“I’m not really a hockey fan,” she admitted. “Which is crazy because I’m from Michigan. If you ask my sister, something in my brain is broken.”
Jack’s eyes widened, a hand flying to his chest. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I don’t like hockey,” she shrugged. “Not my thing.”
“Not your thing? But…next to Minnesota, Michigan is like the epicenter of hockey in the States.”
She shrugged again. “It’s more my sister’s thing,” she said. “And my brother’s.”
Jack rose to his full height and craned his neck, dramatically looking around the dance floor. “Where is this sister? She seems more like my kinda girl.”
Jessica playfully shoved his chest, though the boy was built like a brick wall and didn’t sway so much as a centimeter.
“Rude,” she said, adopting an expression of mock hurt.
Jack settled a hand on her hip and tugged her close. “I’m kidding,” he said, and kissed her again.
When she pulled back, she said, “If you must know, I’m here with my mom, my best friend, and her mom. Berkley is back in Michigan, finishing up her second year of law school.”
“A lawyer in the family?” Jack’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s impressive.”
“Oh, not just one,” she said, holding up a peace sign. “Two. My older brother, Logan, is also an attorney.”
Jack whistled low. “And you?”
Jessica sighed. “I want to be a teacher.”
She waited for the furrowed brow, the pursed lips, the “why would you want to do that?” to leave his mouth, but none of those things happened. He studied her thoughtfully, and Jessica tried not to squirm under his gaze.
Her older siblings had always been close. With only thirteen months separating them, they were glued at the hip growing up. Unfortunately for Jessica, that didn’t change much with her arrival when Logan was seven and Berkley was six. They had already started school when Jessica was still in diapers, and graduated and started college before she ever made it to high school.
She loved her siblings dearly, and she lucked out having two ridiculously smart, talented, and driven people serving as role models as she grew up. But…a lot of the time, she felt like she was letting them down by not following in their lawyerly footsteps.
For as long as she could remember, she’d wanted to be a teacher. When she was younger, she was often helping her classmates understand homework assignments when their teacher’s explanations went right over their heads. In high school, she worked with a few different tutoring programs in her hometown of Traverse City and its surrounding areas. Logan and Berkley might not understand it, but she knew without a shadow of a doubt this was what she was meant to do.
Jessica had a plan for herself.
She’d be attending Michigan State University in the fall, where she’d get her teaching degree in secondary education, probablywith a focus on English because she loved books and writing and languages, though that was subject to change. She would student-teach in her senior year, hopefully both semesters, before graduating and getting a job doing what she loved.
Finally, Jack said, “I think you’ll be amazing at that.”
“You don’t even know me,” she said, for the second time that night.
“You’ve got that look about you,” he said, narrowing his gaze, the corner of his mouth tipping up in a half smile. “Like you’re fully capable of handling rowdy children and shaping young minds.”
“I don’t know exactly what age I want to teach yet. Or even what I want my specialty to be.”
That was a lie, actually. She knew exactly what she wanted to do, but she wasn’t about to lay all of her fragile hopes and dreams at Jack’s feet so he could step all over them.
“Well I’m confident you’ll be amazing whatever you decide to do.”
She grinned at him then, and he returned it.
The urge to do something spontaneous gripped her, and she said, “Let’s get out of here.”
Jack raised an eyebrow. “And do what, exactly?”
“Notthat, you perv,” she said, swatting at his chest. “I’m starving.”
