A Sad, Embarrassing, Honest Story About Me and Two Guys

Halfway through my second year in architecture school, this new guy transfered in. He was about five years older than I, and because of some things he'd done before--as well as his, I don't know, vigorous personality?--he was very interesting to me and to everyone in the class.
There were lots of intelligent and attractive guys at my architecture school, and I found myself drawn to most of them at one point or another, but this one particular man was somehow different. Years ago I'm sure I could have given you pages of reasons why. But in retrospect, I think it was mostly that he was still and serious in the very most attractive way when alone, yet merry and jovial in conversation. Not that he ever conversed with me.
I first noticed it one day when he announced to the studio (architecture students work in studio between class times and often overnight) that he was going to the convenience store across the street and asked if anyone wanted anything. I pulled a dollar out of my pocket. "Can you get me a king-sized Snickers?" I asked (I was about fifteen pounds heavier then). Suddenly his sunny demeanor clouded over, and he looked squarely at the dollar as he took it and nodded. When he returned, he approached my drafting table briskly but stopped about four feet away. He then leaned forward as far as he could, and placed the Snicker's bar on the very corner of my desk, practically bowing, stone-faced, before he walked away. At the time I was confused and a little bit insulted. Did he think I smelled bad? Was he offended that I had actually taken him up on his offer to get me something?
Over the next several months, though, I began to notice him watching me. His glance would linger longer and longer until it became more like a gaze. It's extremely rare that anyone I find likeable shows an interest in me, so I guess it was inevitable that I would develop a crush on him. And when I say crush, please consider the etymology of the word. I was a very young adult, and I felt physically weighed down by his presence in the room. Even in his absence, there was the psychological burden of my obsession with what he could possibly be thinking or feeling or wanting from me. Dozens of times I tried to engage him in conversation, only to have him direct his replies obliquely, to the other people in the room. One day I found him all alone, reading a book, and went to stand at his shoulder. "Whatcha readin'?" I asked in a forced casual tone. He simply closed the book and pointed at the title on the cover. "Oh," I said, and retreated to my desk. He set the book down and left the room. Moments later, I looked out a window and saw him leaving the convenience store across the street with a fresh pack of cigarettes, tamping it down, ripping off the cellophane, and lighting one as he walked away.
In the middle of my third year in architecture school, I made plans to take a language-based study-abroad trip to Italy in the summer, and an architecture-based one in the fall. I had already begun to dislike architecture as a potential career for a variety of reasons, and I wasn't getting along with that semester's Design professor, so I was looking forward to these trips, even going so far as to cross out the days on a calendar. Then the young man I had a crush on began to waver in his commitment to architecture as well. He frequently became agitated in his conversations with the other students, unsure whether to even finish his projects as overwhelming deadlines loomed.
One day he announced he was quitting. Or had quit. He was supposed to finish out the semester anyway, but stopped showing up to classes. His projects lay half-finished on his tables. I was already struggling with the professor over an innovative design that I had gotten approved by engineering students but that he refused to believe could work. I had made extra work for myself on top of an already impossible schedule. I remember one night I was supposed to meet the professor at 7 PM so he could yell at me, but I didn't show up. Instead, I was at the music library on the opposite end of campus. (Was that the day I listened to the entire Velvet Underground box set?) He had my former best friend call me and ask why I hadn't showed up. I didn't have a reason. The next day I changed my major to an Architectural Studies degree plan that I had already pretty much finished (I think I had already added English as a second major). The guidance counselor was the only person in my life who wasn't shocked. "Every time you came in here, you would talk about all the other things you wanted to do," she said. I cancelled my fall trip to Italy, losing a $500 deposit, since I would no longer be in the professional architecture program.
I saw the young man I had a crush on one more time before summer. He showed up to final reviews after all, with hastily "finished" projects. As he strode briskly down the hall with an armload of models and drawings, the air raised a sheet of vellum against his face like a veil. I had my hands free, so I lifted it carefully from his face and followed him to the elevator, where I operated the buttons for him. The doors slid shut. "Thank you, thank you," he whispered. "You rock." I don't think I said anything. The ride was short and the doors opened and he was gone.
That summer I spent five weeks in Rome, staying with a divorced woman and her 20-year-old daughter. I was unsure if I would ever see the young man again, but hopeful. Nina, my "host sister," had a variety of lovely friends who came over often for the delicious dinners that she and her mother prepared ("delicious" doesn't come close to describing their cooking, but I'm not sure any word could). I especially liked one couple, Davide and Francesca, who were kind and upstanding despite their gutter-punk aesthetics. One day Nina and I visited them at their apartment. It was small, but had lovely light and a courtyard view. That was where I met Andrea.
He lived in Davide and Francesca's apartment's entryway. (All four friends were students at the same university.) I nearly tripped on his mattress, and he apologized and introduced himself. He had a thick, strange accent that made it even harder to understand him than anyone else, and the room exploded with laughter when I tried to repeat his name. "Oh just call him Andrea," they said in Italian. Andrea is Italian for Andrew--he must have introduced himself with his Russian name. I learned later that he was from another town in Italy but had grown up in Russia. Davide and Francesca invited everyone out to the balcony, where Andrea offered me vodka. "But... it's two o'clock in the afternoon!" I said in Italian. Everyone thought this very, very amusing except Andrea, who looked embarrassed.
The next evening when I came out to the kitchen to help with dinner, I was surprised to see him at the table, listening to a soccer match on the radio. He was over six feet tall with large brown eyes and thick, wavy, dark brown hair. He was highly animated as he cheered on his Italian hometown team. The game ended, and we talked a little, though it was difficult since neither of us spoke Italian as a first language. After that night, he began turning up quite frequently. One evening he decided to help me with my Italian class homework, and went down the page "correcting" everything. That was the only assignment I failed--as it turned out, his Italian grammar was worse than mine. One night when he didn't show up, I asked another of Nina's friends where he was. "Studiando..." she said, rolling her eyes. The students had made plans to go to the discoteca later, but like me, Andrea had chosen to stay home and study instead.
One night, three weeks into my trip, I came home after dark. Everyone was already gathered on the balcony. "Ciao, bellissima!" Andrea whispered to me, under the din of warm Italian greetings. He came in and sat with me on the couch, and we talked for a while. Hand-holding was imminent. Maybe it happened. I don't know. I just remember feeling incredibly good, like nothing could ever hurt again. We were still having difficulty communicating through our broken Italian, but I understood that he was asking me how much longer I would be in Italy. "Two weeks," I said. "No, no," he said. "That's how long you've been here. I'm asking how much longer you will stay." "Two weeks!" I repeated, and as I looked up, I saw his face fall apart. "Il tempo non ci basta!" he said, and rushed out to the balcony. It literally means "the time is not enough for us." He stayed away from me until it was time to leave. It was usual for all of us to "kiss" goodbye in the European way, where the lips are pursed in the air very near to the sides of the face, but when the time came, Andrea held both my hands in his and kissed me for real on each cheek. I remember that he said goodbye, but was it in English? What word in Italian would he have used? Anyway, I never saw him again.
In my last week, Davide and Francesca came and insisted I walk with them, even though I was busy. They tried to persuade me to stay in Italy, but I was already registered for second summer session classes back home. Davide was angry with me. "Why would you fly all the way across an ocean for just five weeks?" I was bewildered by the whole scene. I had no idea why Davide wanted me to stay so badly.
For some reason, I didn't quite realize what was going on until I got back to the United States: Andrea lived with Davide and Francesca; they knew that he wanted me to stay. But I had been oblivious, still thinking I would see the young man from architecture school when I got home, and maybe now that neither of us had the pressure of being architecture students anymore, things could be different. But I never saw him again, either. It turned out he had moved to another country and left no forwarding address. I sent him an email, but received no reply. I googled him and found an abandoned MySpace page and nothing else.
One day several years ago I spoke with a stranger in a coffee shop. She was a Chinese herbalist and accupuncturist. She looked thirty-five, but claimed to be fifty. I told her about how I had graduated with two degrees, but couldn't decide what kind of work to try to find. I told her of how I had gone to architecture school, but finished with only a mostly useless non-professional degree. She asked why, and I couldn't quite articulate it. "Was there a boy?" she asked, smirking. My face exploded in silent tears. I was so angry at her for asking this question in such an abbreviated, belittling way, a way that seemed to take for granted that it knew all about what had happened. But she didn't know. And even though there had been a boy, there also wasn't a boy. Or maybe there had been two boys. "I think you should go back to architecture school," she said, still smirking, as if she had solved everything. But I was done with architecture. If anything, my trouble with the "boy" had helped me to realize how unsatisfied I already was with architecture. It gave me a new perspective on what I really cared about and wanted in life, and showed me that things would only get worse unless I accepted myself and took a path of my own design, however tortuous and flawed.
But that's another sad, embarrassing story--the one I'm living now.