Her eyes were really what struck him first. They were the eyes that spoke across a room, grey-rimmed, hazy violet blue, kaleidoscopic irises.

Beautiful. Tragic. Lonely. Needy.

Antonio’s achilles heel. His fatal flaw, his hamartia, his greatest weakness. The waxing and the waning of relationships, the sudden passionate swoop that led him to sleepless nights, the adoration of someone that needed constant devotion. Loving was, without a doubt, his most potent addiction.

“Tonio,” said his younger brother, a solid wrench into reality. “Tonio, I want an ice cream!”

Distracted, without his usual flair for the dramatic, Antonio dug up a handful of euros and sent eight-year-old Luigi on his way. Then he made his way towards the beautiful woman, who stood surveying the enormous museum with something resembling sadness in her magnificent eyes.

His eyes scanned her form as he approached. She was facing one of the Botticelli paintings now, and he could not help but notice her long, freckled arms; her pale, muscled legs; hair that was not just red but hundreds of varying shades of reddish colors: crimson, amaranth, terracotta, vermillion, rust, flame, mahogany.

That was probably the first thing he should have noticed, he reflected. Most people would have thought it her primary attraction. It was rather a fantastic panache of hues, something he’d only read of. Obviously, she was a tourist or something of that sort, because she was wearing a nondescript navy backpack, and anyways Italians really didn’t have that sort of coloring.

She turned around, as though to look at the next painting, and saw him looking at her. “Is there anything I am able to help you with?” she asked. Not unpleasantly, but not really with any actual curiosity either. It was a rather flat query. Antonio immediately noticed the accent in her voice: it was Irish, or Scottish, or something of that sort. Exotic.

“I’m Antonio,” he replied. “I was wondering if you needed a tour guide of Italy. You don’t look like you live around here.”

She smiled, and it was rather a haunting smile. Tired and untrusting. Fearful, almost.

Antonio hated it.

“Alright, I’m sorry for asking. I shouldn’t have. You’re just absolutely beautiful and I felt compelled to introduce myself.”

She looked deeply into his eyes, and he didn’t notice their color or shape anymore, just a sprinkling of tiny freckles around them. He found one freckle to focus on, tawny and unexceptional and small, just beneath her right eyebrow. It was like someone had taken fairy dust and sent it flying onto the sharp planes of her cheekbones and eyelids. “I’m Emer,” she responded finally, faintly. “Thank you for the compliment.”

He liked how she said her name, with that clipped, tight “r” at the end, the rushed beginning syllable and the drawn out last one. Antonio liked her full lips, how the tubercle of her upper lip sharpened into a point when she finished speaking. Her distrustful violet eyes and the fringe of eyelashes surrounding them, her pointed cheekbones, the small red curls that gathered at the edges of her forehead. The only thing that marred the perfect symmetry of her face was a long, thin scar on the left side of her forehead, and he liked that too.

“So,” said Antonio. “Where are you from?”

She laughed, revealing sharp white canine teeth. “God, you’re relentless. I don’t need an Italian man chasing me.”

Antonio stared at Emer, and it was just this: two beautiful young people trapped in the searing embrace of a glance that seemed to perpetuate the age-old love story. It was terrifying, the beginning of a journey and the end of a search. There was a relief in this gaze; that they had found one another, that they needn’t be lonely anymore. “I think you do,” replied Antonio softly, slowly, sexily.

Emer reddened and twirled a strand of breathtaking hair around a long finger. “Stop with the Italian sex-talk. I’m just a tourist, and I would like to observe the galleries of the Uffizi in silence, please.”

With his penchant for drama reinstated, Antonio gave a courteous bow and turned away so that he could leave the museum and search for his brothers. His role of babysitter had been neglected, he thought woefully, and his wooing techniques would need improvement, and his ego was stinging with the pain of rejection. It was all a pity.

Yet in his mind he was writing their story already.