He was Swedish. I was American.
But we didn’t know it was a match made in heaven until three cups of coffee later. It wasn’t really a date. In fact, the plan was to go site seeing that day with a group of friends, after all, we were in Italy. Oh sure, I had noticed him lingering around the coffee stand at work, or trying to find ways to talk to me, but I didn’t really know that he liked me.
That day started in typical fashion: hitting snooze so many times on my alarm that I was then rushing through my morning routine. My hair didn’t want to be tamed, so I gave up and headed to the lobby to eat breakfast. Everyone was excited to have the day off of work to see the seaside town of Genoa. I enjoyed a delicious breakfast and my favorite kind of coffee, a cafe latte.
Italy has the best cafe lattes.
Soon, ten of us hit the road ready for Italian adventures, cameras in hand. We were heading to the city center to enjoy the Italian arts, architecture, pizzerias, and coffee bars. We had also heard good things about a nice aquarium along the marina.
Unfortunately, my plans changed.
Something wasn’t sitting well with my stomach and I ended up in a restaurant bathroom for far too long, holding up the rest of the group. They had been patiently waiting for me, but I told the rest of the group to go on without me. I figured I had to end my day and head back to the hotel. I was so disappointed to be missing out on a fun day, and also to my disappointment was that the Swedish flirt was nowhere to be seen.
I thought he had left; probably finding the morning’s event rather boring or unattractive.
I sat outside, alone, waiting for a taxi.
Then I heard someone call out my name, and there he was. In his hands? A small white bag. He had raced to the nearest pharmacy to get medicine to settle my stomach. Okay, now he had my attention.
We had all been traveling together for weeks now and I never really noticed him before, but that all changed with a little white pharmacy bag. This Swed was now on my radar. How sweet he was! Not only that, but he stayed with me and we walked to the marina when I started to feel better. There we found a cafe with fantastic coffee.
We ate, we drank, we talked for hours. This shy, quiet Swed hardly ever said much to anyone, but that day the conversation flowed. We were together for so long that we talked through two meals. The weather was perfect, the view of the marina gorgeous, the coffee round and strong, all elements for a perfect day.
Twelve years later we are still together, still chatting for hours, still enjoying our moments of solitude over cups of coffee.
This is the story, of two coffee-lovers that traveled the world and fell in love.
—All American Girl
