“Luggage-less, I walked up to the sliding doors and blinked as I felt the sudden whoosh of air against my face. When I opened them again, I was standing in front of this familiar stranger. A face and a smile that I knew from a different world, when our surroundings were my comfort zone and the language was my own.”

“ They say Rome is meant to be lived on rooftops. I think it’s meant to be lived in the in-between, the dash, the dot, dot, dot… like those moments right before you see each other across the lit piazza when the tension and anticipation is so high that all you can hear is the sound of your own heartbeat and the voices of all your friends back home asking how could you possibly fall for him. Italian, from Rome, and far too gorgeous for monogamy, isn’t that how they are?”

“...and he looks like a dream”. You can find Meg on Instagram as @mzacheja.

“It was spring when we met. The panna cotta colored magnolias were in full bloom in Milan and their sweet perfume seemed to come in waves, in little puffs of perfection. He paused and looked up at them for a moment, almost pink against the bright, bluebird sky, but then instantly regretted stopping. She used to love this time of year. Primavera. If she had been here now, holding his arm on the way to nowhere, she would have undoubtedly commented on the magnolias.” You can find James on Instagram as @jamesottoallen.

“I have this guilty pleasure whenever I travel and it's to first guess where people are from and then why they are going where they're going, all before we've exchanged any actual words. For whatever reason, I pegged this one as an Italian going home. There's just ways I can tell now, I can't explain how. It's not even that this boy looked classically Italian- he had sandy blond hair, a slight build, wide eyes, and was dressed more like an American with a sweatshirt, shorts, and black Nikes on his feet- he could have been anything but Italian if my deductions were made on looks alone.” You can find Julianne on Instagram as @giuliafarr.

This is the last chapter of my debut book, Wander(lust) and essentially the “title track”. “Like the pull of gravity, like the tides, there is no other alternative and no other direction to move in except into each other. Perhaps this is what they mean by wanderlust. That it was never about places in the first place, it was always about people.” You can find Amy on Instagram as @amyychristinee

“Maybe I'll be back here in fifty years from now, sitting under the sun with wrinkles and grey hair, a pocketbook full of photographs and a life lived and out of the corner of my eye, I'll be looking for a boy I once knew. I need to memorize him, I tell myself. His dark eyes and the way they speak Italian to me with a look. The curve of his back and the way the muscles in his jaw are tense, as if he's holding back words. It's dark now and my plane is in the morning.” You can find Elissa on Instagram as @itselissanotalyssa.

“Then there’s that perfect red wine buzz, he’ll be ordering bottles of Brunello like the world is ending tomorrow and you have to live your entire life in one night. And the warmth of the wine spreads all the places you want his hands to be and the thought is exciting isn’t it? Like a coming-together of the continents, a world merging when lips meet. He’s from Here and you’re from There and for just a cosmic moment, the universe has somehow brought you together to this trattoria, down an unlit via, somewhere in Rome and far from reality.” You can find Amy on Instagram as @amyjustbecause.

“I kissed him, which is always a bold move after you’ve been travelling for over 14 hours but seems almost obligatory at airport arrivals, if not for yourself, then to add to the romance of it all for everyone else.” You can find Joanna on Instagram as @msjcoll.

“I'm woken from my Lambrusco-induced sleep by the sound of Lorenzo attempting to balance a tray filled with cappuccini, cream-filled brioches, and hand-squeezed spremuta from Sicilian blood oranges as he walks precariously towards me. The juice looks like a sunset in a glass and he looks like a dream.” You can find Sarah on Instagram as @sarlucky.