Blue (6 page)

We walked through the antique revolving doors of the Headland Hotel and into the lobby. The music from the live band was thumping, even from there. I stopped to catch my breath for a moment before walking the long corridor to the function room.

Kelly looked at me. “You OK? You've gone really pale.”

“What am I doing here? I'm still not over Daniel.”

“You're over him. You are. You just don't want to be. Because that'd mean you'd have to get off your butt and take a chance on someone else.”

There wasn't much I could say to that, so I just stood there until Kelly leaned forward and gave me a big hug.

“I love you,” she said. “You know that, Iris, don't you?”

I nodded, so she continued.

“Then trust me. You're going to be all right again. This is the first step. It's time.”

I jumped as I heard a loud voice beside me, “What's up, laydeeez?”

My heart sank.

Daniel.

Kelly gave him a fearsome glare and said, “What do you want?”

“Don't,” I said to her under my breath. Even after all these months I still couldn't bear seeing my best friend and Daniel at each other's throats. Not when we'd all once been so close. Back before everything went to crap.

“Just being polite and saying hey. Is that a crime?”

“No, but that doesn't mean we want to talk to you.” Kelly was determined to have the last word. “How did you even get a ticket to this?”

“If you did the beach clean this morning, your name was put on the guest list.”

“
You
did a beach clean?” Kelly's mouth was practically hanging open.

“Well, yeah, it was a bargain. Forty minutes' work and they gave you a ticket for this party, plus a free Billabong swag bag. It's all good.”

Daniel looked at me and for a minute I thought he was going to do something mortifying like kiss me on the cheek, granny-style, and pat my back. He'd put wax in his dark hair, and his eyes were sparkling the way they did when he was happy, or when he'd had three cans of lager.

“You're both looking lovely tonight,” he said, looking at me.

“Well, you're a dick and I just boregasmed. So fuck off.” Kelly again. She gave everyone a lot of chances, but once you'd
crossed her line, she was stone. If she'd written you off, that was it. She didn't forgive. Neither did I, really, but I was a lot more subtle in my grudges.

“Where's Cass?” I said. A shadow crossed Daniel's face. I'd hit home with that one. Subtle is sometimes harsher than blatant. Kelly had yet to work that out.

“I'm here with the boys. Cass's family is doing some saddo intervention thing tonight because of her bulimia. I bailed. Said I had to work.”

“Oh, ever the charmer,” Kelly said.

“I don't want her hatin' me. She's going to feel very betrayed after tonight. I'll go around when her folks have gone to bed.”

I nodded. Just the idea of Daniel creeping into Cass's bedroom at night was totally sickening.

“Screw this for a laugh,” Kelly said. “Let's go get drinks.”

She hooked her arm in mine and dragged me off to the free bar. We picked up a couple of half-filled glasses of white-wine spritzer before the bar staff could get a good look at us.

There was no sign of Zeke but Saskia was there, ordering a barman around like he was her personal slave. She was wearing a floor-length black dress with a nipple-grazing neckline and a slit up one leg. It made Kelly and me look like we were on the way to a seven-year-old's birthday party. Though I guessed Saskia wasn't much older than me. Two, maybe three years.

I rolled my eyes.

“Foe?” Kelly said.

“Don't know her.”

“You don't like her though.”

“She's friends with Zeke. She's called, get this . . .
Saskia
.”

“Posh girl, then.”

“Not just posh. London posh.”

“Interesting. Let's go talk to her.”

“Nah, you're all right.”

“Come on, she might know stuff about Zeke.”

Kelly clattered off toward Saskia and I could either follow her or stand on my own. At least that's what I thought.

I felt a hand on my lower back and turned around to see a man smiling at me. He was skinny, late twenties or early thirties, with brown hair that was already greying, and really hyper body language.

“You must be Iris. Nice to meet you, darlin'.”

He was the other type of Londoner: the cockney type, which suited me fine.

“How'd you know?”

“Local surfer girl fitting the description Zeke gave me. I'm Anders.”

“OK.” The memory banks were coming up blank. I had definitely never met or heard of anyone called Anders. And how exactly had Zeke described me to this man? And were the words “distinctly average-looking” in there?

“I'm Zeke's agent. Didn't he mention me?”

“No.”

“The lowlife. Well, Golden Boy's not here yet. He's still working out at the beach. He said you can meet him in his room, if you like? Billabong's sprung for a suite for him tonight. He won't be long, and you can order drinks and snacks from room service. I have a spare key card for you.”

He held out the card in two fingers and I took it and clasped my hand around it, one edge digging into my palm, not ready for Kelly or anyone else to see.

“Third floor. Room 1.”

Kelly was giggling at something that Saskia was saying, and I turned on my heel, walked out of the bar area and straight into the elevator.

What was I doing? Why did he want to meet me in his room? What was he expecting from me?

The elevator doors pinged open and I padded along the thickly carpeted hall until I was standing outside Room 1. I knocked just in case, but as expected no one answered.

I slid the key card into the slot and opened the door. The front of the room was all windows, giving the most incredible view of the bay, which was dotted with the lights of marker buoys and moored fishing boats. It wasn't just a suite; it was the penthouse suite.

I kept still for a second and listened in case Zeke was in the shower, but the room was silent apart from faint thudding music from the party downstairs.

The room was pretty tidy, with only a couple of surfboards leaning against a wardrobe, a crumpled T-shirt on the bed and a Billabong messenger bag by the window as evidence that anyone was staying there at all.

I picked up the phone, pressed 0 for room service and ordered two Coronas and a plate of mixed sandwiches, since I was starving, and I knew Zeke was bound to be too after a beach workout.

I had a look at the fancy bathroom, which had a separate wet-room shower on one side, done out in sandstone, and a full
hot tub on the other. I dipped my hand into the water. It was still lukewarm.

That's when I saw that Zeke's iPhone was lying on the far side rim of the tub. Maybe he'd been texting someone while he was in there.

Don't pick it up. Don't invade his privacy.

I walked around to the other side of the tub and looked at his phone in my hand. When I pressed the On button, I saw that it had been left open on his Contacts page. Apart from an Andy, an Arron and Anders, it was all girls.

Abigail, Agnes, Aimee, Alice, Amelia, Anabel, Angelina, Annemarie, Arianna . . . The list went on and on. Who were all these girls? What did they mean to Zeke?

Suddenly I had a cold, sick feeling in my stomach. What was I doing? Just because Daniel had cheated on me, that didn't mean I had the right to go snooping through Zeke's phone. It was gross.

The door clicked open and I slammed the phone down where I'd found it. It slid across the dewy surface of the hot tub and dropped into the water with a tiny
plink
.

Oh crap
.

Panicking, I went straight to the toilet and flushed, so whoever had come in would think I was taking a leak, rather than being a psycho stalker. I walked out of the bathroom, where Zeke was beaming at me. He was wearing gray sweat pants, his feet were caked in sand and his chest was glistening with sweat.

“You came? Awesome.” He kissed me on the cheek. “I thought you'd dig the view up here. Pretty nice, huh?”

All I could think was, I've totaled your iPhone. I owe you about four-hundred fifty.

But how could I tell him that? How could I admit that I was being Jealous Stalker Girl?

A loud knock on the door made me jump, and Zeke gave me a curious look, probably wondering if I'd invited a load of local girls to check out his suite.

“It's room service. I ordered us some sandwiches and beers.”

“Cool. My blood-sugar level is through the floor. Mega-hungry.”

“Thought you might be.”

He opened the door and the room-service guy wheeled in a trolley with a huge platter of triangular sandwiches, two frosty beers and two half-pint glasses.

Zeke signed for it, showed the guy out and turned back to me. “I'll just grab a quick shower and be right with you. Help yourself.”

He went into the bathroom, not bothering to close the door, and I heard the shower running. This lack of shyness didn't surprise me particularly, as most surfers weren't fussed about being naked. We're constantly getting in and out of clothes in public and trying to towel-dry ourselves in strong sea breezes, and most of us have surfed naked at least once. So I guess you could say we're pretty comfortable in our own skins. My legs were having a battle about whether to go check him out, but my brain kicked in and stopped me. What would I do if he saw me? Jump in the shower with him? No way.

I sat on the bed and ate a ham sandwich. Then I remembered that Zeke was vegetarian. I peeled apart all the sandwiches to look at their fillings and there were only two cheese ones on the whole platter, so I figured I'd have to eat all the meat and tuna ones before he got out of the shower.

By the time Zeke came into the room a few minutes later with a beach towel around his waist, I had downed six sandwiches, including the crusts. Only the cheese ones remained on the platter. Zeke was holding a small hand towel and rubbing his hair with it, leaving it sticking up at crazy angles. He looked at me with my mouth full of bread, then at the platter, then back to me.

“Wow,” he said, and then added, “Impressive.”

“Missed lunch,” I said. “There's some cheese ones for you.”

“Sweet.” He pulled on some checked boxers, dropped his towel and then went to a chest of drawers and found some loose jeans. I thought about all those girls in his phone; wondered how many of them had been in my shoes, watching him get dressed.

He pulled on a gray vest, cut deep across his shoulder blades, and then he fished a blue and white Hawaiian print shirt out of a plastic bag. He used his teeth to pull off the tags and I noticed the shirt was really creased from sitting in the bag. I could see him looking around for an iron.

“Wardrobe?” I said.

I watched as he set up the ironing board, peering beneath it to look for the little lever that released the catch. He dragged it over to a socket by the dressing table and plugged in the iron.

“I've actually never seen a boy iron something before,” I said.

“Anders says I gotta wear a shirt tonight and not look like a surf troll. Oh crap,” he said, “I was supposed to shave too. Wait a minute.”

He went into the bathroom and came out holding an electric shaver. He switched it on and raked it against the stubble of his cheek, the hair disappearing in clean little patches until his face was totally smooth. He looked different. Younger.

The iron was hissing away, steam pouring out of the front, and Zeke still hadn't eaten a thing.

“I'll iron your shirt,” I said. “Eat your sandwiches.”

“No way, you don't have to do that.”

I took the iron out of his hand and said, “Go eat.”

My mom had taught me to iron at the age of eight, and I'd been doing my school uniform and my mom's work clothes ever since, so ironing one boy's shirt was hardly going to break my back.

He scarfed down the sandwiches like he hadn't eaten in days.

“Anders has got me doing all this extra prep. He wants me to be at my strongest this season. Some of the workout sessions are insane. Plus, he has me doing like a hundred push-ups every morning and night. I'd better do the night ones in a minute actually.”

“Anders seems like quite a character.”

“Yeah, he's nuts, but real good at his job. I'm stoked you came, Iris.”

“Kelly kind of dragged me here. Not that I didn't want to come. It's just, I had work all day, and I couldn't face a big night.”

“Remind me to buy Kelly a drink. So I guess you know I've been telling Anders all about you?”

“Me? Why are you telling him about me?”

“You've got real quality. The way you were ripping Fistral . . . That tube you caught was a perfect ten. Cool dress, by the way. I should have already said that.”

“It's Kelly's. I was going to wear jeans, but she thought I should dress up.”

“You look crazy hot.”

If it's possible for a whole body to blush, then mine did. Zeke, a pro-surfer with an international reputation, had said that I looked crazy hot. I glanced at the glitzy mirror hanging over the fireplace just to check my head hadn't been swapped with someone else's. Nope. All I saw when I looked in the mirror was someone average with a bit of a tan. Nothing special; just me.

Zeke guzzled from a bottle of water and jumped on to the floor to do his press-ups. I finished the shirt, hooked it over the end of the ironing board and sat on the bed to watch him.

I took a swig from my bottle of Corona and said, “So I left a note telling my mom I was staying over at Kelly's house tonight.”

“Uh-huh.”

He was breathing hard.

“Must be fun to sleep in a penthouse though. Watch the sun come up in the morning.”