Page 32 of Italy and Forever

Helpful. Not sexy or beautiful or intriguing – not that she’d believe him if he said any of those.

‘That’s good. I’ll make sure I never stand next to someone else with a labret piercing.’

‘No, I mean, I could recognise you anyway, by now – especially with your ears. But at the beginning, the piercing identified you.’

‘My ears, of course,’ she muttered, but she paused, considering his words. ‘So you did always recognise me?’ His ‘look’ wasn’t confusion, then. Now she was back to square one, trying to work out why he didn’t like her.

‘Yes, but with my colour perception, I’ve always struggled with your eyes.’

She blinked at him. He didn’t mean he didn’t like her eyes. She’d just mashed together her unspoken thoughts and his clipped sentence. She peered up at him.

‘My eyes are brown. What’s the problem for you?’

He studied her. ‘Brown? Really?’

Ginny’s skin prickled. Even though she knew he was studying her as a photographer rather than a friend – or more – heat still flared up her throat. She might like being his subject – when she wasn’t in tracksuit bottoms and a silly jumper, or looking as though she had to vomit.

‘I see shades – yellow, amber. There’s something about the refraction. It’s a little clearer to see right now, without your eye make-up on.’

She tried to tell herself what he was saying wasn’t intimate, but her lungs were tight as she stared up at him. He didn’t hold her gaze for long. He’d said he struggled with her eyes. For some reason, that hurt even more the second time she thought about it.

She asked, ‘You can’t remember my face, but you know I usually wear eye make-up?’

‘The black is quite dramatic.’

More careful word choice – impersonal, objective. He looked at the world through a camera lens and she had to wonder whether that was a way to distance himself. It was only Ginny who felt as though she were pulled closer with every step they danced.

‘I don’t know many women who wear as much make-up as you do.’

That was an objective observation that provoked a different emotional reaction. ‘Are you implying I wear too much?’

‘No,’ he insisted. ‘I might not have noticed if I didn’t have prosopagnosia – that’s the proper name for the condition. I tend to memorise prominent details⁠—’

‘Like my ears. I get it,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Wait, how did you recognise me at the pub? You couldn’t see me at all.’

He gave her a look that suggested she should have worked that out herself. ‘I’m better at recognising voices than most people. I remember your posh, nasal twang.’

‘My—’

Before she could finish her indignant reply – which would have been half-hearted anyway, with Rhys giving her a smile with a hint of a dimple – Petra called out more instructions over the sound of the accordion.

‘Now we use both steps in the carré. Forwards, side, together. Backwards, side, together.’

‘Fucking hell,’ Rhys muttered and Ginny burst out laughing. When heads turned in their direction, she bit her lip to shut herself up. She could feel Kira’s curious glance and she didn’t want to answer questions about what had changed in the past ten minutes.

Maybe she could believe Rhys when he said he didn’t dislike her, although she suspected he hadn’t meant he actively liked her. But one thing was clear – she liked him, monosyllabic tendencies and objective statements and all.

An unattainable crush, which was exactly what she didn’t need right now.

When they attempted the carré, her body suddenly became a jumble of limbs, as did his. Gone was that harmonious press of his chest to hers, warmth and instinct. Instead, he was stiff and she was uncomfortable and it was lucky she was wearing slippers, because otherwise she would have done some damage to his toes.

As he swung her under his arm in a wonky spin at the end of the dance, studying Petra and Oswald with a grim intensity the casual lesson didn’t warrant, Ginny was both relieved and disheartened. One last brush of his fingertips along her back and there was no excuse for intimacy any more.

‘Now take the right hand of your partner,’ Petra called out, and Rhys obediently grasped Ginny’s hand, ‘and the leader can give her a little kiss.’

Rhys froze, staring at her knuckles.

‘Feet together and bow over her hand.’