling too.

Luca goes on and on about how awesome Giulia is, how her hair smells amazing (seriously? it smells of shampoo), how she laughs like an angel (cheesy), and how she's the best at riding the bike. All kinds of stupid and kind of repetitive stuff. Alberto tries to calm the ugly feeling down and wonders why he's so worked up over this. It's not like he still feels the same jealousy as last year, as he'd just explained to Luca. But the feeling is spreading from his chest and stomach to his limbs, to his throat, to his forehead — and it's hard to breathe, and it's hot, and he is so, so confused.

He sighs, shakes his head, and turns over to tell Luca to maybe have this conversation later, only to find the boy asleep with his mouth slightly open and his head turned to Alberto slightly.

The feeling vanishes almost instantly. Instead, there's warmth spreading all over his body as he watches his best friend's chest moving up and down.

He smiles. Looks at Luca for a while and then snuggles closer despite the weather and falls asleep as well.

****

They meet Sofia at the beach. She's not alone: they are having a sandcastle competition along with Guido, Ciccio, and another girl. Alberto recognizes her voice: it's Sofia's friend. Her name turns out to be Francesca Rossi.

They join the competition; the winner is not decided because they don't have a judge, and they end up joining all their castles into a gigantic sand city. They make channels and try filling them with water by digging deeper or covering the bottoms with pebble and wood chips, but it doesn't work really. They still make bridges with the same tanbark and sticks and put up flags on top of their castles. Some of them have drawbridges and fences, and some — pebbles for windows.

After all, they get bored with their city and decide to go even bigger. So they dig a tunnel in the soft coastal ground so that it goes in and out under the flower and grassroots. If you're nimble enough, you can crawl through quite easily, but if you're tall by kids' standards, you'd need to be careful not to break the earth mass onto your head.

It also gets boring, and they go swimming. Ciccio saw water skiing on TV the other day and tells everyone about it; they find a rope and improvise by tying it to Alberto and Luca and making them swim instead of a motorboat while they try to stand up on their feet on top of the water. Of course, sea monsters or not, but the two of them can't go too fast with the weight of another kid on their backs, so barefooting — or so it is called to water ski without skis, as Francesca informs them — is quite literally impossible to do. Still, it is a lot of fun, and all of them get their chance to try before exhausting the boys so much that they refuse to give each other a ride. They can do it literally any other day.

The sun is only ever so slightly coming down, but most of the kids are leaving. The sky is barely rosy, and the mosquitos are only just coming out for their blood. Giulia mentions that if Alberto's so annoyed by them, he should try eating garlic. Luca logically concludes that that is how the vampires' myth has started, and Giulia elaborates that it's because when a person eats garlic, their sweat tastes and smells differently, and the mosquitoes don't like it. Alberto is not impressed: he'd tried eating garlic and found it absolutely disgusting. A sin against humankind. Perhaps it is he who is really a vampire.

The beach is nearly deserted. The three of them go to the right side of it, where the sand is covered in rocks. They start small and scarce, but it's only the stones and the cliff in a few meters. They climb the rocks to reach several huge boulders close to each other and flat enough to sit on them. Only their feet touch the water. It's crystal clear, and they can not only see their toes but also every pebble of the seafloor. And the sun is pretty, and the breeze feels wonderful.

They walk home only when they start feeling starving. The sun's still up, but the sky is already covered in peachy and purple and pink colored clouds. They pass a muddy puddle, and Luca notices a caterpillar or something like that next to it. It's moving quite quickly from dry land to the mud and, assumingly, to the puddle.

"Guys, look!" Luca stops them with his hands and nods towards the caterpillar. "What's  this ?"

"It must be a caterpillar," Giulia squints at the insect. "Or maybe a leech?"

"Whatever it is," Alberto looks at it disgusted but interested. "It's weird. Let's go."

Luca, however, crouches next to it and points his finger at it.

"No, look, it's about to go into the puddle."

Giulia crouches next to him, too. Luca goes slightly pink but doesn't move.

"It's so fast!" Giulia looks around for a stick or something to poke the poor caterpillar.

"Do you think it will swim or it will walk under the water?" Luca wonders.

"Does it matter? I'm hungry," Alberto looks at the caterpillar, his friends, and at the town they were supposed to go back to.

"Come," Luca blindly grabs his hand and pulls him down next to himself. Alberto's cheeks flush, and his heart is suddenly beating faster. Now that he is so close to Luca, he can look at whatever weird fauna the boy found all day and night. So he does; he looks at the puddle and at the caterpillar. It is fat and flat and moves rather quickly on its many legs.

"It has so many legs," he states boldly.

"Maybe it's a... what's it called?" Luca looks at Giulia for help, but she just shrugs her shoulders:

"How would I know what you're thinking of, dummy?"

"Hm..." Luca thinks for some time, looking at the caterpillar. Then his face lights up, and he says happily, "A centipede!"

Alberto has no idea what a "centipede" is. Giulia looks horrified, however.

"No way! Centipedes are supposed to be big and scary! This one is tiny and not frightening at all!"

"It's kinda gross, though," Alberto notices.

" You're  gross," Giulia retorts.

"Hey! Luca, tell her I'm not!"

Luca turns to him with a grin.

"I can't tell Giulia what to think of you. If she thinks her big brother is gross, it's her opinion," he shrugs.

Alberto makes a grumpy face and rolls his eyes. A caterpillar is reaching the mud.

"Can we make it go faster? Cheer it up a bit? Giulia, you've got a stick. Push it further."

"No way!" Luca panics, "You will scare it!"

They wait another minute. People pass by them, whispering to each other something about "weird kids." When the caterpillar reaches the mud, it stops.

"Why isn't it moving?.." Alberto wonders.

"Shh!" Luca says, "It's resting."

"I don't think it's resting, Luca," Giulia has doubt in her voice. "I think it's asleep."

They look at the caterpillar. It doesn't move.

"Well, let's wake it up, then," Alberto takes the stick from Giulia and pokes the caterpillar, and immediately shrieks, "A-A-A-A!!!"

"A-A-A-A-A!!!" Giulia squeals, too.

"A-A-A-A-A-A!!!" Luca joins them.

The caterpillar screeches and curls up into a ball. They immediately jump up, screaming, and run away from it.

"It spat in my eye!" Alberto wails. "It spat poison into my eye and mouth!!!"

Luca and Giulia go from screaming to laughing.

"It was a caterpillar; it's not poisonous!" Giulia says. She is short on breath because of running and laughing.

"But it did spit something, I saw it, too!" Luca yells with worry but doubt in his voice.

Suddenly, Giulia pulls closer to Luca and pushes all of them to the side of the road.

"Look," she whispers, pointing at a giant dog lying on the other side of the road. They walk very slowly and quietly past it, not daring to look away. The dog isn't moving, but it looks threatening.

When they walk away from it, they burst out laughing again.

"Why'd it do that?!" Alberto is smiling wildly despite being obviously distressed.

"Maybe it was water from the mud," Giulia reasonably suggests.

"Or it was its head," Luca says. "Imagine being hit on the head with a bat when sleeping. I'd spit poison, too."

"You can do that?!" Giulia looks at Luca, disconcerted.

"No," Luca and Alberto say at the same time.

"But I would," Luca explains.

"But it'd be cool," Alberto dreams.

They walk in silence for some time.

"If that was its head, then you suggest it was walking with its tail in the front?" Giulia says after a while.

"Like that," Alberto throws his head back and walks with his legs far in the front.

"No, you look stupid," Giulia says. "Maybe like that," she turns around and walks backward, inclining slightly to make it look like her head is at the end.

Luca watches both of them and decides,

"I like Alberto's idea better since it had its mouth on top. You have your mouth facing the ground, Giulia."

"True," Giulia turns back and looks puzzled. "Then maybe like the way we compete on PE?"

She crouches and puts her hands behind her legs, then moves her feet forward. It looks like she is imposing a table.

"See? You gotta move your legs and arms at the same time to move quickly," she explains.

"Oh! Right!" Luca copies her pose. "Let's race!"

Alberto bends down as well, and they all run down the road, laughing and whooping all the way.

****

They hang out next to Sofia's parents' restaurant,  Trattoria Bianchi , playing hopscotch with Sofia and Francesca. They've used the last pieces of Sofia's old colored chalk to draw large squares on the ground and write the numbers. They've raced from 1 to 12 and back, and they've tried hopping backward, and they've found a tin to kick while jumping (this was the game Francesca taught them: you had to kick the tin from square one to square twelve so that it doesn't lend on the lines and doesn't go out of boards. The hard part was that you had to do that while only hopping on one leg  and  using the same leg to kick the tin. It was fun.) Mrs. Bianchi comes out with a tray full of pasta and calls for them to come to eat. When they run happily to the table outside, Luca stops Alberto by catching his hand.

Alberto stops breathing for a moment, turns around, and sees Luca clearly distressed.

"I need to talk to you," he mumbles. "Alone."

They tell the girls not to wait for them and start walking down the street. Luca plays with his fingers and looks at his feet. Alberto wants to ask him what's wrong but doesn't want to make him even more uncomfortable. His chest suddenly feels too tight, and he frowns. He can't give a name to these uneasy emotions, and he doesn't want to think about it too much.

When they get so far that the girls are out of sight and even the big sign with the name of the restaurant is hardly readable, Luca speaks up:

"I'm tired," he sighs. There's a hinge of annoyance in his voice.

Alberto raises his eyebrow.

"What are you tired of? You've done your homework in June, and as much as I've noticed, you enjoy summer reading..?"

Luca shakes his head.

"It has nothing to do with books!" He clenches his fists.

Why is he angry?

"Then what?" Alberto pushes, affected by his friend's mood.

Luca strains his shoulders but then sighs and slouches.

"I'm tired of myself," he murmurs. He looks like he's on the verge of tears but fights them effectively.

They walk more and more slowly. The weather is kind today. The clouds are like giant marshmallows, and the wind is soft, but it also drives those clouds quickly over the sky. Now that they're not in the rush of a game, it's even a little bit chilly — the skin previously covered with sweat is now full of goosebumps, and Alberto shivers slightly.

"I think I need to confess to Giulia," Luca proclaims.

He stops breathing for a moment.

"Will you help me?" The boy turns to face him, looking like he'd decided something and is going to do that no matter if Alberto actually agrees.

"Erm..." he frowns, trying to identify the sudden pain in his stomach and the origins of a lump in his throat. Is this the jealousy Luca was talking about the first time he told him about his crush? It can't be. He's grown out of that last year, and they'd spent the rest of that summer with no hard feelings involved.

"Will you?" Luca presses.

"Sure..." he drawls, unsure.

Luca breathes out, relieved, and gives him a half-smile.

"Okay, so I've been thinking..."

While he explains what exactly he needs help with, Alberto contemplates his life choices. Luca is his friend, right? And friends are supposed to help each other. He really should help his friend, right? But! He doesn't really want to, and not because he's lazy or the favor is too hard to do... And he can't quite figure out the reason for his unwillingness. And friends are also supposed to be honest with each other. But how can he be honest when he doesn't understand his feelings himself? What is he supposed to say?

He feels like a gudgeon caught in a fishing net. His fins are tied, and he lacks air, and he is mildly panicking. Mildly, because such fish as gudgeons can't feel extreme emotions. That's a fact.

The plan is to get the two of them alone and so that no one can distract or interrupt them. For that purpose, Luca suggests waiting at the docks while Alberto brings Giulia there under some excuse and leaves them. So that is exactly what they do.

"Machiavelli was cuddling some other cat. I saw it as clear as day!" Giulia blabbers while they are walking to the docks. "It's only they were too far away, and I couldn't quite see the other one. But it was definitely there! Do you think Machiavelli made a friend?"

She turns to Alberto excitedly, only to find the boy distracted. She doesn't comment but also doesn't get back to her day description. They walk the rest of the way in a more-or-less comfortable silence; Giulia — looking up at the seagulls flying in the sky, and Alberto — deep in thought. When they reach the docks, he is supposed to leave like it's an accident, but he feels like he'd be missing something. He wants so desperately to know how it goes, even though he realizes that Luca will definitely tell him all about it.

"So..." Giulia starts gently, "what is it that you absolutely needed to show me?"

Alberto sighs. They're on a far end of a dock, surrounded by boats — it's a fishermen's town, after all. He's a bit ahead of his sister, and he just can't think of any better "natural leaving," to quote Luca, than to—

"This," he turns round to look at Giulia's puzzled expression and then dives into the water.

He swims under the dock and waits. He hears Giulia calling for him, her voice getting more and more annoyed, and he knows he should leave. But...

"Giulia," he hears Luca say. He'd probably been hiding behind a boat, as they'd agreed on. He must be bringing flowers.

"Santa mozzarella, Luca! What are you doing here?"

Following his gut, Alberto swims under another dock and up and hides behind the boat's bow. It's easier to eavesdrop this way.

"I—um..."

Come on, Luca! You're the one who wanted this meeting. Man up!

"I wanted to say... something."

He can imagine Giulia's raised eyebrow and confused face. It must look hilarious.

"Um... These are for you." That's where Luca gives the flowers, most probably.

"Thanks..." Giulia replies slowly. "But... what did you want to say..?"

He hears steps on the dock. Are they walking? Or is it just them shifting from one foot to another?

"I think..."

Nope, the second one. The voices are coming from the same place.

"I think I like you."

And then it's silent. For some time, Alberto can only hear the waves crashing onto the boats' sides and the shore and the seagulls squawking and squealing from the sky. One of them lands onto the water right next to him, and he shoves it away. It's a good thing seagulls are just as dumb as gudgeons. Who are as dumb as pebbles on the seafloor.

He's worried they'd maybe left, and he didn't notice? Or worse — what if they're  kissing ?! Although, he'd probably hear that...

And just as he is about to get closer and check, Giulia laughs. Nervously.

"I-I'm sorry, Luca, oh..." she gibbers, "you, um, you like me," a nervous chuckle, "I'm sorry."

"Why are you sorry?" Luca sounds taken aback and confused.

"I, um, I like you too—"

Alberto's heart stops.

"—but not like that—"

And starts beating again.

"—it's more of a, more like a..."

"A friend..?" Luca asks faintly.

"Well, um..." Giulia is clearly uncomfortable. She must be smiling awkwardly, Alberto imagines. "...Basically, yes."

"Oh," Luca says under his breath. "I'm sorry, then."

Poor boy. He must be as red as a tomato right now. Oh, Alberto is going to tease the living hell out of him when it's all over.

"No-no-no!" Giulia comforts him quickly. "I, um, actually... Luca, we're really good friends, right? Nothing can change that?"

Why is she asking that? She's supposed to state that with complete confidence! After all, who's in need of comforting here?

"Mhm, yeah, sure," Luca replies, probably backing away hastily.

"Luca, wait!" Giulia follows. "I don't like you romantically because I think I literally can't."

"W-what..?" Luca asks, baffled.

"I-I-I... Um..." The footsteps stopped. Alberto can imagine that now it's Giulia's turn to blush furiously and rub her elbow awkwardly.

Luca waits patiently for an answer. Alberto waits for it rather anxiously.

"...I think I don't like any boys that way..." Giulia mumbles almost inaudibly. If not for the fact that it's a very calm evening and that the sound travels quickly above water, Alberto wouldn't have heard it.

"Um..." Luca sounds less awkward now. "What do you mean? You're not ready for such things yet?"

Giulia lets out another nervous chuckle.

"No, I... I think I might—" and it's inaudible from there. Alberto is  so  annoyed he's this close to swimming closer and asking Giulia to speak louder.

"Oh," Luca says. Alberto can't tell if he's relieved or taken aback. "It's okay, then."

"It is?" Giulia's voice sounds hopeful.

"Of course it is," Luca confirms. There's some rustle, and his voice is now more muffled. "We'll always be there for you, Giul."

She cackles again, probably trying not to start crying. She might be shaking, Alberto thinks. Because her voice is shaking, too.

"We? You think..."

Alberto can't hear what she says. It's not only inaudible but it's also muffled. Are they hugging and talking into each other's shoulders or something?

And the pain in his stomach is back again.

"Of course! I don't see why not," Luca assures her.

She huffs.

"You're gonna tell Alberto, right?"

She's definitely gonna cry.

"Well... He'd like to know how did it go..."

"I don't think that's the right grammar, cervellone."

"Is it not?" Luca asks, surprised.

"It doesn't matter."

There is another rustling sound, and Gilia sighs.

"I, um..." Luca starts. "I'm gonna—"

"I think I need to be alone for some time," Giulia interrupts. "But thank you. It was nice."

Oh, Jesus, they were supposed to meet on the island after this! And  this  is at an end, and Luca is going to leave any second now — he'd better hurry and swim there first.

****

He's not just happy — he's relieved and ecstatic. He feels as if his chest had been carrying some super heavy stone in it, and now it's gone, and his stomach is comfortably empty, and overall he's so light he's about to become a flying fish. Or even a bird. He'd fly above the island, squawking and squealing, sharing this incomprehensible feeling of euphoria overfilling him with everyone down there and making the air electric with emotion.

But physically, he can't, so he walks to the tower jumpily and collects some wood on his way. Up there, he lights a fire and waits.

Soon, he hears water splash and footsteps approaching. And half a minute later, Luca climbs up.

"Luca!" Alberto greets him, and a wide smile appears on his face.

"Hey," the boy replies, not really looking at him. He walks to the fire and sits by it, hugging one knee close to his chest and propping his chin on it.

"...How did it go?" Alberto asks carefully.

Luca sighs.

"Not that good," he admits. Now that Alberto can see his face, he realizes that he is quite hurt by what happened.

He decides not to push.

"I gave her the flowers," Luca continues after a while, still staring into the fire gloomily. "And she took them, but..."

He sobs. Is he going to cry? Alberto's heart sinks in worry.

"...She said she's not interested," Luca rubs his eye with his wrist.

For some time, they only hear the fire cracking and the waves crashing. Then Luca looks up all of a sudden.

"Won't you like, react or something?" he asks, annoyed and clearly heartbroken. Alberto feels guilt taking over him.

"I, uh..." he panics. "I don't know what to say. I... I'm sorry to hear that?"

"You don't sound very sorry," Luca points out.

That's because I'm not , Alberto thinks but keeps his mouth shut.

"It's not really your problem," Luca continues, looking back at the fire. "Do you want to know why?"

Alberto is actually pretty interested. He couldn't hear his conversation as clearly in the end, and is naturally curious.

"Of course."

Luca looks at him very seriously. Alberto looks back. Very dumbly, he presumes.

"She said she likes girls."

Luca looks as if expecting him to react in some way. But Alberto feels only mildly surprised.

"Oh," he says.

"Oh?" Luca raises his eyebrows. "Alberto, she doesn't like boys, like, at all. And she likes girls  romantically . Even if you weren't raised in a normal society, you must know what it means."

Alberto knows. Well, he's heard  some  things. He has an idea of what people think of it. But he's not other people, is he? And from what he's heard, no one actually knows exactly  why  liking another person of your gender is wrong or bad or call it whatever.

"So what?" he inquires carefully.

Luca looks impressed.

"Actually, nothing," he replies. "I just thought you'd be more, I don't know, surprised."

"You didn't act surprised at all," Alberto shrugs.

And then realizes.

"What?.." Luca's confused. "What do you mean?"

"Uh..." Alberto scratches the back of his head and bites his lip. "I mean, you look more sad than surprised, now that you're telling me this, yes, that's what I meant."

Luca opens his mouth slightly, in a "what the bullcrap did you just shit" expression, but doesn't comment.

"...okay, so you're okay with your sister being a... um... liking girls?" he confirms.

"Well, yeah," Alberto is relieved he got away with his careless words. "Are you?"

"Of course," Luca smiles. "I mean, it's kind of not for us to judge, is it? Mom always said we're mot moray eels or wrasse to act this way, but humans can, right? It's not like they're changing their sex just by going out with someone, I think. No, I'm pretty sure. If humans could change sex, our biology teacher would probably have mentioned it. Although she didn't tell us anything about the moray eels... Hm..."

Alberto is overwhelmed and a little bit disoriented. What does a sex change have to do with it? And moray eels? They don't even live here, do they? What the hell is Luca talking about?

So he just nods, trying not to give away his emotions. He must be doing a terrible job at it because once Luca looks at him, he stops jabbering and laughs.

"What?" Alberto already can guess the answer.

"Y-your face," Luca manages to say in between laughter. "You must see it, oh my god."

Alberto rolls his eyes but laughs, too. At least Luca's not ruminating on any weird topics anymore.

****

Luca still sulks for several days. Well, he had his crush for at least two months — and who knows how long before he told Alberto about it. It's quite a reason to be upset. Alberto can understand, so he tells Giulia it's going to be okay (not without teasing her first and making her run up to her room as red as a tomato) and spends as much time with Luca as possible. He still has to help Massimo out, though, and go on his weekly underwater raids, but he has plenty of time to visit Luca. They just sit on the island together, Luca finishing his summer reading and Alberto drawing simple doodles of them swimming or fighting a dragon or dressed like X-Men. (Guido's parents bought him the comic recently, and they all borrowed it from him to read, one by one. His books must look pretty weary by now. Alberto took his turn second, right after Ciccio, so he had a chance to read it when it still looked new.)

Luca was hesitant about going back to school because of what happened. But Alberto, as much as it pained him to do so, convinced him to continue. He could see how passionate the boy was about learning new things, and it would have been really stupid to drop out of school because of some dumb unreciprocated crush.

"But how will I look Giulia in the eye after my confession?" Luca said that time.

"She's confessed to you too," Alberto reasonably noticed. "And you don't have to do it right away. You're allowed to take some time and space to recover."

He still can't believe he said such wise words. Good job, Scorfano, good job. You're a great friend.

Even if his heart clenches now as he watches them leave.

At the train station, Luca approaches Giulia for the first time since that evening.

"I think I need some time," he tells her simply. "To get used to it and everything."

"But we're still friends?" she clarifies.

"Sure we are!" Luca smiles.

She smiles, too, clearly relieved.

She's told Alberto about it, of course. About how she's afraid Luca only comforted her because he didn't know better, and that he secretly despises her, and that he's going to be so terribly broken up over what happened he'd never want to talk to her again — and Alberto hugged her while she tried not to cry in her anxiety and sobbed and spoke all her worries in a hardly comprehensible manner, making his tank top wet despite her best efforts.

Strange, she is now staring at him not with gratitude in her eyes, like before, but with... a question? He gives her the same look, and she quickly glances at Luca and back and raises her eyebrows in a silent definitely-question. He has no idea what that is about. He feels a suspicious thought forming in his brain and shuts his brain up before it's finished. For whatever reason, he feels scared to even think of... of what his brain is insinuating.

Luca and Giulia say their goodbyes to their parents and Alberto, and he sighs and welcomes the familiar feeling of a sunk heart and a stone in his chest. He's going to miss them.

Chapter Text

"Cara sorella,

Everything is okay here in Portorosso. I was right: Massimo  does  want to buy a car. A pickup truck, to be more specific. I guess his dream and purpose in life used to be hunting us, terrifying and extremely dangerous sea monsters, down, and now that that's outdated, he needs a new one. A new dream, that is. He'd cut several pictures out of magazines and put them up above the stove, and I asked to take one of them to send to you and Luca. I hope you show it to him because I could only get one. Isn't it amazing?

I can't wait to talk to you. Why is it so expensive to use a phone to make a call to another city? What's the purpose of a phone if you can't use it unless you pay a crazy amount of money? And why is it cheaper after 7 PM? Are there more people at the telephone station who can direct our calls at that time or something?

My voice is fully changed! That's why I can't wait. It would be better to see your faces, of course, but it'd still be amusing. Finally, no weird voice cracks and sudden high notes in the middle of a sentence!.. Oh, but you wouldn't understand. You're a girl."

[a poorly drawn face of Alberto sticking out his tongue]

"I took a job as a lifeguard! I figured I'd run out of my (totally not stolen) stuff to give as presents, so I'd need money. I will still help Massimo with fishing, but this job is actually really cool! I only need to sit on a super-cool tall stool and watch over people trying to drown themselves. And also save them occasionally. And I also had to learn first-aid, and all this... But I have an awesome whistle now! I can blow it at someone who swims too far or at local drunken causing trouble. When Ercole comes to visit from college, I use it to startle him, though. He's stopped being a total dickass, by the way. That's weird. Maybe his mental age finally caught up with his physical one. Huh. About time.

Oh, and we're preparing for Ognissanti — the whole town looks so festive! I don't know if you've ever seen it like that or if you spent all your falls in Genova, but let me tell you this: it's truly remarkable. I wish you and Luca could see it. Though, Genova must be dressing up as well, right? What costumes are you wearing? I'm going as a pterodactyl. Massimo bought me a mask, and it's awesome, it has a beak full of teeth and everything! R-r-r"

[a picture of, supposedly, the mask in question]

"Guido and Ciccio will be Frankenstein and Skeleton. They showed me their costumes, and they're mindblowing! Sofia is going as Batgirl and Francesca as Barbie. I really don't understand it, they're not scary at all, and their masks are almost identical. Isn't the point of All Saint's Day to look as frightening as possible?

Talking about scary, I've made costumes for Massimo and Machiavelli! Well, only the masks, but they're hilarious. I'll send you pictures if they agree to pose for a photo.

How are you two doing? I hope you talk to each other again, I mean, more than in September. I'm afraid to ask Luca because what if he's not over it yet, and me asking him will cause him to get all shy and awkward around you again? So that's why I'm asking you.

Remember how we talked about this brother-sister thing? That we can share everything with each other? Well, there's something on my mind that I really need to get off my chest. If that makes sense. The thing is, I keep thinking about what happened... Everybody around me has experienced being in love in some way or another. Sofia's still dating the same boy from last year! Guido and Ciccio were talking about girls from school the other day when we went fishing, and I felt SO out of place it's pathetic. You're my last hope, Marcovaldo. Please tell me we're both still underdogs on that, or I think I'm gonna kill myself just like Elton John sings. Have you heard his songs, by the way? They're pretty nice. But you know what I recently discovered?  The Beatles!!!  And just as they broke up, too! Can you imagine my luck? I've stumbled across their vinyl records at the shop, and it's fantastic. Do you want me to send you and Luca one? Do you have a gramophone there?

I've learned to play poker! Grandma Paguro decided that quote "it was time" and made me play her. I am eternally grateful we didn't get money involved. She's too good at this game! Too good. She must be cheating somehow, I'm telling you.

Oh, but I also learned to play chess, and it's much easier! I got confused at first, but the guys helped me. Francesca's grandpa lets her take his chess, so we sometimes make small tournaments. Thus far, I've never been the ultimate winner, but I was second twice! Francesca wins most of the time, maybe because she plays her grandpa often.

Take care of Luca for me, will you? And of yourself! We miss you both. I miss you both a lot.

Caro Alberto."

****

It was getting colder and colder each day, but the beach was still full of people on sunny days.

On one such day, a young couple came to the beach with their little daughter. She looked about four or five years old and wasn't too thrilled with the prospect of getting close to the sea. Her parents knew that apparently: Alberto'd seen them before once or twice; they'd tried to get the girl to swim a bit, and she had thrown a huge tantrum. This time, however, they were building sandcastles and playing ball with her. No attempts to drown the poor child.

Alberto looked at them lazily from his super-cool tall stool and, not seeing anything worth worrying for, got back to his comic book. He was reading the 68th issue of  Amazing Spider-Man  for the fifth time already. He just couldn't find the 69th himself, and he'd got into an argument with Guido last week, so asking him to borrow wasn't an option. At least until he apologizes for being such a hypocrite. Nobody actually asked him to go hang out with Ercole when he came back for the weekend. And even if he says that it was because their parents are friends and he couldn't have  not  attended that dinner, he could at least have told Ciccio and Alberto about that.  Before  they found out themselves. What a wimp.

Peter Parker gently held Gwendolyn, and Alberto could imagine that it could be him. Handsome, with such stylish hair, holding a blonde girl's waist and flirting so effortlessly... Except Peter didn't have such a fabulous tan, and his hair was much less curly... And he was a super-hero, while Alberto was more of a... lifeguard. Which was far less heroic than fighting Kingpin.

He was about to turn the page when he heard a child cry. He jumped in his seat: what if they were in danger?

It was that girl who doesn't like water. She cried because the sudden wind flew her inflatable ball into the sea. Her father was already taking his shirt off (kind of lazily, Alberto noticed), and her mother tried to comfort the girl, saying that her daddy will soon retrieve the ball. When Alberto's eyes found the ball, it occurred to him that her mother was actually lying. The ball must have been caught up in a rip current and was already too far from shore to be retrieved.

Well, Alberto wasn't about to let the poor girl lose her ball. He jumped from his super-cool tall stool and ran to the water. He quickly reached the lost ball because of his superhuman swimming abilities and swam to his left to get out of the rip current. Then he gracefully swam back and went out of the water. With the ball in his hands, he approached the girl.

He noticed her parents still wince at him, as if his tail could strangle them or something. He was ready to see the girl get even more scared, but some people were afraid of Spider-Man, too, right?

To his surprise, the girl did not cry even harder or hide behind her parents. Instead, she opened her mouth in awe and took her ball from his hands quietly.

"Say thank you, darling," her mom prompted.

"Grazie!" The girl exclaimed in a high-pitched voice. "Mamma, why does this boy have a tail? I also want a tail!"

"That's because..." her mother glanced at Alberto, probably not wanting to offend him.

"I'm a monstro marino," Alberto explained, showing his teeth and moving his hands in a "grrr, I'm a monster" gesture.

The girl squealed in excitement.

"Monstro marino!" she repeated. "G-r-r-r!"

Alberto smiled and scratched the back of his neck awkwardly.

"Well, I'll get back to work," he motioned to his stool with his thumb.

But as he was about to leave, the girl tugged onto his shorts.

"Can I touch your scales?" she asked hopefully. "Please?"

He looked at her parents, wordlessly asking if it's okay. They had those polite smiles on their faces but nodded approvingly.

"Sure," he told the girl. "But they're about to disappear."

The girl touched his leg and his fins. He was right, though: the scales were turning into human skin rather quickly.

"Why are they going away?" the girl asked, pouting. She looked up and saw his face also changing. "Wow! I thought you were a fish, but you're a person, too!"

Alberto's heart jumped in a sudden fear that she'd be horrified by the transformation — but the girl looked only more excited.

"Yeah," he chuckled. "If you want to see the scales again, we need to get to the water."

The girl frowned.

"I don't like water," she said firmly.

Alberto thought for a bit. An idea came to his mind.

"Well, you can give me your bucket, and I can bring some water in it."

The girl beamed.

"Okay!" she ran to get her bucket, and Alberto looked at her parents again. They didn't seem to mind. And they still had those polite smiles.  Hypocrites,  he thought. Why would they let their kid play with a "scary human-eating disgusting" sea monster if they are still so prejudiced?

"Here!" the girl handed him a small bucket, and he went to get some water.

They played for a while, the girl showering Alberto with water from the bucket, which he had to go and refill once in a while. She seemed to especially like his tail and fins.

"You know, it would be much more comfortable if we moved closer to the water," he said after a while. "I'm getting tired of going back and forth."

It was true. They'd spent at least an hour doing  only that .

The girl eyed him suspiciously.

"But you won't make me go into the water?" she asked him. "Or swim?"

"No," Alberto answered honestly. "I know you don't like water; why would I do that?"

"Okay," the girl agreed. "But you have to promise!"

"I promise."

****

The girl and her parents came to the beach more often since that day. On their second meeting, the girl plucked up the courage to actually go into the water, but only for a while: she wanted to check if maybe the sea could turn her into a sea folk, too. Alberto told her that it didn't matter if the water was from the sea or from your own shower at home, but can you really convince a five-year-old kid of such things?

While it was not too cold, they played in the water, and the girl was less and less afraid of it. They would collect pretty rocks and seashells, and she would pretend that she also has a tail and let her body float upon the water surface while holding onto the seafloor with her hands.

Her parents were also slowly warming up to him. Their smiles were less polite now and more genuine, and they even talked to Alberto a few times. They told him about how they took their daughter to the sea for the first time. The weather soon became stormy that day, and giant waves scared the poor girl — that is why she was afraid of the sea ever since. They said it was a miracle that she was going swimming so readily now.

It was his last day on duty — the swimming season ended — and the girl didn't come to swim. It was windy and too cold, so Alberto was surprised to even see the family on the beach.

"Awbewto!" the girl called happily, running to his stool.

"Hello, Vittoria," he jumped down and welcomed the girl with a hug. "How are you doing?"

"Look what I have!" she exclaimed.

It was a doll. But not a usual doll: it was a zombie doll. Its body was soft, and its limbs were plastic and bluish green. Moreover, on these green plastic limbs, Alberto could see black and blue marker drawings.

"This is Lucy!" Vittoria beamed. "She's also a monstro marini now! I made her scales! But her tail is hidden under her dress. She doesn't like showing it."

Her mother rushed closer and smiled apologizingly.

"We bought it for Halloween; she just couldn't leave the store without it," she explained. "I'm sorry, she's not an ordinary kid..."

"I love it!" Alberto told them. The girl laughed and hugged her doll. "It's fantastic. Would you like to give Lucy a bath?"

*****

The Christmas season came again. This time he had some money — he started saving since fall and could afford to buy the gifts beforehand. He found a very expensive and fancy wallet for Massimo: his one was very old and shabby. This gift was the most expensive one. But he still had about a half of his savings left, so he got a set of oil pastels for Sofia, and for Francesca, he found a boggle, which was a riddle where you had to make words out of random letters. He sent a Rubik's cube for Luca, and for Giulia — a pet rock. Totally worth the money, he thought as he imagined Giulia's face.

This year he also thought of the Paguro family. He didn't really know what to get them, so he asked Massimo. He suggested cooking biscotti and having them over for dinner, so that was exactly what they did.

And, of course, he caught the fattest fish he could find for Machiavelli specifically. When Massimo told him the cat couldn't even eat that much and if Alberto wouldn't let him cook the fish, it'd go bad, he was kind of discouraged — but at least they had a delicious dinner that day and the next one. The fish was so big that when he was carrying it home, Ercole, who came back from college for the celebration and was just passing by, stopped dead and followed him with his eyes wide open and the most hilarious facial expression. Oh yes, Alberto was definitely describing it in his letter to Luca.

Just like last year, he had his gifts from the elders first. The Paguro family came to celebrate the opening of the Christmas season with scrumptious fish to cook, and they had a lovely evening. After dinner, Massimo gave him his present — the flip clock. Alberto put it on his bedside table. It was a good thing he already knew how to tell time.

The parcel from Genova came right before the New Year. Luca sent him a simple multi-tool containing a pocket knife, a mini saw, and a compass. It was in a pretty aluminum box, and it was awesome. Giulia sent him a very stupid papier-mâché mask with a giant red nose, wide round eyes with tiny black pupils watching in slightly different directions, thick black eyebrows, and a plastic axe with red paint on the blade. The axe was supposed to be worn on top of the person's head. Giulia also left a message: "So that next Halloween you have a clown costume, fratello" — and a crazy face sketched. He also got a present from Mrs. Marcovaldo — a set of shrinky dinks — you had to draw pictures with special paint and then put them in the oven to make something similar to stickers or cards. When talking on the phone later that evening, she said she'd heard Alberto enjoyed drawing. Alberto felt embarrassed that he'd forgotten to buy a gift for her.

When they talked over the phone, it turned out Luca's voice has also changed. Alberto was so surprised he actually didn't believe them at first — "who's that boy and where is Luca" — but it was actually him! His sweet, almost girlish voice was gone forever, and in its stead, there was a deep, husky voice calling Alberto "stupido" amusedly. When they finished talking, and Alberto'd gone to bed, he couldn't fall asleep for a long time, thinking about this smoky voice he heard and trying to associate it with Luca's sweet face. Not gonna lie, it was hard to imagine.

On Epifania, they exchanged gifts with Sofia and Francesca. Sofia gave him a magna doodle, and they spent the rest of the day drawing all kinds of weird shapes, sets, and characters on it. Francesca gave him stickers with vehicles, which he later pasted onto his new flip clock, his new multi-tool, and the hand of his knife. He had some stickers left and decided to ask Massimo to paste them onto the boat later but forgot.

Overall, the winter was amazing. The kids would slide down the natural slide of the mountain road used for the race during summer, get into snow fights, and draw angels after falling down onto the snowy floor.

He couldn't be a lifeguard in winter since no one was actually swimming. So he helped Mr. and Mrs. Bianchi with their restaurant. He was only a waiter at first, but they'd occasionally teach him to cook more complicated dishes when they didn't have many customers. He enjoyed cooking.

Yet, he was looking forward to summer. However fun winter was, he was still missing his friends a ton. He daydreamed about going swimming with Luca again and teaching him to cook the dishes that he'd just learned and showing him his awesome stickers and the drawings he'd made throughout the year...

Then spring came. So now Alberto was helping at the restaurant  and  attending his lifeguard duties. It wasn't too hard to do: he was not the only person in Portorosso needing an occupation, so he could work part-time pretty easily.  And  have time to go fishing with Massimo occasionally. However, because of his jobs, he usually just told Massimo the fish's most recent routes. Massimo seemed very proud of him for being such a responsible 15-almost-16-year-old.

One day, when he was walking home from the restaurant, he passed several men singing songs on their way. One of them had a musical instrument he'd never seen before — it had a long wooden part attached to an eight-shaped wooden body with a hole in the center. It had strings, and the man had it hanging on a belt. When Alberto came home, he asked Massimo about it:

"What is a thing that's like a gramophone, but it's wooden, and you gotta use your hands to play it?"

Massimo was genuinely confused, so Alberto took a piece of paper and drew what he saw as best as he could. Fortunately, the picture was pretty recognizable — Massimo told him it was a guitar. Alberto was very excited about it and decided to ask the men to try and play the next time he sees them.

So he did. The next time he saw them was when he was headed to the restaurant for his shift. The men were just coming out to sit at the now renovated and repainted table, smoke, and play a bit. They might have been waiting for their order? Some people liked dining outside.

They looked astonished and amused by his request, and one of them handed the guitar over to Alberto. He tried to copy the pose he saw: with a strap over his left shoulder and his right hand over the hole in the body.

He breathed out, nervous, and touched the strings.

The sound that came out wasn't particularly beautiful. He tried touching the strings again, more gently this time, and the sound was, indeed... softer. But still not much.

"Why can't I play as good as you do?" he asked the man who gave him the guitar, confused.

"It's because you need to learn first, ometto," the man chuckled. "Look, this part is called a neck, and it has different frets. You put your left hand here, like that, good..."

He learned to play a simple melody, but at what cost — his fingers were blistered, his wrists hurt, and even his shoulder was sore from all this weight. Despite this, he felt excited and accomplished — and right when he was about to ask the man to teach him more, Mrs. Bianchi walked out and told him to start working already.

The meetings with the men become a regular appointment. They came to Portorosso on vacation and were only planning to stay a month. Music was, apparently, their main job, and they had got a bit tired from big city life, and so came here, where it was more calm and chill. So Alberto got real lucky.

One day he and Massimo were loading their fish from the boat onto the cart when the men passed by.

"Hey ometto!" they greeted cheerfully.

"Hey!" he waved his hand back at them. "Massimo, look! These are the guitar guys I told you about."

Turns out, grown men get on well with each other pretty quickly.

****

Massimo gave him a guitar for his 16th birthday, and Alberto played it the whole day. Sofia, being an amazing friend that she was (and also the closest out of all of the kids in Portorosso),  coincidentally  stumbled upon a book of chords for  The Beatles  and bought it for him. So now, his evenings were not only playing with Machiavelli and doodling various vehicles but also learning to play  Yellow Submarine  and  All You Need Is Love  and other super-easy songs.

Despite his interest in everything new, he gets restless pretty quickly, and concentrating on learning anything else is not the easiest job for him. So he ended up perfecting the tunes that the men taught him and those two simple  The Beatles'  songs. Perfecting only because those are the only things he actually played.

Sometimes things require more effort than expected.

****

It's the end of May, and tomorrow he and Massimo are going to the station to meet the train from Genova. They've prepared a banner saying  "Welcome!" , and tomorrow afternoon they will make preparations for the gnocchi to have a warm family dinner afterward.

But today, he is on his duty, restless and agitated. He can't concentrate on watching over the beach, full of people again, he can't concentrate on reading a book on motors that he borrowed from Ciccio, he can't even stop fidgeting. He wishes for this day to end as soon as possible, so that he can go to bed, sleep, wake up, go help Mrs. Bianchi at the restaurant, help Massimo with dinner preparations, and finally go to the train station to meet—

Woah. What's that?

He's never seen this girl before. Is she a visitor? Somehow Portorosso always has new people despite being literally a village, compared to other cities. Not that Alberto knew anything about it, but Luca'd told him about Rome, and Milan, and Naples — and that's only Italy. He knew that there are other countries, and other languages, and other cultures — so why do people ever choose Portorosso as a traveling destination? Why don't they go to Tokio or, for example, Delhi? Surely those are much more spectacular.

The girl that caught his eye is chatting amicably with an older man — probably, her father. They choose a spot on the beach and put their beach towels down with their bags. They both carry a board similar to surf and a paddle, and with those, they walk to the water and sail off. Alberto observes them as they are paddling further and further away. He can't see their faces from where he is seated, but he definitely can appreciate how the girl is built: she isn't slim per se, but she has a sportive body with visibly strong legs and arms. Her tanned skin contrasts nicely with her fair hair, making her resemble Gwendolyn from  The Amazing Spider-Man.  But Gwendolyn, like every other woman in the comics, was more of a Barbie girl than a real human being. That was rather creepy to look at, but Alberto couldn't deny her conventional beauty.

The girl's supposed father is also exceptionally well-built. He has broad shoulders and quite a lot of muscle. He also has a cool beard and a tattoo on his ankle. Alberto can't tell what exactly the tattoo depicts from this distance, but it looks blueish. Maybe it's something with water?

The girl and her father are paddling pretty far away now. It is getting dangerous, and they need to turn back, so Alberto blows his whistle and calls loudly for them to turn. Unfortunately, they are too far to hear him, and so he now must climb off his stool and swim to get them back himself.

So he does. On his way there, a thought crosses his mind: what if they have never heard of sea folk? What if they're foreigners?

It shouldn't matter, though, as he is obliged to retrieve them and take them back to safety regardless.

What doesn't occur to him is that while swimming underwater might be faster, it is definitely shocking to see a sea monster swimming up suddenly behind your back. So when he does exactly that, popping up from under the water behind both of them and saying,

"Bongiorno," 

in the dullest voice possible, the pair reacts accordingly: they scream and fall off their boards.

"Well, shit," Alberto curses, realizing his mistake. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you... Wait, do you speak Italian?"

The girl and her father both look at him, disturbed but not horrified. He can see the man's tattoo now, and it turns out it's a picture of a palm tree with sea waves at the bottom and a pretty blue and purple sky on top. The girl says something in supposedly English, and the man replies, clears his throat, and then speaks to Alberto in very accented Italian:

"Yes, bongiorno. Is something the matter?"

Alberto is relieved that they didn't try to kill him, at least.

"Um, well, you need to get closer to the shore. It's dangerous to paddle out here so far from the coastline." He glances at the girl. She actually resembles Gwendolyn even more now that he can see her face. She has thin eyebrows, yes, very fashionable, and big cat-like eyes. And she stares at him with a mix of interest and wariness. "Relax," he tells her, "I won't eat you."

He grins, showing off his sharp teeth, and watches the girl shiver. Then turns to her father.

"So, sir, would you need help accompanying you back? I can show you where the safe line for such activities lies."

The man agrees, and so Alberto helps them get back on their boards and swims to the safe line next to them.

"See that boulder over there? It looks kind of like a turtle," he explains, "that's the end of the bay. And on the other side, you can marker those two trees on top of the cliff. So, no paddling further than that, okay?" The man smiles politely, thanks Alberto, and paddles away with his daughter.

****

When the sun rolls down to the horizon, and when it's almost time for him to go on a final swim to check the bay, the girl approaches him.

"Hey," she says, and her Italian is a little bit better than her father's.

"Hey," Alberto takes off his sunglasses, unsure of what else to say.

"I just wanted to say thank you for warning us," she smiles timidly. "We're new here and not very familiar with the customs and rules."

"No problem," he shrugs.

She offers him a hand.

"I'm Sara. Sara Romano."

He shakes her hand.

"Alberto Scorfano."

"Pleasure to meet you."

She leans onto his stool with one shoulder and looks away.

"So..." Alberto starts awkwardly, "Why are you here? You're clearly not from Italy."

The girl chuckles.

"We're from Metroville, The USA," she explains. "My father and I came here for summer vacation. Mom works now, so she couldn't come, but dad got the tickets with a huge discount because he works at the airport and it's his only vacation. And the tickets here were the cheapest, and you've got a lovely bay for our sups."

"Excuse me?" Alberto turns to her, confused.

"Our S-U-P-s," she turns back to him as well. "The boards that we paddled today. Back home, we sometimes participate in competitions, and that one time, we were even competing against Violet and Helen Parr themselves! I mean, Violet is only like five years older than me, and dad was up against Mrs. Parr..."

"Wait-wait-wait," Alberto shakes his head, confused. "SUPs are your boards, okay. Got that. How do you compete? And who are those people?"

Sara looks shocked.

"You don't know Elastigirl?!" she asks, scandalized.

"Well..." Alberto tries to remember where he'd heard the name. "I think I saw some newspaper articles about her, but it was a long time ago... Can you remind me who she is?"

Sara makes a horrified face.

"She's only the most incredible human being in Metroville! Violet is her daughter, and she's awesome, too, and they have powers..."

And so Alberto learns about the local stars, the Parr family. Of course, it's nothing too spectacular now, because they haven't been active since, like, 1962. But they are real heroes! Much like Spider-Man himself, but in real life.

Sara tells him about all their heroics and about their ordinary lives. She explains that she and her father competed in standup paddling in different age groups, and since it was when Violet was still technically a teenager, they ended up against each other.

"The greatest moment of my life," Sara adds somewhat wistfully and looks up at the sky, covered in long, plush strands of purple and orange clouds.

Alberto shoots a look at the hut where they keep all of the equipment and some fun stuff like inflatable swim rings and paddle boats. Next week they will take the boats out for anyone who wants to have a ride, and he'll have some additional maintenance work to do.

The hut stands a few meters away from his stool and has a clock shaped like a lifebuoy on its outer wall. Alberto's duty ends in ten minutes, so he has to go check the bay right about now.

"Excuse me," he jumps off the stool. "But I must go. It was nice chatting with you, Sara..."

Shit. He forgot her last name.

"Romano," she smiles. "Nice to meet you too, Alberto Scorfano."

She waves her hand goodbye and leaves to tell her father to gather their things and go home.

Alberto makes sure that the beach is empty and walks into the sea. The water's still warm, and in contrast to the evening air, it feels even more pleasant on his scaly skin. He takes a moment to breathe.

Tomorrow. Everything he waits for is happening tomorrow.

He wonders if Luca's changed. He must have because he can't still be the same gaunt gangly kid but have a voice of a trucker.

Giulia is probably the same. Even if Alberto tries really hard, he can't imagine her resembling even slightly the women in magazines and on TV. She'll probably be just as weird in ten years as she is now. Both in behavior and in style.

So if Giulia is the same, and Luca is only different in voice and  maybe  in appearance a little bit, everything is great. Alberto doesn't have to worry about getting used to anything new, and the three of them will be underdogs forever.

Despite that, he's kind of nervous. What if it's not his friends who have changed, but himself? Will they still get on well with each other? Will they feel comfortable around each other? Will they know what to talk about?

A strange lump forms in his chest and grows to his stomach and throat. He knows it well: anxiety. But there is really nothing to worry about, is there? He, Luca, and Giulia are friends for two years now, and they have always found ways to fix their relationship even if something happened. This year won't be any different, right?

Right?

****

"What's wrong with you, stupido?" Luca yells as he steps out of the train. Giulia is right behind him, rolling her eyes and making the most tired facial expression she can.

"I tried to talk him out of it," she grumbles.

Luca looks much taller now. He must be around the same height as Alberto now, if not taller. And he doesn't look as scrawny and lanky as before. It's like he's a completely different person. Can a person change this much over just a year? No, it must be some kind of voodoo magic.

His hair is still the same wavy chestnut silk, though. Well... It looks like the waves have gotten bigger, so his hairstyle is now much closer to a "new dandy" look than an "I lived under the ocean for 13 years and didn't know what a hairbrush is" one that he had before.

Giulia also steps out onto the platform. She is also taller and less gangly and angular, and she actually looks like a girl now? It is definitely surprising to see how she looks like a teenage girl and not like a ten-year-old boy wearing a school skirt. Her fiery hair is a usual mess, however, even if she has tried to tie it with a bright red headscarf.

Luca drops his luggage and takes Alberto's hand.

"Piacere, gerolamo trombetta!" he beams.

"This joke is as old as we are," Alberto carefully reminds him. "As is the previous one. When will you stop?"

"Never," Luca grins and hugs him properly this time.

The annoyance caused by that stupid attempt at a joke vanishes without so much as a trace. Alberto hugs Luca back, and it feels as if he had been holding his breath for the whole past year, and now fresh air has filled his lungs, and he can finally breathe out and relax and start living again. The feeling is so intense he has to actually fight back the tears and restrain himself from trembling. His hands still shake a little bit.

Luca pulls back, and he doesn't want to let go. Their eyes meet, and Luca grants him with his shiny smile, and Alberto freezes. He remains unable to move until Luca goes to greet his family and Massimo, and Giulia hugs him instead.

"Your infatuation is showing," she whispers into his ear with a smirk.

"What?.." he says when he regains his ability to speak in words.

She just chuckles and hurries to hug the others, leaving him to think her words over.

They have a family dinner in their backyard. He and Massimo made gnocchi, and Mrs. Paguro brought some seafood and linguine to make Frutti di Mare. They all sit at the table outside and share stories from their year. Mr. Paguro wants to win the crab race again, Grandma Paguro tries to trick Luca into learning to play poker, and Giulia hugs poor Machiavelli. Luca laughs at the adults and their slightly drunken speeches, and Alberto finds himself staring. It's probably because he got stuck in his thoughts and accidentally looked at Luca, he thinks. Yet he can't look away until Luca notices and looks back at him with a smile and raised eyebrows: a silent  "what are you looking at?" . And Alberto smiles back awkwardly and quickly averts his eyes, scratching his forehead.

This time the adults seem to be very into drinking their wine, and after a while, Alberto, Luca, and Giulia get tired of listening to their totally inside jokes and decide to go for a little walk. They stand up from the table and walk out through the gates, closing them behind their backs. The night is young, and the moon is low and tiny. The crickets chirp, and the air is cooling, and it's actually a little bit chilly without a jacket.

They walk in comfortable silence. They don't go to the public beach but to the little piece of land under a cliff where you can only meet an occasional fisherman or a couple hiding from the public's prying eyes.

"That's where 'Berto tried to scare me off with his sea monster appearance," Giulia remembers.

"I think I managed to achieve my goal that time, sorella," Alberto reminds her and sits on the pebble. It's cold, but not uncomfortable.

"Hey, I was more surprised than scared!" Giulia protests, sitting next to him. "When I put it all together in my mind and figured Luca was also a sea monster, I wasn't scared at all, right Luca?"

"Sure," the boy chuckles and sits to Alberto's right.

Instantly, he feels a weird pain in his stomach, like when you're hungry, and his skin gets covered in goosebumps on his right side.

"You're a terrible friend," he pushes Luca's side playfully in an attempt to get rid of sudden agitation. "Why'd you act like that?"

"I already said sorry!" Luca laughs, pushing Alberto back. "And I won the race for you!"

"He did," Giulia shrugs when Alberto turns to her for help.

"Why are we friends?" he sways his hands dramatically before flopping on his back with his hands behind his head.

"Because you love us," Luca pats his thigh.

He freezes again and doesn't respond. His thigh is on fire.

"Well, Luca's been a much better friend this year," Giulia puts her hands behind her back. "I'm still shocked."

"Oh?" Alberto asks in a suddenly hoarse voice.

"It's like our Luca's been captured by aliens, and they sent us this guy right here in his stead!" Giulia turns to look at them both.

Luca just scoffs.

"It's true! Remember how he's always been timid and only showed his brave and adventurous side like once in a century?" Alberto nods. "Well, he's been fighting off those bastards in school all on his own since fall. I was like "wha-a-at," and he was like "no, Giulia, I got this," and verbally attacked them so effectively they actually fled!"

Alberto looks at Luca with a raised eyebrow, and the boy shrugs.

"What did you tell them?" Giulia asks. "I never actually heard, but they looked pale as chalk."

Luca grins.

"I told them that at fifteen, sea monsters tend to get really hungry for human flesh."

"You what?!" Alberto and Giulia shriek simultaneously.

"Dope!" Alberto hits Luca's shoulder lightly with his fist. "I'm so proud of you!"

"Why would you do that?!" Giulia frowns. "They'll never accept you now!"

Luca shrugs and smiles.

"It worked, didn't it? And I don't need them to accept me. They're bastards, you said so yourself."

Giulia slaps her forehead and sighs.

"Luca... okay, I admit, good job." She smiles. "But please, can we talk it over next time you spread a false rumor about your kin?"

"Okay, nerd," Luca agrees.

They laugh and then sit in silence for some time, watching the waves come and go and the moon reflecting on the water and listening to the calming night sounds.

"I really missed you guys," Alberto whispers.

Giulia turns to look at him.

"We really missed you too, fratello," she says with a soft smile.

"We did," Luca adds, meeting his eyes. "I've missed you."

For some reason, Alberto's heart flutters uncontrollably.

****

Alberto is barbariously pulled out of sleep by a loud bang of the door and a deafening yell:

"THE SUN'S UP, MY DEAR FRATELLO!"

Giulia confidently marches inside to open the curtains and the window and let some fresh air in.

"What the fuck, Giulia..?!" Alberto opens his eyes and tries to figure out where he is and what's going on. He looks around sleepily and finds Luca sitting up next to him. He can't help but notice how adorable the other boy looks with his hair an absolute mess, his pink cheeks, and puffy eyes, which he is rubbing slowly. He's wearing Alberto's T-shirt, and it makes his already slender arms appear even bonier, and his already pale skin look almost white. Alberto can see every vein and every joint and every knuckle, and he  can't stop staring—

"Oh my God!!!" Giulia jumps, startled. "Luca, what are  you  doing here?! Weren't you supposed to go home last night?"

Luca turns to her voice and squints at her, half-blind because of the sudden light that now opened curtains let in.

"Jesus, Giul..." Alberto groans. "Why?"

Giulia cackles, covering her mouth with a fist, and leaves the room.

"Get down, ragazzi!" she shouts from her room, and then the two of them hear a door being closed.

They stare at the door to Alberto's room, bewildered.

Alberto tries to remember why Luca is here in his bed, in his T-shirt. Slowly, the memories flood his consciousness: yesterday, the three of them came back from the beach about an hour later, and the adults were still having the time of their life at the table. They turned the radio on, and it played quietly, and judging by the atmosphere, the kids could clearly see that no one of the Paguro family was particularly inclined to leave any time soon. Luca and Giulia were exhausted after the trip, however, so Giulia looked at them both, said her faint  "buona notte , and went to her bedroom. Then he invited Luca to his room to wait until Luca's parents are ready to go and offered him his clothes because school uniform was definitely not the most comfortable clothes to wear, and Luca's suitcase was somewhere in the backyard, and they were too lazy to go get it.

And they must've fallen asleep while talking, and now Luca is right next to him, in just a T-shirt and underpants because the only pants Alberto has are jeans and swimming trunks and the shorts he is wearing right now, and none of the above can be described as "more comfortable than school uniform."

Luca yawns, shivers, and leans closer to Alberto with an obvious intention of lying in the other's lap.

"Nope!" Alberto yells and springs away so quickly that he falls to the floor. His heart races, and he's breathing shakily, and he's slightly dizzy after such rapid movements.

Luca blinks at him in a silent question.

"I mean," Alberto chuckles nervously, "Giulia told us to go downstairs but went to her room. That means it's Massimo who's looking for us, not her."

Nice save, Scorfano.

"Oh..." Luca hums in agreement and gets out of bed.

Blood rushes to Alberto's face. Luca's legs, just like everything else about his body, are not too muscular per se. In fact, his legs are somewhere in between slender and fit (all that bike riding must've contributed at least something, right?), and definitely very good-looking.

Alberto gulps. His head feels suddenly heavy as if made of metal.

"'Berto?" Luca's raspy voice calls. "What're you staring at?"

Alberto looks up and finds his friend frowning at him, not fully awake but slowly coming to his senses.

"I'm thinking of my revenge," Alberto mutters, shaking his head. "Wait till I tell Giulia the sun's  down ."

When did he get so good at lying?

Luca chuckles weakly and walks to get his clothes.

"Sure," he murmurs on his way.

Alberto hopes his face isn't too red.

When they go downstairs, Massimo offers them some cappuccino with sfogliatelle, and while they munch their breakfast explains that Luca's parents decided not to wake them up at night but require Luca's help today.

Alberto has a day off, and Massimo doesn't need his assistance today, so he offers to help Luca with his chores, and Luca agrees.

"I don't know what exactly they need me to do, though," he warns Alberto. Alberto shrugs it off.

They keep chatting all the way to Luca's house.

"Did they take my suitcase underwater?" Luca wonders as they swim to his cave. "I tried to find it in the backyard but couldn't, and then I got distracted by Machiavelli and forgot to ask Mr. Marcovaldo about it."

Alberto shrugs.

"It's possible that they did. Why?"

"Ugh, and they didn't even ask me," Luca grumbles annoyedly. "I was actually going to leave it on the surface, but they—"

"Wait, what?" Alberto interrupts. "Why?  Where ?"

Luca glances at him.

"I was actually going to ask you if I could leave it in your room?"

Alberto frowns.

"Sure, but... Why?"

"Well," Luca waved his hands at his uniform. "I've found out ocean water does not do the fabric any good. Last summer, all my  new  human clothes were kept underwater, and let me just say that I wouldn't want to repeat this experiment. I also don't really know much about the fabrics, and so I thought better safe than sorry, and so I would like to keep most of my clothes on the surface while wearing swim trunks underwater because they won't get destroyed by the water and salt and that means I can wear them for longer, my parents save money, and—" he turns and looks at Alberto very seriously. "I don't even know where my parents get money to buy me all this school stuff!" he exclaims.

"Your grandma is still insanely good at poker," Alberto shrugs. Luca rolls his eyes. "Oh, and your mom sometimes has gigs at Mr. and Mrs. Bianchi's restaurant. She turns out to be insanely good at impressions. Apparently, even better than her friend Bianca Branzino or what's-her-name."

"They're not friends," Luca mutters.

"Anyway, your dad makes good money on selling hand-made jewelry," Alberto continues. "He's got a surprisingly good sense of style, and he knows where to get the most unique shells and even pearls. Your uncle sometimes brings him stuff that was unlucky to get to the deep ocean and is  not  a whale carcass or Giuseppe. That fish has gotten to the deep four times this year alone! Last time your uncle promised to eat him if he swims to his precious deeps again."

Luca laughs at the mental image of Uncle Ugo coming up to the shallow water only to bring the prodigal fish back.

"It's still not what they're used to," he sighs after a moment of silence. "They didn't even know what money is until two years ago. Well, except for grandma. But she's a special cause."

"How do you know that?" Alberto raises his eyebrow.

"Oh, she's always been weird. Mom told me how when she was younger—"

"No-no-no," Alberto shakes his head. "About your parents not knowing what money is. Why do you think so?"

Luca looks at him like he just said that the sky is green and the water is purple.

"They lived underwater their whole life. We kind of have an agricultural community working on exchange there," he explains. "You might've been brought up isolated, but surely you've got the grasp of what it's like to live underwater?"

Alberto closes his eyes, trying to calm down. Luca's annoyance starts getting on his nerve, too. With the boy being away for three-quarters of the year, Alberto forgets how he can be just as bitchy as his mother. He'd say it runs in Luca's family, but Grandma Paguro looks like the most chill woman he's ever encountered... On the other hand, who knows what she was like in her youth.

He breathes out and elaborates:

"Your parents are adults. Have you never considered that they  do  know about money, at least from your grandma? They might just choose to stick to exchange policy due to social norms underwater."

Luca seems taken aback.

"I guess..." he mumbles, "that might be true."

"So," Alberto continues, "it's not a new concept for them. Just a different realization."

Luca sighs.

"They still work more than before. Now that I spend most of the year in Genova, who's taking care of the fish? You said it yourself: Giuseppe keeps swimming off, and frankly, I'm sure Monalisa's eaten at least some of the fry. And who's helping mom with the winter preparations? On the phone, she's always cheerful and assuring, but I know how much work she has to do now that I'm gone. Not to mention I helped dad with fishing and gardening — how is he able to make his stupid beads and earrings  and  feed off the family?"

Luca sighs again. Alberto isn't sure of what to say, so they swim in silence for a few moments.

"I mean. I know how," Luca suddenly continues. "He used to have plenty of free time. But that's the point!" he turns to Alberto helplessly. "They don't have free time anymore!"

"Neither do you," Alberto points out reasonably. "Last time we talked over the phone, you vented about how you're done with studying and how you want to get back to being an uneducated shepherd."

Luca flushes and looks away.

Cute.

Alberto wants to remind him of his letters where he complained about "too much homework," "stupid maths," and "senseless literature essays. Oh, and a majestic quote "why would I need to study Italian if I already speak it" end of quote line.

But as he is about to embarrass Luca even more, they hear Mrs. Paguro's voice calling for them and hurry inside.

"Hey, mom," Luca hugs her and moves on to greet his grandma. Mr. Paguro is nowhere to be seen this time.

"Luca, cocco," Mrs. Paguro shirps. "Hello, Alberto, tesoro."

"Mom, where is my suitcase?" Luca demands.

"Next to your bed, cielo," Mrs. Paguro replies, swimming over to her son and styling his hair slightly.

Luca pulls away from the touch.

"I need to take it back, mom. The seawater is not good for human clothes."

Mrs. Paguro looks concerned.

"Is it not now? Where will you keep it, then?"

"In Alberto's room. He's okay with it."

Mrs. Paguro looks at Alberto, and he nods.

"Okay. What will you wear, then? I haven't sewn any new clothes for you," she worries.

"It's okay," Luca hurries to the bedroom. "I'll wear my swim trunks."

Mrs. Paguro looks a bit lost but quickly gets hold of her bewilderment.

"Luca, it's all good and that, but I have something important to ask you!" she yells to the other room.

Luca swims out with his suitcase in hand.

"Yes?"

Mrs. Paguro sighs and closes her eyes at this sight.

"Cocco, I wanted to ask you..." she opens her eyes as if just changed her mind. "Would you like to accompany your father to the crab show today?"

Luca shakes his head.

"Not in the slightest."

"Are you sure?" Mrs. Bianchi asks again.

"Positive."

"Good then. Because I would like that very much, and I need you to look after the fish. They got new fry just last week, and you know how Monalisa is."

Luca sighs and looks at Alberto meaningfully.

"Sure," he breathes out. He doesn't look anywhere near enthusiastic. Alberto's guess is that while Luca isn't looking forward to this, he realizes what he was just saying when they were swimming here and doesn't want to quickly change his opinions. Even though it's normal for his age. Alberto is kind of an expert himself — he was 15 last year, after all.

He stays to keep Luca company, and they spend the rest of the day doing chores. In the afternoon, his parents come back from the crab show, smiling widely: they've won. After that, it's routine: help with the renovation, bring some tools to Mrs. Aragosta, weed the beds, and so on. And while Luca maintains his moodiness, they have a good time talking and joking around and making fun of each other.

In the evening, Luca asks if he can stay at Alberto's again because he needs to take his stuff there and because they've made plans to keep Alberto company while he's on duty tomorrow and so it would be easier to just stay over. Mrs. Paguro sighs but lets him go with a tight hug and a smile. Alberto wonders if she's realized that her son has grown up and wants some more independence and personal space. It certainly seems so: her previous overprotectiveness is gone, and what's left of it is warm hugs, understanding, and helpfulness.

Massimo is more than happy to have Luca over again. All four of them eat dinner together, and then the boys carry Luca's suitcase upstairs to Alberto's room and flop onto his bed. It was a busy day, and Alberto can barely feel his limbs. He just wants to lay here for some time, with his eyes closed and with Luca by his side.

Apparently, Luca feels the same way because his breaths become slow and regular, and when Alberto turns his head to his right, he finds the other boy asleep.

He examines Luca's face for some time. How his mouth is slightly open and how his cheeks are rosy pink. How a few strands of hair stick to his forehead in the heat of the room, and how his lips look puffier in his sleep.

He does not catch the moment when he falls asleep.

Chapter Text

He wakes up in the middle of the night.

He looks around the room, dark and mysterious, and finds that everything is in place.

What woke him up, then?

That's when he hears a soft sniff next to him and feels someone's hands squeezing him tightly around his belly.

Oh yeah. Luca.

Alberto looks down and finds the other boy's head nuzzling his side and hands swirling around his waist. Luca sniffs again and moves his head slightly. Alberto can barely see in the dark, but he makes out a frown on the other's face.

Right. That was probably the reason.

He feels a sudden urge to hug Luca back — and so he does. He puts one hand on Luca's shoulder and back, and the other one — on top of his head, massaging his scalp and fiddling with his hair. Luca's frown slowly goes away, and Alberto breathes out, relieved.

They lie like that for some time, but then it becomes somewhat uncomfortable. Alberto attempts to change position, props himself up on his elbows, and turns from his back to his side.

And meets Luca's eyes.

His heart skips a beat, and he stops breathing on exhale for a moment. Luca's eyes are so close. In the darkness, it's hard to read his gaze, but he definitely doesn't look sleepy.

Alberto's eyes slide down uncontrollably and linger on the boy's lips for some reason. Their faces are so close together; if he tries hard enough, he can almost feel Luca's breaths on his...

"'Berto?" Luca half-whispers.

His insides feel funny. This is the smokiest voice he's ever heard—

"Why are you awake?" Luca asks, not moving away.

He slowly looks back up. Were Luca's eyes always this dark, or is it the poor lighting?

"I think you woke me up," he whispers back honestly.

"Sorry."

He feels something weird in his lower abdomen and quickly pulls away.

"'S okay," he croaks, flopping onto his back. Luca doesn't move. "So... do you want to lie property this time before sleeping?"

This time Luca... sighs? Sniffs? Sobs?

"I don't think I can go back to sleep," he mumbles.

Alberto turns his head to look at him, concerned.

From this angle, some light reflects on Luca's eyes, and Alberto finally sees — the boy barely holds back tears.

"Luca?!" he jerks and moves back on his side, balancing himself up on one elbow and instinctively leaning towards Luca with one hand.

The boy's face contorts, and he lets out a sob.

"I-I had a nightmare..." he manages to say in a cracked voice before bursting into tears.

Alberto freezes with his hand spread out inches before Luca's face. His chest hurts.

"W-why are you crying?" he whispers, wide-eyed, and instantly realizes how stupid the question is.

"My parents..." Luca chokes on his words and cries even harder.

Alberto holds his shoulder awkwardly.

"Hey..."

But Luca jolts and moves to sit up. Alberto can understand: it's easier to cry when tears don't flow right into your nose. Speaking from experience.

He sits up as well. Luca hunches his shoulders, crooks his back, and covers his forehead and eyes with his hand. He is shaking visibly.

"Hey," Alberto leans closer and holds both his shoulders firmly. "It's okay now. It was just a bad dream. You're safe now." He thinks for a moment. "And your parents are, too."

Luca inclines forward and rests the top of his head against Alberto's chest.

His heart races. He wonders if it's because he's worried about his friend.

He pats Luca on the head and rubs his back. He can't come up with anything worthwhile to say.

He doesn't know how much time passes before Luca's sobs become less violent, and he starts speaking quietly.

"It was so real. My parents... They looked at me with such disdain. We were at home, and it was destroyed, and it was  my fault ," his already shaky voice cracks, and he sobs. "And I couldn't change back into sea folk, even though I was underwater, and then I realized humans can't breathe water and started drowning, and it was  so horrifying —"

The last words sound more like a wheeze, and Luca chokes and starts crying again. Alberto sits closer to him, embracing the boy in a tight hug. Luca buries his face in Alberto's chest and tugs onto the back of his shirt. His crying is muffled now, but Alberto can still feel the heat of his breaths and the wet of his tears.

"Shhh..." he mumbles soothingly. "It was just a dream. It's okay now. You're okay."

He rocks Luca slightly back and forth, purely on instinct.

They sit like that, entangled, for some time. When Luca calms down, he pulls away a little bit, sniffs, and rubs his nose.

"I'm sorry..." he murmurs weakly, looking up into Alberto's eyes.

His heart clenches.

"Don't be," he says. "Everything is alright."

He wants to hug Luca again but can't. Not when the boy pulled away first.

"Now your shirt is ruined," Luca chuckles, weirdly shaky and separate.  Off .

Alberto shakes his head.

"I can wash it. It's no big deal."

Luca looks down and stares at the nook between Alberto's collarbones. Sobs again.

"Thank you."

He feels warmth spread all over his body and can't help but smile.

"I'm always here for you."

Luca smiles and rubs the rest of the tears out of his eyes.

"There was also a five-headed dragon in a smart suit, and he was running for mayor," he says, shaking — from silent laughter, this time. "Though it wasn't related to my nightmare at all."

"Woah," Alberto chuckles. "Five heads are far too many for a mayor."

"He was also wanted for tax fraud," Luca giggles.

"Your dreams are weird."

"I know, right."

They don't move away from each other for several more minutes. Then, Alberto's eyelids become too heavy to keep them up, and he suggests going back to a horizontal position. Luca nods, and they lie down on the bed. This time properly: under the blanket, not on top of it, and with their feet actually on the bed, not hanging somewhere above the floor.

They lay next to each other, and Alberto can't calm his madly racing heart despite the exhaustion.

"'Berto?" a timid whisper comes from his right.

"Yes?"

For a moment, there is silence. Then, Luca mumbles very quietly,

"Can I snuggle next to you?"

"Sure," he says in a voice that would totally crack to a weird high-pitch if it was a year earlier.

Luca moves closer and snuggles up to his side. He is still shaking a little bit.

Alberto rolls to his side and hugs him tightly.

"It's okay. You're safe."

A moment of silence, and then a barely audible

"I know."

****

"Well, fratello," Giulia muses as she throws her arm over Alberto's shoulder. "Spill."

"What?"

The three of them are walking down to the beach. Giulia carries rolled-up beach mats, and Luca has a bag with snacks, water, and two books — for him and for Giulia. Alberto has nothing except for his whistle, a cap, and sunglasses. Everything else he usually leaves at the station, because first — why would he want to bring an aid kit or a rescue buoy home, and second — none of the equipment really belongs to him, except for this whistle that he refused to take the job without.

"Well, you've been acting super-weird since we came," Giulia looks up comically as if thinking. "All these wistful smiles with nothing to smile about, dozing off and daydreaming... And staring into nowhere. You are always staring somewhere! Spill. Do you have a crush?"

What?!

"Oh my god, Alberto," Luca elbows his side excitedly. "Do you really?"

Does he? He does not, does he? He does not. No, he does not. All this behavior can be explained easily by... exhaustion! He's been acting strange because he's been exhausted. First, because he was anxious about seeing Luca again. And Giulia. And then, because it has been two hectic weeks with his duty and working at the restaurant. And when he did have days off, his friends wanted to spend time together, so he had to go hang out with them, or Massimo would require his help. Oh, and he had to monitor the fish routes. Last Sunday, he had, in fact, forgotten about it and had to go on his underwater raid the following Monday after work instead.

So, yes, exhaustion. But the things he's been feeling... You can't blame exhaustion for this inexplicable longing he feels, and for how weird his heart moves sometimes, and for how he is hot one second and then suddenly cold the next one. He's already thought about it. At first, he decided he might be sick. But he measured his temperature, and it was all good. He measured his heart rate and blood pressure like they taught him on his lifeguard training — they were within normal, too. But sometimes, he could swear his heart was beating so fast it could jump out of his chest.

"Alberto~," Giulia drawls. "Look, you just did it again! Come on, who are you thinking of?"

"Um," he frowns. "No one."

"Oh, come on," Giulia rolls her eyes. "Tell your precious sorella. And your precious best friend. We demand to know."

Alberto glances at Luca and feels his cheeks get slightly warmer.

"Okay, well, I was thinking of how my behavior can be explained by immense tiredness I've been dealing with since you guys arrived."

"So now we're the ones to blame for your crush?" Luca says in an overexaggerated offended voice. Alberto turns and looks sullenly at him.

"I don't have a crush," he insists.

"Sure you don't," Giulia pats his back. "You just have weird surges of fever from time to time."

"What?!" Alberto startles. How did she know?!

Giulia laughs at his reaction.

"You think no one can see your reddening face? Or will you say you have flu or rabies or something?"

Does he really blush so obviously? He must really be sick, then.

"Rabies? Only because I'm not a human doesn't mean I have a dogs' disease."

Luca snorts.

"It's not a "dogs' disease," stupido."

"Whatever," Alberto shakes his head. "I don't have anything. Not rabies, and not a crush."

Giulia wants to say something to continue teasing him, but they are at the beach, and a girl's voice is calling for them from a distance.

"Alberto!"

Well, for him, specifically.

"Sara!" he waves and smiles as the girl runs towards them.

Giulia takes her arm off of Alberto's shoulder, and Luca turns to him with a question in his eyes.

He sighs.

He'd forgotten about Sara, to be frank. They haven't seen each other since their first and last encounter. Come to think of it, he's almost always on duty, and she hasn't come to the beach during his shift in two weeks even once?

When they finally reach each other, he notices how she looks even tanner now. Or is it that her hair is fairer?

"Hey," she breathes out and looks at Giulia and Luca by his sides.

"Hey," Alberto replies.

It's a little bit awkward.

Then Giulia elbows his side and shoots a meaningful glance at him, Sara, and herself.

"Oh!" he realizes. "Um, Sara, this is my sister, Giulia, and this is my friend Luca."

Sara beams and extends a hand to greet them both.

"Pleasure," she says in her cute American accent.

"You're not from here?" Giulia raises her eyebrows as she shakes hands with Sara.

The girl chuckles.

"No, I'm from the US. But my great grandparents are Italian, so technically..."

"That's why your Italian is so good," Luca steps closer and also shakes her hand.

Sara flutters her eyes and touches her chest coquettishly, flattered.

"Why thank you," she curtsies.

Instead of letting go of her hand, Luca acts along and bows slightly, and brings it to his lips, putting a gentle peck on top.

Sara giggles.

Alberto's stomach hurts. He's suddenly annoyed but can't figure out why. He grinds his teeth and clenches his fists, and feels his face heating up.

Luca glances at him and chortles. And Alberto's face probably gets even redder.

And then they walk together the rest of the way. Sara chats amicably with Giulia and Luca about her journey here, her relation to Portorosso, and how her grandparents have an Italian bar back in the US. Alberto is confused about this sudden surge of annoyance and keeps silent. He hopes he looks thoughtful or something because it's better to appear as a daydreaming weirdo than as a rude jerk.

They pick a spot closest to the lifeguard station, where Alberto's got to spend the next several hours. Giulia rolls down the beach mats while he walks to the station to grab his hip bag. When he comes back, he freezes again.

His heart stops, as do his lungs, and he gulps heavily to start breathing again.

Luca in swim trunks.

Luca in swim trunks unbuttoning and taking off his shirt.

Luca in swim trunks taking the glasses out of a case and putting them on.

Alberto's insides swirl as he catches himself staring.

Giulia looks up and lets out a high-pitched squeak.

"Jesus, fratello, you are as red as a tomato!" she shakes Luca, who'd been busy finding a needed page in his book, by the shoulder.

Luca turns to look at him and bursts out laughing.

Luca, who looks gorgeous in his large square glasses with a thick black frame.

"I-um," Alberto's voice is suddenly hoarse. He clears his throat and looks around. "Where is Sara?"

"Her dad called her when you were at the station," Luca tells him with a mischievous grin. "Why? Do you already miss her?"

"What?" Alberto frowns, unsure of what Luca's insinuating.

"Oh, come on," Luca teases. "We've all seen how totally jealous you got when I kissed her hand."

"Um, no, I didn't," he crosses his arms.

"You so did," Luca's grin grows wider. "You got as red as now, and you looked like steam was about to come out through your ears."

"Sara?" Giulia seems contemplating. "But I thought you liked—"

He doesn't like where this is going! Think fast!

"When!—" his voice cracks weirdly, and he clears his throat before continuing, "when will you stop with these jokes?" he interrupts her irritatedly. Well, fake-irritatedly; in fact, his heart is beating so fast in a panic right now that he's afraid everyone on the beach will hear. "Vespa was a love of my fourteen-year-old self, and it's long gone!"

"I didn't—" Giulia frowns.

"Yeah, I'd rather you started treating my feelings with respect instead of bullying me for my past love," Alberto shuts her up before she says something he  really  doesn't want to hear.

Luca looks at them and, making sure they weren't arguing, asked carefully,

"So... Do you like Sara, then?" And Alberto doesn't know. Does he?

He tries to think about the girl. She is... alright. She's fit, and her hair looks nice, and she likes water. She seems amicable. She knows real superheroes.

On the other hand, there is all this... something. Something going on since she came to Portorosso and disappeared for two weeks. Something he feels when she's not around and something simultaneously familiar and confusing. Something he feels when he looks at—

"Oh my god, look at his face!" Luca giggles. "He's totally smitten!" Alberto is concerned about Luca's ability to read people's facial expressions.

"You're impossible," he sighs. "Enjoy your—" he glances at the cover of Luca's book, " White Fang . I need to get to work."

Giulia frowns at Alberto, like she wants to ask him something, but doesn't say anything. He chooses to ignore her and leave.

He walks to his stool, which is barely a meter away and flops onto it.

"Just don't spend the whole day staring at a certain girl," Luca teases. "You have other people to take care of."

"Shut up, nerd," Alberto retorts lazily.

Luca's right, though. He has other people to worry about.

But he still spends the rest of the day ruminating.

****

This afternoon, he is free. There is another lifeguard on duty, and he only needs to come to the restaurant at six. He went fishing with Massimo in the morning, but now he was as free as a wind.

Which is why he went to the beach with Giulia to meet Luca there.

And they were going to just chill for a bit because his days are so busy he rarely gets a chance to actually talk to his friends.

So how did he end up like this?

As in standing on an impromptu volleyball pitch, watching the ball flying over an impromptu net, and getting ready to strike.

They are playing two on two: he and Luca versus Giulia and Sara. They've put up two sups with a fishing net tied in between and drawn the bounds of a "pitch" on the sand. Sara brought a ball, and it is currently three to one with the girls' team leading.

"It's yours, Scorfano!" Luca yells as he passes the ball to his side.

"Got it!"

He runs and jumps to hit the ball. It's not as easy as he imagined: the sand is loose and makes it hard to jump efficiently, and the timing is a bit off: the ball is a little bit to his right when he hits it.

And it is another out.

Luca groans, frustrated.

"You stupid fish!" he turns to Alberto. "You can't receive, you can't serve — what  can  you do?"

"I've never played volleyball in my life!" Alberto yells back. "I need some time to adjust!"

"Adjust, my ass!" Luca rolls his eyes and turns to the girls, who are both grinning victoriously. "Can't we call someone to play three on three? I can't do this."

Alberto is a bit hurt. Or maybe not a bit.

"Well, we could..." Sara frowns.

"But there's no one here," Giulia shrugs.

"Well, let's make them come, then," Luca decides and turns back. "'Berto, you know where Guido and Ciccio live, right?"

"Not fair!" Giulia walks over to their side of the "pitch. "If we call them, let's call Francesca and Sofia as well so that we maintain gender equality."

And so they go on a not at all mundane adventure to retreat each of their friends from their houses and ask them to come and play.

Guido is not at home — and that's for the best because they haven't made up yet. And apparently, neither they've done with Ciccio. Who is more than happy to join their game.

Francesca is spending the end of June in Rome, but Sofia is at the restaurant. Her mom lets her go, and the six of them finally walk back to the beach.

The girls are getting along remarkably well: they've only just met each other, and all three of them are chatting like old friends. However, neither Luca nor Ciccio are eager to start a conversation, so they just walk a bit behind in comfortable silence. And maybe overhearing what the girls talk about.

"Sara is pretty," Ciccio says suddenly when they are far enough so that the girls can't hear what they say.

Luca chokes on air and bursts out laughing. Alberto tries to decide if he can find Sara pretty.

...

Maybe?..

"Why?" Ciccio turns to Luca, who's hysterical.

"It's just— that Alberto— Oh Sealord, I can't," Luca laughs so hard he actually has to stop and hold onto his knees. When he catches his breath, he finishes: "Alberto likes her."

And he's back to giggling madly.

Alberto rolls his eyes.

"Seriously?" Ciccio turns to him now. "I'm sorry, then. I didn't know."

"What?.." he asks, confused as to what the boy is apologizing for.

"Good luck with her, mate," Ciccio pats his shoulder.

Oh.

"Um... thanks," Alberto replies.

Well, if Luca's so sure he has a crush... What if he does? After all, Giulia also said that he was acting strange, and he  did  feel some weird possessiveness when Luca met Sara for the first time... Maybe he needs to trust his friends on this.

His stomach hurts.

When they come to the beach, the sun is at its peak. It's too hot to play in shirts and jeans, so they take the clothes off — they have swimsuits underneath. Very far-sighted.

"Girls look even hotter in swimwear," Luca breathes out as they walk to their part of the pitch to start a game.

"They do, don't they?" Ciccio agrees dreamily.

Alberto doesn't say anything. He tries to put together "hot" and "girls in swimwear" — but when he thinks of "hot," his mind deviates to the pictures of slim, pale legs and slightly gangly arms sticking out of the sleeves of a too-big T-shirt and large rectangular glasses and—

"...can you do that, Scorfano?"

He pulls himself out of his thoughts and realizes he's missed the whole conversation.

"Do what?" he asks dumbly.

Luca and Ciccio groan simultaneously.

"I will be a spiker," Luca repeats annoyedly. "And you can try setting the ball, okay? Ciccio will receive and send it to you; you need to pass it to  me ."

"Got it?" Ciccio looks him in the eye.

"Yeah."

He can do this, right?

It soon turns out that not really.

He tries to send the ball to Luca, but it flies in an entirely different unpredicted direction, and Luca can't even reach it sometimes. They still manage to lend several hits, but he gets discouraged and loses interest when they propose to "just play without keeping score." So he leaves to sit and watch.

He has a good view of all five of them from where he's seated: the pitch they made is not too big. He watches the girls gather to discuss how they should take turns to still play two on two. Are they really that pretty in swimsuits? Giulia is the tallest of them; her messy red hair is loose and makes her look even taller. She doesn't look any different, but maybe it's because she's his sister. Then, there's Sofia: she's a bit shorter, and her hair is in a bun, her swimsuit is one-piece, and it's nothing special, either. She usually wears tight shirts and skirts with tights — even her silhouette seems not too different.

And then, there's also Sara. The shortest of them, she is probably more than half a head shorter than Alberto. Her fair hair is in a ponytail, and her swimsuit is more of a bikini. Now,  this  is somewhat interesting: while there are many women in bikinis in magazines and on the beach, it's not the most common thing to see. The way it shows the belly, the legs, and the chest all together... really catches your eye.

But is it  hot ?

Alberto watches as the girls send Sofia to keep score, and the girl comes closer to him, smiles, nods, and turns to look at the pitch and draw points on the sand.

They start playing, and he tries to observe his heart. When you find someone hot, you must be feeling something different, right? It's like when you find that one pasta that you like more than any other. Or when that one special song echoes in your very soul while all the others are just sounds.

But he watches the girls play until the score is ten to ten, and he doesn't feel anything.

Then Sofia goes to play, and Sara is keeping score. She also smiles at Alberto and crouches to flatten the sand with her hand. Alberto notices her breasts almost falling out of her bra and wonders how old she actually is. He has yet to ask but can only guess that she must be older than Giulia and Sofia.

The game starts anew, and this time he focuses on the game more. What's the point of ruminating about girls' hotness when he doesn't feel anything? Maybe, he's just not ready yet. Or maybe he'll never be ready. He can spend the rest of his life on his own just fine. He'd help Massimo with fishing and with their future car, and he'll support Luca and Giulia when they go to university, and he'd go traveling once he can earn enough money on his own. And he wouldn't need any girl by his side. Just Luca would be enough — together, they'd travel all around the world, just like they used to dream. They would visit all the amazing places Luca'd told Alberto about, and they would try all the dangerous and exciting things, and eat all the weird food, and have the time of their lives.

Warmth spread all over his chest. His lips form into a smile involuntarily, and his eyes drive off towards Luca. Luca, who jumps and strikes the ball right in between the girls, making them look at each other, lost and confused.

"Nice one, Paguro!" he cheers.

Luca turns to look at him and beams.

His heart skips a beat.

Sweat makes Luca's skin glisten and shine, and his hair is wet and messy. He waves his hand to Alberto, and Alberto waves his suddenly insanely heavy hand back.

The game continues, and he is left to contemplate this weird feeling he's just had.

When it's time for him to go work, he gets up.

"Well, nice hanging with y'all," he says as he's about to leave. "Bye!"

"What?" Luca drops the ball. "Wait! We'll come, too, right guys?"

Luca looks at the others, and they all turn to one another, unsure.

"Oh," Luca says. "Well, it's even better this way! You guys have fun; I have something to talk to our pescatore about."

And with this, he's waving everyone goodbye and jogs towards Alberto.

And Alberto is pleased and touched but also confused.

"You wanted to tell me something?" he asks Luca as they're walking away.

The boy grins.

"Have you seen the way Sara looks at you?" he starts. "Probably not. You were too busy daydreaming about her."

He waves his hand dismissively, and Alberto is even more confused and slightly annoyed: why does he keep talking about that girl?

"What do you mean," he mutters disinterestedly.

"Man, she's totally into you!" Luca turns to him excitedly. "It's your chance, fratello, you gotta make a move!"

Alberto stops dead, dumbfounded.

"...What."

Luca scoffs.

"Look, if you're so dense, I'll clear it for you: Sara likes you just like you like her, and you have to ask her out. Come on, you big doofus, work your brains."

Alberto frowns but starts walking again. His job won't wait.

"Why do you keep insisting that I like her?.."

"Oh please," Luca waves his hand dismissively. "It's so obvious. Didn't Giulia already explain how you get all dreamy and pensive sometimes? Oh, and you were totally staring today."

He was only staring because he was trying to figure out what the hell they mean when they say girls are hot! Jesus Christ, it's not like he's  in love  with anyone!

"Anyway," Luca continues. "Here's my plan: we'll pull an "operation Giulia" on her."

"We what?.." Alberto asks without a tinge of enthusiasm.

"You're gonna wait at the docks, and I'll take her there and leave under an excuse, and you'll have a chance to talk to her alone!"

"That didn't work out as well last time," Alberto points out.

Luca seems to think it over for a moment, and then his face lights up.

"You're right! We must improve our initial plan!"

"Your plan. Luca, I don't—"

"I have a perfect idea for this. Oh, it's going to be amazing! You're going to get just enough awkwardness and romance, and it'll go perfect!"

Luca almost jumps at the end of the sentence.

And no matter what Alberto says, there's no way he makes his friend change his mind. At least not in such a short time: they're already at the restaurant.

"You're on duty tomorrow, right?" Alberto nods, and Luca beams. "I'll come to meet you when you're off. Prepare your ass, cuz it's going to be freaking awesome."

Luca doesn't tell him the details. Only grins and leaves.

He walks into the restaurant more confused than he's ever been in his life.

****

When morning comes, and his alarm goes off, Alberto doesn't even open his eyes. He grabs the alarm clock blindly and turns it off, turns to continue lying on his back, and sighs.

He'd hoped this morning won't come.

He's been dreading this day since yesterday's evening, yet he can't quite put his finger on why exactly. He likes his lifeguard shifts, and he enjoys coming to the beach. It's summer — his favorite season. His friends are in town for the next a little over two months. However, Giulia is spending more time than before in her room, doing her summer reading and writing letters. She's also made a habit of taking the phone to her room on weekends to speak to someone back at school. Alberto makes a mental note to pester her about it later.

And Luca...

Luca's been acting strange recently. He's still the same most of the time, but sometimes he does weird things or says weird things... Like this whole "crush" thing, which he totally made up. He is going to try to play matchmaker today, and when Alberto remembers this, a wave of annoyance washes over him.

He sighs and gets up.

At around nine fifty, he flops onto his stool and stares at the water. The weather promises to be merciful today, but there are not many people here yet. He takes out his book on motors and starts reading.

It's difficult to focus, as his mind is trailing off all the time. Thirty minutes in, he grinds his teeth at another intrusive thought and shuts the book.

"Storms," he whispers as he shakes his head and looks around again.

Technically, he is not supposed to read books or do anything else while on duty. But the people are not even in the water yet, so there's no life threat or anything. Besides, nobody is actually watching him, and he  will  be paid no matter what. So it's all good.

Hours go by in what seems to be elaborate torture. Finally, his colleague comes and takes his place, and he goes for a final swim around the bay since he has some time.

That's when he meets Luca.

"Oh, I was about to swim up!" the boy greets him cheerfully.

"Were you now," Alberto smiles back.

They finish the swimaround together and then go back to the beach. Luca starts walking to the town, and Alberto follows.

"You know, Alberto," Luca says somewhere in the middle of their conversation about the possibility of sea monsters existing in other seas. He puts his hands into his pockets and looks up at the massive clouds swimming across the sky. "It's really a good thing that you finally like someone. I mean..."

He pauses, trying to find words, and Alberto glances at his contemplative face out of a corner of his eye. Luca opens his mouth but continues speaking only a moment later,

"...You always mention how you're one year older than me, you know?" He glances back at Alberto, and the latter looks away quickly. "But I've already been in love and got dumped, even. All I need now is the experience of actually being in a relationship."

Silence falls for a few minutes. Alberto wonders if he should say anything, but nothing comes to mind, so he just waits for Luca to either continue or change the topic.

"I've been worried about you, you know!" Luca finally exclaims. "How do you ever intend to learn about girls if you never like one?" he looks at Alberto somewhat angrily. "You've mentioned Sofia and Francesca in your letters only, like, twice! I basically told you about literally every girl in our class! So yeah, I'm really happy for you, fratello."

Alberto looks down on the road under his feet and shrugs.

"Okay..?" he says quietly.

For some reason, he feels fake. This conversation feels fake.

"After all," Luca goes on nonetheless, "it's only natural for us to be enamored with an opposite-gender now, right? I mean, don't you wanna know what it's like in a female world? We'd never ever in our lives be able to experience or even understand it. Can you imagine?"

Alberto shakes his head in response to Luca's questioning look: he really can't, and honestly, he doesn't want to. Is it that natural to be so engrossed with this topic? Come to think of it, all his friends have been like that for quite some time now, and before he met them, he didn't have much experience with his peers, so it really is a mystery whether there was something wrong with  him  or with all of  them . If you consider what is more likely, does this mean he must also be this absorbed with girls? Does this mean that if he isn't, he's some kind of an abomination? If the first is natural, then is he some kind of an ungodly abnormality?

He is suddenly struck with a particularly uncomfortable thought.

"Luca," he starts, "do  you  like anyone, then?"

Luca turns to him with sparkles of amusement in his eyes.

"Oh, everyone," he grins. "I am interested in everyone if you know what I mean. No person in particular, but just curious about it all, you know? We've studied the differences in anatomy in class this year, but the real thing is much more intriguing."

He elbows Alberto's side playfully and turns back to the road. Alberto has trouble keeping the conversation going, but Luca doesn't seem to need him: he keeps blabbering about how he and his classmates once tried sneaking a peek into the girls' locker room before a PE lesson, and he caught a glimpse of someone's underwear. Alberto wonders what's so fascinating about underwear and girls' locker rooms and why Luca is so  obsessed  with this topic.

They continue like that — one ruminating and one babbling — until they arrive... at the docks? Why?

The answer is non-verbal: Sara is sitting at the far edge of the wooden dock with her feet in the water. She doesn't see them, but Alberto's heart sinks. He'd hoped Luca'd forgotten all about his stupid "plan." But them coming right where the girl is sitting just can't be coincidental. It just can't.

"Oh, look who's here!" Luca says in such a nonchalant manner that Alberto starts to doubt his initial mental accusations. "Let's go say hi."

Their steps draw Sara's attention, and she turns to them with a welcome smile.

"Hey, ragazzi," she moves from the middle to the side to make space for them to sit.

"Hey Sara," Luca says as he sits on the further side.

"Hey," Alberto smiles politely and sits in the middle.

He grabs the edge of the wooden planks tightly and breathes out to try and calm down his panicking heart.

It's... sort of uncomfortable.

Luca must've noticed his nervousness because he chuckles softly and glances at him.

"So... what have you been up to today?" he asks Sara.

"Oh," she doesn't even turn her head. "This and that. Cooked, cleaned, read a magazine, went for a jog... This stuff."

She sends a quick glance towards the boys but quickly averts her eyes and keeps silent. Alberto thinks it's off.

"Hm..." Luca waves his legs, splashing some water. "I helped my parents with our seaweed garden. What about you, Alberto?"

"Um." Why is he asking a question he already knows the answer to? "I've been on duty the whole day. Nothing really happened, if that's what you mean."

This conversation is  so  tense.

Luca hums again. They sit like that for some time, no one saying anything. Alberto wonders what excuse Sara has to be here if it wasn't Luca who invited her, but when he finally decides to ask, Luca stands up and stretches his arms up.

"Well, it's been nice seeing you guys, but I've gotta get home by six, so..."

He grants them two with a glowing smile and jumps into the water.

Alberto stares for a moment, realizing what just happened.

"Wait, what?!" he yells when he does. "We just met, you jerk—"

He is about to jump into the water, too, when he feels a hand on his shoulder.

"Don't," Sara says simply.

He turns to her with a silent question. She sighs.

"Don't follow him. That's not what he wants."

She smiles apologetically and shakes her head slightly. Alberto frowns.

"How do  you  know what he wants?" he asks, moving his arm out of her grab.

"He told me."

What?

Apparently, his face shows perfectly well how dumbstruck he is because Sara huffs and explains:

"He told me about your whole plan. Well, his plan. And, if you didn't get it yet, it doesn't involve you running off."

"Er..." he says, not finding the right words to express his confusion.

"Questions?" she tilts her head, amused.

"Um..." he shakes his head, trying to clear up his thoughts. "So... Okay. What... What was it that the plan did involve?"

"Oh. You really don't know," Sara raises her eyebrows in apparent surprise. "Well, he told me to come to wait for you guys here and that he'll bring you here and leave under a false excuse."

"What?!" Alberto's face contorts with bewilderment. "That was his plan for— Ugh, never mind."

He sighs and rolls his eyes. Why did he ever think Luca was smart?

"Is there something wrong?" Sara asks carefully.

He sighs again.

"No, it's just— It really doesn't matter. Would you be so kind as to continue? What were we supposed to do next?"

He sees Sara get a little awkward.

"Well..." she starts. It's clearly a challenge for her to find the right words. "Luca said... And I thought... And you always..."

Oh no. No, no, no. It's not what he thinks this is.

"Ugh." She says, frustrated, looks up at him, and says in an unexpectedly firm voice, "I like you. And I think you like me."

Or it is.

He freezes right there and then, with his body half-turned to face the girl and an expression of absolute shock. Gulps.

Sara looks down at her hands and picks her nails nervously.

"At least, I've been told so... And I thought... Well, you sometimes look... And you're very nice and..."

She shuts her mouth and purses her lips as if not willing to say any more jibberish.

Alberto panics.

What should he say? He was not expecting this! He had this intrusive thought that Luca's jokes might someday turn into something worse, but he didn't expect it to be so soon!

Can he just reject her politely? Just like Giulia did last summer with Luca?..

But then again, she did it because she liked girls. But it's expected to like girls for  him , and Luca said... If he rejects a girl now, it will look like he's some kind of a weirdo, like he's not like other guys, like he's a freak. What if they stop talking to him if they find out he doesn't like Sara? Or any girl, for that matter?

Or maybe, he does. What if he does like her, but he hasn't realized it yet? He has never had feelings before. Perhaps, they are more subtle than he'd expected, and maybe he's going through the "falling in love" stage right now? Then he can tell Sara he likes her and finds the needed feelings later! It will probably develop with time, right?

Besides, it's not like he  doesn't  like her. She's a very attractive girl, her hair is shiny, and her face is... symmetrical? He can find beauty in it. In her. He can learn to like her. Eventually. Right?

"I-um," he clears his throat. His stomach hurts, but he ignores it. "I like you, too."

He doesn't.

"You do?" Sara looks up, and her eyes are full of surprise and hope.

"Sure," he scratches the back of his neck.

She smiles and looks away again. Alberto notices her cheeks get slightly pink.

"That's good," she says. "You looked so bewildered I thought I was mistaken."

"Yeah, heh," he turns away as well and looks down at his scaly feet in the water. "By the way, I was meaning to ask you for some time..."

She looks up at him, confused.

"How old are you?" he blurts out with a chortle.

She laughs.

"I'm seventeen. You?"

Oh. Well. It is a good thing, right?

"I'll be seventeen in a few months."

"Cool."

They sit like that on the edge of a dock and watch the seagulls dive for fish. A warm hand covers his own, and he lets go of the wooden plank and relaxes.

This summer is going to be one hell of a ride.

****

Them dating does not change much, opposite to what Alberto'd expected. They still hang out with all their friends; altogether, they go dancing next to the music machine in the trattoria, buying gelato, and playing beach volleyball. Alberto plays, too, and despite being terrible at first, actually learns to strike and pass and even receive quite well. In his opinion, at least.

But he'd be lying if he said nothing's changed at all.

When Luca asks him about that evening that he'd spent with Sara — mostly chatting about insignificant things — and Alberto tells him the result of their little meeting, there's a blast of emotions.

"Scorfano, fratello, this is amazing!" Luca squeals almost like a girl and bounces on the balls of his feet excitedly. "Congrats!"

"Yeah..." Alberto scratches the back of his neck. "Thanks."

And that is their last emotional conversation one-on-one.

After this, they only talk when they're in a group, which is not a rare occasion — but Alberto still feels like their relationship has somehow changed and like he lacks something important. Again. Like in winter. Only this time, Luca is here, next to him, and yet he is so distant it doesn't mean anything. No, it actually makes it worse.

Alberto gets irritated for some reason whenever his thoughts trail off to this.

And Giulia is no better. One day when he's bored, he comes to her room and asks her about what she's so busy with.

"Homework," she responds dryly, not even looking up from her writing.

"Show me," he says and comes closer. She immediately covers the paper with her hands and scowls at him.

"Get out, stinky fish face," she hisses.

"Oh come on, let me see—"

But he can't reach for the paper as Giulia slaps his hands, stands up, and shoves him out of her room, closing the door right in front of his nose.

The next time they talk is when Alberto gets home from his shift at the restaurant. It's already dark outside, and he's exhausted: he's just spent one half of the day fishing and another one serving and cooking food. He drinks a glass of water and splashes some water from the kitchen sink onto his face to freshen up, walks upstairs, and notices a phone cord plugged in an outlet in the corridor. The wire goes to Giulia's room, and her giggling is coming from inside. Curious, Alberto walks to the door and overhears her chatting amicably over the phone. The door is not closed because of the phone cord, and he can easily peek inside to find Giulia lying on the floor with her legs up against the wall, the phone next to her. She is smiling up to the ceiling and swirls the handset cord around her finger dreamily.

"Yo, stupido!" he calls loudly, and Giulia jerks and sits up. "What are you doing? Venting to your mom about how you can't get a new dress or something? Hi, Mrs. Marcovaldo."

Giulia frowns.

"Wait a second," she says into the handset.

Alberto sniffs exaggeratedly and makes a grossed-out face.

"EW! What's that smell?"

Giulia squints at him.

"What..?"

"Why do you smell of fish, Giulia, Jesus Christ, when did you last shower? Eww—" he continues dramatically.

"The hell are you talking about? Get out of my room!"

"I get it you're a teenager," he says, watching as she stands up with the handset in one hand and clenching a fist out of the other. "But have you heard of hygiene?"

Giulia gets comically red in the face, and he decides that it's time to wrap up.

"Oops," he says suddenly in a quiet voice. "Sorry, I forgot it's me. I smell of fish." He shrugs and smiles widely. "Because I am one!"

"You!—" Giulia steps closer to push him out, but he dashes out first and sprints to his room, laughing madly.

"Suck it, redhead!" he yells before closing his door.

Well, that was fun. And since the walls are thin, he can now stay very quiet and overhear Giulia's reaction some more.

She sighs. He hears a dull thud — she's probably sat back down on the floor.

"Sorry. That was my stupid fish brother," she says into the phone. "He's an idiot."

Huh. Yeah, Alberto can't argue with that.

"Um, I guess he's about your age?" Giulia says in an unsure voice.

Which leaves Alberto to do the math. He must be about the age of the person on the receiving end, which means... She  isn't  talking to her mom?!

Well, shit.

****

One day when they all hang out at the beach together, someone else joins them: to Alberto's surprise, it is none other than Ercole himself. He is not alone, as Guido is walking in front of him.

"Hey, guys," he greets everyone while Ercole stands behind his back, looking at his feet awkwardly.

"Hey," Sofia smiles back at him. Wow, she is pure.

"What is this jerk doing here, Guido?" Alberto frowns.

"And with you again," Ciccio adds.

Ercole looks like he's hiding behind their friend, and Alberto wonders when Guido has grown as tall as him.

"So, um, remember how I told you our families are friends?" Guido forces a smile and picks on his nails, nervous. "I am sorry, again, for the record."

Ciccio scoffs but says nothing.

"Well, it was kind of inevitable for us to run into each other again at some point," Guido waves his hand, not looking at everyone in particular. "So we talked, and... Well, Ercole has something to tell you guys."

He smiles apologetically.

"I have no intention of hearing what he has to say," Giulia turns away and crosses her arms on her chest. "But I  will  stay here in case you—" she turns back and glares at Ercole, who looks like a wet kitten, "—try to hurt any of my friends."

Ercole chuckles nervously, clears his throat, and breathes out.

"I-um..." the words fade on his lips, and he grits his teeth, clenches his fists, and continues with more confidence: "I am sorry for my behavior in the past. I was being rude and inconsiderate towards all of you—" he glances at Sara. "Most of you..." he mumbles, confused to see a new face. Then he shakes looks back at the ones he knows. "I recognize that I've dealt a lot of damage, and you all must really hate me, but I now humbly ask for your forgiveness and hope we can eventually put a stone on our past."

Guido steps on Ercole's leg, not even looking at it, but the older boy only forces another smile.

"And I am an immense buffoon and look like a pathetic old catfish," he babbles.

Alberto notices his ears going red.

Guido smirks and glances at the others, who have their moment of utter shock, but then start cracking and, finally, burst out laughing. Giulia holds her knees and wheezes, trying to catch her breath. Even Sara giggles, not fully getting the importance of this moment but appreciating someone calling themselves a pathetic catfish.

"Holy seas, Guido, did you make him do it?" Luca snorts.

"This is the most fun I've had this summer!" Francesca cackles.

"The summer's just begun..!" Ercole starts, annoyed and embarrassed at the same time.

"So?" Guido asks them with a hopeful smile. "Can we all just make peace and move on?"

The laughter dies down as quickly as it started. Giulia steps forward.

"I am a just, kind person," she says, arms crossed and looking threatening. Ercole gulps. "And I will not repay you with the same bullying or whatever. I can see that your apology is... mostly..." she waves her hand. "...Sincere. But it will take more than a simple apology to make me forgive and forget everything you've been doing to us for  years ."

Ercole looks down awkwardly.

"I know that, Sp— Giulia," he smiles at her sheepishly. "Sorry, old habits die hard."

"You need to do something else," Alberto raises an eyebrow. "You owe a personal apology to some of us."

Ercole looks at him and at Luca.

"Err... Yes, I know that, too," he starts. "I'm sorry I treated you two like prey. You are both good people, and I shouldn't have done that, and—"

"What?" Alberto frowns. "No, I didn't mean us! Although this is nice, too, we accept it, right Luca?"

Luca gives Ercole a pitiful look and nods.

"I meant Ciccio, Visconti, Ciccio!" Alberto takes the said boy by his shoulders.

Ercole looks taken aback.

"Oh."

He says.

After a long procedure of personal apologies — because after these, Sofia and Francesca wanted to hear theirs as well, and Giulia made Ercole apologize again because "her memory is not as good as it used to be" — everyone seems satisfied. Ercole announces that he, in fact, has ordered pizza for everyone in  Trattoria Bianchi , so they all walk there to get their free food.

"You can't buy my trust with food!" Giulia yells at Ercole the whole way there, but she is the first to finish her pizza when they finally arrive.

Their banter is almost non-stop, but this time it doesn't sound hostile. Ercole still rolls his eyes and makes weird faces, and Giulia still blows raspberries at him, and yet the overall atmosphere in this little group of friends of theirs is oddly peaceful.

Alberto walks hand in hand with Sara while Francesca retells the whole story behind Ercole's sudden apology. He feels as if he doesn't have a worry in a world.

****

Luca comes to his room to do his homework because apparently, writing underwater is not very convenient.

Alberto tries to help but fails and decides to try and get Luca to do something together instead. It doesn't work: Luca politely rejects.

"Go hang with Sara," he tells him before getting stuck in his study book once more.

Alberto sighs and goes to Giulia's room.

"Hey sorella, wanna—"

"Did no one teach you how to knock?!" Giulia throws a pillow at his face, which he catches and tosses back onto her bed.

"Yeah, no," he retorts. "Wanna go hang? Or just talk, I dunno."

Giulia gives him a look and turns back to her writing.

"No."

"Oh, come on, what's with you two and your papers? There's so much to do outside, and..."

"Oh yeah?" Giulia turns to look at him once again. "Like what?"

He thinks for a moment.

"Like walking, or, or swimming, or sailing... Oh, and we could eat gelato..."

Giulia sighs.

"Alberto, I am busy. Go fulfill your childish whims with your new girlfriend."

"But I don't wanna do it with her. I wanna do it with you guys!" Alberto whines.

Giulia's face crumples.

"Fratello, do you want to say you regret being in a relationship with her? Because it certainly sounds like that."

He gulps and looks away bashfully.

"N-no, I just..."

"I think you should go. Maybe think over and figure out your feelings once and for all," Giulia turns back to her paper. "I'm too caught up in my own shit right now to deal with yours."

And that is how he ends up on the beach alone. He sits next to the water and draws circles on the sand before they're being washed away by the waves.

He thinks of what Giulia said, and there is s weird feeling in his stomach, like indigestion or something. Was it really a wrong choice to get into a relationship? He does realize that he has zero feelings for Sara at this moment, but wasn't he hoping it'll pass? He just needs to wait long enough and to prove that he can act like everyone else.

He hears familiar voices nearby, turns his head, and finds Ercole sitting several meters to his left. There is a girl next to him — and they sit so close and act so... lovey-dovey that there is no room for doubt.

Storms, if even Ercole — the jerk that has barely redeemed himself! — can look so in love with someone who is apparently just as smitten by him, Alberto can undoubtedly do the same. He just needs more time, more patience, and a little bit of self-convincing.

The couple rubs one against another other so obviously that Alberto rolls his eyes. Relationship or not, they should really slow down on the PDA. And are they? Oh devilfish, they are sucking each other's faces off. Ew.

He turns away, not willing to watch any more of this theatrical groping.

Later, when he meets up with Luca, Guido, and Ciccio over some late evening fishing, he tells them about what he'd witnessed, and they all just go "aw, how cute, good for them." They suppose the girl might soften Ercole's heart if she hasn't already and follow this line of discussion for the next several minutes, while Alberto wonders if that's them who are weird or if there's something wrong with  him . He would really appreciate it if someone told him how such extreme PDA could be cute or why they think having a girlfriend can fix their problems.

Maybe he doesn't understand because he's been raised on the island. Maybe it's something you learn about from the community, and he just lacks that experience. Maybe if he pays attention and tries hard enough, he'll get it eventually.

But time goes by, and he still doesn't. He puts all his effort into figuring out the ways of being a good boyfriend because what else is he supposed to do now?

They go on dates, and it is nice all the time, but he notices strange looks Sara gives him and feels out of place and utterly confused. So when the thoughts of there being something wrong with him get practically unbearable, he comes up with a wild solution to fix this.

****

They kiss.

It is an innocent, chaste first kiss of an inexperienced teenager, a soft peck on the lips. When Alberto opens his eyes, he can see Sara restraining herself from pulling him back and kissing him again. She bites her lower lip and smiles awkwardly.

And his heart falls.

It's not like he didn't like it... Well, if he's being honest with himself — no, he really didn't! That is what scares him the most: he knows he was supposed to feel something. He had hoped he would feel something!

But he didn't.

And there goes his last plan on resolving his inner conflict.

He smiles back at her but feels the smile being crooked and not even reaching his wide and possibly terrified eyes. He can't see his own face, but Luca and Giulia kept telling him that his facial expressions are usually obvious and that only drives him crazier: what if Sara sees how frightened he is and figures him out? Figures out this lie he's been keeping up all this time?

He doesn't want to hurt her. She's his friend.

And he pulls her back in and presses a kiss on her lips: much more passionate than the first one. She gasps and opens her mouth, inviting him in. Not having ever kissed in his life before, he copies her movements, which feels very awkward. Is it supposed to be this awkward?

She chuckles into his mouth, tilts her head, and cups his face, taking the lead. Her tongue is in his mouth, wet and warm and moving — and he feels so, so weird.

He doesn't know what to do. Sara notices he's not moving and pulls away. His face must be very red because she smirks.

"First time?"

He nods and looks away. Damn it, his face is like a cooking stove. Can it get any hotter?

"You're steaming," Sara chuckles.

"...Sorry," he mumbles in reply, slouches, and drops his head. "I'm sorry."

For not feeling anything towards you , he wants to say.  I thought this will make me feel something, but it doesn't , he wants to tell her.

But he doesn't.

And she pats his back as if she understands.

"Want me to teach you?"

But, clearly, she doesn't.

****

"You  what?! " Luca shrieks.

"We kissed," Alberto repeats.

They are on the so-called treehouse: Luca's finally remembered that they are actually friends and need to spend time together, just the two of them, and came to have a sleepover. The nights in July are warm, and this particular evening they don't see a single cloud in the sky. Having assumed that it won't rain overnight, they decide to drag their blankets to the treehouse and spend the night there.

And, of course, it leads to Alberto sharing his "first dating experience," as Luca keeps repeating. And that, consequently, leads to Luca now shaking Alberto by the shoulders and whisper-yelling,

"Fantastica!"

Alberto takes Luca's wrists in his hands and removes them from his shoulders, which feel like they've been burnt.

"Yeah, yeah. It's not that big a deal. Now be quiet, or we'll wake everyone up."

Luca cups Alberto's face, not bothering to remove the other's hands from his own wrists.

"Not that big a deal?!" he hisses. "Alberto, this is massive! I am so excited I want to—"

He breathes in, not closing his mouth, but doesn't finish his sentence.

Alberto gulps. His cheeks are practically on fire, and his toes clench as his body suddenly goes rigid.

Luca smiles madly and looks Alberto in the eyes, looking as if he's just won a lottery and is so excited he can't believe his own luck. And for some reason, Alberto finds this so beautiful it almost hurts. It hurts because he realizes he can't look at it forever.

Finally, Luca pulls back, and Alberto lets go of his wrists. Luca flops down onto his back and breathes out, a large smile still present on his lips. Alberto also lies down, but on his side — to watch his face.

"This is amazing," Luca whispers. "I'm so happy for you! And a little jealous," he giggles. "I mean, it's cool and everything, but I haven't kissed anyone yet, and..."

He glances at Alberto, who breathes in, surprised.

"...I really envy you," Luca finishes.

They keep silent for a minute, both in their own thoughts. Alberto tries to understand what exactly there is to be jealous about; it's not like his experience was very pleasant or unique or anything...

And he decides to ask.

"There really is nothing special about it," he mumbles, unsure of how to phrase his doubts. "It was just a kiss."

Luca huffs and turns to his side to face Alberto.

"Did you use tongues?" he asks in a serious voice.

Alberto can bet his knife he's blushing.

"...Yes, but—"

"Then it wasn't  just  a kiss," Luca refutes.

Alberto knits his eyebrows and purses his lips.

Luca lets out a sigh.

"'Berto," he explains. " Just a kiss  would be if you've exchanged a peck, and that's it. And that would be awesome, too, but  this —" he waves his hand vaguely, "is a whole new level of awesomeness. It's like in movies! You know, the ones where they kiss passionately and then take off their clothes and—"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Alberto quickly interrupts, not wanting to hear the rest of it. There's a huge lump in his throat, and he feels itchy all of a sudden. "I got you."

Luca smirks at him.

"So..." he drawls, "you're the expert now. Care to give me some advice, teach?"

He grins and winks, and Alberto's heart stops beating.

"Um..." he chokes on air and coughs.

Luca moves closer.

"Maybe a practical one, eh?" he whispers with a rather seductive smirk, to Alberto's mind, and looks up and down from the other's eyes to his lips.

Or is he imagining things now?

"Luca..." he frowns.

"Show me how to do it, Alberto," Luca whispers, moving so close their noses almost touch.

Alberto's insides feel funny. His lower abdomen is swirling like it's in a washing machine, and he's on the verge of tears because of this mixture of pain, fear, confusion, and...

Something else.

Luca moves yet closer, and their lips brush over each other.

He gasps and sits up.

His head hurts. No, his  everything  hurt. His lungs hurt like after a long run, and he breathes in rapid and shallow breaths; his heart beats so fast and so painful that it might as well break a rib or two; his ears are full of some weird high-pitched noise, and there is a weird tension in his shorts.

He looks around. Luca is right beside him, fast asleep. His mouth is slightly open, and he has his own hands under his cheek instead of a pillow, which is tossed aside.

He sighs, shakes his head, and immediately holds his forehead — it was a bad idea to move it so fast with a headache this big.

Of course, it couldn't be real. He knew it couldn't be.

****

By morning, the weird dream he had feels almost nonexistent. Like... like a dream. Completely gone out of his mind. Poof.

He wakes up because of the sun shining so violently that it has to be imprisoned for attempted murder through arson. Or something. Why is it so hot?!

He sits up and rubs his eyes. Looks around. Finds Luca already sitting next to him with a book in his lap and glasses on his nose.

Pretty .

He shakes his head, waking up completely.

"Mornin'," he greets Luca in a raspy, sleepy voice.

Luca looks up over his glasses.

"Morning, casanova," he scoffs quietly. "Had a nice sleep?"

Alberto raises an eyebrow.

"Yeah, why..?"

Luca starts laughing with his mouth closed. They don't want to wake anyone up at this ungodly hour.

"Any Sara dreams?" he asks, cackling and looking all over Alberto. "Looks like you're hitting  that  period of puberty."

He tries to hold his laughter but doesn't do a good job at it.

"What..?"

Alberto looks down to where Luca is looking and understands everything.

He's all gross.

"Fuck!" he hisses and moves to get down from the tree. "Don't go anywhere and forget you've seen anything," he tells Luca before leaving.

"Yeah, no, I'll save this memory like a photograph!" Luca whisper-shouts to his back.

Alberto tries to make as little noise as he can while sneaking up into his room. Luckily, the sun rises at, like, five in the morning, and no one in their right mind would wake at such an hour unless they are as unfortunate as he and Luca, and the sun is out to murder them in their sleep.

He successfully reaches his room and takes off his shorts and underpants frantically. Eww. When did  this  happen?

He shoves the clothes under his clean ones to wash them later. (He's yet to find out how bad of a decision that is).

It looks like it's going to be too hot for jeans, so he puts on his swim trunks — he's got to go to the beach later on anyway. He has another morning shift today.

But that is later, and now he gets back to the treehouse where Luca — with his adorably messy hair and very stylish glasses — is still reading his book.

"Welcome back to the land of reality," he scoffs instead of greeting.

Alberto rolls his eyes.

"Yeah, uh-huh, and who was the one telling me it's only natural for us in this age?"

Luca giggles because he can't laugh out loud. Alberto gives him a disapproving look and moves to his blanket to lie on top of it.

"Will you tell me about your dream?" Luca sets the book aside and leans forward, putting both his hands in front of his crossed legs. "What'd you see?"

Alberto flops on his back and puts his hands behind his head. Images flash before his eyes, but he blinks — and they're gone, like a piece of dust stuck in his eye.

"Nothing," he replies honestly. Well, almost honestly.

"Ugh, if you're too embarrassed to tell me..." Luca tsks. "Nevermind. When are you planning to go for stage two?"

"What?" Alberto turns his head and frowns. He has no idea what a "stage two" is.

"Oh, you know," Luca waves his hands as if holding a sphere in both his hands and being ready to throw them at Alberto. "Boobs touching and stuff."

Alberto frowns only deeper. The hell is he talking about?

"The guys at school call it "stage two,"" Luca explains. "You've kissed, so it seems like a logical continuation."

Alberto is hardly sure he feels comfortable with the idea. But... it's not like this whole romance thing was playing out just as he'd expected it to. Maybe he just has to follow the plan, and everything will suddenly make sense in the end?

After all, his only source of information on this topic was and still is only Luca. He doesn't really know anything about dating, feelings, or what's right or wrong with this, and Luca seems confident about what he says.

He looks like kind of an expert.

"I-I guess," Alberto starts, awkwardly looking away. "As soon as I get the chance?"

"That's the spirit!" Luca punches air excitedly. "And when you do, you gotta tell me everything."

****

The next week he waits for an opportunity. Or, rather, he spends his time ruminating on how to do...  this ... best.

He isn't too sure he actually wants to. But it also seems like a logical continuation of their relationship with Sara and his own growth as a man? Maybe if he persists, if he goes all the way, if he follows this "script" that seems to be universal for every boy on this planet, he will actually feel normal again?

He's sick of his own mind. He's sick of a constant headache from all the thinking, and he's sick of this feeling — like he is different. Like everybody else knows what they're doing, and what they want, and what they  feel , and he is such a freak who doesn't feel anything to his girlfriend but feels weird things to—

By the end of July, he looks like a squeezed lemon. First, Massimo tells him to sleep more instead of helping with fishing. Then, Giulia tells him he has eyebags the size of a football. And when Sara sees him after two days of being apart (he was working and thinking and working some more), she gasps and cups his face:

"Pesciolino, what's with you lately? You look terrible! You work too much, please, take some rest!"

Alberto can see genuine concern in Sara's eyes. Following some strange, immediate will, he covers her hand with his own, leans in, turns his head to bury his nose in her palm, and...

Cries.

He doesn't know, or, more probably, doesn't want to think of  why , but something breaks inside him the moment he sees her eyes and realizes how much she actually cares. It's unfair, the way she invests so much into this relationship while he doesn't have anything to offer. She is so emotionally involved, and he just plays along, and that makes him feel like a con, a fraud, and such an asshole.

And he cries, because that is the only way for him to apologize and to tell her how he feels, but of course, she only gets more worried and blames exhaustion for his behavior. She walks him home, holding his hand in hers and whispering comforting words. He doesn't listen. His heart is so heavy it hurts, and there's a weird ringing in his ears, and his eyelids feel like they're made of lead. He doesn't look in the mirror when they come home because there is no one in this world right now that he hates more than himself.

He spends his day off sleeping instead of his date. Sara stays for a bit while he tries to fight back the exhaustion — he feels terrible for leaving her like that — but his body can't take any more stress, and he collapses on top of his bed shortly after they enter his room.

When he wakes up, the sky is pitch black, and there is no one in his room but himself.

And then another week passes, and he tries to rest more, just as all his friends keep advising him, but it doesn't really help. To stop thinking of how he is a failure both as a sea folk and as a member of human society, he takes on more shifts both at the restaurant and at the beach, and the only free time he has left he spends helping Massimo (whenever the man doesn't tell him to go to sleep instead) and seeing Sara. Which has turned into another job of his, if he's being honest with himself.

They walk, holding hands, they talk about stuff, they go swimming together, and she seems to really like his sea monster form. They even kiss — more often than not, it is she who initiates the kissing, and that makes him feel only more terrible.

He is a horrible boyfriend.

And so, to fix that, he asks for a day off next Sunday. Mrs. Bianchi is more than happy to let him go for not one but two days, as he's been a huge help, and she is worried he'd overwork himself. His lifeguard colleagues are of the same opinion, so when he looks at his timetable — the one he's drawn in his notebook — it looks like his last two weeks of August are a lot less busy than the previous month overall.

He decides there's no harm in spending some time with his friends first, so on Sunday, the whole gang gathers to play beach volleyball, eat gelato and try to paddleboard on Sara's SUP. It's all of them, and Alberto can't be happier: it's heartwarming to see Guido and Ciccio not being bullied by Ercole, whose girlfriend actually bullies him far worse, and it's lovely to see all the girls get along. Francesca, Sofia, Sara, and Giulia drag Ercole's girlfriend to a small round plastic table further from the shoreline and tell her something apparently hilarious because she bursts out laughing and glances at her boyfriend with a sort of mischievous look in her eyes.

It's nice.

And, of course, Luca is also here. Luca is sitting on the sand right next to him but looks at the other boys. He is telling them that fantastic story of how he scared away the school bullies.

"You could just ask Ciccio to beat them all up for you," Ercole scoffs.

"He was not in Genova!" Luca protests.

"But if he were..!" Ercole insists.

"I would definitely do that for you, Luca," Ciccio agrees.

"Me too," Guido adds. "They deserve a good old beating."

Luca laughs.

"I don't think you guys could have," he says. "No offense, but they have grown into giant human bulls, and there are three of them while within you two—" he squints at Ercole and adds after some contemplating, "you  three , there is only one bull."

They all look at him in confusion, and Luca elaborates:

"It's Ciccio."

"Oh, no way!.." Ercole throws his hands up, frustrated.

They keep discussing how they could totally beat up Luca's classmates, and Luca laughs and brushes his shoulder against Alberto's. Alberto, previously looking at the waves washing over his toes, flinches and turns.

His heart flutters, and his mind goes completely blank.

Because Luca laughing is the most beautiful sight he's ever seen in his life, and he can't look away. Maybe it's exhaustion, but he can swear every sound in the world is muffled, and every color is dull but the color of Luca's eyes. And maybe he is just having a stroke or something because there is no way in hell his heart would react this way to such a simple thing — to his best friend, laughing and casually moving his hand to cover Alberto's.

"Scorfano?" Sofia's voice calls from somewhere far, far away.

He shakes his head and turns to see her.

"What..?"

"You've been blacking out again," the girl frowns. She stands on the road with her back turned to the beach, and he is standing in front of her. And the voices of the others are coming from behind his back.

When did they get here?

"Hey!" She snaps her fingers in front of his eyes. "Stay with me here! What's wrong? It's not even tiredness anymore. Are you sure you're not sick?"

Shit.

"I'm fine," he winces and waves his hands. "I'm fine. I just... Where are we going?"

"Home, stupido," Sofia crosses her arms. "We're walking everyone home."

What? Then does that mean...

"Where's Luca?"

Sofia squints at him.

"Here. He said he'd go after we walk the girls home. Why?"

Alberto's eyes widen, and his cheeks flush.

"Um, no reason. Just thought his home is in a different direction, that's all," he blurts out.

Sofia frowns but shakes her head.

"Let's go, then."

He prays to all gods for a normal, not tomato-red, face and follows the group.

There is something else he needs to do, he remembers suddenly.

"Hey Sara, wait up!" he calls and jogs to his girlfriend.

"Alberto," she smiles at him. "I saw you're troubled by something and didn't want to interrupt your thoughts. Have you solved whatever was bothering you?"

He bites his lip.

"Yeah, haha, about that... Would you meet me at the docs tomorrow? Say, at..."

"Oh," she interrupts. "I promised dad to visit a museum in a city nearby. But we'll be home by five or six, I suppose, so I can meet you then."

"Oh. That's great, then," he smiles back. "I'll wait for you at the same spot."

She beams and takes his hand.

****

The next evening Alberto comes to the docks a bit earlier than he initially planned. He figures he needs some time to gather his thoughts and calm down.

He sits at the end of the dock and draws circles on the water with his toes. The sunset used to be at almost nine in the evening, but now he knows he only has a couple of hours before it's dark. He takes his time watching the yellow disk moving slowly through cirrus clouds and listening to the seagulls squawking.

A baby seagull is chasing a larger one, screeching, trying, and failing to mimic the call of the adults. The others are floating on the water surface and diving from time to time and do not pay any attention to the nestling. They must not have a worry other than food in this world.

Alberto gets so absorbed in watching the birds that he doesn't notice steps behind him. So when Sara covers his eyes with her hands — "Guess who!" — he jolts and falls into the water.

The girl laughs: he does look hilarious, no doubt. Though when he pops up from the water and gives her that look, he notices her blushing, and, moreover, something weird flickers in her eyes. He'd never seen such a look before.

He shrugs it off and pulls himself up onto the dock.

"You look..." Sara mumbles, touching his head scales, "... fantastic."

Her gaze is so intense it almost looks like she can't see him. Alberto flushes to the compliment and scratches his cheek nervously.

"Thanks?" he says. "Listen, ahem, I wanted to show you something today."

Sara falls out of that strange trans immediately and looks into his eyes, intrigued.

"It's, um," he looks away. Is this really a good decision? It must be. How will he ever become a real man if he chickens out in front of his own girlfriend? So he breathes in and stands up. "Come with me."

Sara doesn't say anything, only takes the hand he offered, picks up her backpack, and stands up as well. Together, they walk to Massimo's boat and get in.

"Where exactly are we going?" Sara asks after five minutes of silent rowing.

"My secret hideout," Alberto smirks. "But you can't tell anyone about it — that's why it's secret. Promise me?"

She looks confused but doesn't ask any following questions. Just smiles, nods, and says,

"I promise."

It's kind of amusing to watch her hesitate on whether she is making the right choice — but there's not much she can do now that they're already so far from the shore, really.

They go to the island. Alberto hasn't brought anyone but Luca there, so he thought it would be somewhat romantic or whatever. He hopes he won't regret this decision.

"This is it!" he announces, helping Sara out of the boat. "My hideout."

"The tower?"

"Yep."

"Cool."

He shows her what's rest of his stuff, and of course, she notices the marks on the wall. And, of course, she asks, and he averts his gaze and mumbles something about it "not being important." She doesn't push.

They walk up to the top of the tower right on time to witness the sun slowly diving into the ocean waves. Alberto brings a beach towel from the inside — after all, Sara is a girl, and it would be inconsiderate of him to let her sit on the cold stone floor. Even if it's not that cold after being exposed to the warmth of the sunlight for the whole day.

Sara accepts his concern anyway, smiling and sitting on one side of the towel on the stone wall. She puts her backpack between her knees and her chest and hugs her legs.

"It's beautiful," she breathes out.

He sits next to her hesitantly.

"Yeah."

"You know what else is beautiful?" she asks with a note of playfulness in her voice.

He suddenly remembers dark brown hair, falling down in soft waves, chestnut eyes, and a comically round nose. He remembers green scales and blue fins and a raspy voice saying, "what're you staring at?"

He shakes his head. This is  wrong . He's sitting here with his  girlfriend , and she is flirting with him, and he  has to  flirt back! This is what a responsible boyfriend would do, and this is what a normal  boy  should do.

So he turns to Sara, forces a smile, and says,

"You."

The girl's ears redden, and she giggles, covering her mouth with a fist. Feeling content, Alberto turns back to look at the sun, which is already halfway down. They sit in silence for around a minute, and then he hears the rustling of clothes, and suddenly instead of the sunset, there's skin in front of his eyes, and there are soft lips pressed against his own.

He flinches but quickly realizes this is perfectly normal behavior. They have kissed once before, so why not again?

He parts his lips and kisses her back. This doesn't feel right. Why doesn't it feel right? This is just like in all the movies: they're outside on a sunset, and they are, supposedly, in love. Maybe it's because he isn't leading? Well, that can easily be fixed.

He leans forward and smirks into the kiss, looking up at her. She has her eyes closed, so he takes her by the waist and lifts her up. She lets out a small gasp and grabs his shoulders when he moves her so that she now sits in his lap.

"That's much more comfortable," she smirks before leaning in for another deep kiss.

He doesn't feel any better. He  is  leading now, or... or that's what he thinks he is doing. But it still feels kind of... wrong. Maybe he needs to push further? Follow Luca's advice and go down for "stage two"?

So he starts moving his hands down and under Sara's T-shirt. She giggles into his lips and moves her hand further behind his neck. He leaves his left hand to draw circles on her back and moves his left one up and between them. If he goes just slightly up, there it will be — his "stage two."

Just a few more centimeters...

Suddenly, she pushes him away. His heart drops in fear — did he do something wrong? Did he hurt her? Did he make a fool out of himself? Does she hate him now? Well, that would probably be more of a relief than he dares to admit, but...

He opens his eyes and looks at her face, horrified of the unknown.

And she grins and winks.

Then, she bends down and picks up the backpack she dropped before when he lifted her up.

"I have a better idea," she mumbles, roaming through its contents.

Alberto just holds her tightly, so she doesn't slip, which would be pretty easy with such careless movements.

And then she pulls out something in a square shape and glistening in the dim light of the almost set sun.

"Know these?" she asks in a suddenly low voice.

Alberto gulps.

"Is that..?"

He's seen these before when Guido and Ciccio bought a pack in the pharmacy and filled some with water out of boredom. Of course, they also first talked about how they are supposed to be used properly. So yes, he does know these.

Sara smirks and puts one hand on his lap, then slowly moves it up until it covers his groin. He feels pressure in his lower abdomen, and his heart races. Sara rubs her hand against his pants, moves it up, and starts unbuttoning them.

His breathing becomes shallow and rapid, and he feels his face heat up like a frying pan. Yet he freezes: he is so confused he is unable to move a finger.

This is wrong.

But it shouldn't be because he knows that this is exactly what everyone wants, this is exactly what adult men and women do, and this is something he, too, should do to prove to himself that he is not a deviation, not a  freak .

"Now, let's see..." Sara muses as she manages to unbutton his pants and slides her hand underneath. "O-oh, someone's feeling quite impatient already?"

He trembles when she touches him and squeezes.

"Well, fishboy?" she leans in to press a soft kiss onto his neck. He gulps. "Let's have some fun, shall we?"

He is a mixture of fear, confusion, disgust, and physical arousal, which doesn't make it any better.

Her hand in his pants starts moving again, and this is too much.

No. I don't want this.

He pushes her away hastily and with force, and she stumbles upon her backpack. The condom falls out of her hand.

"What..?" she sounds hurt and confused. "Alberto? What happened, caro?"

He doesn't dare look up.

"S-sorry..." he whispers, breathing heavily, and holds onto the stone wall's edge they'd been sitting on. "I—"

"Isn't that what you wanted..?" Sara steps closer.

"I..." Alberto hugs himself with one hand and looks away, not really sure of his emotions. He knows only one thing for sure: he does  not  want to do what Sara wants to do. And, possibly, he does not want to date her, either. This has been a mistake. Maybe she's just not the right girl, maybe if it was someone else, like Sofia or Francesca, or...

He shivers. No, Sofia or Francesca are his friends, and even imagining them in this situation is sickening.

"...Why?" he can hear Sara frowning. "I thought you liked me?"

She takes another step forward and takes his hand.

"Come on, look," she pulls him closer and puts his hand on her chest — on her breast, really — and it is weirdly soft and round and nothing like anything he's ever touched before. "This is my heart—" purposefully or not, but she squeezes his hand, which, in return, squeezes her breast, and Alberto feels like his head is going to blow up because of all these contradicting emotions he's feeling. "—beating for  you . Don't you feel the same?"

He looks up to see her smile and even chuckle quietly. She puts her own hand on his chest.

"See? There's nothing to be afraid of, silly..."

Her hand starts moving down again, but he intercepts it.

"N-no..." he mumbles. His eyes are teary for some reason, but he is certain he won't cry. He doesn't even want to. It's probably just something in the air, like smoke or something.

She stops for a moment and then recoils.

"What is wrong with you?" she frowns. "I can see and  feel  that you're aroused. Are you..."

He purses his lips so that they don't start to tremble. And moves the second hand to hug himself more tightly.

"Oh my god. So what, you don't like me? We've been dating for over a month!" Sara yells.

He feels sick.

"I... I'm sorry. I didn't think— I thought—"

"You thought what? That you'd pick me up like some chick just to show off to your little friends?" she scoffs.

"I am sorry, I truly am!" he tries, still not looking up and moving his shoulders up. He wishes he could be a turtle to just! — hide in his little shell and not face all this.

"Wait. Are you..." Sara gasps and stumbles back. "No. Do you even  like  girls at all?!"

He starts and looks up at her quickly.

"What..? Why would you—"

"All this time, since the beginning, I  knew  there was something fishy about you," she gibbers. "But I thought, maybe he's just inexperienced. And maybe he just likes his friends too much. After all, I'm new here, and I'm kind of a stranger; who am I for him to look at me the same way he looks at his best friend, but... Holy shit! You have never liked me one bit, have you?!"

He tightens his toes and clenches his fists. It's suddenly hard to breathe.

"What are you talking about?! I... I..!"

He can't think of anything to say in his defense. But she is wrong! Why can't he prove that she is wrong and he doesn't like...

"Tell me one thing," she says, still standing in an "I am very disgusted by what I see and am ready to run if anything happens" pose. "Do you like Luca?"

He opens his mouth and takes a deep breath.

But no words come out.

He doesn't know what to say. He wants to scream  "NO,"  but something deep down inside of him stops him from making his life entangled in any more lies.

He's been lying for long enough.

Sara shakes her head in disbelief.

"No," she breathes out. "No! Do you want to say that I just spent my summer dating not only a guy who doesn't like me back but with a guy in love with his  best friend ? And male, on top of that! No."

She picks up her backpack.

"And this," she picks up the condom as well and tosses it to Alberto. "This is for you. Have fun not catching AIDS."

He flinches as the condom brushes his cheek and stands up.

"Wait, Sara, you don't understand—"

He reaches out for her hand, but she flinches away and shudders.

"Don't touch me," she hisses, not looking at him. "I'll sail myself back, and the boat will be safe and in the same place. Poor Mr. Marcovaldo, I wouldn't want him to be any more upset when his son is such a sad, gross excuse of a per— you're not even human, though. How could I ever trust you?"

Her voice breaks and Alberto does feel sorry — it is, after all, his fault for getting her into this. For lying to her and for tricking her into thinking he likes her, and for making things complicated by kissing her and taking her here...

She rubs her eye; was she crying?..

"You played me, didn't you?" her voice trembles. Yes, she is definitely about to cry.

"Sara, I..."

"You fucking bastard!" she turns back, and her eyes are, as he expected, teary. She looks enraged and hurt and... And disgusted. "Go get raped, you fucking faggot!"

She storms down and out of the tower, and Alberto is left there feeling like he's been punched in his guts.

He falls on his knees and catches air with his lips.

He can't even cry.

****

When Alberto doesn't show up at home after 10PM, Massimo and Giulia started to worry. At 11PM, they went out searching: Giulia went to find Sara, and Massimo sailed to the Paguro family.

Luca's parents immediately swim out to search underwater, leaving grandma Paguro at home in case Alberto decides to come there for some reason. Maybe he just didn't notice how late it is, they say, but there is little confidence in their words.

Luca comes with Massimo to meet Giulia first. When they don't see her at the docks, Luca suggests checking Sara's home to see if Giulia is still there. He proves to be right — they do find both girls talking right outside.

"Oh, papà! Luca!" Giulia turns when she hears their panting. They've been running up the hill the whole time and are both out of breath — one very obviously more than the other. To be fair, Luca's probably the only one out of breath, but he likes to think Massimo is just that good at hiding.

"Giulietta!" Massimo places his hand on his daughter's shoulder carefully and turns to Sara. "I presume, Sara Romano?"

"Yes, sir," Sara smiles.

"Please, do you know anything about where Alberto might be?" Massimo asks her.

"I'll tell you the same thing I'd just told your daughter," Sara responds politely. "We broke up, and I don't know where he is. It's been hours."

Massimo sighs.

"I'd hoped..." he starts but never finishes. "Where have you last seen him?"

Sara seems to consider her answer for a bit and then sighs softly.

"At the docks," she says, looking down at her feet. "And no, I don't know where he might have gone to. Probably to lie to another girl."

She added the last sentence very quietly, so Luca isn't sure if Massimo or Giulia heard it. He did, though, and he frowns: what is she talking about? What did Alberto lie about?

"Thank you," Massimo tells Sara, and they all leave to search through the city some more. He and Giulia talk Massimo into splitting up so that they can cover more ground in less time — and that is how Luca ends up at the docks, staring at the black sea and a dark silhouette of an island further away.

Sara did not look at all sincere about where she'd seen Alberto the last time. And even if she did, there is only one place Luca knows about where the boy could be hiding after a breakup.

He also knows that Alberto hadn't told anyone about his life on the island, that he lied about living underwater just to keep his hideout safe. And Luca respects his wish to have some private space, but now really isn't the time. Of course, he isn't about to go telling everyone; instead, he must—

Dip into the water, and swim as fast as he can.

When he gets out of the water, his heart is racing, and his face is on fire. He doesn't remember ever swimming this fast before. Sure, he's been running on his PE lessons, and he's been playing water tag with other kids in summers — but this time, he really needed to get to his limits.

He holds his knees, catching his breath, and looks up at the tower. There is no light on top of it, no fire casting shadows — and Luca's heart drops. If Alberto isn't there, he has no other place to look for him. What if he's gone? He does have the tendency to blame everything on himself and avoid all contact when something happens. He could have run away as easily as if he had no home at all.

But he wouldn't do that, right? He's been nothing but happy here with his found family; he has a  father  now, and a  girlfriend , and so many friends! And what about his job? Okay, well, yes, Alberto would abandon his job on a whim with no second thoughts. But all the other things... He wouldn't, right?

With an uneasy feeling in his stomach, Luca walks to the tower and climbs to the top.

Wow, déjà vu much?

The room is empty. Luca glances at the wall with marks on it and winces. Why doesn't Alberto cover those, like he did with that Vespa poster? These are disturbing.

He walks upstairs, and it, too, seems empty at first. Until he makes out a silhouette in the dark, right in the middle of a terrace, crumpled down on the floor.

"Alberto?" he steps closer and recognizes what is, indeed, his friend.

Alberto is on his knees, and his upper body is so limp it seems like a miracle that he hasn't fallen down yet. In the dim moonlight — the moon is new, and there's not much it can give to the Earth yet, — Luca sees Alberto's face glistening.

Are those... tear traces?

"Alberto..." Luca bends down and sits in front of him, but Alberto doesn't look up. He doesn't even move, and it is kind of creepy. "What happened?"

Several moments pass before Alberto finally looks at him. Luca tries to decypher his gaze, but it is nothing like he expected: it appears to be a mixture of hatred, confusion, anger, and embarrassment — but mostly disgust.

"Luca..." he breathes out, his voice hoarse like he'd been creaming or caught a cold.

Luca takes his hand.

"Hey, it's okay, it's me. I know what happened with you and Sara, and I—"

Alberto shudders.

"You know?!" his already rough voice cracks, and he backs away all of a sudden.

"Well, yeah, I do," Luca tries to keep his composure and not be affected by this certainly out-of-the-ordinary behavior. "Of course I do, we'd been worried sick, and we looked for you, so we asked... Alberto? Are you okay?"

Alberto clearly isn't: he is shaking so violently Luca starts to worry he'd break into pieces. And he also looks around frantically and then storms out downstairs.

Luca is so taken aback he doesn't register what happened at first. And when he does, Alberto is already running along the beach.

"Alberto! Wait!" he yells and runs after him.

But by the time he gets down, there's no sight of his friend. The traces lead to the water, so that is where Luca goes — but the water is as dark as ink, and he has no idea where Alberto could have possibly swum to and what direction Luca should be chasing him in.

He wonders around for some time, but with no result. He swims back home and tells his grandma what happened, unwillingly giving away the secret of Alberto's initial homeplace, but the old sea folk just chuckles.

"He'll be back," she tells Luca.

****

Alberto feels absolutely miserable. In fact, he recalls only one moment in his life when he's felt equally devastated: when he realized his father's not coming back for him. And even though Massimo says it's because his father is a jerk, Alberto can't shake off the feeling that it is him who was not good enough.

And now, he's got proof. He's always been wrong. That's why his father left him, that's why his mother didn't bother to stay in the first place, that's why Luca left to live in another city, and that's why Sara looked at him with such repulsion. Okay, well, he might be a little bit overboard with some of these... But screw it, he just wants to gather all the evidence he can to prove that, indeed, everyone secretly hates him, and he shouldn't have been born in the first place.

While he does realize half of what he's thinking is a hardly plausible lie, he does feel nauseous when he turns his thoughts to look at himself. Isn't it just marvelous: how he played the girl to try and prove he's normal and maybe fix the not-so-normal parts about himself; how he is such a chicken who can't even stand up for himself in an argument; how he can't even convince himself that he is not... the way he is.

In the past two years, he started coming to terms with what he used to hate about himself. With the help of Massimo and his new friends, he gradually learned to accept his boisterous and short-tempered personality, and he even made friends with Machiavelli — a cat notorious for not liking noisy, chaotic people! And what happened today just feels like a major setback, like all this experience, is just gone, washed away like drawings on a sandy beach.

How is he supposed to deal with this now? There is no way he can right his wrongs towards Sara — there's just too much, and she wouldn't want to talk to him anyway. And even if he could, there's this heavy rock in his chest now that won't go away. The one that appeared when Sara said it out loud and has been there for several hours now. At first, it blocked all the other emotions out and didn't even let him cry his heart out. It got a bit better in an hour or so when his thoughts stopped ruminating around what just happened and turned back onto the people he's hurt. That's when emotions flooded him like a tide, and he shook and broke down, howling and sobbing, and couldn't stop until there were no more tears to shed — his body just didn't have this much liquid in it.

When he stopped shaking, at last, he just sat there, motionless, unsure of what to do next. Going home sounded like the worst option of all. Even if he's making Massimo worry...

And how would Massimo react? The man seemed to not mind Alberto's weird behavior and impromptu wishes and actions. He actually cared, and it was he who accepted Luca and him as sea monsters when the rest of the town was reluctant to do so. He... might understand?

But what about Luca?

He would definitely feel engrossed. So what that he is friends with Giulia, who is literally in love with some girl at their school? It is not the same. And when Luca would find out, he would leave him, like his dad did. He wouldn't want to be friends with such a horrible person, not after finding out that Alberto is...

In love with him.

There, he said it. He confessed. To himself, at least. He does realize that it was most probably the reason he didn't want to have sex with Sara in the first place. Or why he wasn't really interested in any of the girls in Portorosso. Holy seas, he is  so repulsive . It's sickening, isn't it? It's unnatural, and weird, and wrong, and he shouldn't be feeling this way. He shouldn't have feelings, romantic feelings, for his male best friend.

And then Luca comes to the island asking what happened, trying to comfort him... And Alberto can't bear with it. His heart jumps in his chest just by hearing Luca's voice, and when the boy says he knows... Alberto is scared at first, but Luca looks so calm and collected, and for a brief moment, he thinks maybe it's not that bad, maybe he can just tell everything now and... But then he remembers the look on Sara's face. He can't risk it. So he does the only thing he could think of: he leaves.

He swims with no direction or purpose through tons and tons of black water and tries to hold back the tears that come yet again. This is all ridiculous. He has to go back at some point, right? Where would he sleep? Luca is probably trying to follow him in the water. He can't go back that easily. But he could go where nobody would actually look for him.

So he turns back, makes a huge loop over the island, and walks up from the water and onto the beach. The exact same one where he is working as a lifeguard. There is his super cool tall stool, and there is the tiny hut with the equipment. He doesn't have the keys with him to get inside, but he doesn't need them. He can spend the night on the porch perfectly well.

Except he can't, not without waking up frozen like an icicle and shaking like an autumn leaf. August nights in Italy are not exactly Rio de Janeiro, but he would not be himself if he thought this through when he decided to sleep outside with wet clothes on and with no cover. To his defense, he was extremely emotional when making a decision and could have misguidedly judged the weather as acceptable with his blood full of adrenalin.

He ponders a bit, looking at the tide coming and going, and decides it's best to just go home. In a few days, Luca and Giulia would go back to school, so he'd need to explain what happened before that.

He also has to face Massimo... Oh, how he hopes the man wouldn't be too angry with him. Or disappointed. Which is always worse.

He walks the empty streets of Portorosso, stumbling here and there because his legs won't walk properly — he's too cold. When he finally gets home, he finds that neither Giulia nor Massimo is sleeping. They must be on their tenth cup of espresso by now, he thinks briefly before being crushed in the tightest hug he's ever received. He can only guess that Luca's told them about his abrupt leaving by what they say through sobs and neverending "we were worried sick," "please don't scare us like that again," and "we love you so much." Massimo actually tells him off, but only after feeding him some broth to warm him up. Alberto feels as if everything is happening somewhere else and to someone else. Everything is kind of foggy... Is he having a fever?

And then he falls asleep.

He stays in bed for the rest of the day, and when he wakes up, at last, it is already dark outside. Again. He finds a wet towel on top of his forehead and some water on his bedside table. He also discovers a headache when he tries to move, so he falls back onto his pillows and goes back to his fever dreams.

He is sick for the next two weeks. All of his friends visit him — Guido and Ciccio come together with some comics to read, Sofia and Francesca bring some sweets, and even Ercole visits with a broth his mom made specifically for bad colds. Alberto tries to tease him but gets caught up coughing mid-sentence, and Ercole only sighs and holds his hand tightly until the surge is over. Then, he leaves without saying anything at all.

Luca visits every day. He tries to ask what really happened that day, why he broke up with Sara, and why he left with no explanation, but Alberto can't tell him. Whenever Luca touches this topic, he just rolls to his side facing the wall and tells him he's tired. After a while, Luca drops it.

Giulia doesn't push. She brings him food and changes the wet towels on his head while he is asleep, and when the fever becomes less torturous, she just sits there, reading some of the summer books she hasn't finished yet. Alberto appreciates her silent support.

He wants to explain, or at least maybe to come up with another fancy lie to cover everything up, but nothing comes to mind, and he really is tired — of lying. He decides to just leave it be.

He hopes Sara left. After all, she only came for the summer.

August ends, and he is still feeling unwell. He doesn't go to work, and he rarely leaves his room at all. But when it's time for Giulia and Luca to leave for school again, he talks Massimo into letting him go to the station with them.

When he holds Luca's hand for the last time this year, something in his chest hurts so much he wants to scream.

Chapter Text

Luca and Giulia left for school and he was alone again. At least now he had time to deal with his head. He still had his heart make a somersault every time Luca sent a letter precisely for him. But he also couldn't help but feel a painful sting in his chest. A sting telling him it was all wrong and he should stop it. It was just that he couldn't. He really tried, and he couldn't. He just fell deeper and deeper in resentment for himself and in love with Luca.

So the year passed. For his 17th birthday Massimo gave him a harpoon, so he was now an awesome fisherman. He felt very menacing and threatening holding the harpoon. He overheard some guys saying it was the best to work out to get rid of unneeded thoughts, so he got really into working out. He found out there was a sports center for the surfers, and got to train there. It didn't really help, but now he liked himself a bit better. And he was ashamed to admit, but it was really oddly satisfying to look at all those ripped guys at the gym... I don't think I like this idea anymore instead let's make it like he worked out at home but knew there was a gym where Ercole got to work because he had just finished college and he told him gym is where all the girls are. Also they sometimes went fishing together. I must think of a bonding arc with them......

He also took some time and learned more guitar songs, tunes and tricks. He thought about how impressed his friends would be if he learned to play better. This thought gave him the needed motivation to actually make some effort.

One morning he noticed his facial hair started growing rather fiercely. It was no longer just several nearly unnoticeable hairs poking out weirdly from his chin, but it's gotten rather consistent. As much as it could be at such an age, he guessed. At least he didn't have the weird mustache like Ercole used to have.

They bought a car after all, and for Christmas, Massimo and him went to Genoa for a visit. They took Machiavelli with them.

The rest of winter and all spring he was working at the restaurant, learning to drive, and ultimately going for a job as a lifeguard and giving swimming lessons.

That summer was one of the best he had in his life. The first one would forever be the summer they had won the cup and bought the Vespa. This one was, on the contrary, very calm. Giulia started dating that girl from her school, and she was about to come visit in July. Luca had grown into a much taller and much less dangly lad, which was more than many 16-year-olds could have. He seemed more open now and more easy-going and less shy. The life in Genoa really did do him some good, apparently. He behaved with such confidence and was so... complete. Alberto couldn't help but feel like Luca has become his own man, and he doesn't need him anymore... But that wasn't a bad thing. Sure, he felt nostalgic for the times he could play the role of a leader and Luca would just follow him wherever. But he was also happy for his friend, who seemed very happy and content. They hung out like the old times. In three years, for the first time they weren't distracted by anyone's crush and could just spend time together. They went swimming, diving, they visited Luca's family and went sailing, cheered for the kids getting ready to race for the Portorosso cup. Luca and Giulia showed him their schoolbooks and told him all about their year. Giulia was smitten with her new girlfriend, but that was a secret, of course. They laughed and ate ice cream and pasta, and Alberto showed them his lifeguard chair and played the guitar. It actually became an activity he enjoyed — sometimes after a busy day, tired as heck, he just lay on his bed and played his favorite tunes to ease out the excitement in his head.

GIULIA LET ME CUT YOUR HAIR

NO!!!!

GIULIA PLEASE

eh okay wtv.

Then Giulia's girlfriend came, and Luca and Alberto were alone together. Most of the time they were either on Alberto's duty, chilling at the beach or out there in the water, discovering the bottom of the sea. It was the best time in his life.

This one must've been between luberto:

u looked so funny trying to play the guitar last summer lol

wait what? u saw that????

surf - who tf knows

Of course, he couldn't hide all the glances and got flustered each time they accidentally got too close. But it didn't seem to matter: Luca was oblivious (or so Alberto thought), and it was easy to get away with practically anything.

Except for the wet dreams. That part of puberty was THE. WORST. The first time he had one he was so confused and embarassed and very scared — Luca was literally in his room!!! But by the end of that summer he was waking up and just immediately going to the bathroom. It was annoying, but as long as Luca didn't notice it was okay... Right?

They're at the cinema. They watch a horror, and Luca gets scared and puts his hand on Alberto's thigh and squishes it in his emotions. It's suddenly very hot and hard to breath and hos heart races. He doesn't want Luca to stop but at the same time he's going to have a very awkward pants situation if Luca keeps squeezing his thigh. So he takes his hand and intertwines their fingers in a "im here for you dw" gesture.

I actually watched a period appropriate Italian horror for this? It was terrible and I barely remember anything but the fact it was about a cult or smth. They were watching that.

So the fall came again, and it was time for Luca and Giulia to leave for their pre-last year of school. And Alberto once again felt as if a part of him was missing. As if he was not really where he was supposed to be.

The year was dull. His friends had really a lot to study, and thus their letters were scarce. He missed them like crazy. Or, more precisely, one of them. Well, he missed Giulia too, but it was different. He'd gotten used to this feeling, but it didn't make it any easier.

tv, drawing, planning trips and reading magazines

letters abt roller skating and a new fast food restaurant

music collection

playing poker w massimo and sofia and her friend

Giulia actually was writing letters for him directly, since they became siblings and they did grow closer as friends. She asked if he was okay and encouraged him to "be himself and most importantly be honest with himself". He understood, but pretended that he didn't.

Luca wrote about losing his virginity and thinking that Giulia is probably not a virgin either but in a very respectful way. Of course, Giulia would never tell them, and they knew better than to ask — it's fucking 1970s!!!

On his 18th birthday he talked Massimo into letting him get a tattoo. He was thinking about getting one since last year — and this time he was finally sure of what to get. Two hooks forming a heart — trivial and a well-known sign for the love of fishing, but for him... something more. Usually fishermen had their tattoos on their shoulders or legs, so he went for the shoulder. Right where it can be seen most of the time, since he wears mostly sleeveless shirts, but could be easily hidden by a big t shirt if needed.

And summer came, and with it, his friends. And he had a tiny beard and a ponytail by then, and Luca looked so grown-up and mature and was taller than him, and Giulia was not a weird kid anymore. She was still their favorite dorky girl, but she was much more elegant and confident, and it suited her.

and they went to picnics, went to the beach, sailed, alberto played them some tunes and drew them together, they went fishing with luca, they went patroling with luca, he had his guard duty still and they went dancing to the cafe Sofia's parents started.

And Luca taught Alberto to dance a paired dance like waltz or samba and Alberto was entranced.

giulia talks to alberto and he says it's not love it's despair

And it was perfect.

It's Alberto's day off. They planned it beforehand, and this day was reserved for Luca.

They meet at the sea shore and take a boat to go to the island with Alberto's guitar, sketchbook and a pack of cigarettes. They also take some new vinil records to put in a gramophone which still stayed in the tower, a full set of playing cards, and a packet full of sweets for later.

They push the boat to the sea but don't get in. Instead, they race around a little bit — so what that they're not 14 anymore? They are still full of energy, it's a scorching July day, and the water feels much better than the frying pan which the boat is slowly turning into.

They swim over the old cursed fish cemetery — no fish actually takes it seriously anymore, apparently, so it's less deserted than it used to be. They don't mind, but they also don't stay there for long.

They go around the bay and then a smaller circle around the island, dive deep down and jump out of the water just like they used to do when they were kids. They enjoy the cool sea breeze, the comfortable chilliness of the water, and the burning sun. They laugh and they swirl close to each other only to back away instantly, and this weird dance of their weird friendship makes Alberto feel ecstatic and longing at the same time.

They make their way back to the boat at some point, and sail it to the island (more like push it from behind, since getting in seems like too much work). They move all the stuff into the tower and sit under the trees with the guitar. Alberto plays some tunes lazily, not even thinking of any song in particular, more like touching random strings and moving the fingers in familiar sequences and positions. Luca finds the book he'd sent as a Christmas present years back and flips the pages of it nostalgically. They sit together, their backs leaned to the tree trunk, and their shoulders touch. Alberto feels content. He likes this feeling.

They talk about everything and nothing at all. Luca asks him about the future, and he has no idea. They daydream about travelling, and buying a Vespa like they'd wanted in their childhood, or a car, which would be more comfortable now. About Luca attending college and maybe pursuing a career in astronomy, and Alberto is torn between not wanting to let go of him again and also not wanting to leave Massimo here all alone. He asks about Giulia, and turns out she's also still passionate about astronomy and, surprisingly, biology. Especially marine. Though, come to think of it, it's not that surprising, is it?

And one day Luca and Alberto went to the island to just hang there like old times. They stayed there all day talking, sharing stories from their year and discussing their future. It's getting dark, so they make fire and sit close to it. Weird feeling is in the air, but Alberto thinks it's just like always when he's around Luca.

"Crushes are weird," Luca says.

"Yeah. I always act stupid when I'm around my crush," dreamily says Alberto before realizing what he just said.

Luca chuckles. Alberto expects further questioning, like "who's your crush" and stuff. But instead Luca says,

"You're always acting stupid, though."

Alberto flushes and mumbles something about yeah being stupid is my credo but his thoughts are very panicked. Does he know? When did he find out? Did he realize just now and will hate him from now on? Did he come here to say good bye and never talk to him again? Will he have the same disgusted look as that girl had last summer?

"When were you planning to tell me?"

"What?.."

"You know. That you like me."

Alberto felt his heart sink.

"What?!"

Luca laughed, and Alberto thought very quickly on what to do. Should he give in and confess? Should he lie? Should he joke?..

He settled for the last one.

"I mean, if I didn't like you I wouldn't be friends with you," he laughed nervously, "why would I need to tell you?"

Luca gave him a disapproving look and sighed.

"Cute," he said, quietly.

Alberto felt like his face was on fire. He decided to ignore it and pretend he misheard.

Luca looked at the sky and kept quiet. Alberto kept quiet and looked at Luca out of the corner of his eyes.

Suddenly, Luca turned to face him.

"Were you even going to tell me? Ever?" he asked seriously.

Alberto must have been so red he couldn't have not noticed. No, he definitely noticed.

"I..." his voice broke. His heart was beating somewhere in his stomach and he felt so cold and so hot at the same time and he was scared but hopeful but mostly scared. Go away, hope!!! Don't break my heart!!!

Luca breathed out with a smile and looked down at the floor. Alberto didn't know what to do with his hands and legs so he hugged his knees and waited.

"Hey," Luca said after a while. He looked back up right at Alberto, and the latter held his breath. "Remember what you taught me the year we met?"

Alberto shook his head. He felt as if all the thoughts fled leaving him with only desperate fear inside.

Luca smiled.

"You said that whenever you're afraid of something, you have to say "Silenzio, Bruno" and just do what you're afraid of."

Alberto gulped.

"Come on, 'Berto," Luca said with a grin. "Repeat after me. Silenzio, Bruno!"

"S... Silenzio, Bruno. But why?.."

"Louder, Alberto!" Luca encouraged, laughing and punching the air. "Silenzio, Bruno!"

"Of— of course, silenzio, Bruno, Luca, but..."

"I can't hear you, Alberto! Come on, louder! Silenzio, Bruno!"

Alberto was so confused and flustered that he didn't notice the change in Luca's eyes.

"Okay, okay!" he yelled, panicking. "Silenzio, Bruno!!!"

"That's right!" Luca yelled back at him excitedly. "Silenzio, Bruno!"

"Silenzio, Bruno!!!" Alberto yelled too.

"Can you still hear him?" Luca said suddenly very quietly.

"No!" Alberto continued yelling. "I can only hear you!"

"Good," Luca whispered before pressing a kiss on Alberto's cheek.

He waited a bit, and Alberto could feel his hot breath on his cheek. He only pulled back after a few seconds. Looked down, face gentle pink.

Alberto was so confused. What was that? Was it a weird way of saying good bye? Or maybe a token of a great friendship? Maybe humans did that a lot and he just never noticed?..

Or maybe... No, he was afraid to hope for more.

"I..." he started, his voice shaking. "Ahem. Can I... Can I ask you what that was for?.."

He hoped he didn't sound too stupid.

Luca looked surprised, then sighed.

"You really are stupid, aren't you..." he mumbled to himself. Then looked up. "I like you. Do you like me too?"

Alberto's face couldn't be more red, but his feet were ice cold. He decided to continue playing dumb so that he makes an idiot of himself but at least in case he's mistaken Luca won't be grossed out by him.

"Of course I like you, you're my friend," he nudged at his shirt's collar, trying to get more air. "I also like Giulia too, and Massimo, and even Machiavelli..."

"You stupid freaking asshole," Luca pushed his shoulders angrily but lost his balance and fell on top of him. His face was red with embarrassment but his brows were furrowed in annoyance. "You know I don't mean it like that. You know it! Stop pretending you don't!"

Alberto thought he's going to explode. His face never had so much blood in it in his life. He looked away.

"Look," Luca said more calmly after a while. "If I misunderstood, and if you don't like me... Or if you're not sure... I won't do anything."

They stayed silent for a minute.

Then Luca said, very quietly,

"But I really wanna kiss you right now."

Another silence.

"You are," Alberto finally started, "The only thing... I have ever been sure of."

He didn't look at Luca. He could feel his weight on his shoulders and his waist, hear the fire cracking and see the dark, almost black, sea. He closed his eyes and breathed out.

"I just... I'm so sure that I wanna be with you. As friends or..." he didn't want to say it out loud. He didn't dare hope. "I really care about our rel... Friendship. I don't want to lose you."

He breathed in, gathering all his courage.

"And I love you so much."

He didn't want to open his eyes. Did he really just say that? Out loud? He really is stupid. Now that Luca knows the truth... He must hate him. He must...

"I think I love you too."

Alberto opened his eyes in surprise. Did he hear that right?..

"I've been feeling this way for a while now. I don't know how big it is or... But I know it's real. And I've seen the way you look at me. I wasn't sure if I got it right... I thought, maybe you just do that with anyone or whatever... I know now." He looked at Alberto annoyed, shy and determined. "So can I kiss you?"

Alberto thought his heart was beating so loudly the whole island could hear it. He looked at Luca in disbelief and hope.

"..Yes."

Luca moved his hands from Alberto's shoulders to the wooden floor, leaned over and pressed his lips very softly to the other's.

Alberto couldn't believe his feelings. Was this really happening? Were those Luca's lips on his?

He decided that even if it's a dream, he's gotta take everything he can get. So he opened his mouth, allowing Luca to deepen the kiss.

This next part was supposed to be an epilogue full of cutesy snippets.

"Have you decided on what to do after school?"

with ice cream

playing chess tgt

going to laser tag, Luca corners and kisses him and shoots him and he is absolutely smitten and not even annoyed.

Alberto tries to kiss Luca's cheek when he's asleep, but he moves his head and Alberto ends up kissing his mouth. He pulls back, flustered, and Luca wakes up and pulls him back closer.

They rest in a hammock in Alberto's tower and Luca falls asleep on Alberto's chest and he just keeps his leg down and rocks the hammock to keep Luca asleep.

And when they cuddle and Luca is like i need to pee and Alberto is like nooo and Luca's like when I get back you get all the kisses though and Albertos like just wash your hands first casanova

In my head, Luca's grown taller than Alberto when they're adults, so:

"So how's the weather down there?"

"The best. You should try it sometime"

"Okay," and he leans over and kisses him.

a kiss on the hand before asking him to dance

since when did you know?

Here are some scenes that I marked as "cut" in my doc, I've no idea anymore but you get them anyway:

Luca not having a separate room in his cave

it's Time!!!

wait what i thought you're joking

nope MY DEAR SORELLA THE SUN'S DOWN ARE YOU ASLEEP YET

wHAT THE FUCK ALBERTO ITS NOT FUNNY 

i tried to stop

papà needed you down that's why i woke you up!!!! fucking twat

Meanwhile when his friends find out about the guitar theyre like WOW COOL CAN YOU PLAY???? and he can only play several simple melodies and is quite embarrassed. So they never talk about it again, but he takes the guitar out sometimes to practice when and where no one's watching (They were watching).