How To Date A Greek Boy

I Made The Leaning Tower Lean

“You really are going to get us raped.” I thought that for the third time in two days.
“Chill out, girl! We’re just hitch hiking!”
“ARE YOU INSANE, Fran? This isn’t home, we can’t just hitch hike like that! We’re on the highway in a country we don’t know, asking for a ride with people we don’t know, to a place we DON’T KNOW!”

Yes everybody, hear. That was Fran’s excellent idea to get us to Pisa for free – hitch hiking.

“Oh look, a truck!” She stuck her thumb out before I could stop her. And to my utter chagrin, the man actually stopped. He rolled down his window.
He’s an old dude. Shit, we’re going to be raped by an OLD dude in a foreign country.

“Stai ragazze bloccato??” He asked in Italian.
“He doesn’t know English!” I said, trying not to sound too happy. “We can’t travel with him, he won’t understand a thing!”
Fran glared at me and then turned back to him. “Actually, Sir, we don’t know Italian.”
“No Italiano?” He looked disappointed. “English, si?”
“Yes! English, please. We know English! We’re headed to Pisa, actually, sir. You’re going anywhere that way?”
“I drop you few miles from main city? Not inside. Okay?”
“That’d be great!” Fran said. And before I could stop her, she was up and into the truck, reaching a hand down for me.

The guy drove at a record breaking, Earth shattering speed of exactly zero point one miles an hour, I swear.
Okay, maybe that was a slight exaggeration. Maybe zero point three.
It took us five seconds to pass the last tree I saw. I counted. We’d never reach Pisa before the summer ended. No chance.
“Sir, could you go a little faster? It is a highway, after all.” I prodded.
“Better safe than sorry!” He grinned. I counted three missing teeth.
Maybe Fran chose him because he was safe. Judging by his calm demeanor and speed of driving, the guy wouldn’t rape a naked woman. He may just avert his eyes, instead.
Fran was telling him about our trip, and how we ran away from graduation and randomly picked a place and were off.
“My granddaughter exactly your age! She in Rome, studying. Last year of school now. Such a beautiful girl! I tell her about these Italianos. Boys in Italy are very touchy!” He raised his hands from the steering wheel to make a wild motion, and I gently put them back on the steering wheel.
I think everyone in Italia liked using their hands a lot. Wherever we went, there were people talking with hand actions. It must be the one country where a foreigner has the least language issues, because there's a hand action for everything.
“Boys everywhere are touchy. Gosh you remember Stanton?” She turned to me. “He was such a douche, trying to get to second base like that!”

In Psychology, there is a theory about Emotional Intelligence. The emotionally intelligent are those who can give a toast, make friends easily, are comfortable and comforting, basically popular. Fran had the highest emotional intelligence I’d ever seen, though she wasn’t that emotional.

Back home (and even here), Fran was quite a hit with the guys (even the old ones, apparently). In fact, she was a hit with everyone, except parents. With her many piercings and outright demeanor, Fran wasn’t exactly someone parents would like. I was the one parents always liked.

Stanton had come up to her in school once, and told her she was hot, and would she be willing to go out on a date with him? She told him she was already dating another guy (she wasn’t, she was just trying to let him down gently).
Then, Stanton made the grave mistake of smirking and telling Fran “I don’t think that’ll be an issue with you.” And he proceeded to feel her up, right there.

That was when Fran lost it. He ended up in the infirmary, with the bubblegum that Fran had been chewing, along with some spit, in his hair, and two black eyes. I think he even broke a bone or two.

That entire month, everyone at school had called Stanton bubblegum boy. Fran had even referred to him in her Graduation Speech.

“You and your crazy orange flavored bubblegum.” I laughed. “They were a legend in school. You remember how you didn’t have any place to spit it out during Algebra finals and you just stuck it to your answer sheet?”
She roared with laughter. “Yeah! I’ll never forget the disgusting look Mr. Henry gave me when he gave us our reports. Must’ve all got in his hand while he corrected them.”

Old Guy was laughing at Fran’s stories. They were funny, and even though I’d lived all of them with her, I was laughing too.
“I wish you could meet my daughter! She need to meet you! You teach her crazy things!” Again, his hands left the steering, and he waved in the air.
“That’s cool, man! I wish I could meet her! I love meeting new people!” Fran pouted.
Suddenly, his eyes widened. He reached out and grabbed Fran’s wrist.
That’s it. He’s going to rape us now. I underestimated him.

“I go to back to Rome again tonight. You come back with me and meet her!” He said excitedly.

Oh. He wasn’t going to rape us.

Fran’s eyes widened as she looked at me and raised an eyebrow. I knew she was considering it.
“I don’t mind. But that means lesser time to see other things.”
“That’s cool. I’d rather meet more people than see things.”
“Then you come back with me to Rome tomorrow! My Helen will love you two bellas! She’s always with boys.” He grimaced.
And that’s how we sealed our fate for the next two days.

“It’s pretty cool, yeah?” Fran’s head was tilted at a weird angle as we saw the Leaning Tower of Pisa. She looked like a confused dog. I put her head straight.
“You’re supposed to view it normally, that’s when it’ll be leaning.”, I chuckle.

After we’re done ogling at the tower, we clicked a few photos of us over there. I made Fran stand in different poses in front of the tower, so that in one photo, she looks like she’s pushing it over. In another, she looks like she’s holding it from falling anymore. In another, she’s leaning on the tower.
At lunch, she went through all my photos, laughing at them. She showed me the one where she’s pushing over the tower. “Now I can tell everyone how great I am. The Leaning Tower of Pisa wasn’t an engineering marvel, pshht. It was me who did it.” She gloated. I smiled fondly at her, remembering why I loved Fran so much.

Hello people :)
So they're going back to Rome. Who'd have thought, huh? XD
Vote, comment, be a darling :)
Thanks, Hera