white sand and enjoy the peace offered by the beach for now. She knew that tonight would be one of the beach’s moonlight beach parties. She wasn’t sure who organised them, but the alcohol was cheap and every young foreigner attended.
Just as she was about to sit down, she noticed a pair of pale blue eyes on her. His brown hair was damp, and his wet body glimmered in the sunlight. Those eyes glared at her as if she was holding a secret and he was trying to decipher it. Stevie felt the air in her lungs flee, as he didn’t break eye contact. She neither smiled nor frowned. Instead, Stevie directed her attention back to the clear water and sat on the hot sand. Then she set her beach bag and thongs down.
She fought an internal battle to resist the temptation to glance back at him. To discover if his eyes had been focused on her or not. But she heavily doubted it. However, there was no denying the fact that he was beautiful. His eyes were what lured her into a sense of curiosity towards him. They were so pale that she filed them as unique. Her eyes, however, were bright blue as the sky on a cloudless day—or so her last boyfriend had said. No way did hers match this man’s beauties.
Ignoring her roommate predicament and the attractiveness of that guy’s light blue eyes, Stevie reached into her bag until she found her copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. The same copy that her father had given to her when she was ten. The cover was worn with creases and spill marks, but that was what she loved about the book. It had lasted through the years she’d spent in Melbourne and Paris. After flipping through the novel, she landed on the page marked by the same gift tag her father had written her name on. She smoothed out the page and continued to read.
“Tell me you’re a local and that you do this every day when you come to the beach,” she heard a smooth voice say when she had almost finished the chapter.
Heart stopped.
Breathing ceased.
Oh.
Slowly—as she tried to process the unnatural movements that her body made—Stevie placed the book on her lap. Then she turned to see those pale blue eyes staring at the pages of her book. At first, his closeness startled her as he peered over her shoulder, but she had managed to hide her flinch. Then she felt a cold drop of seawater hit her exposed shoulder, and she shivered.
“Excuse me?” she asked.
“You’ve got to be a local. There is no way a tourist comes to Phuket to read Harper Lee’s classic.”
Stevie blinked as he took the book from her lap. His wet fingers moistened the pages as he flicked through them. Suddenly, he stopped going through the book and ran a finger down the page.
That was when Stevie felt her jaw drop. This stranger picked out and read out loud one of her favourite quotes from her favourite novel. He smiled and closed the book before handing it back to her. After a few blinks, Stevie quickly took the book back and returned it to her lap.
“I like your choice in classics. I think we’ll be good friends,” he stated with a hint of excitement in his voice. He gave a genuine smile, and she couldn’t refrain from staring into his eyes. More grey than blue. But then more blue than grey. They were beautiful. Alluring, even.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
The ability to voice her name had become a struggle with her dried up throat.
You don’t just tell random strangers your name, right?
“Blondie, what’s your name?”
His nickname for her snapped her out of her thoughts.
“It’s not Blondie, that’s for sure. And I’m not here to make friends,” she retorted.
Those goddamn eyes.
Seriously?
I need to get out of here. I can hide out near the pool…
Yeah. I’ll do that.
Stevie leant forward and grabbed her beach bag. Those eyes and that smile had her alarm bells ringing. And she was sure that he was Australian. His accent wasn’t strong, but she knew he couldn’t be from up north.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Blondie. Need to be somewhere?” he asked as he gently wrapped his hand around her arm, stopping her. Stevie looked down at his hand and then up at him, his eyebrow raised at her.
“It’s not ‘Blondie.’ Okay?” Her body remained tense under his grasp.
“Come on. I have to know the girl behind the mockingbird.