We smile at each other without speaking for a ridiculously long time before I say, ‘Hello,’ which is apparently the best conversation I can manage.
He laughs.Obviously, his laugh is perfect. Low, rumbly, infectious.
‘Hello,’ he replies. Then he sticks his out his hand (which is perfectly shaped, it goes almost with saying, big but quite slim, nice and strong-looking, with short and clean nails) and leans forward in an air-kiss stance. I put my hand into his and proffer my face and we shake hands while our cheeks graze. I try to ignore the actual tingle that spreads through my entire body at his touch.
‘I’m Flavia,’ I say, feeling weirdly bold, like I’m coming onto him, except actually it’s entirely normal to introduce yourself at a party at your parents’ house.
‘I know.’ His smile reaches his eyes immediately, and I smile in response, before registering that it’s odd that he knows my name. Or maybe it isn’t odd; he must, despite his youth, be a friend of my parents (and whyshouldn’tpeople have cross-generational friendships), and they probably told him about me.
I’m about to ask how he knows them, and whathisname is, but am interrupted by some other guests, and then we’re both swept into my parents’ open-plan kitchen-diner-living room, and then out into the garden beyond, and then I’m busy greeting family and friends and he’s with other people and it feels like that’s that.
Except, I’m pleased to say, I find myself next to him when we’re all queuing for the barbecue.
‘So what are you up to now?’ he asks.
‘Erm.’ I’m disappointed. I was expecting better chat than this from him. ‘Waiting for my food?’
‘Ha. Yeah, no. I meant what are you up to now with uni, work, that kind of thing?’
It’s weird how he’s phrased it like we know each other. Thenowis strange. When you meet someone for the first time surely you just say something like:so what do you do? Not: what do you donow?
I study him more closely. He does lookslightlyfamiliar.
‘Have we met before?’ I ask.
‘Is that a serious question?’
‘Yes?’ I screw my face up because I’m getting the impression that I’m being very rude, as in totally failing to recognise someone I actuallyknow, but, also, how is that remotely possible? Did we once meet when I was very drunk or something and I’ve completely forgotten? And really? I cannot believe I would forget someone as extremely gorgeous as him. I mean, call me shallow, but honestly, he’s made abigimpression on me now and I can’t imagine what state I’d have to be in not to notice his extreme sex-on-legness.
‘Oh my God, you actuallydon’tknow who I am, do you?’ He laughs his sexy laugh, and I laugh too, because it’s infectious.
‘Noooo,’ I admit.
‘I’m Dominic Rock.’
‘DominicRock?’ I’m frowning in puzzlement. Dominic Rock is the son of our neighbours, who are also close friends of my parents. He was – is – one year older than me but when we were kids he was always a lot smaller than me – and nearly everyone else of our age – and therefore sarcastically nicknamedThe Rockby pretty much our whole village. He was also a boy of physical contradictions: blond hair but dark eyes and tanned skin; very good at football despite being so much shorter and skinnier than most other boys his age; fairly nerdy-lookingbutreallynaughty (in a cheeky way, never a mean way). What he was not was a very attractive tall, dark, handsomeman.
‘Erm, you’vegrown,’ I say, too mind-blown to find any proper conversation.
He laughs. Quite a lot. Possibly I overemphasised thegrown. I laugh too, because his laugh is extremely infectious.
‘So have you,’ he says when he’s finished chuckling.
I smile at him. ‘Very true.’ I haven’t grown as much as he has, though. I mean I’m definitely still recognisablyme.
‘So at the risk of sounding repetitive, whatareyou up to now?’ he asks.
‘Oh yes, I forgot you asked that. When was the last time we saw each other?’
‘I think just before you went to Italy. Your parents’ leaving party.’
My mum’s Italian, and when my brothers and I were little she used to say quite regularly that she’d like us all to live in Italy for a few years as a family. My dad managed to get a work transfer to Milan when I was fourteen and we all moved over there, renting out our house here. Mum’s from Sicily but has a lot of friends in Milan, and we all loved it there. My older brother Vinny and I decided to go to uni in England, though (I think one of those grass-is-greener feelings), so Mum and Dad moved back here three years ago, a year after I left school and came back for uni, in time for my younger brother, Antonio, who’s four years younger than me, to start his GCSEs here.
I don’t remember Dominic being at that leaving party. But in those days he wasn’t particularly memorable.NowI imagine he gets remembered all the time.
‘Good memory. I did history at uni and have just started work as a teacher at a big comprehensive in London and Iloveit,’ I tell him. ‘What about you?’
‘I can imagine you being an amazing teacher,’ he tells me, which makes me smile. ‘I’m doing something much less inspiring. Law.’
