Ariana Grande put Ricky Álvarez front and center on November 2. The first photo in her latest Instagram carousel, E! Online reported, shows the singer wrapped around him on her tip-toes, dressed in an off-white raincoat, dark wide-legged pants and white kitten heels.
Álvarez is smiling back in a beanie, green sweater and dark pants. The shot was taken from below, the two of them locked in eye contact.
Ariana Grande Posts New Photos with Ricky Álvarez on Instagram
Grande also used the dump to show off a new flipped bob, which appears in several of the pictures. The hair got a few frames. Álvarez got the opening slot.
Placement matters on Instagram. The first image is the one everyone sees without swiping, and Grande gave it to him.
Grande kisses Álvarez on the forehead in a dimly lit selfie further into the carousel. His eyes are closed.
Couples who get back together carry a question nobody says out loud: is it different this time? A posed embrace is one answer. A forehead kiss in bad lighting is a better one, because it is the kind of picture that only exists when two people are comfortable with each other. Nobody styles that shot.
Ariana Grande first made the reunion Instagram official back in August, according to E! Online. The November post came three months later and featured intimate photos of the couple. Just the two of them, again.
Their Relationship History Includes a Previous Split
Grande and Álvarez first dated from 2015 to 2016, back when he was working as a backup dancer. She split from her Wicked costar Ethan Slater earlier this year, a breakup E! News confirmed in June.
The rumors about Álvarez started on stage, not online. During her Eternal Sunshine tour this summer, Grande kept changing a line in “thank u, next.” The original goes “Wrote some songs about Ricky / Now I listen and laugh.”
On tour, the second half changed. Some nights it was “I’m tryna make him my last.” Other nights she sang “I know he still got my back.” E! Online singled out one version as the most telling: “We’ll always find our way back.”
Rewriting that lyric is the boldest move in the whole story. “thank u, next” is a song about closing the door on exes. Changing it in front of an arena crowd means admitting, out loud and repeatedly, that one of those endings was not final. Plenty of people quietly hope an ex never hears the breakup song. Grande edited hers night after night until the subject of it was back in her photos.
Matching Tattoos Reflect Their Love for Each Other
On August 15, Ariana Grande posted a new script tattoo on her collarbone to her Instagram Stories. It reads “I do love you.” According to E! Online, her fans worked out that Álvarez has the same words tattooed on his own collarbone, in a different font.
Álvarez answered on September 26. His own Instagram dump included a photo of Grande’s tattoo, plus a mirror selfie of the singer kissing him on the lips.
Reconciliations tend to get judged on whether both people show up for them. In the posts so far, he has matched her move for move: her tattoo, then his photo of it, then her carousel with him in the first frame.
Same words, two fonts, ten years after they first dated. The lyric she sang all summer says they will always find their way back. The photos are the closest thing to proof either has offered.
Sources: E! Online
