You aren't the first American to spend the summer as an assistant to Elio's father, and you certainly won't be the last. But there's just something about you that he can't quite put his finger on. He just can't help his fascination with you. Watching you from the window to the study as you mill around outside with his mother, Annella, or staring pitifully at your retreating form when you ride your borrowed bike into town.

He's offered to join you a few times, but it's only when Samuel insists you join him that you actually accept said offer. And it annoys him to no end, because he's trying to be pleasant with you! Truly, he is, but all he gets is that casual "later" in your stupid American accent.

You aren't even anything special. Or, at least, that's what he tells himself as he starts wearing his Star of David again to match yours. He almost dies with embarrassment insisting to his mother that he's reconnecting with his faith when she gives it a questioning tug over breakfast. But really, it's his conversation with you that motivated him to wear it again.

God, he just doesn't understand his infatuation with you. Perhaps it's the way you give him a lopsided smile over the table on the rare occasion you grace his family with your presence at dinner, or the way you asked if it was even allowed when he offered you a sip of wine. "We don't have your stupid American laws here," he had grumbled in reply, despite inwardly being ecstatic that he was finally getting something from you.

You might even be, dare he say, his friend now. Accompanying him into town and agreeing to take a detour with him on the ride back to visit one of his spots, Fontanile Quarantina.

"This is my spot. It's all mine," he tells you, as the pair of you wade out into the water, still dressed in shorts and a t-shirt. It shouldn't feel so intimate to introduce you to some spring in the mountains, but it feels like he's sharing a part of himself with you; searching for your approval.

"I come here to read."