We sat drinking martinis and eating olives with the Mediterranean swaying about in front of us and a string of pink and orange 2-dimensional houses behind us. The green shutters and windows displayed against the warm tones were hand-painted props, adding to the pristine scene that was Portofino.

“I have good feelings with you” was what the google translate depicted when he revealed the phone to me after minutes of silently typing as I slurped down olives. He gave me a grin and his cigarette flopped. This one line, seamlessly already ‘translated,’ could mean anything. He feels good when he is with me? He has feelings for me? I squeezed his hand and accepted it in all its lack of sense. Google translate was an asset, but it also loomed over us, abusing its power to connect us and manipulating a distance between us. 

After, we discussed the American phenomenon of love languages. “Mots d'affirmation, temps de qualité…”,  they sounded more romantic in French. I explained these were just a baseline for partners to understand each other. He criticized how Americans must label and categorize everything to make sense of it. He was right. I suppose we are constantly trying to relate to one another as a way to feel less alone or vulnerable. Love languages are not quantifiable. Each couple creates a language of their own, like the dancing Italians in Lake Como. For now, our language would consist of google translate’s lines like “I have good feelings with you,” and other mysterious Mots d'affirmation that led to our various interpretations of one another. 

The sun sank as we snuck onto a hotel beach and lay in the sand hiding behind the stacked lounge chairs and closed umbrellas. We dipped into the warm salt and drove back to Milan soaking the chairs of our rental fiat.