A Heart's Desire (Book 1)

Chapter 10

The food, both the amount and variety, is impressive. Most of it was home cooked, especially the barbecue, and there are tables full of delicious looking desserts, a few of which I suspect are Julian's creations.

After eating my fill and enjoying the rest of the festivities, I head over to where the football game is going to take place, already dressed in my Florida State Seminoles football jersey and a pair of cutoff blue jean shorts. Gotta represent Florida.

Once the girls and I plan our strategy, we plan on kicking ass. This may be a party to celebrate all kinds of events, but we plan on one of those being the boys' defeat.

The boys are huddled together looking very smug - I guess they think they have already won this. What they don't know is how serious I take my football. We all gather to discuss the rules, which are pretty basic - TD is just that - no extra points, quarterback can run, pass, or hand off the ball and soft tackle is allowed. Surely the last rule will be appreciated from numerous people of both sexes.

We line up after the boys think they have graciously given us first run. We quickly go through the strategy for this play and set up on the line. On our first play the boys already seem determined, so I drop back to pass and no one is open, damn - what to do, what to do. I look and see that both Julian and Aaron, a newer warrior, are headed my way. No way am I going to get caught by either one of those with the ball in my hand. So I do what I've seen so many times before - I tuck and run. Oh those boys are not going to catch up to me - nope - not today. I sprint forward and see Julian head my way. As much as I'd like to get tackled by him, I'm not going to let my team down. Moving to the left, I sidestep him, rushing out and then down towards the goal line. That is all it takes, plus a little get up and go to make it to a touchdown. A touchdown for the girls - the first of several I plan on us getting during today's game.

The boys seem quite sour after this play and try their best to get a touchdown of their own, but not by running past the girls nor by trying to do any tricks - we are all over anyone who plans on receiving the ball. Julian finally gets handed the ball from Romain, but I stop him real quick. I don't think he minds that I tackle him by the smirk on his face. Our position causes me to blush, so we get up quickly, and I help him stand as well.

"Nice play, she-devil."

"Nice moves JD. Sorry you couldn't get past me."

He leans in slightly to whisper, "I'm not." with that he smiles and walks over to where the other boys stood.

Damn males. He doesn't make my life any easier.

Sour, determined males are something difficult to play consistently with, so we have to work harder to get our touchdowns. We have to pass and run with different players and sometimes use people that normally ran to receive a pass down field and vice versa. Of course, the boys caught on rather quickly and are able to counter some of our moves, so we have to resort to a few trick plays to keep our momentum up. One time I pretend to hand off to Sienna but pass down field to Mariah where she is already past their safeties. One time I even passed to a pack member named Star, and she lateral passes it back to me where I run the ball in for a touchdown. I even have Mariah line up as a receiver but she actually gets the ball and acts as the quarterback where she passes it to Juniper. We are bound and determined to win this game against the guys.

Romain has his own plays some similar to ours. Brazil is quite effective at running and Tyson is equally as successful at receiving the ball. Of course, Julian likes to try and tackle the girl's quarterback - which unfortunately doesn't go unnoticed by multiple pack members.

Exacerbated by Julian's antics, I huff over to him "Julian what the hell are you doing?"

"I'm keeping the quarterback from passing, she-devil." he jokes.