Hey guys, long time lurker first time poster. As with most of these stories, this didn’t happen today. This took place a few years ago while I was in New York city. I had traveled from Stockholm to New York for a 2 week intensive bartending course where I would be staying in accommodation with 29 other students. One of those students, Ricardo, took my interest on the first day, but this story takes place on the 2nd to last.
Ricardo [name changed] was a young, striking Italian man, who grew up on a small coastal town where he and his mother, a deeply Catholic woman, ran a small pizzeria. Ricardo was in New York for the bartending course because they planned to expand the pizzeria to include a cocktail bar. The country was, and still is, in deep recession and while the pizza they made was famous within the town, it was struggling financially and they had hopes for the bar to make them viable once more.
Ricardo, having lived under the watchful eye of mother his entire life, and having come from a small town, had been unable to find time for romance, if you know what I mean.