Chapter 5

Bright turquoise.

I like to figure out what color people would be. You’d be bright turquoise.

If he were a color, Giorgiano would be mahogany. He was complex. Hard to discern. So dark at times that you couldn’t tell what made him him. A combination of places, of relationships, of experiences. Over the next 2 years more would come out. Bit by bit.

Engaged. I reminded him of his ex-fiancé. I still wonder what she looked like. She gave him a shaving kit for his birthday one year. Right before they broke up. That was in Colorado. It wouldn’t have been a temple marriage, he said. That it was a dark time in his life. And that he was still recovering from it.

The first day we met, it was snowing outside. I had this savage Russian hat with ear flaps. I had curled my then auburn hair and stuffed it in the hat. When I walked into Geography 100, he smiled. To be honest, I noticed his shiny folder before him, I’m kind of a crow.

I sat down. Took my hat off, my long auburn hair came tumbling over my shoulders. I saw him look.

My name is Giorgiano, he said. He flashed the smile I would see so often for the next two years. Only a little crooked. Really? I asked. He didn’t seem Italian. Giorgiano Bertoli.

When he kissed me, he sighed. I have been wanting to do that for a long time, he said. Our heads were where our feet should have been, and our feet were resting on the pillows. I smiled, got up, turned off the light, and came back.

With Giorgiano, it meant something. He actually like me for who I was. Silly, ridiculous, tempermental, and fun. We talked for hours, kissed for hours, and held each other even longer. I wonder if it was hard for him not to do the things he had done before. It certainly didn’t seem hard. The next day was magical. We went to Disneyland. If only he knew what that meant. We kissed on the haunted mansion. We held hands and talked all day. In that moment, it was right.

I should have left a few hours earlier, he told me.

My mind raced to everything that happened in those few hours. With my family and friends just across the street, he told me his deepest darkest secrets. He told me that he would probably end up marrying me. That it had been almost 3 years since we had met, and that all can’t just mean nothing. We tried to kiss in his car, but the alarm went off. As if it was screaming at us. I felt so odd… I thought it was what I wanted.

When I finally came in a few hours later, my room was silent. Still. So I woke them up.

Victoria, have you REALLY thought about this? Is this REALLY what you want? She asked.

I think so. Maybe. Maybe not. No.

We didn’t talk for a few weeks. Nothing after the night of confessions. I finally called him. To tie up loose ends, I told myself. You can’t just let three years of loose threads hang there. And he told me that he should have left a few hours earlier. I guess it meant just as little to him as it did to me. After so much time, after countless hours driving and talking and bonding and kissing, it meant nothing.

When we walked on the beach, he found a seashell. He gave it to me. It had a perfect little hole in it; a hole that would be strung with clear fiber. I wore that seashell every day. The necklace was long enough so that no one would see it. It just sat next to my heart. I thought I was in love. When people asked me about him, about us, about anything, I would tell them the truth. Utter honesty. I remember in the MTC that they made fun of him. Drew a picture of a man with a moustache and a big pot of pasta.

He took me to dinner when he came to visit. He got me appetizers and desserts, and all the things I had never had before. It was his form of affection; money. Things. He took me out to lunch that last time. We got Peruvian sushi. He loved it. I pretended.

When he kissed me, the world stopped. It was as if everything fell into place in that moment. The problem was, that it only worked when we were together.

He could make my eyes roll back in my head and my knees go weak just from his smell. His breath.

When he stopped writing me, I closed my heart to him. It never opened again. I wonder what would have been had I said yes? Had I actually allowed him back into my heart, my life.

Giorgiano could have been my fairy tale. The prince with a dark past and a heart of gold, who was dashing and handsome and bold. He was shorter than me, but manly enough to handle that. He was gentle but firm, demanding and secure. I could have been his princess; spontaneous and insecure, ambitious and full of life. He dampened me. I sharpened him.

That one major flaw, the dealbreaker. Giorgiano can’t laugh at himself. He gets defensive and unkind.

That night, in my kitchen, by the washing machine. My roommates in the other room, watching Stardust. He took me to a movie. My mom told me to make sure to take the right girl, he said.

You look so beautiful.

Of course I do, I thought. I’ve lost weight and I’m wearing hair extensions. Why did people tell me I looked beautiful when I felt so wrong inside? I thought that we are what we eat. That technically meant at that time that I was nothing. Coke and rice. That’s what I was. He just kept reaching out for who I used to be. The carefree girl he let go over 7 months earlier.

She died. Along with my self-respect and my lightheartedness. All three murdered by the frostbitten cold of Armenia.