Free Dating da Vinci by Malena Lott

juice mixed with Sprite, a sly trick I'd used to get my boys to get their vitamin C.
    When I spun around I bumped into a handsome man about my age holding an orange drink, too. “I prefer mine with vodka, but what can you do?” he said.
    “I forgot my flask,” I said, thinking someone this attractive didn't belong at a singles mixer. He could get any woman he wanted. My blink reaction was that he was either a multiple divorcé or a workaholic womanizer who just came to these things to pick up chicks. (But isn't that what we were all here, for? I had bought into my mother's idea of finding a new friend, but once here I could see friendship was the furthest thing from these people's minds. They were all trying much too hard.) He seemed too happy to be a Griever.
    He began to respond when a bosomy redhead grabbed him by the arm and whipped him around in a hug reserved for the overly friendly. She looked his type. Maybe he'd already taken her home before, or maybe she was trying to seal the deal, but I had no desire to wait around just to get his name. In fact, I had no desire to be there at all. Besides, I had a friend at home waiting for me.
    I found da Vinci napping on the back patio with a row of golden mums he had planted appearing like the frame on a beautiful picture.
    Without thinking, I walked over to his body splayed out in the armchair and ottoman and ran my fingers through his dark hair, causing his lashes to flutter in sleep. He opened his eyes and turned his head, where his lips met the soft skin on the underside of my wrist and kissed it, causing a thousand butterflies to take flight.
    His eyes locked with mine and he whispered, half asleep, “ Ché modo buono di svegliarmi. ” He could have said, “Do my laundry,” and it would've felt poetic to me at the time, but what he said was far better: “What a nice way to wake up.”

 
     
     
     
Chapter 5
    con·nec·tion \ n 1 : the linking or joining of two or more parts, things, or people ( Origin: late Middle English, from Latin)
     
    I COULDN'T STOP THINKING about that kiss the rest of the week. I pretended it hadn't affected me, going about my business as usual, taking da Vinci where he needed to go, his next temp job at a flower shop and classes at U T. I zipped right through the week, soccer and football and chess club and laundry and coffee with my mother and salad with Anh and life should've felt exactly as it had before da Vinci arrived in my classroom, but it felt anything but. The only difference in my life came down to a connection, taking me from the lonely dark cave of my sadness out into the light, led by one strong-armed Italian.
    When you lose a spouse, you can suddenly feel as though the strings to your life have been cut forever, as if you're an abandoned kite floating aimlessly in the clouds. Like non-stop static on a television screen, the picture becomes fuzzy, the signal lost. The connection is broken forever, like a baby being separated from its mother after birth or downed power lines in an electric storm. This is the way I felt after Joel died. I had lost my connection and didn't know how to get it back or even if I could.
    Most spouses in happy marriages know that the best part is shared experiences: making love, making memories, making a life that becomes richer because you have each other. You understand the otherwith just one look or sound. It's true what they say about partners starting to look like each other as they age. You eat the same food, breathe the same air, go where the other goes. So the absence of one makes the other feel immobile. You literally feel half the person.
    But after meeting with Deacon Friar, I realized I had it all wrong. My connection to Joel had not been lost, and in some ways, we could be closer than ever. Because instead of him being outside of me, he was within me. He was just on the other side of the universal plane, in the spiritual world, and if I believed that our spiritual relationship had been