Ariana Grande and Ricky Álvarez took their relationship to the next level.
Grande, 33, took to Instagram on Wednesday, August 12, to share a number of photos from her life. In one pic, she and Álvarez, 35, cuddled up. The singer snapped a mirror selfie of them wearing coordinating outfits. The backup dancer put his arm around Grande and she held his hand.
While posing together, Grande wore a white off-the-shoulder peplum top and black jeans. Álvarez matched his girlfriend in a white T-shirt and black pants.
“🌱 ！ ♡,” Grande captioned the post.
Rumors started swirling that Grande and Álvarez rekindled their romance earlier this summer when they were seen grabbing a bite together in Texas in June. He then attended her Eternal Sunshine Tour in Austin, where she went viral for changing the lyrics of her 2018 hit, “Thank U, Next.”
Instead of singing her original lyrics, “Wrote some songs about Ricky / Now I listen and laugh,” she sang, “Wrote some songs about Ricky / I know he still got my back.”
The following month, she was seen running errands with Álvaraz at a Whole Foods in Boca Raton, Florida.
In July, a source exclusively opened up to Us Weekly about where the duo stood, sharing that their reunion is “the real deal.”
“Ricky is far from a rebound,” the insider told Us, noting that Grande and her ex Ethan Slater called it quits “long before the public knew about it.”
“They’re still newly dating, but because there’s a lot of history there, they were able to fall back into a relationship organically,” the source added. “They’re the real deal.”
Grande and Álvarez first dated over a decade ago in 2015. They met during her Honeymoon Tour when he joined as a backup dancer. After she split from Big Sean, the pair began dating.
In July 2016, the pair broke up after around a year of dating, but remained friends through the years.
Grande previously revealed what Ávarez thought of her “Thank U, Next” lyrics during a 2019 episode of the Zach Sang Show. “Ricky loved it. He was proud. But Ricky was like, ‘Why did I get the worst line?’”
She continued through laughter, “And I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ He was like, ‘Everyone else’s line is so nice and mine is like, ‘Man f*** him, he’s trash.’” She then defended the lyric, recalling, “I was like, I could have said that. I could have said, ‘Wrote some songs about Ricky, never mind he’s trash,’ but I didn’t. I could have said that! But I didn’t! I said, ‘Now I listen and laugh,’ because it didn’t work out.”
