Sofia hugs me at the gate of the hotel so hard my camera bag swings into my hip. “You came,” she says, as if there had ever been a version of this where I didn't. I am Valentina, thirty, a photographer, her best friend for twelve years, and I have brought three lenses and one secret to her wedding in Tuscany.
The secret is standing on the terrace with a glass of water, watching the cypresses.
Matteo. Eight years since a storm knocked the power out at a party in Bologna and we ended up in a doorway, and he kissed me, or I kissed him, and by morning we had both decided it never happened. He is Sofia's older brother. He has her eyes and none of her ease, and around his neck, under the open collar, I can see the thin chain he wore then.
He turns. He sees me. He doesn't smile, exactly, but he puts the glass down as if he needs his hands free.
“Valentina.” My name in his mouth is a whole conversation. “You're shooting the wedding.”
“I'm the friend with the camera. It's cheaper.” I lift the bag like proof. He looks at it, then at me, the way he looked at me in that doorway before the lights came back.
At dinner the family puts us side by side, because we are the two who aren't paired. He passes me the bread. Our fingers don't touch, and I notice that they don't, and I notice him noticing. Under the table his knee rests one careful centimetre from mine for the whole of the second course. When Sofia stands to make a toast, Matteo leans in under the applause and says, so only I can hear, “I still have the photograph.” I don't know which photograph. I know I want to.
