It was a hot, airless morning. The only breeze on offer was the air coming from Emmet Ridgewater's mouth. It smelled of instant coffee, menthol cigarettes, and regret. Emmet was the overeducated son of a Southern Baptist minister, an underpaid school bus driver, and notoriously unlucky in love. Seemingly, the whole county was talking of his recent break up with Peggy Lee Sutherbopp - a woman almost twice his height and half his age. As we barreled and bounced down Missionary Ridge Road, the children on the school bus were grimly resigned to the terror of this morning's commute. Breakups always had an outsized impact on Emmet's job performance, and in the aftermath, they could only pray for safe deliverance to Burns Elementary School. Meanwhile, I was merely frustrated. You see, as a 12-year-old, prepubescent boy, I was surprised to find myself holding a deep, and unrepentant love of Romance Novels. To be clear, I am not talking of Classic Literature, but the tawdry bodice rippers favored by middle-aged women who were three-years-from-the-last- child-completing-university-before-filing-for-divorce. And more to the point, I was more than a fan of the genre; I was an author writing under the nom de plume, "Focoso Fabrizio." Emmet didn't know it, but for the past 18 months, my accidental friendship with him had provided a cast of characters and plot lines for my debut novel. It had sold unexpectedly well in the South, and my publisher (the surprisingly fast-talking Atlanta socialite, Simonee Capswell) was pressuring me to quickly finish my sophomore effort for print. My new novel was a classic tale of the strong Tuscan farm hand, Lorenzo (admittedly, my self- styled, nom de guerre back then) and his unrequited attraction to his neighbor, the haughty Duchessa Kimberlina. The only thing harder than the callouses on his hands was her heart (or so it appeared at the beginning of this magnificent novel). At any rate, I was just at the part of the story where Lorenzo had seeked to prove his love for Kimberlina by preparing her the perfect seasonal delicacy of Castagnaccio. I could barely spell this fucking dish, much less write convincingly of the ingredients and preparation of it. The Dickson County Library, while surprisingly full of tomes instructing of animal husbandry had very little to say of Tuscan cuisine. As a younger man, Emmet had spent two years traveling the width and breadth of Italy alternating between employment as a fishing guide and a hostage negotiator, seducing elementary school teachers, grandmothers, and anesthesiologists, and cooking complicated regional dishes (did I mention the part about seducing Nonni?) His cooperation - no matter how unsuspecting - was essential. We were getting closer to the school. Emmet's occasional yelps of existential pain were disturbing my schoolmates more than usual - especially because his verbal outbursts coincided with sharp jerks of the steering wheel to the left or right. I needed him to calm down and the best way to do that was to get him telling stories about his travels in Europe. I snuck up to the front seat, perched immediately behind and to the right of the drivers seat. I started off in the low, confiding, dulcet tones that belied my 12-year-old vocal cords. I was telling him how funny his last story of making that chestnut flour cake for the anesthesiologist was and gently imploring him to tell it to me again - paying special attention to the recipe - maybe I could be so bold as to attempt to make this dish myself? In some respects, my ploy worked. Emmet's breathing slowed. The school bus stopped rocking dangerously around corners. Emmet started talking, with that faraway look in his eyes about his travels in Italy. "Yes, that was in Tuscany... It was a good dish... She was a special woman. But, it does recall another weekend I spent in the countryside..." He went on to relate some perfectly boring story of beautiful sunny days lounging under the Tuscan sun, swimming the days away, while cooking pizzas at night with some hysterically violent championship martial artist and his stunningly accomplished and utterly lovely spouse. I almost cried in frustration at his unwitting refusal to give me the recipe for Castagnaccio. Lorenzo and Duchessa Kimberlina could never become lovers at this rate! As the bus pulled up to the school. I knew with curious certainty that I was already a washed- up, has-been author who would be a failure - a victim of the sophomore slump. This failure, could only lead to a dull life lived within the same boundaries of the county I grew up in. Oh! I would never know the forbidden kiss of a passionate Nonna. To be sure, I never did fulfill my life's ambition of being the world's best Romance Novelist. Instead, I bitterly chose the route of earning my bread from the sweat of my brow by building the Internet - even stooping so low as to work in Europe myself for several years. I had long forgotten Emmet's stories and how I so desperately strove to capture them. I had forgotten how urgently I wanted my words to be cast onto the page, bound between paperback covers, and hard pressed against the welcoming breasts of disappointed women. Yet, I find myself sitting here and thinking of the old stories of my youth, and my mind returns to that story of the days Emmet spent under the Tuscan sun and wonder if perhaps his stories and mine are not so far apart after all?