Author's Note, 1/4/06: This story makes reference to USC winning seven national championships in a row. Obviously, as we all saw tonight, that's not going to happen, after Vince Young led Texas to victory in one of the greatest college football championship games of all time. Nonetheless, as the story was written almost a year ago, and since these characters are fictional anyway, it might just be safe to suppose that this takes place in an alternate universe, where the Trojans still reign at the top of the NCAA.
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TO THE READER: this story includes several characters from the series of Jason Garrett stories; however, this story is not part of that series.
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Hi, my name is Emily Garrett. I'm the youngest of three in my family. My oldest brother, Jason, is a pastor in Sherman Oaks, and my other brother, Austin, is an Air Force captain stationed at Beale Air Force Base in Sacramento.
The day was December 27
th
, 2011 - my 21
st
birthday. Born in 1990, at the height of Operation: Desert Shield, my middle name has haunted me since then and is usually relegated to the middle initial "A". My parents, wackos that they were, had named me Emily Arabiya Garrett. Very few people knew about my middle name.
I also sometimes wondered exactly what dormant DNA had woken up with me. My father is 6'0" and weighs just over 200 pounds. My mom is 5'9" weighs about 150 pounds, and has a fairly small chest - 32B. Both my brothers are 6'2" and weigh in at about 210 pounds. Somehow, though I ended up coming in at 5'1", 97-100 pounds (depending on the time of month), with a 34D chest. I've been in physical therapy since I was 16 to deal with the back problems inherent with having such huge tits on such a small frame.
Although people sometimes wonder what the hell family I actually came from, I definitely have characteristics from both my parents, so I'm definitely their child. I'm just a throwback to something - God knows what.
Being built like I was, I was extremely popular in high school - for all the wrong reasons. I was heavily recruited for the cheerleading squad, but turned them down, choosing instead to go with what I loved - acting. I was heavily involved with the drama department at my high school, pulling down the part of Adelaide in
Guys and Dolls
my junior year and the part of Ado Annie Carnes in
Oklahoma
my senior year. Of course, I couldn't help but wondering if I was typecast, given that those two parts are supposed to be ditzes with big boobs, but I didn't care - I put everything I had - big boobs included - into those parts. And it paid off - I got a drama scholarship to the University of Southern California.
I started at USC in the fall of 2008. USC was working on trying to break its own record for NCAA Division I football championships, attempting to bring home a record sixth straight championship under the new playoff system that had replaced the crappy BCS. And they were successful, too. Where was I for all of their games? On the sidelines.
When I got to USC, I was, for the first time since junior high, not pressured to join the cheerleading team. I had wanted to be a cheerleader for the last six years, but I had refused to give in to their pressure to join simply because I had a big bust. So, when I got to USC and nobody pressured me, I decided to try out. All that dance experience from theatre really paid off, too - I made the varsity squad as a freshman.
And so it was that I met Martin Daly, the guy who took Matt Leinart's place at quarterback as a freshman in 2006. He was two years older than me, and was the starting quarterback for the most successful football program in the history of the NCAA. I should've been nothing to him. During the championship game, though, I caught him staring at me during the fourth quarter. As soon as he realized I had seen him, he looked away and his face turned bright red.
A week later, though, after the Trojans had soundly thumped Iowa in the Rose Bowl (now strictly an exhibition game), he came up to me after the game. "Hi," he said. "You're Emily Garrett, right?"
I couldn't believe it. The quarterback for the USC Trojans was not only introducing himself to me, but he knew my name?
"Y-y-yes," I stuttered.
"Marty Daly," he said. "Um..."
Okay, this was crazy. He seemed to be at a loss for words, just as nervous about this as I was. He had guided USC to their sixth straight championship, and yet he wasn't able to find the words to talk to a freshman cheerleader.
Just then, Pete Carroll came up behind Martin and put a hand on his shoulder. "Great game, Marty," he said. "Team meeting in the locker room in five minutes."
Then he noticed that I was there. "Who's this, Marty?" he asked.
At that moment, Martin's tongue seemed to find life again. "Uh, Coach Carroll, this is Emily Garrett. She's on the varsity cheerleading squad. Emily, this is Pete Carroll, our coach."
"Nice to meet you, Emily," Pete said. "See you in a few, Marty."
He walked away toward the locker room.
"Uh, listen," said Martin, "I have to go, but..."
Looking around, he spotted a clipboard hanging on the wall. Tearing off a piece of paper and grabbing a pencil, he jotted down something, and handed it to me.
"Bye," he said. "I'll talk to you later."
As he followed Pete Carroll down the hall, I looked at the piece of paper.
661-555-9587 cell - give me a call - Marty Daly
No way. I had the cell phone number for Martin Daly.
Later that night, I was talking to my brother Jason online. He was off at seminary in Iowa at the time. I told him about getting Martin's number.
"Wow," was his reply. "Go Emily - you're the regular pimp now, aren't you? ;-)"
The next morning, I sat next to my phone, debating whether or not to call him. I had been sitting there for about an hour when my roommate staggered out of her bedroom. Unfortunately, she spotted the piece of paper immediately.
"What's that?" she asked. Grabbing it, she picked it up - and immediately dropped it.
"HOLY SHIT," she said. "Marty Daly gave you his phone number? Have you called him yet?"
"No," I said. "I've been sitting here next to my phone, trying to decide if I should call him."
"Good Lord, child, what the hell are you waiting for?"
With that, she picked up my cell phone, entered the number, and hit talk. Then she handed it back to me. "Talk to the man, for God's sake!"
Marty picked up after three rings. "Hello?"
"Uh, hi, Marty, this is, uh, Emily Garrett," I said. "We met after last night's game..."
"Yeah," he replied. Wow, his phone voice was very different from his in-person voice. Very deep, very sexy. "I was wondering if you'd call..."
Well shit. I didn't know what to say. "Well, here I am!" I said brightly, with my cheerleader voice. Oh hell, I sounded like a complete moron.
"Well..." he paused. "Let's see. Are you doing anything tonight?"
OH MY GOD. HE WAS ABOUT TO ASK ME OUT ON A DATE.
"No plans," I replied.
And that's how I became Marty Daly's girlfriend. We never had sex, though - he had gone to a private Christian high school and was still trying to work out the fact that he would, in fact, NOT go to hell if he had sex before marriage. We were both still virgins - an amazing thing for a couple living in Los Angeles at the beginning of the twenty-first century!
Three years later, I was a senior, one semester away from graduating. Marty and I were still together, although he was now playing for the Marauders - L.A.'s expansion NFL team that had started play in 2009. Their first season - his last at USC - had been awful, but with the addition of Marty and wide receiver David Boston in 2010, they had had an 8-8 record, and this season, they had gone 9-7 and gotten a wild card spot. Granted, they were going to have to face Arizona in Phoenix in the first round, but even if they got creamed, they could still say that they had reached the playoffs in just their third year of existence.
Tonight, my twenty-first birthday, he was taking me out for dinner at On The Border at Northridge Fashion Center. Our reservation wasn't until 8:00, and it was just after 7:00, so we were walking around the mall to kill a little time. That's when lightning struck.
"Emily," he said, sounding somewhat nervous, "Have you... have you ever thought about the two of us having sex?"
Had I ever thought about the two of us having sex. What kind of a stupid question was that? Of course I had!
But I didn't say that. "Yeah," I said softly. "Why?"
"I think I'm ready," he replied.
And Handel's
Hallelujah Chorus
played in my mind.