On that warm night in Sydney, I wanted to dance. It was a long weekend, thanks to Australia Day. I was out with three close friends in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. I loved my job. I loved the dress I had on. AND I was having a great hair day.
Meeting someone the last thing on my mind. After one too many heartbreaks, I was 29, and (melodramatically) ready to die alone.
We lost track of time while we boogied at my favourite club, and soon, it was midnight. A friend got a text from the guy she was seeing. He was coming to meet us. With friends.
I was tired and said I might go home, but she wanted me to stay and meet her beau. After some gentle coaxing and a Jagerbomb, I agreed.
The boys arrived, and we decided to take our party to a huge club that stays open until 5 am. I chatted to the beau and the boys as we made our way down the street.
“I’m Jez,” one of them said. Jez. Australians truncate everything and frequently add zs. “Jez” is Australian for Jeremy.
The bar was pumping. Drinks were bought, dancing started, and we all ended up on a podium jumping around to a remix of “Diamonds in the Sky” by Rihanna.
I felt someone grab my hand. It was Jez. He pulled me towards him and we started dancing. After a few dances, he gave me a little kiss. I couldn’t remember the last time I had kissed a boy while dancing. I had forgotten how fun it was.
At about 4:30, we decided to go to the Sydney institution, Pancakes on the Rocks, which doesn’t close and serves food around the clock. We arrived (probably looking like roadkill) and ordered.
Before I moved to Sydney, I had lived in Rome. Jez wanted to know about it. He thought it was cool that I had lived there and had learned Italian. He was really easy to talk to. I couldn’t remember the last time I had chatted with a boy so effortlessly. I had forgotten how fun it was.
He asked for my number as I got into a cab. The sun was coming up. “You don’t have to ask for my number,” I said, like a jerk.
He chuckled, took my number, and walked to his taxi.
The next day he texted me. “Happy Australia Day, Molly! Want to have drinks tonight?”
I couldn’t remember the last time I had gotten excited over a text message. I had forgotten how fun it was.
After dating for seven months in Sydney, it was time to say goodbye. My visa was expiring, and I had gotten a fellowship to teach in Senegal for a year. He was leaving too, because he had been accepted into a PhD program, in Italy, of all places. We decided to break up.
The morning we said goodbye, it was raining. He helped me carry my bags to a taxi where my two best friends were waiting to bring me to the airport so I could fly back to the States for two months before heading to Senegal.
He gave me a kiss and cupped my cheeks with his hands. “I think you’re amazing,” he said.
I cried. A lot. We hugged for a long time, and then I had to go.
I cried so much on the flight that I probably should have had a Gatorade to replenish my electrolytes. I cried when I got to my hotel room. I cried when I woke up at 3 am the next morning and read the messages he had sent, telling me how much he was going to miss me, and how he hoped we would always be friends.
Three months later, I was in Senegal, and he was in Italy. Being new to our respective places, neither of us had any friends, so we both found ourselves in front of our computers a lot. We talked every day, usually more than once.
We made a plan to meet in Paris for New Year’s.
After New Year’s, we made a plan for him to come to Senegal over Easter.
After Easter, we made a plan for me to go to visit him before I went to a friend’s wedding in Florence in June.
After the wedding, I told him I loved him, and he said he loved me back.
Because I didn’t have a work visa for Italy, I had to go back to the US after my year in Senegal. I travelled to Australia to meet his family. He came to Maine to meet mine.
Long-distance was hard. Sometimes, things that were tiny seemed big. We were in different time zones. I was busy when he was free, and vice versa.
After about 1,000 job applications and a year of trying, I finally got sponsored for a job in Italy. I moved to Padua to be with him.
Since then, we’ve moved to Bologna together, and now, we live in Rome. We’ll be celebrating our six-ish year anniversary in January. We don’t really know how to count the time we were apart, so we just kind of don’t. It is both significant and insignificant. Significant because it was the right move at the time, and insignificant because it didn’t really matter, in the end.
Molly lives in Rome and blogs about eating and travelling well in Italy and beyond at Luggage and Life. If you like pictures of pasta, travel tips, and funny stories from the road, follow her on Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook!
