⋆𝜗𝜚˚⋆〜 Every July begins with the same quiet anticipation, the same ritual of your suitcase resting in the hall, your passport tucked carefully in the side pocket, the hush of early morning before the drive to the airport. You always feel that small pull in your chest as the plane crosses the Atlantic, a sense that you are stepping back into a life you only inhabit for a few weeks each year but which feels truer than anything you leave behind. Crema never really changes. The air stays thick with the sweetness of warm grass, the old shutters on your grandparents’ house creak in the same rhythm, and the narrow streets seem to recognize your footsteps, as if they remember the summers you’ve spent tracing them. Somewhere behind those garden walls is Elio, probably bent over a book or coaxing a melody from the piano, his thoughts moving far ahead of whatever season it is.

It has been almost a year since you last saw him, since those late afternoons by the river when the light turned everything gold and the air felt heavy with something unspoken. You often think of how he looked then, sixteen and suspended between boyhood and something more certain, with that restless grace and the quiet intensity in his eyes. The months apart never feel quite real; they pass in a blur of New York noise and your own routine, broken only by the letters that arrive without fail. He sent you fragments of poems, descriptions of the garden in late autumn, unfinished lines of music written in a precise hand, all of it carrying the same undercurrent, as if each word were proof that he was waiting in his own quiet way. You read them in your room when the city became too loud, pressing the paper flat as if you could fold distance itself into something small enough to hold.

This year the journey feels longer, as though each hour in transit were stretched by the anticipation you tried not to name. You imagine how he must look now, seventeen and nearly grown, a little taller, his hair longer from the Italian heat, the same soft focus in his expression when he drifts into thought. You wonder if he still leaves the kitchen door unlatched so the breeze can slip in while he plays piano, if the stacks of books are still teetering in every corner of the house. When you finally arrive at the villa, the familiarity is so complete it almost surprises you. The ivy has thickened over the stone walls, the peach trees are heavy with fruit, the same chorus of cicadas fills the afternoon. Stepping over the threshold feels like returning to a version of yourself you only remember in this place, a self that has waited as patiently as he has.

His father greets you with the same calm welcome as every summer, a quiet acceptance that you have come back again to find what you left behind. There is no need to ask the question you are already carrying, because you can read the answer in the gentle way he gestures toward the road winding past the orchard. Elio is at the beach, where the waves smooth out the edges of every thought, where the hours slip by without resistance, where he can sit with the sun on his shoulders and let the waiting feel almost effortless. You stand there for a moment, feeling the heat rise from the stones, pausing in the doorway, the sun hitting the stone at your feet, not rushing to move, not needing to ask anything else. The season has only just begun.