I had taken ages getting ready for the evening and had been pretty pleased with the result. Putting on the blue dress had turned me from ordinary and shapeless to … a girl with curves, with milky-white skin and long glossy curls. The colour of the dress and a little mascara had picked out the grey in my eyes. Everything about me was just so … feminine. Like a picture in a magazine. And it made me feel like I was floating just above myself. Luca’s eyes swept over me. If he hadn’t been the chivalrous boy he was, I got the feeling he would have given the low whistle my dad sometimes gave my mother when she bothered to dress up. Even in the half-light I could see the glow in his cheeks. ‘You really need to ask that?’ he said with an impish smile. I subtly ran my eyes over him. Out of his scruffy clothes I realised he had the perfect slender physique for formal wear. A taut, lean body and cheekbones all the more prominent after a haircut. If I didn’t think of him as my weird-looking friend, I would have said he looked … handsome.
