The not-so-perfect story of an Italian Summer

Chapter 4

Elisa and I are walking under the sun along the shore. "Remind me again, where are we going?" I ask slightly annoyed. I actually already know the answer to that question. Last night, while I was having one of the worst nights of my life, she apparently met a group of people of different nationalities, and now we are going to meet up with them, though I don't see why they can't come to us and we have to get sunburned on the way to where they are staying. "I already told you! It's not much farther! See those windsurfers over there? Well, we just need to go a little further! Come on, we're going to be late! I told them we would meet up with them at Bridgman's by 11 am!" Elisa answers. "They're really nice people, we're going to have lots of fun together." she continues. Usually Elisa isn't really the extrovert type, but apparently last night she helped a guy from this group order his drink (the barista at King's didn't understand enough English to even serve this poor fellow a drink, so Elisa just had to step in and act as his translator), which then resulted in him bringing her over to his friends. They apparently also helped her look for me after I've been MIA for too long. They left about half an hour before Elisa finally found me, with the promise to rent a few 'pedalò' boats together the next day.

We finally arrived at the pre-arranged meet-up spot and there stood a group of 7 people waiting for us. Elisa presented me to the group and then one after the other they told me their names and nationalities. The first two to come up to me were Marlene and Alina, two sisters from Germany; then came Miriam, a tall girl from Luxembourg. Next were Miguel and Carlos from Portugal, Alexandra (who prefers to be called Alex) from France and finally Harry from England. Alina was the youngest, she had just become 17 last month, while Miguel was the oldest with his 22nd birthday just around the corner. They explained to me how they all had met: Miguel, Alexandra, Miriam and Marlene had met a few years back at a summer camp in England and had become friends. There Marlene had also fallen in love with her boyfriend Harry. After that encounter at summer camp they had decided to keep in touch and had already spent various holidays together. Alex used to go to Jesolo with her parents, so this is how they started to spend at least one month every summer here. At some point Marlene had started bringing her sister Alina along, and Miguel had brought his boyfriend Carlos.

Once the introductions were done, Elisa exclaimed: "I hope you guys didn't have to wait too long for us! Someone..." Here she looked at me: "... doesn't really like walking under the hot sun at a certain pace so we took a bit longer than expected...". I just rolled my eyes. "Well if someone didn't need half an hour to finally wake up after her last alarm sounded, we wouldn't have to 'walk at a certain pace' under the frigging scorching hot sun!" I answered her. Slightly embarrassed, Elisa picked up some sand and threw it at me while our newly acquired friends stared laughing at our playful banter.

"Don't worry" said Alex "You guys weren't even that late. Besides, we were also waiting for someone else. Christian has the bad habit to be constantly late for everything. He was at King's with us, but you didn't meet him Elisa. He was busy trying to hook up with some girl. He should be here any moment now... hopefully" she added. We kept chatting and waited for this Christian guy to show up. After a while I started wondering if he had bailed on us. "Christian never bails. He often arrives very late, but if he makes a commitment, you can be sure he will honour it. He also never breaks promises, and he did promise he would come. Too bad he didn't also promise to be on time!" said Miguel almost as if he had sensed my concern. We laugh. He told me they had met Christian the first year they came to Jesolo. He had been the only Italian guy around that actually understood and could speak a decent amount of English, and he had soon found a place in the group. He usually hung out with some other locals, but he always made some time for them too. "He's a nice guy... sometimes he feels the need to act up and acts kind of moody, but most of the time he's a really fun person to be around" Miguel concludes. I just nod. I'm not so sure what to think about this guy, he sounds... well let's say interesting.

"Go Alex!" I hear Elisa cheer all of a sudden. I turn around to find out what is happening. It would appear that Alex has engaged in a push up battle with a few guys, and she is clearly winning. "She saw them doing push-ups and just ran over to them, dropped to the ground and started doing push-ups herself." Alina tells me amused. "It's the third time this week she does it. Every time she sees guys trying to brag about how sporty they are by doing push-ups, planks or other she just runs up to them and joins. She pretty much always ends up winning. It's quite entertaining to see how the expressions of the guys always change from 'yeah-let's-give-the-girl-a-chance' to 'damn-she's-actually-way-better-than-us'." We laugh. In the meantime, the push up competition has shifted from 'who can do the most push-ups' to 'who can do the most difficult kind of push-ups'. Alex easily manages to do this push-up where you have to jump with your whole body stiff between a push up and the next and this other one where you have to clap your hands in front of yourself after you come back up from your push up. After she demonstrates a couple of handstand-push-up she returns to us victorious. A few guys from the group she just crushed stare after her in various stages of confusion to how they were just beaten by this girl and admiration.

Carlos, who had left our group to get a call, joins us again. "Christian said he would be here in two minutes. I told him we would already rent the 'pedaló' so that we can get going as soon as he gets here." he tells us. We all get our share of the money out and Carlos goes to the guy who supervises the rental. We pick two 'pedaló' since each one can only host up to five people. Both have slides on them, a blue one and a yellow one. We push the 'pedaló' into the water and then start climbing onto them. Carlos, Alina, Miriam, Marlene and Harry climb onto the 'pedaló' with the yellow slide, while Alex, Miguel, Elisa and I climb onto the one with the blue slide. Just as we're about to go someone runs up to us and quickly climbs onto our 'pedaló'. "Hey Chris! Nice of you to finally join us!" Alex shouts as she and Miguel start pumping onto those pedals. Elisa is sitting on top of the slide, just like Alina is doing in the other boat. I turn around to welcome the newcomer and freeze.

It's him. It's the guy from yesterday, Mister Oh-I-am-so-hot from the beach. Christian is the jackass from the disco!

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Hello! So this chapter was kind of short, but I hope you liked it nevertheless. Sorry for the long wait. Do you like the new characters? Which one of them is your favourite? And we finally discovered Christians name! Did you expect him to be part of this new friend group? Anyways, up top is a picture of the pedaló. Please vote and comment if you liked the chapter!