To be honest, I’m just a little apprehensive.

I knew it was coming, I just expected a little more notice.  And it’s not as if it’s anything to worry about, really.  But, you know…….?

F phones.  He is at Liù, near my flat.  He’s not IN Liù since it’s only 6.30 p.m. and I know they don’t open until 7.30.  He’s there because he has to get some stuff.  He needs a cable for the TV so that it can be moved to the correct place in the bedroom.

“Would you like to go for a pizza later?”, he asks me.  “We can go to Liù”

“Sure”, I reply.  He’s going to phone me later.

He does.

“We’re going to Basillico”, he states, “for 8.30.  We’re meeting S”.

He uses the nickname so it takes me a moment to understand what he means.  “Is that OK?”, he adds, maybe misunderstanding my initial silence.

“Sure but are you sure you want me to come?” I ask him.

Now, you should know that this is only me being polite.  S and F haven’t met up since S got back into town.  And, I’m not really jealous but there’s something.  I mean, he was with S for 11 years and, you know, maybe with S coming back, F thinks there may be a ‘getting back together’.  I don’t really think so but…….

And, I think, perhaps it would be better for them to have an evening together, catching up on old times or stuff like that and I would just be in the way.  Anyway, S’s boyfriend is still in the States.  It will be weird with me being there but S not being able to bring his boyfriend too.

Of course, the question, just like the thoughts are all crap.  What I want is that F would not possibly meet S without me being there.  But one can’t actually say that, right?

But there is also the thing that I am not S.  I am not as good as S.  That my not being good enough will become obvious to F when he sees us together.  Still, I want him to say that he wants me there too.

And he does.  He calls a little later to say he is having an aperitivo at Bar Basso, which is in the same piazza.  I have just come out of the shower.  I can’t meet S without making the best of myself, obviously.  I expect him to be somewhat glamorous.

I say I will be another 10 minutes.  As I am leaving he calls to say he will meet me at the pizzeria.  I walk up.

I see them.  S with his back to me, talking to F.

We meet.  He shakes my hand.  I shake his and we kiss on both cheeks, as one does, instigated by me.  Why not, I think to myself?  He is the same height as F.  Thin but not as thin as I thought.  An old-fashioned haircut, a short beard, not over-fashionable nor quirky as he might be, being a designer and all.

We sit in the restaurant.  Afterwards I think about how strangely F acted.  Like he was over-excited.  It strikes me that he was excited about introducing me to S.  I think that either he so wanted S to meet me or that he wanted to show S that he had someone else.  I thought the former last night and the latter this morning – so, obviously, I have no idea.

He and S always spoke Italian to each other in the past, F not speaking any English when they first met but, several times when S spoke Italian last night he asked him to speak English.  He finds it difficult to understand S so well, what with his heavier Mancunian accent.

Anyway, I liked him.  S, that is.  He’s not me and I am not him.  We are very different.  He asked a lot about me and I asked a lot about him.  He told me that when I meet F’s family I will like them.  He asked how long we had been together.  F replied that it was four months to which I added that it wasn’t so long.  However, S seemed to think that it was and seemed genuinely pleased that F had ‘found’ someone – as did F.

At the end he said that it was really nice to meet me after all the good things he had heard about me.  And since he would only have heard those things from F, it made me smile as perhaps this IS the real thing?  Apparently he texted F afterwards to say I was simpatico – our equivalent of nice, I think.

I don’t know, really.  Should I feel jealous (or whatever this is)?  Do I, in fact, feel jealous?  I’m not even sure about that.  Whatever I feel, I feel less now that I’ve met him.  He’s more ‘gay’ than F, for certain and more ‘gay’ than me too, for that matter.  I think that’s what F likes about me and it’s certainly one of the things I like about him.

And, after all, F said that we’re all looking for the same thing really.  The same thing with the ‘right person’, of course.