Free The Lesson by Virginia Welch

tempting thought of spending an evening talking to handsome, sexy Rolando and being in Michael’s apartment again. She wanted … she wanted to be near him or anything that reminded her of him, at least for tonight. She pushed the guilt down a little deeper and kept driving toward Scott Boulevard.
    #
    In less than five minutes Gina was standing in the covered foyer outside the door of Rolando’s second-floor apartment. She knocked, and when he answered a minute later, she saw that he had not changed. He was still the striking, confident Latin, eyes sparkling flirtatiously.
    “Gina baby!”
    Rolando smiled but all the pleasure was in his eyes, not his mouth. He looked her up and down shamelessly before he invited her to step in, an act that made Gina feel gorgeous but embarrassed. It wasn’t quite like he was undressing her with his eyes. It was more like he took keen pleasure in admiring a pretty woman and didn’t care if anyone knew it. It was his signature.
    It felt strange to be standing in the apartment she had visited so many times in the last two years. She scanned the rooms, half expecting to see Michael step from the hallway. The living room and kitchen were exactly as she remembered: stark, just enough cast-off furniture to accommodate two graduate students; two ugly, mismatched lamps; a TV; the sparest of cooking utensils; no throw rugs; nothing on the walls−absolutely no extras or decorative touches. Like all off-campus student rentals, the walls were painted dirty white and the carpet was old. Guys’ digs were so unlike the elaborate, cutesy cluttered look of the rooms on sixth floor Swig, where she and all the girls had outdone each other trying to make their cramped abodes chic yet homey. And nothing here had changed, except that Michael’s loving smile wasn’t waiting to greet her. It was weird that the apartment looked the same as it always did yet he was not there. A wave of exquisite desire washed over her. She missed Michael profoundly.
    But at the forefront of her mind was another thought, which grew more conscious by the second: she should not be here. She slapped it back into the dark place from where it had crept. Rolando was an old friend, and she was twenty years old. She could take care of herself. She would have a nice evening of conversation, enjoy a good meal, and then go home and forget about Michael forever. She would be fine.
    “Come in, come in,” said Rolando.
    He took her hand in his, lifted it to his lips, and kissed it dramatically, like a black-and-white Valentino movie from the 1930s, his eyes flirting madly with hers the whole time. Then, without letting go of her hand, he escorted her into the kitchen. So like Rolando to make every girl feel like a princess. Lord knows, it’s been a while. She was pleased with all the male attention and played along, though she didn’t remember him being so touchy.
    Something was boiling on the stove. Steam bubbles roiled noisily from a large metal pot. Gina knew that sound and what it meant. She’d seen her mother make pasta a thousand times. She figured that’s what Rolando was preparing for dinner. The familiar fragrance of simmering tomatoes and fresh-cut oregano filled the bare little room.
    “Pasta,” he said, while holding a forkful of spaghetti over the steaming pot, “cibo dell'amore , food of love.”
    “Well,” said Gina, “from what I’ve seen, pasta is more like alimentari di grassi donne anziane —food of fat old women.”
    They laughed together, which helped her feel a little better, at least for the moment. Gina had studied Italian only her freshman year at Santa Clara, so her skills were crude at best. Her goal had been to converse with her grandmother, who spoke not a word of English. Her grandparents, Filippo and Mariana, had emigrated from the little town of Trabia near Palermo, Sicily. She loved speaking Italian with Rolando, or what little she remembered of it, though she often feared she was butchering the