They were planning a simple courthouse ceremony with a private dinner afterwards. She wanted her parents to attend, but could not rely on both of them having good days together and did not want to risk the stress that it could give either of them.
She and Joseph had already been making plans in his house for their care, and she had been speechless when he assured her that having them live with them was no problem at all.
Joseph smiled to himself when he remembered the conversation. He had spent nearly two hours assuring her that it was an honor and a tradition in his own culture to care for aging parents at home, at least for as long as medically reasonable to do so.
He granted her three weeks off, and knew that she would probably never return to work after the wedding. She used the first week to finish the arrangements for their intimate wedding, and giggled every time he declined to answer her questions about their two-week honeymoon.
Finally the day arrived. Sherrie was so nervous she could hardly breathe as the kind coordinator zipped up the back of her dress. It was a simple ivory lace dress that could actually be used as a cocktail dress afterwards, should the need arise. The scoop neck hugged her full breasts, the smooth waist accentuated her trim middle, and it ended just above her knees.
The ceremony was short and a complete blur for both of them. As the limousine whisked them off to their private dinner, Joseph ran his hands over the delicate lace that tickled her thighs.
“You take my breath away,” he whispered in her ear.
Dinner was served at the rooftop restaurant. She had carefully selected a menu that she thought would be fun and interesting, and would not stretch the limits of the snug-fitting dress.
They sipped glasses of paired wine with each small plate that was delivered — a cheese board decorated with beautiful fresh strawberries and grapes; a charcuterie plate served with spicy mustard and delicate water crackers; a tiny terrine of pâté with slices of fresh warm French bread; an arrangement of gorgeous red peppers stuffed with goat cheese; and finally for dessert, an assortment of bite-size cookies and petit fors.
Joseph marveled at her selections and smiled to himself, Perhaps she is cut out for this life after all.
The limo then delivered them to the premier five-star hotel downtown and a very eager young concierge escorted them to the penthouse suite. While they waited for their luggage, Sherrie sunk down onto the king-size bed and sighed deeply.
“Joseph, this is all too much,” she smiled up at him shyly.
“Sherrie, I will give you this and more. I can’t wait to show you the rest of the world. But you are my world now.”
Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
He knelt in front of her and as he took her hand, she looked into his eyes. She saw a sincerity so deep she almost did not recognize it. And, just as Joseph had fallen, Sherrie did too.
THE END
Getting the Game Plan
1
The crowd was going wild. The stadium was filled for the first game of the season, and the people of Angel High were going crazy for the football team. The night was still light so the towering floodlights were not turned on.
The red uniforms of the team ran onto the field, clad in their white helmets and their thick pads, looking inhuman as they sought to begin their defense of the title. Leading them was Trey Fournier, the star quarterback who had transferred to the school at the beginning of the previous year. At first he had been the new guy, and people had been wary of him; however, he had quickly ingratiated himself and become an integral part of the school, so much so that the popular clique revolved around him.
He waved to the crowd as he took to the field and they responded by waving back and cheering. The noise was cacophonous, and the rival team had entered a cauldron of passion. The cheerleaders were bouncing and flipping in the middle of the field as the teams took to their starting positions, and everyone was eager to get the game started.
Millie, a reporter for the school newspaper, was sitting near the front row with a notepad on her lap and her laptop by her side. She was leaning forward, her pen resting in her hand, trying to ignore the raucous noise that was swirling around her. Her blonde hair was tied back into a tight ponytail and a pair of glasses rested on the bridge of her nose. One of her habits was to push them up with her index finger whenever they slid down or when she was agitated, and she was doing this now.
“Something wrong?” Matt asked. He set his camera down and stopped taking photos for a moment, turning to his friend. He was a scrawny boy and he and Millie had been friends for a long time, just about since they had started high school. They both worked on the school paper, and it was something of a passion project for them. They enjoyed roving around like proper journalists, but Millie was looking like she wanted to be anywhere else but the game.
“This is just so boring. Why did we get assigned to do the sports? Adrian would have been a much better fit.”
“I think Cindy just hates you. She only went for editor because she likes the power. Do you know I even heard her say that she doesn't like reading, and she doesn't listen to the news because it's too depressing? What kind of editor doesn't read the news? It's pitiful I tell you, nobody respects our profession anymore.”
“All I want is to write some interesting pieces that actually tackle real subjects. I'm sure that Cindy only put me on this assignment to torture me. She can't actually believe that I'd be good at this. Do you know I spent the past few days watching football games just so that I'd be able to understand what's going on?”
“And what do you think? Have you been converted?”
“It's not actually as bad as I thought but I'd much rather watch something else. I mean, sure I get the blood and thunder of competition but the games take so long to get going, and whenever something happens it stops again and you have to wait for it to get started. It's not very fun, and I can never tell who is who under all that padding.”
“I don't think there's any way you can miss him,” Matt said, nodding towards Trey, who was sprinting along the touchline.
“Yeah, well, I don't think he wants to be missed. Don't you think it's weird that he just thrust himself into the middle of the school culture and everyone is okay with that?”
“I think you're just jealous because he became popular overnight and you're still, well, you're still always stuck sitting with me.”
Millie looked at him and pulled a face. “I don't know what you mean by that. I've never been unhappy sitting with you.”
“Pull the other one Millie. We've known each other too long for you to lie to me about these things. I know that you've always wanted to be one of the popular girls and it must kill you to see some guy come in from some other school and just have everyone instantly love him. But that's just the way the world is for us. We're the people who will always be on the outside, always looking in. I guess that's why we gravitated towards journalism, because we’re the ones that can observe and report about what's going on, instead of being a part of it.”
“I really hate it when you get so philosophical about things.”
“No, you hate it when I'm right,” he said, teasing her. Millie pushed the glasses up the bridge of her nose again and perched herself on the edge of her seat, eagerly waiting for the game to start so that it would be over as quickly as possible and she could dash off the report and send it in to Cindy. The cheerleaders finished their performance and then the klaxon sounded, indicating the start of the game. The ball flew through the air and the players ran in their formations, executing the game plans their coach had formulated. It wasn't long before the Angels scored first, and the crowd erupted in a loud cheer.
Millie's eyes darted across the field as she made notes, taking down the numbers of the players and any important plays they made. She had no time to cheer like the people around her, and neither did Matt, who was snapping photographs as often as he could. Millie soon lost herself in her job and she seemed to become removed from herself. The
cheers that surrounded her became faded echoes, and even when she was jostled she did not get annoyed.
As the game unfurled it became quite clear that the Angels were going to win comfortably, and at the heart of the victory was Trey. Millie scanned her notes and noticed that she had written his number down many times, far more than any other player on the team. At first she had wondered whether the other players must have been upset that Trey was receiving all the accolades when it was a team game, but she had now seen firsthand that Trey was instrumental in the success of the Angels. The crowd was cheering his name and he waved to them as though he were royalty. Millie felt sickened that someone could receive so much praise for what amounted to tossing a ball around, especially when she knew so many other people that were gifted intellectually and the only thing they got was shunned.
“It's impossible not to get swept up by the crowd, isn't it?” Matt said.
Millie grunted as she made the final notes and then sighed as she flicked back through her notepad. The game was over. The Angels had won comfortably, and Trey was being carried off the field by his teammates, while the other team was skulking off despondently with hunched shoulders.
As the team moved off the field Millie watched them and noticed how people looked at Trey. All the cheerleaders wanted him and he could have had anyone he wanted. Even the adults were locked in sheer admiration for him, and she wondered how that must have affected his personality. Surely nobody aside from a king should have been the focus of that much adulation.
2
Millie waited a while for the crowd to disperse as she soaked up the atmosphere and started to piece together the framework of her article. Matt spent some time taking pictures of the empty stadium, part of a project he was doing where he was able to combine his assignments with something he actually wanted to do, and took a few snaps of the cheerleaders as well.
“Did you have any luck this time?”
“No, they're all obsessed with Trey. They like the attention I give them though. I'm sure that one day I'll make some progress. Lacey smiled at me this time, so I'm getting there!”
“Uh huh,” Millie said. “You want a ride back home?”
“Are you not going to the party? It could be good for your article, get some behind the scenes reaction from the players and fans?” There was a tradition of going to a local restaurant after every match where the fans and players could celebrate or commiserate together. Before Trey had arrived at Angel High it had mostly been the latter.
“No, it's going to take me ages to write this anyway and I just want to get it done. I've already spent too much time on it. I want to just do a good job and then hopefully Cindy will see my talent and then put me back on writing the things that I actually enjoy.”
“Or you'll do such a good job that she'll keep you on football for the rest of the season. Maybe you should try doing a bad job on purpose so that she'll be forced to give the assignment to someone else.”
“Unfortunately I'm too much of a professional for that,” she sighed. “Enjoy the party anyway. I'll catch up with you tomorrow.”
Millie returned home and grabbed a bite to eat from the fridge. Her mother called out to her but Millie shouted “I'm writing!” and retreated to her room, her sanctuary. Nobody was allowed in when she was writing. She needed absolute quiet.
She went through her routine of closing the door, opening the window a crack to let some fresh evening air through, and then went to sit at her desk. She placed her notepad beside her and glanced down at it, closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and started writing. The words flowed. The black letters appeared on the screen as her fingers danced over the keyboard, making a clacking sound as she hit each key. She was typing so fast that her fingers began to ache but it was a sweet pain, and a pain that she was used to. It was the pain of productivity and it filled her with a sense of achievement.
Her words flowed as rapidly as her thoughts and her report soon became an article about the ways in which people bestowed respect and glory upon those who showed skill rather than great moral fiber or intellect. She wrote about how many people were living vicariously through Trey as the opportunity for fame had already passed them by. The words were filled with emotion and she found herself getting angrier as she wrote them, because she knew that nobody would ever read them.
When it was over she exhaled slowly, letting the air escape her lungs, and slammed her palms down on the edge of the desk. She combed through the article and deleted big chunks of it because she knew that it wasn't what Cindy was looking for and wasn't what the paper needed. It wasn't her job to give an opinion piece about the psychological need for football or how one player could be placed upon the shoulders of giants. It was her job to report on the plain, cold facts, with the occasional poetic flourish when describing one of the plays.
She started again with a blank page, and recounted the game. When she was finished she had a neat summary of the events of that afternoon, but it felt vapid and empty, like it didn't mean anything. She'd joined the school paper because she wanted to do something that mattered, wanted to write words that would make people think, but instead she was merely reporting on a game that was one of many. People would glance over it and then forget, because it wasn't her words that mattered in that context, only the actions of the team. It frustrated her to think that she was but a cog in the machine that furthered the worship of people who she didn't think deserved such idolization in the first place.
After she'd e-mailed it off to Cindy, she turned off her laptop and read a book, trying to nourish her intellect which had gone unloved for the past few days. She enjoyed doing something other than watching football, and her eyes eagerly drank in the words that she was reading. Later on, she received a picture from Matt of him having fun at the party. The caption read that he wished she was there, but in truth she was glad to be away from the hustle and bustle. Crowds had never excited her and she was always most comfortable in her solitude; she could surrender to the peace and tranquility rather than be bothered by the boisterous nature of people.
Yet as she crawled into bed and the cloak of darkness came upon her, as the wan moon sat in is celestial throne and looked out upon the world, Millie found herself thinking about Trey. He had become almost a mythic person in such a short amount of time and it was impossible for him not to play a part in her thoughts.
He was certainly handsome, if you liked that square-jawed, black-haired, all-American look. He had a smooth smile and an easy charm that made people gravitate towards him, and he was one of those people that things just happened for, or at least that's the impression she had. He didn't really have to try for anything. Girls threw themselves at him. Even the teachers were willing to bend over backwards to help him through his classes, because of course the football team was the most important thing and the players couldn't afford to limp through their studies.
She hated to admit that Matt was right but there was some truth in what he had said about her being jealous of Trey. She longed to be in the inner circle. Millie considered herself to be a fun person with a good sense of humor, and yet for most of her life she had only had a few people she considered friends, and she was only ever invited to parties as an afterthought. She started to imagine what her own life would be like if she was as popular as Trey, and smiled as she thought about all the boys that would throw themselves at her, being able to walk through the halls of the school and have everyone whisper as she went by, making their day if she only just smiled at them, and of course being able to write anything she wanted for the newspaper. Everyone would read it and, most importantly, everyone would love it.
3
“I'm not sure I love this, but it'll have to do. Don't have any time to rewrite this. Did you not get my email last night?” Cindy barked in a demanding tone.
“No, I was reading after I wrote the article. I thought it was fine, what's wrong with it?”
“Oh, where to begin. And you should always check your emails you don't
know when I'm going to need something from you.”
“It's just a game report, it's not that important.”
Cindy glared at Millie with piercing emerald eyes. Her thin, angular face gave her a stern demeanor and she licked her thin lips before she spoke.
“These match reports commemorate the season. They help people relive the moments they witnessed, and it brings back all those good feelings. When they feel good reading our paper they start to associate those feelings with our paper. Right now the football team is enjoying its best ever period and we have to make sure that we're there to report on every throw, every kick, and every match. When you write the reports I want you to try to show some of the passion that the crowd feels and try and evoke the feelings that you can see on people's faces. When they read it I want them to feel like they were there, I want your words to make them experience the passion of the game. What I don't want are dry statistics. That's not what I want this paper to be about. I want it to be about how the game makes you feel, about the emotions that are involved,” she said. Millie sighed.
“You mean I have to do more of these?” she said.
“Of course. I didn't just assign you to this for one game. This assignment is yours for the season. I thought you would have been happy, this role will be invaluable for you. You want to be a journalist, right?”
“Yeah, but not a sports journalist.”
“It's all good experience. Besides, I thought I was doing you a favor. You get a taste of glory this way, and you get to play a part in what's probably going to be the best year this school has ever seen. What more could you want?”
Taken By The Forbidden Highlander (Scottish Highlander Romance) Page 22
