The Hat Trick

by Tara Wimble

  THE HAT TRICK

  Tara Wimble

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 1

  SEPTEMBER 20th rolls around a lot faster than she expected. It feels like she’d only just started packing up the things in her room and labeling them and now her dad is hauling them out of the back of the car. That’s the extent of her life from home that she’ll keep here for the next four years. Seven boxes and a bike.

  “You’ll call in between all of the parties you’ll be going to?” Her sister asks before hugging her tightly. Lexie muffles her laugh in her shoulder. It still hasn’t sunk in that they’re not going to be living with each other for the next four years.

  Behind them her mom comments: “No parties.”

  “Sneaky parties.” Jeri whispers.

  Lexie grins but lunges forward when her dad starts to unload her bike. “Hang on!” She takes over quickly and lifts the blue bike to the sidewalk, checking for kinks and unlocking some of the chains she’d placed on it to stop the wheels spinning while they drove.

  “Dad, watch Lexie’s baby.” Jeri jokes. “She loves that more than me.”

  “Not true.” Lexie argues for a second. “It’s the other three I love more than you.”

  “Jerk.”

  Her dad continues pulling things out of the car. “You can bring your other bikes back here after Christmas if you have the room in your dorm.”

  Lexie loads some of her boxes onto a trolley.

  “Just don’t buy anymore while you're here?” He advises. “You can start building bikes when you finish college. Make some friends to buy them from you in the meantime.”

  “That’s the dream.” Lexie exclaims. Preferably a store near the beach that would let her cycle a never ending boardwalk with only the waves in the distance as indicators of where she was.

  “Come on, they said your room was this way.” Jeri takes control of the trolley while Lexie holds her bike and looks out at the piece of campus in front of her.

  This is her playground for the next four years. Four years away from her parents, her sisters and her friends. Her grip tightens on the handlebars. She needs a minute.

  “Dad?”

  He looks up at her call and rolls his eyes at the expression she wears. “Go on. Explore. But be back here in an hour okay?”

  Lexie scrambles for her helmet and straddles the seat of her bike. She kicks off pedaling with such force that a few people squeal as she races past them.

  Hello college.

  ***

  LEXIE hunches over the registration desk to check into her classes and pick up her schedule. A senior called Jasmine points to a few of them she’s taken before and gives her opinion before handing her a leaflet about student politics on campus.

  It’s then, with her pen filling in her email address, that she notices a girl hovering next to her, eyeing her choices.

  “Intro to World Politics, that volleyball hoodie and-” The girl ducks under to get a look at her. “-a stunner to boot.”

  It’s so surprising and blatant that she can’t stop the blush from the complement appearing on her face. “I’m sorry?” Lexie laughs nervously.

  Cocky and confident sticks a hand out to her. “Janice McPherson. Somewhere in Georgia.”

  Well, that’s different.

  “Lexie Jameson.” The hand she takes is soft and dotted with freckles that hop up the girl’s arm and seem to explode over her face. “Confused from L.A.”

  “Confused huh?” Janice grins. “Not sure politics is gonna help you there. You thought about biology?”

  That’s...forward.

  “Ignore her.” An amused voice to her right advises. “They didn’t teach her boundaries in high school.”

  Janice rolls her eyes while the second girl hands back her registration to the helpers behind the desk. She’s almost a head taller than Janice and carries herself like she’s walked this campus a thousand times more than either of them.

  “Laurel’s just jealous I saw you first.” Janice winks.

  Lexie faces up to Laurel as she introduces herself. “Laurel Santos. Indiana.”

  For a second Lexie’s face scrunched in confusion at the two of them not saying the same. Laurel breezes past it. “We met at the airport, between the delays from the baggage and the buses with our parents.”

  Janice’s face seems to grow brighter the longer Lexie continues to pay attention. “So many games of scrabble.”

  “Are you taking Politics too?”

  “Sociology.” Laurel says with a glance at Janice. “Now that you’ve been flirted with, are you re-considering your classes?”

  A small ‘hey’ goes unnoticed as Lexie answers. “I think I can handle it.”

  “Or enjoy it?” Janice jokes. Jasmine comes back to take their forms back.

  Laurel picks up the rest of her welcome pack and hands Janice hers. “She thinks you’re being serious.”

  Janice makes a noise that doesn’t dissuade the accusation. “I mean- come on.”

  There’s something casual and freeing about the playfulness in Janice and Laurel’s gestures. The flirting too but that, Lexie thinks, stems from not having to watch out for her parents when things like this happen to her. Not that they happen a lot or anything.

  “So have you moved in yet?” Janice asks.

  “Yesterday. My parents brought me.” Lexie tells them. They keep walking out, against the waves of new students heading into the registration area, with no real destination in mind. For a second Lexie wonders if they’re just being polite but they wait for her to continue. “My sister stayed to help me unpack everything but she drove home this morning.”

  “How’s your roommate?” Laurel inquires.

  She’d only met Rhetta briefly but from the looks of her Ke$ha inspired decorations they wouldn’t be mixing in the same social circles. “Nice enough.” She settles with saying. It’s not that they probably won’t get on but there was only so much glitter Lexie could handle on a daily basis. “Are you rooming together?”

  “Nah, same building but Santos has a single.” Janice informs. “I have yet to speak to my roommate but so far I can gather her interests include: snowboarding, long boarding, surfing and most sports you can play with balls.”

  Pause. “That’s a lot of information considering you haven’t spoken to her.” Lexie says.

  Janice shrugs. “I’m just guessing from the posters and unpacked boxes and long board stacked in her wardrobe. She’s also seems to be a fan of sleeping.”

  Lexie catches up to reality when they start crossing campus and have to weave in and out of people still moving in. “Do you want to get something to eat?”

  The girls pause for just a moment, enough for Lexie to panic that she’s said the wrong thing and maybe they were actually just being polite, before Janice shoves Laurel to the side. “Lexie, I’m so flattered that you-”

  Laurel groans. “Ignore her. It’s the first time she’s been allowed out unsupervised and apparently Janice flocks to the pretty girls.”

  Somehow Lexie could have guessed that. “There’s a little place over there that doesn’t look completely crowded.” She points out.

  “Awesome. Let’s go make lifelong friendship bonds.” Janice claps and leads the way for the three of them.

  ***

  “You should m
eet my roommate.” Janice insists about two weeks into their course towards the end of their World Politics lecture. “I think you’d get along.”

  They’ve staked a claim over two seats near the back of their lecture hall and discovered that Intro to World Politics wasn’t the only class they shared. In the welcoming talks and hand outs Janice also handed over her number, her dorm address and took several pictures of them to be tagged on Facebook.

  (Her sister has already liked and commented on how nice it was she was making such good friends already. That was several minutes after she’d stopped Janice from uploading the one of her licking milkshake from Lexie’s face.)

  Laurel is in a few of them too, now that they’ve all agreed that this friendship thing wasn’t just an awkward mess of Janice flirting, they meet up after classes for dinner at King’s.

  “So, she’s stopped sleeping enough for you to talk to her now?” Lexie murmurs back. Janice scribbles something down and nods.

  “Yeah, she bought me breakfast the other day. She gets up at like six to go running around campus or something.” Janice notes.

  “Does she run track?”

  “No.” Janice shakes her head. “It’s like she runs for fun or something.”

  Lexie’s face splits into a small smile.

  Janice has been updating them on her roommate since she started getting to know her. Her name is Robin or something, Lexie recalls. She’s taking Communications and Janice swears that even though she spends more time cruising the beach on her bike or her board or hogging the tennis courts, she’s still managing to ease through her classes.

  “I know it’s way too early to even think about yet, and Robin might surprise us all and drop out but I think we should get a house together next year.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Deadly.” Janice emphasizes as the class rounds out. “Like, I don’t think I’m going to meet a group of girls that I get on with more than you, Robin and Laurel.”

  Janice goes on and on about this for a month. How they should meet and all become best friends and live together next year and all the crazy things they’ll get up to, but Lexie still hasn’t met this girl. She doesn’t even know that much about her other than what Janice first told her.

  “Totally chill. Likes soccer, reading, monopoly, long bike rides.” Janice makes a nod to Lexie’s obsession. She’s grilled her a lot about what she wanted to do after college and hadn’t really made ground with it until Lexie invited her over to her dorm to see her bike plans. “She’s really passionate about the big guy too.”

  “What?” Lexie says. They’re walking to King’s after another thrilling debate on politics and U.S history and apparently Robin might join them. Despite knowing that she’s easy to get along with, Lexie is kind of nervous about meeting Robin, especially when Janice tells her that she’s been telling Robin about all of them as much as Janice’s been talking about her.

  “The big guy.” Janice says when they’re sat down and motions upwards to the ceiling. Lexie can see a few other people from their lecture milling in with similar looks of despair in their faces. She’s going to have to study for this test next week and it’s going to suck the life out of her.

  “God?” It feels a little weird listening when Janice puts it like that. It’s just another addition to Lexie’s theory that Robin is one of those girls that walked around wearing ‘Jesus is my homeboy’ shirts and flip flops.

  Robin’s Instagram informs her that she’s pretty accurate.

  “You should come wakeboarding with us.” Janice suggests. When she’s finished laughing about Lexie’s guess.

  “What makes you think we’ll even get along?” Lexie jokes. The way Janice’s been pushing this sometimes makes her think she’s got some sort of pool on this friendship.

  Janice tosses a napkin at her face. “Because I’m a great judge of character and Robin is like the human version of a chill pill.”

  Lexie makes a face. “You want me to swallow her?”

  Janice, her mouth full of the milkshake she just drank, makes a choking noise before she covers her face.

  “Oh come ON.”

  Janice splutters down the milkshake without it spilling. Before she can make a lewd comment about it, as always, her eyes fly open.

  “She’s back,” Janice taps the table. “Holy shit, she’s back.”

  “Who?” For a second Lexie thinks the infamous Robin has come in but Janice’s reaction is towards tall, dark and strikingly intimidating walking past their table and to the counter.

  “Who is that?”

  “That,” Janice sighs wistfully. “Is the hottest cop I have seen in my entire life.”

  Lexie hasn’t seen that look on Janice’s face since they first met, and it’s being directed at the broad back of a woman who is definitely not in college. Tall, dark and intimidating leans on the counter and talks to Jasmine, the senior in Lexie’s PSSO society, who works at King’s. She’s pretty cool actually- when-

  “Janice, what are you doing?- Janice!” Lexie’s voice drops to a frantic whisper as Janice slides from their booth. “Get back here!”

  Janice turns her back to the woman in uniform just long enough to give Lexie an ‘okay’ sign with her hand, her tongue pokes between her teeth, before spinning back and approaching the woman at the counter.

  Lexie covers her eyes briefly because a part of her really doesn’t want to see Janice hit on a woman, a cop no less, especially if it goes as well as it did with her. To her credit, Janice keeps her cool as she approaches the counter; smiling at Jasmine and making a joke before she turns her head to TDI. Lexie can’t hear from her seat but Janice points to TDI’s gun and-

  “Oh she did not just make that joke.” Lexie dies a little inside.

  Tall, dark and intimidating actually cracks a smile when Janice finishes gesturing with her hands. By this point Lexie is staring at them from behind a menu when TDI laughs loudly, moves her coffee from one hand into the other just to touch her gun. The tap she makes on it with her fingers seems playful enough but it gets downright flirty when TDI touches Janice’s head afterwards.

  However something blares on the woman’s radio a second later.

  On the bright side, Janice’s smile doesn’t fade when the cop side steps her and out but she doesn’t look back either, like Lexie does, to see TDI grinning all the way back to her squad car.

  Not that she’ll tell Janice that. Yet. “You got rejected.”

  “She just touched my face.” Janice stares wistfully at the car pulling away from King’s.

  “Your hair.” Lexie looks behind her friend to see Jasmine giving the both of them an amused look on Janice’s attempt. She’s going to have so much fun at their next PSSO meeting.

  Janice sighs as she slinks down in her seat. “She just ruffled my hair.”

  “There was no ruffling.” Lexie argues. Minimal contact if anything.

  “You didn’t feel it.” Janice misses her mouth when trying to find the straw in her milkshake, still looking out of the window.

  “Did you manage to get her number when she psychically touched your brain?” Lexie drolls.

  “Nope. But I did get her name.”

  Lexie stares.

  “Okay, her badge said SORENSON, but I still talked to her.”

  “Sure, sure.” Lexie teases. She kind of loves bickering like this with Janice, especially since Janice got bored of flirting with her after the first week of classes. The moment is short lived however, when Janice’s phone goes off.

  “Robin.” Her voice is apologetic. “She ditched her afternoon class to play flag football in the park.”

  Strangely Lexie feels let down. “Next time.” If Janice still insists on them living together next year, they’ll need to meet at some point.

  Janice nods. “I’ll make her feel bad when she gets in. You’re so much cooler than flag football.”

  Somehow, Lexie thinks, if that were the case Robin would be here.

  **

/>   She’s not stalking the woman, per say, she’s just attentive. Yeah, attentive. She attentively wrote down her squad car and spent a few days walking around campus or running after Lexie on her bike in the hope they would just casually run into each other again.

  Because Sorenson was insanely hot and there was touching so this whole thing is just Janice being attentive.

  “This is getting a little creepy.” Laurel whispers from her side. “Why are we hiding?”

  “Shh!” Janice swats behind her, where they’re both hiding out of sight of Sorenson in the parking lot of the Sports Center. “She’ll hear you.”

  Janice had been happily jogging around the track before her next class leaving Laurel in the dust when she’d spotted that squad car on the road and then she’d casually sprinted to the changing room, splashed water on her face, sent off a desperate text message to her roommate and changed into a non-sweaty shirt before walking to the car park.

  “You don’t even have a car Janice.” Laurel’s annoyance filters through in her voice. Which is to be expected if one minute you’re jogging with a friend and then the friend has suddenly ditched you to go stalk a potential love interest.

  Officer Sorenson looks as thrilled as anyone can be writing out parking tickets in the lot of the sports center. In the time they’d been watching her from afar she’d gotten three done with one irate car owner shouting very loudly about it until Sorenson took off her glasses-

  “She has really pretty eyes.” Janice presses her face against the brick wall they’re mostly hidden behind. She pauses. “And good cheekbones.”

  “I’m sure you’ll woo her with your compliments from here.” Laurel remarks sarcastically. “You’re going to be late to class.”

  “I have it covered.” Janice waves off. That uniform shirt was clinging wonderfully to Sorenson’s biceps. Wow. Good job.

  Laurel straightens up behind her. “Are you just going to stand here and stare at her ass for the next hour?”

  “Yes.” Janice sighs but then listens to herself. “No.”

  “Really?” The surprise in Laurel’s voice sounds slightly sarcastic.

  “No.” Janice suddenly elbows Laurel in the gut and flings them both safely behind the wall. “Shit she saw me. Engage plan B.”