When Life Turned Purple Read Online Free

kept comparing her to Lia. He didn’t mean to, but when he looked at her tanned freckled skin, he automatically thought of Lia’s smooth ivory skin. When Alex looked up at him with her light green eyes, he immediately thought of Lia’s rich purple ones. Alex was cute and peppy, but Russ felt like he was walking around with a magazine cut-out instead of a real person. And he missed the conversational curveballs that kept him on his toes with Lia—like how she could be totally normal one minute and then suddenly blurt out something like “diffraction grating” or “the electromagnetic spectrum.”
    Russ figured he could have a lot of fun with Alex that evening, but strangely enough, he wasn’t sure he wanted to. Chatty and smiley, Alex kept bumping up against him. But it just left Russ cold. Why had he asked out Alex? He could have called Lia and been with Lia right now.
    But now, Russ was stuck and couldn’t blow Alex off after he’d invited her out. Finally, Russ decided to take her to where he usually hung out with his brother. Maybe Evan would be there and take some of the load off Russ.
    Alex’s shoulders sagged and her mouth retreated into a straight line at the suggestion, but Russ just said, “C’mon. It’s a cool place to be.”
    Evan was there and he had a girl with him. Well, not a real girl, of course, but a geek like Evan. But she was cute with perfectly straight and shiny black hair. Russ introduced them to Alex, who by now seemed less chatty and less perky.
    “Nice to meet you, Alex,” chirped Evan. Then, holding out his arm toward his date, he said, “And may I now introduce to you both the Grand Game Mistress?”
    Evan’s date chuckled, her eyes disappearing into cheerful black curves above her round cheeks.
    Evan leaned toward Russ. “I mean, you have got to hear these RPG plots she comes up with! And the weapons …Russ, I’m telling you—” He turned to his date. “Genius, Edison. Sheer genius .”
    Shaking her head, Edison just chuckled some more.
    Alex stared at Evan and Edison, and blinked.
    Then Russ excused himself to the bathroom.
    When he came back, Alex was gone. He looked from Evan to Edison, then back to Evan.
    “What happened?” he said.
    “She wanted to know if you were gay,” said Evan. “So I said yes. Then she asked me why you asked her out. And I said because you were hoping for some good waxing tips for your hard-to-remove toe hair. And that maybe she would know.”
    Edison passed her hand over her mouth as she held back a smile.
    “Whatever,” said Russ.
    Evan sat there with his arm around Edison, smirking at Russ. “Then I enthused about your idea to re-skin the Wiccan collecting dragons as a vampire collecting zombies . Which is really wacky because zombies have no blood, right? So why would a vampire be interested in zombies? Then I went into the different breeds of zombies and the different levels of zombieness—which is even wackier. I mean, how can you be only a partial zombie?”
    “What?” said Russ. “I never said a damn thing about zombies. Or vampires. Or any kind of gaming. Gaming is for weirdos.”
    “I know,” said Evan. “The zombie-vampire re-skin was my idea. But I get codependent with you sometimes. It’s hard for me to tell where you end and I begin.”
    Now Edison chortled so hard, she needed to support herself against the table with both hands. Russ wondered how much she’d had to drink.
    “Where’d you two meet?” Russ asked.
    “You’re okay with your date ditching you?” asked Evan.
    “Sure. I wasn’t so into her anyway.”
    “Hmm,” said Evan. “That’s telling. Because she is your type.”
    “Nah, I wasn’t so into her.”
    “I love seeing you in love,” said Evan. “It makes me feel in love with you too.”
    Russ scowled at Evan and said, “Go jump.”
    Evan looked at his date. “See? He’s even cleaned up his language.” He looked back at Russ. “Presumably so that he doesn’t accidentally forget