GUARANTEED EXIT STRATEGY.

My elbow knocks into something and before I can look over, I hear the glass wobbling around. I whip my head to the side and the glass, once filled with water, is headed straight for the floor. The water splats first, creating a puddle that I wish would be enough to cushion the impending shatter.

My body freezes while my mind yells, catch it! And yet. Well, there's nothing I can do about it now. But the cleanup afterwards is going to be a pain in the ass.

5am on an April morning in Florence is pitch black. The only people awake right now are me and my taxi driver. This is the last time I'll get to use my Italian for a while, so I greet him, buongiorno. His comes out flat, groggy. I don't blame him, it's early. He's a young guy, tall, with long brown dreads. I don't get a good look at his face.

We ride in silence for a few minutes, me gazing out the window at landmarks still covered by nightfall. I'm gonna miss you, I think to myself, bidding farewell to Florence like a lover I don't know when I'll see again.

He stops to pick up a couple flagging us down, drops them off on the way, explains to me after that it's not usually allowed, but it was late and they probably didn't know how else they'd get home. Prego, non c'è problema, I tell him. His tone shifts, more curious now. How do you speak Italian so well? I fight back a sheepish smile. Ho studiato qui a Firenze. Vorrei esercitarmi a parlare il più possibile.

Even in the dark, even with him facing forward, something in him woke up. Like water splashed on a face, the shock of it registering. The conversation opened from there, Italian folding into English and back. When I tell him I'm heading back to the States, he says, surprised, that I'm not like the typical American. It used to bother me, that phrase, for reasons that had nothing to do with him. But he means it as: not many Americans bother to learn the language. E tu, sei fiorentino? I ask. He says he's Italian and Brazilian, his father from Florence, his mother from Brazil. He's spent his whole life here except a few childhood summers, feels Florentine through and through, and still gets asked if he's "really" Italian, like I've been asked if I'm "really" American. We don't say much more about it. Just enough to know we'd each carried some version of the same question.

We introduce ourselves. He reaches back for a handshake, funny, endearing. Remarkable, he says, about my Italian. His voice sounds nothing like the groggy hello twenty minutes ago. He asks when I'll come back to Italy. Non lo so, I say.

Maybe that was the glass, mid-air. The lights of the airport already in the windshield.

He pulled up to departures. I don't remember how we said goodbye. I remember the sunrise, his taxi in my periphery, turning to head inside. I never got a good look at his face, and there's no way I'd recognize it now. What stayed with me: the dreads, the curious voice, his name.

There's no line to check in for my flight, and security was empty. I board in about an hour. I take a seat on the bench in my gate and stare out the window.

I should have asked him to breakfast. We could have kept talking over subpar cornetti from the tiny bar down the hall. I huff a bit through a side grin. What timing, meeting someone interesting at the last minute before I leave the country. This isn't the first time this has happened to me, in the same city no less.

My eyebrows furrow, my gaze flickers back and forth. I rack my brain for a few seconds about why this grief feels familiar.

There wasn't any harm in just going for it. The stakes were so low at that point. If he said no, I could flee the country via the flight I'm about to board in an hour. Guaranteed exit strategy. I'd never see him again, bye bye. But if he said yes, I would have gotten to know someone interesting, and who knows where that might have led. Either somewhere, or nowhere. In which case, I'd arrive at the same ending: I'll never see him again, bye bye.

But the thought that I keep reaching for is this: whether he would have said yes or no, I lost the chance to practice courage in asking for what I want.

Years later, I asked someone if they'd like to get coffee together one day. I asked with the kind of confidence that felt more like a fake calmness for a few seconds until I got my answer than actual confidence. He said yes. A few days later, we went out for coffee. It didn't lead anywhere after that. It didn't have to. It was enough to be able to say I just went for it.

The glass is in mid-air, and my arm reaches out before my mind can tell me it's too late. I let out a breath, not because I know for certain I'll catch it, but because I tried to anyway.