Fortunately, she knew she had other options. The town of New Salisbury, like most college towns, contained plenty of casual restaurants and fast-food places that catered primarily to cash-strapped students, so Lisa was sure she could grab a quick and inexpensive dinner before heading back to the parking lot for the drive home to Willow Creek. In fact, she remembered that once last year, when she had driven up with Stevie and Alex to visit Chad, he had taken them out to a terrific burger-and-pizza place near his dorm. That meant it had to be somewhere nearby. But where? Lisa turned slowly in a circle, frowning slightly with concentration as she tried to remember in which direction they had gone.
“Hi there.” An unfamiliar voice interrupted her thoughts. “I don’t usually walk up to strange girls like this, but I couldn’t help noticing that you looked a little lost and thought you could use some help.” Lisa turned to see a tall, broad-shouldered guy in a rugby shirt smiling at her. He gave her a winning smile. “My name’s Rick, by the way.”
“I’m Lisa,” she offered, smiling back tentatively. “And I’m more hungry than lost. I was just looking around for someplace to grab a quick burger or something.”
“Well, then you’re in luck, Lisa.” Rick’s smile broadened. “Because I happen to be on my way to just such a place. In fact, they may serve up the best burgers in the county. Want to join me?”
Lisa gulped nervously. “Um, I’d better not,” she said, not wanting the friendly student to get the wrong idea. “Thanks anyway, though.”
“Are you sure?” Rick shrugged and ran a hand over his straight, sandy brown hair. “I’m just meeting my girlfriend and a couple of my housemates there—no big deal. They won’t mind if you tag along.”
Girlfriend? Lisa relaxed immediately, feeling slightly foolish for jumping to the conclusion that the guy was hitting on her just because he was being nice to her. “Well, if you’re sure they won’t mind,” she said slowly. The thought of going to a real college hangout with real college students made her feel mature and slightly daring. She liked the feeling. “That would be really nice.”
“Cool. Come on, it’s this way.” Rick loped off, and Lisa had to break into a trot to keep up with him.
He led her straight past the dining hall and a cluster of dorms to the edge of campus. After crossing the street, they walked another block or two until they reached an area packed with small shops, restaurants, and bars.
“Here we go.” Rick gestured to a tall, narrow building with a neon sign reading Old Dominion hanging over a green-painted door. “This place gets pretty crowded at night, but we’re early, so we should get a seat.” He pushed open the door and held it for Lisa to walk through ahead of him.
As far as Lisa could see, the restaurant consisted of one long, narrow room. A large, ornately carved bar ran the length of the left side, with bar stools lined up all along it. At this early hour, only a few people were perched on the stools, with beers or paper plates full of french fries in front of them. The other wall was lined by a row of deep vinyl-upholstered booths with glass-shaded overhead lamps hanging over each scarred wooden table. Several of the booths were occupied by groups of laughing, talking people, mostly students. The warm smell of frying beef mixed with the slightly sour odor of stale beer and tickled Lisa’s nose, making her stomach growl more than ever.
“Cool place,” Lisa commented, raising her voice slightly to make herself heard above the din.
Rick smiled. “Just wait until you taste the food.” He gestured for her to follow him toward a booth halfway down the wall. Three other students were already seated there—a pretty, olive-skinned girl with cat’s-eye glasses, and two good-looking guys, one with broad shoulders and close-cropped blond hair and the other African American with shoulder-length dreadlocks and serious brown eyes.
“Yo, guys,” Rick greeted them. “This is Lisa. I kidnapped her from the green and forced her to come eat with us.”
The girl—Lisa assumed she was the girlfriend Rick had mentioned—looked up and smiled. “Hi, Lisa. I’m Safiya. You’ll have to excuse Rick—he loves picking up strays, even when they don’t actually need rescuing. I hope you didn’t have other dinner plans he dragged you away from.”
Lisa smiled, feeling a little intimidated by the other girl’s exotic good looks but reassured by her warm words and sincere smile. “No, I didn’t have plans,” she said. “Actually, I’m just here visiting by myself.” She had explained her visit to Rick on the walk over, and he quickly filled in his friends. Then he introduced the two guys, whose names were Teddy and Paul.
“So you’re a senior in high school?” the big blond guy, Teddy, asked as Lisa took a seat beside him in the booth. “Where do you go?”
“Willow Creek High,” Lisa said, accepting the menu Safiya handed her across the table. “It’s about forty miles from here.”
Teddy shrugged and smiled, revealing a pair of perfectly matched dimples in his beefy cheeks. “Never heard of it.”
“I have, I think,” Safiya said. “A girl on my freshman hall last year went there. Do you know Melissa Overbrook?”
Lisa nodded, vaguely recalling a rowdy, athletic girl who had been two years ahead of her in school. “I know who she is,” she said. “But I didn’t really know her.”
“What about Kevin Hart?” the other guy, Paul, asked. “He’s in my English seminar.”
Lisa smiled in surprise. “Of course!” she said. “I mean, he actually didn’t go to my school, but he’s from Willow Creek—the town, I mean. His little sister rides at the same stable as I do.”
“You ride?” Safiya looked interested. “Sweet. That must be so amazing. Do you have your own horse?”
For the next few minutes, Lisa fell into a comfortable discussion of the familiar subjects of horses and riding. From there, the conversation wandered naturally to other topics. The college students were happy to answer all the questions Lisa could come up with about NVU, and the more she talked to them, the more excited she felt about starting college. In fact, she was beginning to wish she could enroll right then and there—hanging out with her new friends on campus definitely sounded better than going back to Willow Creek and dealing with all the annoying and unpleasant problems awaiting her there.
Still, she did her best to forget about her meddling mother, her unsupportive boyfriend, and the high-risk pregnancy of her horse-to-be for the moment and just enjoy herself. It wasn’t that hard once she got started. She really liked Rick, Teddy, Paul, and especially Safiya. The older girl was so friendly and smart and funny that Lisa was already starting to think of her as a friend.
“How did you end up choosing NVU?” Lisa asked after Safiya finished a hilarious story about her first day at college, when she had dragged three overstuffed suitcases into the engineering building, thinking it was her dorm. “I mean, what made you decide to go here instead of somewhere else?”
Safiya shrugged and took a sip of her iced tea. “It was pretty easy, really,” she said. “I want to be a nurse, but I also wanted to go to a regular four-year school—you know, have the whole college experience. NVU has a really good undergraduate nursing program. Just about the only places better are Penn and Michigan, and they both turned me down.”
“Oh.” Lisa felt a little bit awkward about having brought up the subject when she heard that. Still, Safiya didn’t seem upset or embarrassed about it, so Lisa figured she didn’t mind. “Well, I’m glad you’re here now, anyway.”
Safiya smiled at her across the table. “Me too.”
“Me three,” Rick added, leaning over to plant a kiss on Safiya’s cheek. “If you’d ended up at Penn or Michigan, we never would have met.”
Paul rolled his eyes. “And the romance of the century would never have occurred,” he said dryly as he grabbed a handful of fries off Rick’s plate.
Safiya ignored him. “We still would have met, sweetie,” she said, grabbing Rick’s face and turning it toward her to plant a big kiss on his lips. “We would have found each other somehow. Fate, you know.�
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Lisa smiled as she watched them. She thought she knew exactly what Safiya meant. It was the same way she felt about Alex. Even if he hadn’t been her best friend’s brother, even if he hadn’t lived just a few doors down from her, she couldn’t quite believe that they wouldn’t have ended up meeting and falling in love anyway. She knew it even when she was really annoyed with him, the way she was at the moment.…
As she continued to chat with her new friends between bites of her delicious burger, Lisa automatically scanned the restaurant once again, looking for familiar faces. Now that she was here and having such a good time, she thought she might not mind running into Chad or one of her other acquaintances. The only person she really wanted to avoid, of course, was Rafe. But she was pretty sure he was working that night, so she wasn’t too worried.
But this time she did spy someone else she knew—someone she wasn’t expecting to see there. “A.J.?” she muttered with a slight frown, hardly believing her eyes.
But it was definitely Phil’s friend A.J. who had just walked into the place with a couple of other guys. There was no mistaking his reddish brown hair and thin, energetic form. As Lisa watched, A.J. and his companions slid onto some stools at the bar and said something to the bartender. The bartender cocked his head at A.J. and one of the other guys, looking skeptical. But when A.J. and his friend flashed their IDs, the bartender shrugged and walked over to the tap. Before long he had filled three mugs and set them in front of the trio.
Lisa’s mind reeled. She was surprised to see A.J. there at all, so far from home, but what was he doing drinking beer? He was sixteen, a year younger than she was. Besides, she would have thought he’d learned his lesson at the Lakes’ party, when he’d drunk too much beer and ended up being escorted home by the police. She watched out of the corner of her eye as A.J. and the other two guys sat there and drank their beers, then ordered a second round.
“Lisa?” Rick said, poking her on the shoulder. “What’s wrong? Looking for an escape route? Don’t go—I promise I won’t let Teddy start talking about his econ midterm again. That could scare anyone away.”
Lisa forced a smile. “It’s not that,” she told her new friends. “Um, I see someone I know over there at the bar. Excuse me a minute. I think I’ll go say hi.”
She slid out of the booth and made her way toward A.J., wondering what to say to him. She hadn’t seen him since the party, but she knew he’d been unpredictable ever since finding out that he was adopted. Sometimes he seemed almost like his old, friendly, funny self, while at other times he was a virtual stranger, sullen and bitter. Still, she couldn’t just ignore the fact that he was there. She had to try to talk to him.
There was an empty stool next to him, and she stopped beside it. She cleared her throat. “Hi, A.J.,” she said.
A look of surprise and dismay flickered across his face when he saw who had greeted him, but then he shrugged and smiled. “Yo, Lisa,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“I was just about to ask you the same thing.” Lisa did her best to keep her tone casual.
A.J.’s two companions had leaned over curiously to see her. Lisa noted that one of them was a guy she’d seen around town at parties and other events. A.J. jerked his thumb at the guy. “You’ve met Jeremy Castle, right? He’s a senior at Cross County. Jer, Lisa Atwood. And that’s his older brother Caleb. He goes to school here.”
“Hey there, Lisa,” Jeremy said, smiling and blinking and leaning closer, almost shoving A.J. off his bar stool in the process. “Why don’t you join us? You can sit right here with me.” He patted his lap invitingly.
“No, thank you.” Lisa did her best not to shudder. The way Jeremy was looking at her made her feel like one of the burgers on the restaurant’s menu. Ignoring both Jeremy and his older brother, who was gazing at her curiously, Lisa focused on A.J. “Look,” she said in a low voice, “I don’t know what’s going on, but I really think you ought to get out of here. I’ll give you a ride home if you want.”
A.J. shook his head and lifted his beer. “No thanks,” he said. “I’ve still got work to do here.”
“But you’re—” Lisa shot a quick glance at the bartender, making sure he was out of earshot. The last thing she wanted to do was to get A.J. busted again. He had enough problems as it was. She lowered her voice still more. “How did you get served, anyway?”
A.J. grinned, took a swig from his mug, and then set it down. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. “Check it out,” he said, handing it to Lisa.
She took it and saw that it was a driver’s license with A.J.’s picture on it. But instead of being from Virginia, it was from Oregon. And instead of A.J.’s real name and age, the card listed him as Michael O’Reilly, age twenty-two.
“Are you crazy?” Lisa whispered, handing it back to him quickly. Even holding it made her feel nervous and somehow dirty. “That’s a fake ID!”
“Isn’t it cool?” A.J. returned the card to his pocket, still grinning. “Caleb got them for us. Ten bucks. Great deal, huh?”
Just then Caleb leaned forward. “Ready for another round, dude?” he asked A.J. “I’m buying.
“Sure,” A.J. said, quickly draining the rest of the beer from his mug and wiping the foam from his mouth with the back of his hand. “Hit me with it.”
“What about you?”
With a jolt, Lisa realized that Caleb was addressing her. “What?” she asked, startled.
Caleb spoke very slowly, as if talking to a slow two-year-old. “Do—you—want—a—beer?”
“No,” Lisa replied quickly. “No thanks. And A.J. isn’t having any more either.”
“Huh?” A.J. frowned at her. “Who are you, my mother?”
“Yeah, Mama!” Jeremy hooted, pounding his hand on the bar and almost upsetting his beer mug. “Hey, Ma, will you change my diapers?” The other two guys started laughing; then Caleb turned away to signal the bartender.
Lisa gritted her teeth. “A.J.,” she said as calmly as she could, “I really don’t think you want to do this. Why don’t you come with me? My car’s just across campus. We can talk about this on the way back home.”
“Is that a threat?” A.J. said, smirking. “Because I think I’ll pass. I’m not in the mood for a chat right now.”
“Are you crazy, dude?” Jeremy shoved A.J. in the side. “She just invited you back to her car!” He leered at Lisa. “Forget about him. I’ll come home with you, honey.”
Lisa sighed, forcing herself not to snap back a sharp retort. It wasn’t worth it. Jeremy was either already drunk or just a jerk. Either way, he wasn’t her problem. But she was really worried about A.J. As obnoxious as he’d been acting lately, he was still her friend.
Still, there didn’t seem to be anything she could do for him right then short of turning him in to the campus police. “How are you getting home?” she asked him.
A.J. shrugged. “Don’t know. I’m probably not,” he said. “Caleb said we could crash at his place tonight. He lives off campus.” He seemed very impressed by that fact.
Just then the bartender slid another beer in front of him. Lisa shot the man a desperate look, wishing she could just blurt out the truth—that A.J. and his friend were underage, that their IDs were fake. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She turned away, comforting herself with the idea that at least A.J. and Jeremy wouldn’t be trying to drive anywhere that night. Of course, that meant they were probably planning to skip school the next day, but that was the least of Lisa’s worries.
“Okay,” she told A.J. “Well, I can’t force you to come with me. So I’ll see you, okay?”
As she walked away, she thought she heard Jeremy make some comment about how she could force him anytime, and then a snort of laughter from A.J. But she didn’t look back.
When she returned to the booth, Lisa realized she wasn’t in the mood to play coed anymore. Suddenly her fun, grown-up college adventure didn’t seem that exciting, and all she wanted to do was get home, ca
ll Stevie, and tell her about A.J. She only hoped Stevie’s parents would let her talk. After making a quick excuse to her new friends and exchanging phone numbers with Safiya, Lisa hurried out of the restaurant and headed for her car, hardly noticing the softly glowing campus lights blinking on all around her as dusk fell.
Ten
Carole glanced out the office window over Max’s shoulder. A light but steady drizzle had been falling all afternoon, and the heavy cloud cover made it look a lot later than it actually was. That wasn’t helping anyone’s mood at Pine Hollow—the show was the next day, and there was still so much to do that it was making everyone a little frantic.
And as if I don’t have enough to worry about already, just getting myself and Samson ready, Carole thought, twisting her hands together nervously in her lap, I just can’t stop thinking about that vet check last night.
She forced herself to tune back into Max’s speech. She didn’t want to miss anything important because she was obsessing over Tanya’s visit. “… and I just want you all to remember,” Max was saying somberly, tapping a pen slowly against his desk for emphasis. “Competing at a show of this importance, against riders of this caliber, is going to be a great challenge. But you shouldn’t think of it as a contest against others. I really want you to focus on bettering yourselves, concentrating on improving your own …”
Carole’s mind drifted again. She had heard Max give the same speech, or some version of it, more times than she could remember. She couldn’t seem to concentrate on his words this time, not when her mind wouldn’t stop worrying over the fact that Starlight would soon belong to someone else.
The vet check had gone perfectly smoothly, just as Carole had anticipated. Once the doctor had pronounced the gelding sound and healthy, Tanya had practically gone ballistic with excitement. She’d been ready to pack Starlight into her mother’s car right then and there—or at least return to pick him up as soon as possible. Part of Carole wanted to go along with that plan, thinking it might be easier to do it fast, like ripping off a bandage all at once. But she couldn’t quite bear the thought of losing Starlight amidst all the preshow commotion. So she had insisted that Tanya wait to pick him up until Saturday evening, after the show was over and Carole could give her horse a proper farewell. She hoped that would also give her enough time to break the news to her father and Max. Somehow, she couldn’t quite picture how Max would react if a van arrived to pick up one of his boarders without his knowledge.
Riding to Win Page 11