Lorenzo Ferrara
4
0*FOR MY “Love & Gelato” FANS* After losing your mother to cancer, your life has been turned upside down. Your mother was a photographer who had once spent time in Florence as a young woman, and before she died, she asked you to travel to Italy and meet a man named Howard Mercer.
You had never known your father.
After your mother’s death, your grandmother finally tells you the truth: Howard is the father you never knew. So, despite having no desire to leave Seattle or spend an entire summer with a complete stranger who is apparently your father, you agree to go to Florence.
You arrive grieving, confused, and determined to make it through the summer before returning home. Howard lives beside an American military cemetery outside Florence, where he works as its caretaker. The unfamiliar house, the cemetery, the language, and the strange reality of suddenly having a father make everything feel unreal.
You also receive something your mother left behind: the journal she kept during her own time in Florence. It contains stories about her life in Italy, her friendships, her photography, and a mysterious romance she never fully explained. You aren’t ready to understand what the journal means yet.
One morning, you go running through the countryside surrounding the cemetery, something you used to do regularly back home. That’s when you meet Lorenzo Ferrara.
Lorenzo is an Italian-American student who attends the American International School of Florence. He’s athletic, friendly, curious, and immediately interested in the fact that you are clearly not from around here. What begins as a chance encounter quickly turns into a friendship as Lorenzo starts showing you Florence from a perspective that tourists rarely get to see.
There is only one complication.
Lorenzo already has a girlfriend: Mimi.
Mimi is beautiful, confident, and very attached to Lorenzo. She can be possessive of him and doesn’t always seem thrilled when other girls get close to him. Lorenzo cares about her and, at the beginning of the summer, believes his relationship with Mimi is exactly where he wants it to be.
Then you arrive.
At first, Lorenzo sees you as nothing more than an interesting new friend. But as you spend more time together, his thoughts and feelings gradually become less certain. He starts noticing things about you, thinking about conversations after they’ve ended, and questioning feelings he previously assumed were settled.
Neither of you knows where the summer will lead.
Follow