Higher (The University of Gatica #3) (5 page)

“Where are we going?” She didn’t really care. Jani had just tossed her chances of no study hall next semester out the window and was feeling a little on the wild side. It felt… irrationally awesome. The thrill made her excited instead of stressed as she had thought it would.

“What do you feel like?” Carter’s truck slowed for a stop sign and he accelerated again as he headed toward downtown.

There weren’t a lot of vehicles around. Most students were chilling out, getting ready for classes tomorrow or doing homework that had been neglected all weekend.

“Let’s do take away. We can go and park the truck somewhere and eat out of plastic containers, overlooking some view or something.”

“You want to go parking?”

She playfully punched his arm. “I meant, like a picnic.”

“In a truck?”

“Sure. It’s too cold to eat outside.”

He chuckled and shook his head. “Sounds good to me.” He drove to the local Spaghetti Factory and parked in the near vacant lot by the entrance. “We can be like Lady and Tramp.” He hopped out, waiting for her on the sidewalk to get out of the truck.

Jani jumped out and followed him into the restaurant. They ordered and sat back to wait on a bench for their food. She jumped up when she noticed a game table on the bar side of the restaurant. “Come on.” She knew exactly what it was.

“What is this?” Carter asked when Jani slipped the quarter into the slot. The game groaned loudly and she slid an orange rounded cone looking thing his way.

“It’s air hockey! You seriously have never played?” She bent down to see if the flat plastic puck was sitting in her goal holder. “Puck’s in your net.”

“I’ve never seen this.” He looked down and tossed a cream-colored disc on the top of the table. It skimmed smoothly across as the air coming from the small holes on the table assisted it.

“Where are you from?” Jani laughed as she glided her orange cone over to hit the disc. “This game is huge in Canada. New York’s got hockey fever, how can you not?”

“I’m not from here.” He moved his hand, hitting the puck too hard and sending it flying over to Jani’s end. It smashed against the edge and came surging back toward him. He lifted his hand, paranoid he might crush his fingers.

The puck fell into his net and a muffled cheer came from inside the old hockey table.

“I think this thing is going to explode.” The noise from the air pushing through the small holes made a wheezing sound.

“It’s fine. Stop being such a wuss. You’re going to get hammered by a girl.”

Those were apparently the kind of words that sparked Carter. He grabbed the puck and tossed it back on the table. He set his feet shoulder width apart. “Game on!”

The puck flew back and forth before finally hitting the edge of Jani’s goal and then her handle. It ricocheted back at her and fell into her net.

“Yes! One – One now.” Carter grinned and winked at her. “I’m from Arizona, by the way. We don’t do hockey where I’m from.”

“Poor you,” she teased. “All that sunshine.”

He ignored her comment and tapped the air hockey table. “Who taught you how to play this?”

“My dad picked one up at a garage sale when I was a kid. It was huge!” She laughed. “It was probably the same size as this one, but when I was a kid it seemed so big. He set the freakin’ thing up on one side of the garage and we used to play it all the time after school, till my mom called us in for dinner.”

“Your dad still have it?”

“I think my mom made him get rid of it when I left for school. We hadn’t played it much when I started high school.” She had gotten into track and boys. They seemed a lot more fun than a silly game made of air. She felt a little tug in her chest. She wished she had played it more with him in high school. “What about you? What kind of games did you play as a kid?”

“Spin the bottle, cards, you know, all the usual games kids play back in grade school.” He tried hitting the puck again and completely missed. It slid into his net. “Shit! This is stupid.” He glanced at her with a rueful smile on his lips. “I’m sure this game is super popular in Canada, back where your winters are so cold, you have to stay in your igloos for days.  Even your pee freezes before it hits the ground.”

“The tough guys break it off like an icicle.” She rolled her eyes. “Really? Why does everyone always assume Canada is full of ice and snow? I live on the west coast. It’s mild, like English weather.”

“West coast?” He looked at her and a moment later the waitress came back with their order in takeaway containers. “Thanks,” he said to her and gave her money to pay for the food. When the lady headed back into the entrance ordering area, Carter turned his attention back to her. “I know you’re Canadian but I had no idea you were on the west coast. I figured you were from Ontario or something, just above the state of New York.” He let the puck slide into his goal again and set his floating handle down. “What made you pick Gatica? It’s a long way from home.”

“Same as you. Arizona’s probably further.” The air hockey table drizzled to a quiet hiss before turning silent. The game time must have run out.

“I can’t picture you a big mountain, downhill skier-type resort-style person.”

She dropped her head to the side, trying to picture what he had just attempted to describe. “I can’t either. Only because I have no clue what you mean.”

He sent her a lazy grin. “I figured you for a big city kind of girl.”

“Vancouver’s pretty big.” She didn’t picture herself as a metropolis kind of person. The comment surprised her.

“I’ve heard of Vancouver.” He watched her a moment before reaching for her hand. “Hey, I wasn’t dissing you. I just meant…how do I explain it?” His eyes moved heavenward as he stared up at the ceiling a moment. “Okay! There’s this guy on the swim team who graduated last year. He’s from Canada. I can’t remember where. It wasn’t from a province though. It’s like some Eskimo city way far up north. His town has a population of like a hundred people. In the winter, the only way to get to his place is by plane and they barely fly up except for supplies because it’s so bloomin’ cold the engines can freeze.”

Jani pressed her lips to suppress a giggle. “You mean a territory? Like Nunavut?”

He snapped his fingers. “Yeah! That’s it!”

“How in the world did a guy from there turn into a swimmer?”

“He said he had an uncle in the state right above North Dakota and went down there for high school. He made the swim team there and was pretty decent. He was on a full ride.”

The state Carter was referring to was the province of Manitoba. She didn’t feel the need to correct him on it. That was just being cheeky. “That’s really cool.”

“He was a nice guy. Never got into trouble, kept his head down. Good swimmer.” He lifted their food. “Let’s go eat and you can tell me your athletic story and how you ended up here. Then I’ll tell you mine.” He slipped his arm around her shoulders and led her outside.

Once inside the truck, Carter drove them to the outskirt of town and found a scenic hill to look out the front truck window at. You could see the football stadium and larger buildings of the university.

“I’ve never been here before,” Jani said and handed Carter his container. She unclicked her seatbelt and settled comfortably on the seat to eat.

“You haven’t?”

She shook her head as she sucked up a long noodle with sauce. She stared down at the end of her nose when it seemed like the noodle was never going to end.

Carter laughed at her silly face. “I’m having déjà vu of Lady and the Tramp.”

“I can’t believe you watched that movie.”

“I have a little sister. She’s ten years younger than me. When I was sixteen, she was six. I used to babysit and she was all about Disney. Not the new stuff with princesses and shit but the old, original movies. She still is.”

She pictured Carter at sixteen, tall and sexy, hanging with his little super cute sister. It wasn’t hard work to imagine. “Is your family still in Arizona?”

He shook his head as he finished chewing. “We’re military brats. My dad’s some bigwig dude, my mom’s the silent follower and then there’s me and my sis. Grew up on a couple of bases. I was born in Arizona, we were in Germany a few years, then a couple other European cities. We came back to the States when I was nine and settled in Arizona again. Lily was born there. Dad ran the base training where he turned boys into combat men.” He jabbed another forkful of food in his mouth.

Jani noticed his voice had dropped when he said the last sentence, as if trying to imitate his father.

Carter swallowed. “Anyways, we moved three years later and lived in New Mexico a couple of years before returning to Arizona, west side this time, where I finished high school.”

“You swam in high school then?”

“I swam ever since I could remember. At least under water I don’t have to listen to my father talk to us like we’re a bunch of useless army recruits.” He snorted. “I took the first full scholarship offer on the table and high-tailed it out of there.” He picked up a long noodle and mimicked Jani’s sucking face as he slurped it into his mouth. He winked at her and his tense body relaxed. “That’s my story of how I ended up here. Pretty boring.”

Jani thought otherwise. “When’s the last time you saw your sister?” She had the feeling he didn’t go home for Christmas and probably took summer school just so he didn’t have to go back.

“We FaceTime a lot. She’s in some accelerated program at a boarding school. Loves it.”

“That’s impressive. Is it in Arizona?”

“Nope. Folks are in Louisiana or Kansas or something now. Lily’s in Connecticut.”

Jani frowned. Carter was probably twenty-one now, that would make Lily only eleven. She couldn’t imagine living in another town from her parents at that age, let alone halfway across the country. “She’s all by herself?”

“She’s at a boarding school. With other kids. She’s not alone.”

“Does it bother your mom?” Her own mom hated that Jani was on the east coast in the US and her home was the west coast in Canada.

“Nah. My mom’s happy being a wife. She didn’t have kids because she wanted them. She had them because we fit the military lifestyle.”

“That sucks.” She couldn’t imagine his life growing up. There had never been an ounce of consistency in his life. It made her want to be around him more. She was glad she’d skipped her essay to hang out with him. It was worth it.

He shrugged. “It’s no big deal. I’m in my fourth year of university, made All-American a bunch of times, and will graduate next year from school. Five years here is longer than I’ve ever lived anywhere else. This feels more like home. I’m talking with my coach about staying on for grad school so I can keep competing, maybe make a national team and assistant coach here so I don’t have to pay for school.”

She liked the idea of him hanging around here longer, and not just for selfish reasons. She was in her third year now.

“What about you? How did you get into the high jumping?”

She shook her legs and pointed at them. “These are kind of hard to miss.” She smiled when he chuckled. “In grade nine, or as you Americans say, my freshman year—”

“Or ninth grade.” He winked as he teased her.

“I was fourteen and tried out for the varsity volleyball team in high school. The coach who did volleyball also happened to run the track program. I was tall at the beginning of grade nine, but by the end, I was still growing. He talked me into trying high jump. Said all I had to do was jog up to the bar and fall over. Sounded simple enough.”

“You make it look simple. I highly doubt it is.”

She smiled, loving his compliment. He had watched her compete even though he had never told her directly. Cool. “There’s a good track club in Vancouver so I joined and by the time I finished high school, I’d won Provincials, Junior, and Senior Nationals. Not a ton of under seventeens jump one eighty-three.”

“One eighty-three?”

“Sorry. I’m thinking metric. Six feet. It’s a big jump for a high schooler. It opened a lot of doors down here in the States and since Canada doesn’t have athletic scholarships, I came over here. Coach Maves has a record for good high jumpers. All the recruiting trips I went on, Gatica had the best program suited for me.”

“You won Canadian Nationals?”

“First time was when I was seventeen.”

“Wow. That’s impressive. Did you go to World Championships then?”

She laughed. It came out perfectly sarcastic. “Canada doesn’t work like that. You have to make A standards and B standards and all that jazz. Winning doesn’t guarantee anything.” That was part of the reason she was happy to jump ship and head down here. “It’s funny though. Everyone back home warns you that the US system is going to gobble you up and spit you out. Burn you out before you have a chance to peak. I’ve never had that. I love the competitive indoor and outdoor season. Maves trains us hard but it works. Last summer I went home for nationals, nearly made one-ninety,” she paused when his eyebrows popped up. “I mean, six foot three. So close. This year’s going to be even better.”

He shook his head, obviously impressed. “I can’t imagine jumping that high. I’d need a pole to get up there.”