Warming Trend Read Online Free Page B

cream!”
    “Buy your own apple!”
    “You’re incredibly boring.”
    Lisa settled in to read Terrafrost . Ani wanted to ask her if she didn’t have plans or something, but she kept her mouth clamped shut.
    Some time later, Lisa grunted and said, “Not a bad story. And I got stood up.”
    “Whoever she is, she’s a fool.”
    Lisa looked up from the magazine, eyelashes fluttering. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
    “Don’t get used to it.” Ani continued giving most of her attention to an article on fly fishing near Bristol Bay. “What’s your last name, anyway?”
    “Garretson. Yours is Bycall.”
    Ani nodded and Lisa was finally quiet.
    Someone like Lisa lounging on a towel tended to attract a lot of foot traffic. Guys and girls alike trolled past them. Half the girls Lisa seemed to know, but she was equally laconic with most of them, though a couple earned the kind of smart-ass teasing she’d dished out to Ani. Ani was blotting out the chitchat with another table of ice temperature data when a newcomer’s coy-kitten tone broke into her concentration.
    “Don’t you look cozy?” The new arrival was sleek and tall, and sported a mane of golden bronze hair that had to have emptied a salon of its entire supply of extensions.
    “Hello, Tina.” Lisa didn’t move, but her breathing had gone shallow. “Yes, I’m cozy.”
    “It’s a shame we don’t see you around much anymore.”
    “I’ve made a clean air environment a priority. For my health.”
    “Remember Mindy?”
    “How could I forget? The image of her skinny legs wrapped around you left me with retinal damage.”
    Ani couldn’t see Lisa’s eyes, but she could have sworn that little fire bolts darted out of Tina’s. “Now that we’re living together she’s handcrafting me a board.”
    “Something to do after getting canned from the board shop?”
    The fire bolt eyes turned to Ani. “Who’s this?”
    Ani answered, giving Tina a patently false smile, “Anidyr.”
    Tina dismissed her with a blink, and went back to trying to burn a hole in Lisa. “Your dear Ani? I didn’t know you were dating finally , even after all this time.”
    Ani had seen Tina’s excellence-in-bitchery type in the student union back home. When the sun rose at eleven a.m. and set four hours later practice with verbal knives passed the time. “We haven’t been dating for very long. It took me forever to convince her I wasn’t another lowlife.”
    Tina made a face at both of them. She flicked some sand onto the towel and the reading material. “Taking a vacation to Alaska or something?”
    She’s dying to know, Ani thought, which makes her still hung up on Lisa or a control freak stalker. Control freak stalker seemed more likely.
    Lisa brushed the sand off the Alaska Today . “Yes, you’ve got it. I am in awe of your deductive abilities.”
    “Before we go,” Ani said, “Lisa thought we ought to familiarize ourselves with the deterioration of oxygen isotopes and the rate of glaciation retreat.”
    “Ani’s a geologist.” Lisa smiled sweetly. “I’m sure with her help I can work my way up from ablation of the ice cap to the proper use of a surf wax comb.”
    Tina tossed her hair, which was no small feat. “Whatever. See you on the curl that is, if you can still get your ass up on a board.” She stalked off, her hair blotting out the setting sun.
    “You didn’t have to do that,” Lisa said. “Now I owe you.”
    “It was self-defense. She was standing in my reading light.”
    The tension in Lisa’s body eased. “I used to think she was a big deal. I was flattered she even noticed me.”
    “And then you figured out she was a bitch?”
    “No, then I fell for her and we moved in together.”
    “And then you figured out she was a bitch?”
    “No, then I did her laundry for thirteen months, eleven days.”
    “And then you figured out she was a bitch?”
    “No, then I walked in on her and that skinny, empty-headed surfboard