Blue by Lisa Glass Read Free Book Online Page B

of toiletries in my locker and I found an old lipstick in there. I slathered it on. It was bright red and reminded me of Cass. I rubbed it off, but it still left a pink stain.
    The shop door opened and a girl dressed in a black pencil skirt and a vintage-style blouse walked in. Her sky-high Mary Jane shoes smashed against the stripped wooden floor of the shop. She turned to me and I was dazzled by wide green eyes and shiny red hair.
    Hot on her heels was Zeke. As he came through the door, the red-haired girl turned to him and kissed him on both cheeks. She reeked of money. It wasn’t just her clothes; it was the way she moved and how she held her head. It had to be the girl I’d seen at yoga. You could tell she had a trust fund as big as the entire GDP of Cornwall.
    “Hello, beautiful,” she said to Zeke, batting her eyelashes. “I can’t believe you’re here already. Not like you to be so punctual! I wonder what could have brought you here on time . . .”
    Her voice was really something. The most plummy Home Counties accent that I had ever heard in real life.
    Zeke gave me a quick salute and then started talking to the girl in a low voice. She looked over at me with a surprised expression, which didn’t make me feel paranoid at all.
    I shuffled around tidying handbags and wallets and then took a deep breath and went over to Zeke, who was looking out the window toward some fishing boats sitting in the bay. His hands were shaking a little, so he was either nervous or hungover, and he definitely hadn’t drunk more than one can of lager when he was with me, so . . .
    The girl was talking loudly on her cell phone. Giving directions to Fistral Beach.
    “Hi there,” I said. “How’s it going?”
    “OK. I guess I didn’t sleep much last night.”
    “No?” After yoga, surfing and the beach party, I’d slept like the dead. I wondered what had kept him awake.
    He looked back out at the sea again and I said, “I had fun last night.”
    “Me too.”
    He gave me a big smile. I’d said the right thing for once. Technically the night hadn’t been that amazing, as I’d been so nervous to be out with someone other than Daniel that I hadn’t been able to totally relax for more than two minutes at a time. First impressions were so important; what if I screwed it up and said something that offended Zeke, or something he thought was stupid? And Daniel shaking his head at me had killed my buzz.
    “Who’s the city chick?” I said.
    “Oh, that’s just Saskia.”
    Just Saskia. What was he doing here anyway? My early-morning brain couldn’t put it all together.
    At that moment Billy came in and bustled over to me.
    “Iris dear, I see you’ve met our star. The press will be here shortly. I’ve brought some chocolate cookies, so could you arrange them pleasingly on a plate and put on the kettle?”
    Zeke gave me a sympathetic grimace, and then the door opened to reveal a stream of young girls clutching posters of Zeke.
    I read over one of their shoulders:
    Zeke Francis. Hawaiian Champion, 2013.
    I knew he was a good surfer, but this was ridiculous. Hawaii had some of the best waves and surfers on the planet, and Zeke was Hawaiian Champion in the Junior Men’s category. He hadn’t said a word to me about it and we’d spent the whole of the previous evening together. Well, this explained the stream of star-struck teeny-boppers taking pictures. I’d just thought they were acting so giddy around Zeke because of his looks. Apparently I was wrong. In the surf-contest world, Zeke was a megastar.
    It made things less complicated for me. There was no way someone like Zeke would stick around in Newquay. He’d have places to go, people to see, contests to surf. He was probably on the Association of Surfing Professionals world tour, in which case his schedule would be brutal: traveling from ocean to ocean, beach to beach. In a few days he’d be gone and everything would go back to its old boring sameness. And I’d go