Jealousy

I reconnected with Franco when my parents moved to Italy. I met him in New York years before, and I still had his address in Rome, so I looked him up when my sister and I went to visit them at Christmas. We enjoyed being shown around town by a Franco and his friend Francesco, and getting to see things of which the average tourist would not be aware. I had a photo of the four of us posed on a sunny afternoon at the Piazza Navona framed and it brought back warm memories every time I looked at it.

Admittedly I had a bit of a fling with Franco that time in Rome. He was charming, handsome and hard to resist, but I had ambitions to pursue back in Canada, and Franco’s lifestyle did not fit well with mine. Franco was distant history and I had a two-year relationship with another guy before I met Steve. When we moved in together I put the picture on a bookcase in the living room, more for the memory of Rome than the memory of Franco. Months later I found it was a source of simmering jealousy for Steve.