The events of the next two years that follow the end of the book. For those who only watched the movie (which I haven't yet, therefore I have no knowledge of how it ends and this is not based in it), here follows a quick explanation: Elio and Oliver meet again three times after that summer: one during Christmas in 1983, one in the States in 1996 for a drink at a hotel bar and one last time back in the summerhouse twenty years after their first encounter, just for a night, as he was passing through cities. The end of the book goes as:
❝Twenty years was yesterday, and yesterday was just earlier this morning, and morning seemed light-years away.
"I'm like you," he said. "I remember everything."
I stopped for a second. If you remember everything, I wanted to say, and if you are really like me, then before you leave tomorrow, or when you're just ready to shut the door of the taxi and have already said goodbye to everyone else and there's not a thing left to say in this life, then, just this once, turn to me, even in jest, or as an afterthought, which would have meant everything to me when we were together, and, as you did back then, look me in the face, hold my gaze, and call me by your name.❞
[word count: 14047]
I do hope you enjoy this. It is the first time I come forward with a piece of work so intimate and that I'm extremely proud of, and one that bears my signature and not a pseudonym or anonymity. Feel free to leave your constructive critics and general comments, I'd love to hear them all. Have a great reading. ⚘
Eventually, his shoes stepped in front of mine, so close that his pointed brown toecap nearly touched the scuffed toes of my old vans. Old and new, coming together as if time and wear had never mattered at all. Perhaps if I stared at his shoes long enough, I could forget that his face was there at all and I would never have to say a word to him. I would never even have to look him in the eye. He would never look into mine and read right away that I hated him more than I had ever hated anyone else, but also that I loved him more than I had ever loved too. And that such a love made me willing to let go of all of my hatred, my resentment, for just a small dose of what I'd had before. If I could pour Oliver into a needle and shoot him straight into my veins, letting my eyes roll back into my head and reality slip away from me, laying in a delicious delusion, I would never want for a single other thing.
***
Twenty years after their first encounter, Elio is learning to accept that he and Oliver will never be together. Now living in Dresden, teaching music, and in a relationship with someone new, his time with Oliver feels a world away. Except, it's not. Oliver comes crashing back into his life and Elio realises that he can never truly move on from the Summer in Northern Italy. So, he decides that, if he can't move on, then neither should Oliver.