[Fic] Six in One (Pt. 2)
Part 1
Four hours and a shower later, Lovina was feeling much better. She was also feeling extremely grateful that she didn’t quite remember everything that had occurred the night before, because from what she did remember/what Romano and Antonia had said, she’d made a right ass of herself. It was obviously all their fault, though, for not telling her about their weird threesome relationship. Why on earth would she assumed that’s what was going on?
Hey, you’ve reached Antonio! Well. Not really. You’ve reached his machine. My machine. It’s not really a machine, this is a cellphone, they don’t have the machines with the tapes in them, but-- right! Sorry, Roma! Romano says leave a message and I’ll call you back later! Antonio will call you back later, not Romano, he never calls anyone ba--- bye! Wait for the beep!
And why on earth had she assumed Antonio would answer her phone calls after being told she was going to make one?
She decided against leaving a message because she got the impression that Antonio didn’t quite know how to use his own damn cellphone. Instead, she fired off a text that simply read Pick up your damn phone. She jumped when a reply came only seconds later.
sry @ lumbe w my sis :) cal l8r?
“...What the fuck is lumbe?” Lovina stared at the atrociously typed text for a moment, before deciding he probably meant lunch, since it was about that time of day.
Learn how to text. Call me when you’re done, I guess.
thas wut roma sys 2 haha! l8r <3
Lovina stuffed her phone in her pocket, deciding against responding to the text again, if only to save herself from having to decipher what it was Antonio was saying. She contemplated going out to grab something to eat, but settled on eating one of the many tomatoes she and Antonia had laying around the room instead. Somebody knocked on the door, and she thought maybe Antonio had decided to stop by instead, so she ignored it. He could call her back like a normal person, she wasn’t in the mood for company.
Apparently company was in the mood for her, though, because a grumble came from the other side of the door before a key was being inserted into the lock and she was met with, not Antonio, but Romano. “Who said you could have a key to the room?” Lovina scowled at him when he stole one of her tomatoes instead of responding. “That’s mine, put it down.”
“S’mine now.” He sat on the edge of Antonia’s bed and took a bite out of her her tomato. “You gave me a black eye, I can steal your tomatoes if I want to.”
She’d been too tired to notice it earlier that morning, but yes, there was indeed a dark, nasty looking bruise that started underneath Romano’s left eye and extended down to his cheek. Romano turned away from her with a huff when he noticed her staring and continued to eat the tomato, a slightly sticky hand coming up once or twice to rub at the large bruise. “I’m never helping you again, you’re on your own at the next party.”
Lovina probably should have apologised, but she was already being made to apologise to Antonio later and by the time she was done with that, her quota for the year would surely be met. A change of subject was in order instead. “I thought you were out with Antonia?”
“I was.”
“...So why are you here?”
“You’ve never met Francine, obviously, or you’d understand.”
Right. Antonia’s ex. Lovina was a little surprised that somebody who currently had two boyfriends had an ex-girlfriend, but she wasn’t exactly one to talk about that particular matter, much to her mother’s chagrin. “Doesn’t explain why you’re here. Or why you’d leave your girlfriend with a perverted ex you hate, but whatever.”
“I don’t have to explain why I’m here. You gave me a black eye.” Lovina was going to give him another black eye if he didn’t stop using that as an excuse for being an asshole. “And Antonia’s not going to do anything. If the French bitch touches her I’ll just call her boyfriend and he can deal with it.” A buzzing sound echoed through the room and Romano paused to check his phone. “...Apparently your name is ‘Loth’ now.”
She was glad to know the horrendous texts from Antonio weren’t only reserved for her. “And he eats lumbe instead of lunch. Got yourself a keeper there, bastard.”
Romano was silent for another moment as he responded to whatever it was Antonio had said about Lovina. “Oh shut up.”
“You shut up.”
“No you.”
The sound of laughter and the door opening cut them off. When Antonia got back later, Lovina was going to need to have a chat with her about these stupid boyfriends of hers who just entered rooms without permission. “I’m sure you two are in the middle of a very important argument right now, but can I steal Lovina, Roma?”
“Go right ahead,” Romano got up and started rummaging through the fridge in the small kitchen. Lovina sent him a dirty look, but didn’t otherwise protest because none of the food in there was hers anyway and if Romano ate all Antonia’s food, that was Antonia’s problem, not hers.
She did throw a pillow at him when he went back for more of her tomatoes, though.
“Hey!” Romano picked the pillow up and tossed it back at her. “Knock it off, woman, seriously.”
“You knock it off.” Lovina crossed her arms, a habit she’d picked up as a small child that she’d never really grown out of. “I told you to stay out of my tomatoes! You already had one, leave the rest alone.”
Romano defiantly picked up two tomatoes and licked them both before setting them back down in the bowl. Lovina had half a mind to chuck another pillow at him, but Antonio quickly made his presence remembered when he looped an arm through hers and passed her her purse. When he’d grabbed it, she had no idea. “C’mon, Lovi, I’ll take you out for a coffee, okay?”
“No.” She looked up at Antonio’s hesitant smile and that was probably a mistake, because really, that look made her feel worse than a frown and she’d maybe already been feeling a little bad about apparently upsetting him the night before. “Fine. Romano owes me a new bowl of tomatoes.”
“I ate one.”
“And licked two,” Antonio reminded him. “He’ll bring some over next time we go shopping, don’t worry.”
“I won--”
“Bye bye Roma, love you!” With that, Antonio was dragging Lovina out of the room and down the hall, the door closely softly behind him. “The best way to finish an argument with Romano is just to stop having it,” he told her.
“Good to know.” Lovina fell into step with Antonio as he started walking out of the building and toward the coffee shop down the road. "Um." Lovina was suddenly at a loss for words and thought maybe she'd continue with this whole apology thing later, but Antonio had apparently heard her false start, since he glanced down at her curiously as they continued to walk along the street. "So I guess I might have acted like an ass last night." Smooth, Lovina, smooth.
Antonio laughed and the smile he gave her this time was the real, full one she'd seen before in their handful of meetings. "It's okay." A crowd of people were coming down the sidewalk heading the opposite direction, and Antonio took full advantage of the fact that his arm was still linked with Lovina's to steer her around them. "Antonia told me what happened. I'd probably hate me too if I really were off stealing Romano from Antonia, she's much to sweet to do that to."
"I don't hate you, stupid."
He laughed again and shook his head. "If I had a cent for every time I've heard that particular sentence, I'd be able to buy us all new apartments so we wouldn't have to live in these silly dorm rooms."
She didn't know why, but being included in that ridiculous sentence Antonio had just uttered made those damned butterflies start fluttering in her stomach again. Lovina was seriously going crazy, there was no other explanation.
"You'd probably blow any coins you got on more tomatoes before you managed to save up enough for that."
Antonio just shrugged and their conversation was temporarily put on hold when they reached the same coffee shop that Antonia and Romano had taken Lovina to a few times. As much as she complained about Romano and Antonia, and Antonia and Romano together, she'd somehow found herself spending more and more time with them as the months went by. Odd.
Her train of thought was broken when Antonio pulled out a chair and motioned for her to sit down. She sat there awkwardly while Antonio went up to the counter to order their drinks, and from the sounds of it he'd probably absorbed enough information about her from Antonia to know how she liked her coffee (strongest brew they had, no sugar, just a splash of milk).
"They'll have it right out," Antonio told her after he'd finished paying.
"Thanks." Antonio smiled at her and she looked up at the ceiling, suddenly finding it fascinating. "So..."
"So?"
“How’d you three meet anyway?” she asked suddenly, before she could think better of it. At least she'd asked something like that, and not any of the other questions swirling around in her head.
“Romano and Antonia have known each other since they were kids,” he started explaining. “I met Antonia at a party Francine was throwing, and we became friends right away. Obviously I met Romano through Antonia. He’s a year behind us in school and he didn’t know anyone else here except for Antonia, and since my old roommate went back to Germany after our first year, she suggested me and Roma be roommates. And then, well.”
“You became more than roommates, got it.”
“It wasn’t really quite that simple, but yeah, eventually.”
“I can’t imagine it was, no. It’s not everyday you start dating your roommate and his girlfriend.”
“You probably think it’s weird, a lot of people do,” he said. “But after the three of us managed to work things out and start dating, I just really couldn't imagine not dating them, you know? It's like we were meant to be together from the start." Had that statement come from anyone else, Lovina might have laughed at them, but the look on Antonio’s face, a look of complete sincerity as well as love for the two people he was talking about, kept her from doing so. She was sure she’d have plenty of other opportunities to laugh at stupid things he said, she’d leave him alone this time.
A waitress came by with coffee for the two of them and Lovina picked at her glass for awhile before asking just one of the many other questions she’d been wanting to since that morning. “Don’t any of you ever get jealous?”
Thankfully, Antonio appeared to be more than happy to keep answering her questions. “Of each other? Of course not.” He leaned in conspiratorially after that, an odd twinkle in his eyes. “Though I think Roma’s been a little jealous of all the attention Antonia’s been giving you.”
Lovina shoved his face away from hers. “Stop joking around with me, bastard.”
“I’m not, really! She likes you a lot. I think Romano does too, but it took him years to ask Antonia out so he probably won’t be admitting it anytime soon.”
“And why are you telling me this?”
"No reason." Lovina didn't believe that for one minute. "Just making conversation. Anymore questions I can answer for you?"
---
If Lovina hadn’t known about Antonia, Romano, and Antonio before, she would have definitely clued in their next term at school. Their first term, Antonio had been far too busy to stop by or go out too much, a fact she was only aware of because Romano and Antonia complained about it constantly, but his course load was lighter the next time around and this lead to him becoming yet another constant guest in her and Antonia’s room. She insisted this bothered her, but she was pretty sure the fact that she was always tagging along with them on outings when asked to gave away the fact that she really didn’t mind so much.
Well. She didn’t mind so much when they were doing perfectly innocuous things in the room. Now was not one of those times, and she certainly minded very much.
“Shit!” Her hands were flying up to cover her face the second certain parts of Antonia and Antonio were in her line of vision. The very second that happened, she didn’t linger for even a nanosecond.
“Oh, hey Lovi! What’re you doing home so early?” Lovina kept her eyes covered as the sounds of Antonia and Antonio running around getting dressed replaced the previous sounds the dorm room had been filled with. Lovina was guessing, she hadn’t actually heard anything prior to opening the door. “We’re dressed now, sorry.”
“My last class got cancelled for today, the teacher’s sick or something.” Lovina tentatively removed her hands from her eyes and only opened them fully when she ascertained that yes, the two previously naked people were indeed no longer in such a state. “I told you that this morning.”
“Aw, I forgot, sorry!”
“Obviously.”
“Sorry, Lovi, it won’t happen again.” Lovina looked over at Antonio just in time to see he was tossing a tomato in her direction and she caught the fruit just in time to avoid it falling to the ground. “We were in my room, but Romano kicked us out.”
“How come it never works when I kick you out?”
“Usually never works when he tries either, but he has a headache so we thought we’d leave him be for a couple hours.”
“Lucky me.” Lovina would have to remember to fake a headache next time she wanted the room to herself. “If I get a headache too will you guys leave us both alone?”
“Never,” Antonio and Antonia said in sync. Their twin looks of surprise made Lovina laugh, and the two quickly joined in, their giggles only subsiding when Antonia began speaking again.
“It’s Friday, let’s go do something since we’re all done with class for the week!” Not waiting to see if the other two people in the room thought this was an acceptable idea, Antonia took Lovina’s bookbag away from her and tossed it onto her bed. “I’m sure Romano won’t mind as long as we take him something to eat later.”
“You two can just go out without me, I don’t feel like it.”
“Aw, no, you have to come too!” Antonio grabbed one of her wrists and Antonia grabbed the other, the two of them working together to drag Lovina out of the room. “Edmée says they’ve opened up a new pizza place nearby, we want you to come check it out with us.”
Pizza did sound good. Pizza sounded very good, actually, so long as it was good pizza, and not some nasty, sorry excuse for pizza. Nasty, sorry excuses for anything never sounded good. “Fiiine.” Lovina wasn’t giving in, they’d just made a very good case for themselves what with the whole pizza thing. They were dirty, bribing cheaters and that wasn’t Lovina’s fault one bit. “But I’m not staying out all night. We’ll get some pizza and then I’m coming back here.”
Countless hours later, Lovina was finally walking back to her room, Antonia and Antonio skipping along behind her. The pizza place, it turned out, not only served pizza, but an assortment of wine as well, and after a couple glasses staying out seemed like a very good idea, despite her initial plans.
“Lovi!”
“What?”
“Loviiiiiiiiii.”
“I said what?!”
“Oh, hehe, didn’t hear you!” Antonia ran up to Lovina and after some stumbling and some laughter from Antonio, she was walking side-by-side with her. “You’ve got Roma’s pizza, right? I don’t have it and Antonio doesn’t either!”
“For the billionth time,” Lovina hiccuped a bit before continuing. “Yes. And for the billionth... billion-and-third time, it’s ridiculously late. He’s sleeping. He can have the damn pizza tomorrow.”
Also for the billion-and-third time, Lovina found herself wondering why Antonio was going back to their room with them, instead of just taking the pizza and going to his own damn place, but she was pretty sure that had already been answered too. After spending the whole short walk from the pizza place to their room yelling at the two of them for not listening when she answered their questions, she’d been damned if the fact that she hadn’t bothered to listen when they’d answered her questions would make a hypocrite out of her.
Once they were back in the room, Lovina shoved Romano’s pizza in the fridge and went to get into her bed, not caring that she was still in her clothes. What she did care about was the fact that somebody else was already in the bed.
“Antonio.” She shoved at his arm. “This is my bed, fuck off.”
The demand was met with a snore.
“Antonia, make him go away.”
Another snore, this time from the other side of the room.
Antonio just mumbled and hugged her pillow when she tried to wake him up. Lovina was not going to spend the night on the floor when she was in her room, and a quick glance at Antonia made her decide against stealing her bed, since she was currently drooling all over the pillow.
“Don’t hog the covers,” she mumbled as she slid in next to Antonio and yanked most of the covers over herself. He just snored in response once more and the obnoxious noises both him and Antonia made in their sleep were what eventually lulled her off to dreamland as well.
---
Lovina had been in her room for the past two hours talking to her younger sister on the phone, and she’d spent the last hour and fifty minutes contemplating just hanging up and letting Felicia ramble to herself for awhile. It would probably take her awhile to notice, and it would certainly save their parents from having to pay a ridiculously high cellphone bill. Again. The last time she’d tried that, though, Felicia had called in a panic thirty minutes later, crying about the call being dropped and asking Lovina what the last thing she’d heard was, and she’d been forced to listen to the younger girl ramble on anyway, so she’d resigned herself to just dozing on her bed while the girl gabbed about school and pasta and what universities she was thinking about going to and pasta and Germany (Lovina really hated that place, she had no idea why Felicia liked it so much) and had Lovina made any other friends? Did she have a boyfriend yet? A girlfriend? Oooh, how was Antoni-- Or how about a cat?!
“...Why the fuck would I have a cat?” was the first thing she’d said in over half an hour.
“Ve, I don’t know. Cats are cute! Does Antonia like them?” Antonia did. “Oh oh, right, you can’t have pets in your room I forgot. How about I get you a cat and keep it here and send you pictures and then you can come see her over the summer?”
...At least Felicia had gotten fixated on the cat thing and not the Lovina’s love life thing. “You do that.”
“Oh, I will! I’ll find you a really cute one right now!” The sounds of Felicia scrambling off whatever she’d been sitting on came over the phone and with a quick, “Ciao!” she was gone.
And then Lovina’s phone was ringing again.
“What do you want now?” she said in place of a normal greeting. “I thought you were going to look for a cat, did Mamma tell you no?”
“I wasn’t going to look for a cat?”
“Oh.” That was definitely not her sister. Somebody who was definitely Antonia giggled in the background and a very Romano-like shhh followed, but there was no mistaking who was actually calling her. “Ciao, Antonio.”
“Hey Lovina! Hold on a minute,” his voice got fainter and Lovina guessed he had pulled the phone away from his mouth. “Tonia, can I have my pants back? Lovina finally answered her phone!”
...Lovina didn’t want to know.
After some shuffling noises that were hopefully just Antonio putting his pants back on, he was once again on the line. “Sorry about that. Are you busy right now?”
No. “Maybe. Why, what do you want?”
“We want you to come over! We’ve been wanting to talk to you about something.”
“Can’t you just talk to me over the phone? I don’t want to come talk to you while you’re pantless, I’ve met my quota of seeing you three pantless for the rest of my life.”
Antonio laughed and Antonia’s echoed in the background. Bitch was probably eavesdropping on their conversation. “Please just come over? Pretty please?”
“Why should I?”
“Well Antonia and Romano really like you--”
“I do not!”
“Yes you do~!”
“And I do too, so we want to spend time with you! We really need to ask you something too. Please? We’ll make you some pasta, the stove in our kitchen got fixed so we won’t even need to go out to eat if you don’t want to.”
Pasta was tempting. Seeing Antonio inevitably burn himself on the stove again was also tempting. “I spend enough time with you morons, but whatever. I’ll be over in a few minutes.”
Antonio and Antonia had quickly learned that the best way to get Lovina to agree doing things with them was to offer her a free meal. Romano had also learned this, but he preferred to just show up in Lovina and Antonia’s room when Antonia wasn’t around and steal Lovina’s tomatoes. Lovina wasn’t quite sure if this was because he wanted to hang out with her, or if he just had an awful time of keeping tomatoes stocked in his own place and spending time with her was only an unfortunate side effect of his tomato stealing endeavours, but she liked to pretend he was secretly desperate for her company. She liked to pretend a lot of things like that, but just as Romano might never admit she was the reason he was stopping by, Lovina would never admit any of the things she liked to pretend.
“Guys, guys, she said yes! She’s coming over right now!”
“Aw, yay, that’s great!”
Lovina was about to hang up when a rustling came over the line followed by Romano’s voice. “Make sure you knock first, Antonia somehow managed to lose her bra agai-- Get dressed, morons, knock that off!”
“So how exactly are you not completely insane after dating both of them?” Lovina asked, phone still to her ear as she exited her dorm.
“Ugh, I think I’m already insane, I’d have to be--”
“To be dating them in the first place, right.” Lovina was probably just a little bit insane herself.
“You’d know, I suppose.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nothing but the click of Romano hanging up answered her question. “...Fucker.” Lovina pocketed her phone and quickly made her way down the street to where Antonio and Romano’s dorm was. She wanted to punch Romano in the arm for hanging up on her, and this single-minded plan was what lead her straight to the front of Antonio and Romano’s building, as well as straight into Antonio, who was waiting for her outside the front door. “...Antonia couldn’t find her bra in time?” She stepped back from Antonio and rubbed her now sore nose.
Antonio shook his head. “No, she found it. I just realised you’ve never been to our room so I didn’t know if you knew which one to go to. Is your nose okay, should I go find some ice?”
“No, I don’t want ice. And Antonia has the room number written down on the fridge. Romano made her put it there the last time she showed up drunk at the dorm one floor up.” Romano hadn’t even been home at the time and Lovina had been forced to go retrieve Antonia after some very confused, shaky boy had called her on Antonia’s phone. Antonia had laughed and insisted Lovina would too later after Lovina had yelled at her, and she was a little peeved to realise Antonia had been right.
“We lived in that room last year,” Antonio explained. “But it’s got a draft, so we’re glad we got a different room this time around.” Lovina followed Antonio over to the stairs and stepped into the drafty area where they were when he opened the door for her. She and Antonia were nearly at the top of their floor, but Antonio and Romano were just on the second floor, a fact she was very jealous of when the elevators in their building were crowded or just plain not working.
She opened the door at the second floor and quickly made her way to room 218, showing Antonio that she hadn’t been lying when she said she knew which room to go to. Not wanting to walk in on anything awkward, she waited for Antonio to catch up.
“You can go in,” he assured her. “Everyone is fully dressed and there are no stray bras hanging from any of the lamps, I promise!”
“...Are there usually bras hanging from the lamps?” She opened the door anyway and peaked in cautiously, finding nothing more than Antonia and Romano gathering up ingredients for dinner in the kitchen.
“Thankfully no,” Romano answered her. “Make yourself useful and come chop these tomatoes, Antonia keeps pretending to cut herself and I’m sick of it.”
“That was the last time, I swear! It’s just so cute how you freak out every single time.” Antonia waved over at Lovina before turning back to her cutting board. “You just have a seat Lovi, we’ve got this all under control! Your sister emailed me a tomato sauce recipe and she says it’s your favourite, so I’ll do my best to make it right, okay?”
“How the hell do you know my sister, tomato bitch?”
“I tried to call you when we had our last break and you were back in Palermo, but remember Antonio accidentally took my cell home? So I called all the Vellas in Palermo looking for you and when I finally got your house Felicia answered!”
“And then I told her she could have just got your number from me,” Romano added.
“Oh well, I ended up getting to talk to Lovi so it was okay.”
“Right. I remember.” Lovina had been waken up oh so rudely at the crack of 1 PM by her sister shoving the phone in her face and then running off to tell their parents that Lovina “finally has a friend, she called asking for her and everything!!!”. “You’re an idiot.”
Antonia pouted in response but said nothing as she turned her attention to carefully making the sauce. She’d been practicing the recipe for the past two weeks, unbeknownst to Lovina, and wanted everything to be perfect, though even if Lovina had known that the reasoning behind it would also be lost on her at the moment.
While Antonia was busy with the sauce, Romano was cooking the pasta and arguing with Antonio about the wine he’d chosen for after dinner. “I don’t care what we usually drink, stupid, get out the Marsala I bought.”
“You hate Marsala.” Lovina’s eyebrow raise in Romano’s general direction was met with a foul gesture. “Well you do. Stop doing that, you rude bastard.” The last time she and Antonia had been drinking wine in their dorm and Romano had come by to join them, he’d immediately left and gone to the store when he saw what the only bottle Lovina had was, and he’d spent the rest of the night drunkenly arguing wines with her, so him buying one of his own made absolutely no sense.
“So rude, Roma,” Antonio chastised, handing him the bottle of wine he’d asked for. “It’s your favourite though, right Lovina?”
“I guess.”
“Good! We’ll drink this after dinner then. Sorry for grabbing the wrong one, Romano.”
Dinner was eventually served without further argument, on a pair of red ceramic plates Lovina knew belonged to Antonia, but that had never once been used in the time Lovina had known her.
“What’s with you three?” she finally asked when Romano of all people was the one to pull out her chair at the small table in his and Antonio’s kitchen.
“Nothing is with us,” Romano snapped back, taking his own seat.
“Yes there is. Didn’t you say you wanted to talk to me about something?” She’d temporarily forgotten about the reason Antonio had asked her over, but she hoped whatever they wanted to talk to her about would explain their more odd than normal behaviour.
“Uh, well.” Lovina had never known Antonia to be a shy woman, but she definitely looked something akin to it at that moment.
“Not to be too forward, Lovi,” Antonio cut in. “But we were all wanting to ask you out. ”
That was definitely not what she’d been expecting. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but that. That was not it. “Ask me out?”
“On a date, idiot.”
“Roma shhh, no talking, you’re too mean when you’re nervous.”
Lovina decided the whole “butterflies in the stomach” metaphor made no sense, because it didn’t feel at all like anything was flying in her stomach, it felt like her heart was about to burst out of her chest and somehow that damn thing would be the one flying, not some stupid bugs. She looked from Antonio’s smiling face, to Antonia’s hopeful one, and over to Romano, who was blushing and looking at some spot to his left. “...With all three of you?”
Three nods (two of them eager, one of them reluctant) answered her question and the room filled with silence.
If one were to ask Lovina how exactly she got into this whole... "mess", she would be quick to blame Antonia, because Antonia was one of her very favourite people to blame for everything, anything, and nothing at all (unless Antonia was asking who had stolen something of hers, then her favourite person to blame was Romano, especially when the something in question was a dress). She could also blame her parent's insistence that she study abroad, because had it not been for that, she'd have just gone to university in Italy, and never would have been anywhere near Antonia or Antonio or Romano (well maybe Romano, he was originally from Naples, after all) in the first place. Perhaps whoever had made the roommate assignments and put Lovina in the same room as Antonia could also be found at fault-- given all four of their different ages and completely different majors, maybe they still wouldn’t have met even if they all did go to the same school.
Maybe the universe itself was at fault for putting her in this bizarre position.
However...
All four of them, Lovina included, knew completely who was to blame when Lovina eventually answered the question with a nod of her own. The tension that had previously filled the room vanished as they continued their meal and the normal conversation that typically took place when the four of them were together resumed.
She had no idea how she was going to explain this one to her mother.
Four hours and a shower later, Lovina was feeling much better. She was also feeling extremely grateful that she didn’t quite remember everything that had occurred the night before, because from what she did remember/what Romano and Antonia had said, she’d made a right ass of herself. It was obviously all their fault, though, for not telling her about their weird threesome relationship. Why on earth would she assumed that’s what was going on?
Hey, you’ve reached Antonio! Well. Not really. You’ve reached his machine. My machine. It’s not really a machine, this is a cellphone, they don’t have the machines with the tapes in them, but-- right! Sorry, Roma! Romano says leave a message and I’ll call you back later! Antonio will call you back later, not Romano, he never calls anyone ba--- bye! Wait for the beep!
And why on earth had she assumed Antonio would answer her phone calls after being told she was going to make one?
She decided against leaving a message because she got the impression that Antonio didn’t quite know how to use his own damn cellphone. Instead, she fired off a text that simply read Pick up your damn phone. She jumped when a reply came only seconds later.
sry @ lumbe w my sis :) cal l8r?
“...What the fuck is lumbe?” Lovina stared at the atrociously typed text for a moment, before deciding he probably meant lunch, since it was about that time of day.
Learn how to text. Call me when you’re done, I guess.
thas wut roma sys 2 haha! l8r <3
Lovina stuffed her phone in her pocket, deciding against responding to the text again, if only to save herself from having to decipher what it was Antonio was saying. She contemplated going out to grab something to eat, but settled on eating one of the many tomatoes she and Antonia had laying around the room instead. Somebody knocked on the door, and she thought maybe Antonio had decided to stop by instead, so she ignored it. He could call her back like a normal person, she wasn’t in the mood for company.
Apparently company was in the mood for her, though, because a grumble came from the other side of the door before a key was being inserted into the lock and she was met with, not Antonio, but Romano. “Who said you could have a key to the room?” Lovina scowled at him when he stole one of her tomatoes instead of responding. “That’s mine, put it down.”
“S’mine now.” He sat on the edge of Antonia’s bed and took a bite out of her her tomato. “You gave me a black eye, I can steal your tomatoes if I want to.”
She’d been too tired to notice it earlier that morning, but yes, there was indeed a dark, nasty looking bruise that started underneath Romano’s left eye and extended down to his cheek. Romano turned away from her with a huff when he noticed her staring and continued to eat the tomato, a slightly sticky hand coming up once or twice to rub at the large bruise. “I’m never helping you again, you’re on your own at the next party.”
Lovina probably should have apologised, but she was already being made to apologise to Antonio later and by the time she was done with that, her quota for the year would surely be met. A change of subject was in order instead. “I thought you were out with Antonia?”
“I was.”
“...So why are you here?”
“You’ve never met Francine, obviously, or you’d understand.”
Right. Antonia’s ex. Lovina was a little surprised that somebody who currently had two boyfriends had an ex-girlfriend, but she wasn’t exactly one to talk about that particular matter, much to her mother’s chagrin. “Doesn’t explain why you’re here. Or why you’d leave your girlfriend with a perverted ex you hate, but whatever.”
“I don’t have to explain why I’m here. You gave me a black eye.” Lovina was going to give him another black eye if he didn’t stop using that as an excuse for being an asshole. “And Antonia’s not going to do anything. If the French bitch touches her I’ll just call her boyfriend and he can deal with it.” A buzzing sound echoed through the room and Romano paused to check his phone. “...Apparently your name is ‘Loth’ now.”
She was glad to know the horrendous texts from Antonio weren’t only reserved for her. “And he eats lumbe instead of lunch. Got yourself a keeper there, bastard.”
Romano was silent for another moment as he responded to whatever it was Antonio had said about Lovina. “Oh shut up.”
“You shut up.”
“No you.”
The sound of laughter and the door opening cut them off. When Antonia got back later, Lovina was going to need to have a chat with her about these stupid boyfriends of hers who just entered rooms without permission. “I’m sure you two are in the middle of a very important argument right now, but can I steal Lovina, Roma?”
“Go right ahead,” Romano got up and started rummaging through the fridge in the small kitchen. Lovina sent him a dirty look, but didn’t otherwise protest because none of the food in there was hers anyway and if Romano ate all Antonia’s food, that was Antonia’s problem, not hers.
She did throw a pillow at him when he went back for more of her tomatoes, though.
“Hey!” Romano picked the pillow up and tossed it back at her. “Knock it off, woman, seriously.”
“You knock it off.” Lovina crossed her arms, a habit she’d picked up as a small child that she’d never really grown out of. “I told you to stay out of my tomatoes! You already had one, leave the rest alone.”
Romano defiantly picked up two tomatoes and licked them both before setting them back down in the bowl. Lovina had half a mind to chuck another pillow at him, but Antonio quickly made his presence remembered when he looped an arm through hers and passed her her purse. When he’d grabbed it, she had no idea. “C’mon, Lovi, I’ll take you out for a coffee, okay?”
“No.” She looked up at Antonio’s hesitant smile and that was probably a mistake, because really, that look made her feel worse than a frown and she’d maybe already been feeling a little bad about apparently upsetting him the night before. “Fine. Romano owes me a new bowl of tomatoes.”
“I ate one.”
“And licked two,” Antonio reminded him. “He’ll bring some over next time we go shopping, don’t worry.”
“I won--”
“Bye bye Roma, love you!” With that, Antonio was dragging Lovina out of the room and down the hall, the door closely softly behind him. “The best way to finish an argument with Romano is just to stop having it,” he told her.
“Good to know.” Lovina fell into step with Antonio as he started walking out of the building and toward the coffee shop down the road. "Um." Lovina was suddenly at a loss for words and thought maybe she'd continue with this whole apology thing later, but Antonio had apparently heard her false start, since he glanced down at her curiously as they continued to walk along the street. "So I guess I might have acted like an ass last night." Smooth, Lovina, smooth.
Antonio laughed and the smile he gave her this time was the real, full one she'd seen before in their handful of meetings. "It's okay." A crowd of people were coming down the sidewalk heading the opposite direction, and Antonio took full advantage of the fact that his arm was still linked with Lovina's to steer her around them. "Antonia told me what happened. I'd probably hate me too if I really were off stealing Romano from Antonia, she's much to sweet to do that to."
"I don't hate you, stupid."
He laughed again and shook his head. "If I had a cent for every time I've heard that particular sentence, I'd be able to buy us all new apartments so we wouldn't have to live in these silly dorm rooms."
She didn't know why, but being included in that ridiculous sentence Antonio had just uttered made those damned butterflies start fluttering in her stomach again. Lovina was seriously going crazy, there was no other explanation.
"You'd probably blow any coins you got on more tomatoes before you managed to save up enough for that."
Antonio just shrugged and their conversation was temporarily put on hold when they reached the same coffee shop that Antonia and Romano had taken Lovina to a few times. As much as she complained about Romano and Antonia, and Antonia and Romano together, she'd somehow found herself spending more and more time with them as the months went by. Odd.
Her train of thought was broken when Antonio pulled out a chair and motioned for her to sit down. She sat there awkwardly while Antonio went up to the counter to order their drinks, and from the sounds of it he'd probably absorbed enough information about her from Antonia to know how she liked her coffee (strongest brew they had, no sugar, just a splash of milk).
"They'll have it right out," Antonio told her after he'd finished paying.
"Thanks." Antonio smiled at her and she looked up at the ceiling, suddenly finding it fascinating. "So..."
"So?"
“How’d you three meet anyway?” she asked suddenly, before she could think better of it. At least she'd asked something like that, and not any of the other questions swirling around in her head.
“Romano and Antonia have known each other since they were kids,” he started explaining. “I met Antonia at a party Francine was throwing, and we became friends right away. Obviously I met Romano through Antonia. He’s a year behind us in school and he didn’t know anyone else here except for Antonia, and since my old roommate went back to Germany after our first year, she suggested me and Roma be roommates. And then, well.”
“You became more than roommates, got it.”
“It wasn’t really quite that simple, but yeah, eventually.”
“I can’t imagine it was, no. It’s not everyday you start dating your roommate and his girlfriend.”
“You probably think it’s weird, a lot of people do,” he said. “But after the three of us managed to work things out and start dating, I just really couldn't imagine not dating them, you know? It's like we were meant to be together from the start." Had that statement come from anyone else, Lovina might have laughed at them, but the look on Antonio’s face, a look of complete sincerity as well as love for the two people he was talking about, kept her from doing so. She was sure she’d have plenty of other opportunities to laugh at stupid things he said, she’d leave him alone this time.
A waitress came by with coffee for the two of them and Lovina picked at her glass for awhile before asking just one of the many other questions she’d been wanting to since that morning. “Don’t any of you ever get jealous?”
Thankfully, Antonio appeared to be more than happy to keep answering her questions. “Of each other? Of course not.” He leaned in conspiratorially after that, an odd twinkle in his eyes. “Though I think Roma’s been a little jealous of all the attention Antonia’s been giving you.”
Lovina shoved his face away from hers. “Stop joking around with me, bastard.”
“I’m not, really! She likes you a lot. I think Romano does too, but it took him years to ask Antonia out so he probably won’t be admitting it anytime soon.”
“And why are you telling me this?”
"No reason." Lovina didn't believe that for one minute. "Just making conversation. Anymore questions I can answer for you?"
---
If Lovina hadn’t known about Antonia, Romano, and Antonio before, she would have definitely clued in their next term at school. Their first term, Antonio had been far too busy to stop by or go out too much, a fact she was only aware of because Romano and Antonia complained about it constantly, but his course load was lighter the next time around and this lead to him becoming yet another constant guest in her and Antonia’s room. She insisted this bothered her, but she was pretty sure the fact that she was always tagging along with them on outings when asked to gave away the fact that she really didn’t mind so much.
Well. She didn’t mind so much when they were doing perfectly innocuous things in the room. Now was not one of those times, and she certainly minded very much.
“Shit!” Her hands were flying up to cover her face the second certain parts of Antonia and Antonio were in her line of vision. The very second that happened, she didn’t linger for even a nanosecond.
“Oh, hey Lovi! What’re you doing home so early?” Lovina kept her eyes covered as the sounds of Antonia and Antonio running around getting dressed replaced the previous sounds the dorm room had been filled with. Lovina was guessing, she hadn’t actually heard anything prior to opening the door. “We’re dressed now, sorry.”
“My last class got cancelled for today, the teacher’s sick or something.” Lovina tentatively removed her hands from her eyes and only opened them fully when she ascertained that yes, the two previously naked people were indeed no longer in such a state. “I told you that this morning.”
“Aw, I forgot, sorry!”
“Obviously.”
“Sorry, Lovi, it won’t happen again.” Lovina looked over at Antonio just in time to see he was tossing a tomato in her direction and she caught the fruit just in time to avoid it falling to the ground. “We were in my room, but Romano kicked us out.”
“How come it never works when I kick you out?”
“Usually never works when he tries either, but he has a headache so we thought we’d leave him be for a couple hours.”
“Lucky me.” Lovina would have to remember to fake a headache next time she wanted the room to herself. “If I get a headache too will you guys leave us both alone?”
“Never,” Antonio and Antonia said in sync. Their twin looks of surprise made Lovina laugh, and the two quickly joined in, their giggles only subsiding when Antonia began speaking again.
“It’s Friday, let’s go do something since we’re all done with class for the week!” Not waiting to see if the other two people in the room thought this was an acceptable idea, Antonia took Lovina’s bookbag away from her and tossed it onto her bed. “I’m sure Romano won’t mind as long as we take him something to eat later.”
“You two can just go out without me, I don’t feel like it.”
“Aw, no, you have to come too!” Antonio grabbed one of her wrists and Antonia grabbed the other, the two of them working together to drag Lovina out of the room. “Edmée says they’ve opened up a new pizza place nearby, we want you to come check it out with us.”
Pizza did sound good. Pizza sounded very good, actually, so long as it was good pizza, and not some nasty, sorry excuse for pizza. Nasty, sorry excuses for anything never sounded good. “Fiiine.” Lovina wasn’t giving in, they’d just made a very good case for themselves what with the whole pizza thing. They were dirty, bribing cheaters and that wasn’t Lovina’s fault one bit. “But I’m not staying out all night. We’ll get some pizza and then I’m coming back here.”
Countless hours later, Lovina was finally walking back to her room, Antonia and Antonio skipping along behind her. The pizza place, it turned out, not only served pizza, but an assortment of wine as well, and after a couple glasses staying out seemed like a very good idea, despite her initial plans.
“Lovi!”
“What?”
“Loviiiiiiiiii.”
“I said what?!”
“Oh, hehe, didn’t hear you!” Antonia ran up to Lovina and after some stumbling and some laughter from Antonio, she was walking side-by-side with her. “You’ve got Roma’s pizza, right? I don’t have it and Antonio doesn’t either!”
“For the billionth time,” Lovina hiccuped a bit before continuing. “Yes. And for the billionth... billion-and-third time, it’s ridiculously late. He’s sleeping. He can have the damn pizza tomorrow.”
Also for the billion-and-third time, Lovina found herself wondering why Antonio was going back to their room with them, instead of just taking the pizza and going to his own damn place, but she was pretty sure that had already been answered too. After spending the whole short walk from the pizza place to their room yelling at the two of them for not listening when she answered their questions, she’d been damned if the fact that she hadn’t bothered to listen when they’d answered her questions would make a hypocrite out of her.
Once they were back in the room, Lovina shoved Romano’s pizza in the fridge and went to get into her bed, not caring that she was still in her clothes. What she did care about was the fact that somebody else was already in the bed.
“Antonio.” She shoved at his arm. “This is my bed, fuck off.”
The demand was met with a snore.
“Antonia, make him go away.”
Another snore, this time from the other side of the room.
Antonio just mumbled and hugged her pillow when she tried to wake him up. Lovina was not going to spend the night on the floor when she was in her room, and a quick glance at Antonia made her decide against stealing her bed, since she was currently drooling all over the pillow.
“Don’t hog the covers,” she mumbled as she slid in next to Antonio and yanked most of the covers over herself. He just snored in response once more and the obnoxious noises both him and Antonia made in their sleep were what eventually lulled her off to dreamland as well.
---
Lovina had been in her room for the past two hours talking to her younger sister on the phone, and she’d spent the last hour and fifty minutes contemplating just hanging up and letting Felicia ramble to herself for awhile. It would probably take her awhile to notice, and it would certainly save their parents from having to pay a ridiculously high cellphone bill. Again. The last time she’d tried that, though, Felicia had called in a panic thirty minutes later, crying about the call being dropped and asking Lovina what the last thing she’d heard was, and she’d been forced to listen to the younger girl ramble on anyway, so she’d resigned herself to just dozing on her bed while the girl gabbed about school and pasta and what universities she was thinking about going to and pasta and Germany (Lovina really hated that place, she had no idea why Felicia liked it so much) and had Lovina made any other friends? Did she have a boyfriend yet? A girlfriend? Oooh, how was Antoni-- Or how about a cat?!
“...Why the fuck would I have a cat?” was the first thing she’d said in over half an hour.
“Ve, I don’t know. Cats are cute! Does Antonia like them?” Antonia did. “Oh oh, right, you can’t have pets in your room I forgot. How about I get you a cat and keep it here and send you pictures and then you can come see her over the summer?”
...At least Felicia had gotten fixated on the cat thing and not the Lovina’s love life thing. “You do that.”
“Oh, I will! I’ll find you a really cute one right now!” The sounds of Felicia scrambling off whatever she’d been sitting on came over the phone and with a quick, “Ciao!” she was gone.
And then Lovina’s phone was ringing again.
“What do you want now?” she said in place of a normal greeting. “I thought you were going to look for a cat, did Mamma tell you no?”
“I wasn’t going to look for a cat?”
“Oh.” That was definitely not her sister. Somebody who was definitely Antonia giggled in the background and a very Romano-like shhh followed, but there was no mistaking who was actually calling her. “Ciao, Antonio.”
“Hey Lovina! Hold on a minute,” his voice got fainter and Lovina guessed he had pulled the phone away from his mouth. “Tonia, can I have my pants back? Lovina finally answered her phone!”
...Lovina didn’t want to know.
After some shuffling noises that were hopefully just Antonio putting his pants back on, he was once again on the line. “Sorry about that. Are you busy right now?”
No. “Maybe. Why, what do you want?”
“We want you to come over! We’ve been wanting to talk to you about something.”
“Can’t you just talk to me over the phone? I don’t want to come talk to you while you’re pantless, I’ve met my quota of seeing you three pantless for the rest of my life.”
Antonio laughed and Antonia’s echoed in the background. Bitch was probably eavesdropping on their conversation. “Please just come over? Pretty please?”
“Why should I?”
“Well Antonia and Romano really like you--”
“I do not!”
“Yes you do~!”
“And I do too, so we want to spend time with you! We really need to ask you something too. Please? We’ll make you some pasta, the stove in our kitchen got fixed so we won’t even need to go out to eat if you don’t want to.”
Pasta was tempting. Seeing Antonio inevitably burn himself on the stove again was also tempting. “I spend enough time with you morons, but whatever. I’ll be over in a few minutes.”
Antonio and Antonia had quickly learned that the best way to get Lovina to agree doing things with them was to offer her a free meal. Romano had also learned this, but he preferred to just show up in Lovina and Antonia’s room when Antonia wasn’t around and steal Lovina’s tomatoes. Lovina wasn’t quite sure if this was because he wanted to hang out with her, or if he just had an awful time of keeping tomatoes stocked in his own place and spending time with her was only an unfortunate side effect of his tomato stealing endeavours, but she liked to pretend he was secretly desperate for her company. She liked to pretend a lot of things like that, but just as Romano might never admit she was the reason he was stopping by, Lovina would never admit any of the things she liked to pretend.
“Guys, guys, she said yes! She’s coming over right now!”
“Aw, yay, that’s great!”
Lovina was about to hang up when a rustling came over the line followed by Romano’s voice. “Make sure you knock first, Antonia somehow managed to lose her bra agai-- Get dressed, morons, knock that off!”
“So how exactly are you not completely insane after dating both of them?” Lovina asked, phone still to her ear as she exited her dorm.
“Ugh, I think I’m already insane, I’d have to be--”
“To be dating them in the first place, right.” Lovina was probably just a little bit insane herself.
“You’d know, I suppose.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nothing but the click of Romano hanging up answered her question. “...Fucker.” Lovina pocketed her phone and quickly made her way down the street to where Antonio and Romano’s dorm was. She wanted to punch Romano in the arm for hanging up on her, and this single-minded plan was what lead her straight to the front of Antonio and Romano’s building, as well as straight into Antonio, who was waiting for her outside the front door. “...Antonia couldn’t find her bra in time?” She stepped back from Antonio and rubbed her now sore nose.
Antonio shook his head. “No, she found it. I just realised you’ve never been to our room so I didn’t know if you knew which one to go to. Is your nose okay, should I go find some ice?”
“No, I don’t want ice. And Antonia has the room number written down on the fridge. Romano made her put it there the last time she showed up drunk at the dorm one floor up.” Romano hadn’t even been home at the time and Lovina had been forced to go retrieve Antonia after some very confused, shaky boy had called her on Antonia’s phone. Antonia had laughed and insisted Lovina would too later after Lovina had yelled at her, and she was a little peeved to realise Antonia had been right.
“We lived in that room last year,” Antonio explained. “But it’s got a draft, so we’re glad we got a different room this time around.” Lovina followed Antonio over to the stairs and stepped into the drafty area where they were when he opened the door for her. She and Antonia were nearly at the top of their floor, but Antonio and Romano were just on the second floor, a fact she was very jealous of when the elevators in their building were crowded or just plain not working.
She opened the door at the second floor and quickly made her way to room 218, showing Antonio that she hadn’t been lying when she said she knew which room to go to. Not wanting to walk in on anything awkward, she waited for Antonio to catch up.
“You can go in,” he assured her. “Everyone is fully dressed and there are no stray bras hanging from any of the lamps, I promise!”
“...Are there usually bras hanging from the lamps?” She opened the door anyway and peaked in cautiously, finding nothing more than Antonia and Romano gathering up ingredients for dinner in the kitchen.
“Thankfully no,” Romano answered her. “Make yourself useful and come chop these tomatoes, Antonia keeps pretending to cut herself and I’m sick of it.”
“That was the last time, I swear! It’s just so cute how you freak out every single time.” Antonia waved over at Lovina before turning back to her cutting board. “You just have a seat Lovi, we’ve got this all under control! Your sister emailed me a tomato sauce recipe and she says it’s your favourite, so I’ll do my best to make it right, okay?”
“How the hell do you know my sister, tomato bitch?”
“I tried to call you when we had our last break and you were back in Palermo, but remember Antonio accidentally took my cell home? So I called all the Vellas in Palermo looking for you and when I finally got your house Felicia answered!”
“And then I told her she could have just got your number from me,” Romano added.
“Oh well, I ended up getting to talk to Lovi so it was okay.”
“Right. I remember.” Lovina had been waken up oh so rudely at the crack of 1 PM by her sister shoving the phone in her face and then running off to tell their parents that Lovina “finally has a friend, she called asking for her and everything!!!”. “You’re an idiot.”
Antonia pouted in response but said nothing as she turned her attention to carefully making the sauce. She’d been practicing the recipe for the past two weeks, unbeknownst to Lovina, and wanted everything to be perfect, though even if Lovina had known that the reasoning behind it would also be lost on her at the moment.
While Antonia was busy with the sauce, Romano was cooking the pasta and arguing with Antonio about the wine he’d chosen for after dinner. “I don’t care what we usually drink, stupid, get out the Marsala I bought.”
“You hate Marsala.” Lovina’s eyebrow raise in Romano’s general direction was met with a foul gesture. “Well you do. Stop doing that, you rude bastard.” The last time she and Antonia had been drinking wine in their dorm and Romano had come by to join them, he’d immediately left and gone to the store when he saw what the only bottle Lovina had was, and he’d spent the rest of the night drunkenly arguing wines with her, so him buying one of his own made absolutely no sense.
“So rude, Roma,” Antonio chastised, handing him the bottle of wine he’d asked for. “It’s your favourite though, right Lovina?”
“I guess.”
“Good! We’ll drink this after dinner then. Sorry for grabbing the wrong one, Romano.”
Dinner was eventually served without further argument, on a pair of red ceramic plates Lovina knew belonged to Antonia, but that had never once been used in the time Lovina had known her.
“What’s with you three?” she finally asked when Romano of all people was the one to pull out her chair at the small table in his and Antonio’s kitchen.
“Nothing is with us,” Romano snapped back, taking his own seat.
“Yes there is. Didn’t you say you wanted to talk to me about something?” She’d temporarily forgotten about the reason Antonio had asked her over, but she hoped whatever they wanted to talk to her about would explain their more odd than normal behaviour.
“Uh, well.” Lovina had never known Antonia to be a shy woman, but she definitely looked something akin to it at that moment.
“Not to be too forward, Lovi,” Antonio cut in. “But we were all wanting to ask you out. ”
That was definitely not what she’d been expecting. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but that. That was not it. “Ask me out?”
“On a date, idiot.”
“Roma shhh, no talking, you’re too mean when you’re nervous.”
Lovina decided the whole “butterflies in the stomach” metaphor made no sense, because it didn’t feel at all like anything was flying in her stomach, it felt like her heart was about to burst out of her chest and somehow that damn thing would be the one flying, not some stupid bugs. She looked from Antonio’s smiling face, to Antonia’s hopeful one, and over to Romano, who was blushing and looking at some spot to his left. “...With all three of you?”
Three nods (two of them eager, one of them reluctant) answered her question and the room filled with silence.
If one were to ask Lovina how exactly she got into this whole... "mess", she would be quick to blame Antonia, because Antonia was one of her very favourite people to blame for everything, anything, and nothing at all (unless Antonia was asking who had stolen something of hers, then her favourite person to blame was Romano, especially when the something in question was a dress). She could also blame her parent's insistence that she study abroad, because had it not been for that, she'd have just gone to university in Italy, and never would have been anywhere near Antonia or Antonio or Romano (well maybe Romano, he was originally from Naples, after all) in the first place. Perhaps whoever had made the roommate assignments and put Lovina in the same room as Antonia could also be found at fault-- given all four of their different ages and completely different majors, maybe they still wouldn’t have met even if they all did go to the same school.
Maybe the universe itself was at fault for putting her in this bizarre position.
However...
All four of them, Lovina included, knew completely who was to blame when Lovina eventually answered the question with a nod of her own. The tension that had previously filled the room vanished as they continued their meal and the normal conversation that typically took place when the four of them were together resumed.
She had no idea how she was going to explain this one to her mother.