Post by Kathleen Conway on Dec 23, 2013 2:26:11 GMT
Her hotel room.
She had no idea how she got here, but she was here now. She sat up in the bed and couldn't help but smile as she heard him singing in the en suite shower.
I was only twenty four hours away from Tulsa
Ah, only one day away from your arms
I saw a welcoming light, and stopped to rest for the night
And that is when I, saw her, as I pulled in outside of a small motel...
Jake Conway emerged from the shower, his waist wrapped in a white towel, and his body glistening, wet. His damp hair hung loosely over his shoulders as he slowly approached her, serenading her all the way on the short journey across the room to the bed.
She was there
And so I walked up, to her, asked her where I could get somethin' to eat
And she showed me where...
Katherine looked over and noted the small two bottles of beer on her bedside table, but she didn't have long to contemplate them as Jake reached out and touched her cheek with his right hand. She held his gaze and quivered under his touch. Her eyes shifted and took in the tattoo of the black cat across the inside of his lower forearm. The last mark of a married man that she hoped to erase within the fullness of time.
She looked at the letters 'KAT' tattooed on the inside of his wrist and for tonight could convince herself that it was her all along that had made his pulse race and inspired the tattoo in the first place.
Their lips met for the first time in six years, and it was still as sweet as she remembered. Caught up in the moment, her mind traveled further back to the first time she had kissed him twenty two years ago.
He slowly pulled off her Santa hat and she shook her head, allowing her raven hair to fly free and rest on her shoulders as she smiled at him. She looked into his soft brown eyes and saw them dance with a lust that was all too familiar to her.
He pushed her back on the bed gently and she giggled as he shifted on top of her, he kissed her neck and she let her hands slip down his sides and her fingers teased the edge of the towel.
Megan McCauley made a most unwelcome intrusion on the passion of the moment as the vibrating buzz of her cell phone demanded her attention. She didn't want to answer it, not now, but she was still a woman in power and she had been given the ball to make this first Diamonds Pay Per View work.
Jake: Just ignore it...
Katherine: I really wish I could but it might be Simon...
She reached over and fumbled for her phone, knocking the beer bottles over in the process and they rolled andcrashed on to the floor.
Her eyes shot open.
Her hotel room.
But Jake wasn't there. Nobody was.
She was all alone and her insistent phone was the string that had tethered her fantasy to her dream and it still rang. She sighed and threw her head back in frustration before she rolled over in the cold bed, reached over and answered it before her blurry eyes had adjusted completely.
Katherine: Hello...
It was Jake's voice on the other end, fate had a sense of humour after all.
Jake: What the hell are you doing?
Katherine: Excuse me?
Jake: What is this crap I hear about you putting Louise back in therapy? I trusted you to look after her.
Katherine: And I am. The best way I know how. Mister De Montford insisted that it was a condition of her employment since its obvious she has issues...
Jake: And on what planet is it a good idea to make her relive them in every session?
Katherine: What is her problem anyway? What went on with you two? If you told me, I'd be in a better position to help her.
Jake: No, forget it. You've helped enough. I'll handle this, like I should have from the start...
With that, the line is disconnected and the call ended abruptly.
Katherine sighs as her head hits the pillow.
Katherine: Great...
You know they say you never get a second chance to leave a first impression, so I hope for the sake of the new girls on the block, the nauseatingly named Pretty Committee, I hope they got it right, because the first impression I got of Amanda Rowe and Morgan Jameson was that I was in high school again.
I hope the impression of vapid, self-centered, stuck up little bitches was really the impression you wanted to leave, because if it wasn't, you two seriously need to reconsider what you are really doing here, in this business. If primp and pampered princesses really wasn't what you were going for, and you want me to accept you as anything other than a couple of expensive dresses and designer handbags, I invite you to try again, and you two will have your opportunity at IWF's first annual all female Pay Per View, Diamonds Are Forever.
You see I was rather hoping to face two hungry young rookies who were eager to leave a lasting impression on the fans by proving they could go toe to toe with a team that has the age and the experience over them, but from where I stand right now, it doesn't look like Louise and I are going to get that, are we?
Instead, it looks like we're going to get hit not with the stiff shots of ambition and desire to be here among some of the best female wrestlers in the world, but rather with the limp wristed, tired old insults that we've heard all before from a couple of women who have little to say but a lot of air time to fill.
Now as a woman, I can and often do appreciate the value of self-indulgence and looking good, in fact I'm partial to expensive designer dresses and pretty shoes myself, but I know where that part of my world begins and where it ends. When I step into that ring, I work and I work hard. My work affords me the indulgences and luxuries that you as a pair seem to enjoy, and that in itself is perhaps the most startling of all the differences between us.
I can sacrifice looking good when I need to get the job done.
I don't think you two can.
You two, well I'm sure this wrestling thing sounded good to you initially, or else you wouldn't be here. But I don't think you completely understand what it is that you two have signed yourselves up for. It's all good fun until somebody breaks a nail or has a hair pulled out of place, and believe me in this business, that kind of thing really is an occupational hazard. This is not going to be a Sunday professional hair appointment, this is going to be a professional wrestling match, and whilst I know all about what it is to live in your world, I fear that the two of you don't know a thing about what it is like to live in my world.
I fear that the only time you will get passionate in that ring is when the sweat stains ruin the look of your wrestling attire and quite frankly that's disappointing. As I said, I hope I'm wrong ladies, I hope there is more to you than meets the eye because if there isn't, you will not last long in this business...
It may not be pretty to hear it put quite so bluntly.
But the truth seldom ever is.
A garden shid, and I wiz there again.
It wiz the summer o' '89, only I wiz older now than I had been then. I sat nekid as t' day I wiz born on the grass in mah back garden. The grass wiz taller than I remembered as it concealed mah lower half as I sat with mah knees pressed up against mah chest and mah arms wrapped across mahself.
Suddenly there was a bang n' a crash as the wooden door buckled under the impact o' three sledgehammer shots n, through the splinters, mah hero emerged. His face covered in blood, his clothes torn, his lip swollen and his left eye blackened by a bruise. He coughed up blood as he stumbled towards me.
He dropped the sledgehammer n' offered me his hand. I looked up at him before acceptin' n' risin' slowly out of the grass. He put an arm around mah waist n' pressed his body up against hers tah preserve mah modesty, ever the dashin' English gentleman n' the wind whipped through oor hair as I, Louise McDowell lost mahself in Jake Conway.
Locked in oor embrace, the serenity of mahrgreen eyes locked with the dusky brown of his, moments later, I closed mah eyes and oor lips were millimeters apart as I felt mah body heat rise, it almost became unbearable...
Her eyes shot open as she stared with her head tilted back at the chrome shower head as it snapped her back to reality.
With a frustrated sigh, she twisted the knobs of her shower to cold, and twenty five seconds later, grabbed a white towel from the railing to the side and emerged from behind the frosted glass of the cubicle with the towel wrapped around herself.
She stepped into her hotel room, and walked over to the bed side table, a smile never leaving her face as she replays the daydream in her head. She picks up her cellphone and notes that she has a text message, and what's more, it was from him.
Hey, Loo.
Kat is training today at the gym.
Thought it might be a good chance for you two to bond as a team.
Jake.
Louise texts back a response.
I am no' sure how I feel aboot teamin' up with a lass who made a point owttah beatin' me in my very firs' match in this company. I can understand why. I can respect the lass on some level fur wantin' tah do somethin' with her career, even though it came at mah expense. It iz tha' sense o' respect tha' will see us through this - our firs' match as a team.
I have never been one fur tartin' mahself up like some ponce, I'm a simple lass at heart. Mah partner fur this match, well I know she has a swanky streak in her but I also know tha' she's different from the two lasses we're facin' in tha' she also knows when it iz time tah jus' shut up n' punch some bints right in t' mush!
See Rowe, Jameson, I am no' sure how lang t' two of yoo have been a team, n' tah be quite honest with ye, I dun' much care. All I know is that this is a bizniss of wha' have yoo done lately, n' as far as aye-dubya-eff goes, yoo two haven't done squat. Like it or no' lasses, the fact is yoo two are both as green as Irish grass n' whilst I may not have many matches under mah belt either, with Kathy by mah side I can say I've got her experience on mah side too.
This match izne aboot Team Lockheart or the Board O' Directors fur me, it's more aboot beatin' two people who think they belong in a fight 'cause they can tell a Versace from a Christian Dior n' jus' cause their favourite hobby is prancin' aboot in front of a camera lens pullin' duck faces in selfies.
I cannae believe yah wid go tah all the trouble o' jumpin' on Twitter n' callin' us losers in some attempt tah get attention, but I guess I shidne really be all tha' surprised. There is no denyin' tha' yoo two have youth on your side n' if we ye somehow do manage tah beat us, I know the two o' yoo won't shut up aboot it, but honestly I feel like Kathy n I need tah beat yah even more so than yoo need ta beat us, if only to show the young generation of lasses who look up tah us as role models tha' there are alwiz smarter choices in life than bein' jus' beauty withowt 'ne brains...
Kathy looked over to her husband as she lay in bed, snuggled up beside him. He had one arm under the sheets, wrapped around her naked waist, and the other was busy tapping out a response to Louise's text message on his cell phone. Kathy had her head on his bare chest as she looked up at him.
Kathy: She really means a lot to you, doesn't she?
Jake: Who?
Kathy: Louise...
Jake looked down at his wife.
Jake: Yeah...well, I mean...she's...fragile. I have to look out for her, because nobody else can.
Kathy: What happened between you two, anyway?
Jake: What do you mean?
Kathy: Well I mean...something must've happened between the two of you to make you feel so...responsible for her welfare. Not hiding a secret love child away from me. are you?
Kathy winked and smiled, clearly intending her remark as a joke, but Jake frowned.
Jake: No, as I recall, that's more your style...
And there it was. The first sign that she had been poking around in the bee's nest for a little too long. He always shut her out whenever she or anybody else bought up Louise. He got immediately defensive. It hurt her that very occasionally the man she loved knew exactly where to hurt her the most. She had never been proud of keeping Solitaire's existence a secret from him for two years, and looking back on it, even now it was one of her biggest and most hurtful regrets, and Jake knew it as well as she did.
Jake freed his arm from around her and spun around, sitting on the bed. He got up.
Kathy: Jake, wait, I'm sorry, I was only joking. I know you'd never...
Jake left the room, not letting her finish her apology. His phone was now pressed to his ear.
Jake: Hey Bertie...what's up, mate?
That was the last rhing she heard clearly before she buried her face in the pillow and wondered exactly which seam of the delicate tapestry of her wonderful life she had almost undone for the sake of a bad joke.
She had no idea how she got here, but she was here now. She sat up in the bed and couldn't help but smile as she heard him singing in the en suite shower.
I was only twenty four hours away from Tulsa
Ah, only one day away from your arms
I saw a welcoming light, and stopped to rest for the night
And that is when I, saw her, as I pulled in outside of a small motel...
Jake Conway emerged from the shower, his waist wrapped in a white towel, and his body glistening, wet. His damp hair hung loosely over his shoulders as he slowly approached her, serenading her all the way on the short journey across the room to the bed.
She was there
And so I walked up, to her, asked her where I could get somethin' to eat
And she showed me where...
Katherine looked over and noted the small two bottles of beer on her bedside table, but she didn't have long to contemplate them as Jake reached out and touched her cheek with his right hand. She held his gaze and quivered under his touch. Her eyes shifted and took in the tattoo of the black cat across the inside of his lower forearm. The last mark of a married man that she hoped to erase within the fullness of time.
She looked at the letters 'KAT' tattooed on the inside of his wrist and for tonight could convince herself that it was her all along that had made his pulse race and inspired the tattoo in the first place.
Their lips met for the first time in six years, and it was still as sweet as she remembered. Caught up in the moment, her mind traveled further back to the first time she had kissed him twenty two years ago.
He slowly pulled off her Santa hat and she shook her head, allowing her raven hair to fly free and rest on her shoulders as she smiled at him. She looked into his soft brown eyes and saw them dance with a lust that was all too familiar to her.
He pushed her back on the bed gently and she giggled as he shifted on top of her, he kissed her neck and she let her hands slip down his sides and her fingers teased the edge of the towel.
Megan McCauley made a most unwelcome intrusion on the passion of the moment as the vibrating buzz of her cell phone demanded her attention. She didn't want to answer it, not now, but she was still a woman in power and she had been given the ball to make this first Diamonds Pay Per View work.
Jake: Just ignore it...
Katherine: I really wish I could but it might be Simon...
She reached over and fumbled for her phone, knocking the beer bottles over in the process and they rolled andcrashed on to the floor.
Her eyes shot open.
Her hotel room.
But Jake wasn't there. Nobody was.
She was all alone and her insistent phone was the string that had tethered her fantasy to her dream and it still rang. She sighed and threw her head back in frustration before she rolled over in the cold bed, reached over and answered it before her blurry eyes had adjusted completely.
Katherine: Hello...
It was Jake's voice on the other end, fate had a sense of humour after all.
Jake: What the hell are you doing?
Katherine: Excuse me?
Jake: What is this crap I hear about you putting Louise back in therapy? I trusted you to look after her.
Katherine: And I am. The best way I know how. Mister De Montford insisted that it was a condition of her employment since its obvious she has issues...
Jake: And on what planet is it a good idea to make her relive them in every session?
Katherine: What is her problem anyway? What went on with you two? If you told me, I'd be in a better position to help her.
Jake: No, forget it. You've helped enough. I'll handle this, like I should have from the start...
With that, the line is disconnected and the call ended abruptly.
Katherine sighs as her head hits the pillow.
Katherine: Great...
You know they say you never get a second chance to leave a first impression, so I hope for the sake of the new girls on the block, the nauseatingly named Pretty Committee, I hope they got it right, because the first impression I got of Amanda Rowe and Morgan Jameson was that I was in high school again.
I hope the impression of vapid, self-centered, stuck up little bitches was really the impression you wanted to leave, because if it wasn't, you two seriously need to reconsider what you are really doing here, in this business. If primp and pampered princesses really wasn't what you were going for, and you want me to accept you as anything other than a couple of expensive dresses and designer handbags, I invite you to try again, and you two will have your opportunity at IWF's first annual all female Pay Per View, Diamonds Are Forever.
You see I was rather hoping to face two hungry young rookies who were eager to leave a lasting impression on the fans by proving they could go toe to toe with a team that has the age and the experience over them, but from where I stand right now, it doesn't look like Louise and I are going to get that, are we?
Instead, it looks like we're going to get hit not with the stiff shots of ambition and desire to be here among some of the best female wrestlers in the world, but rather with the limp wristed, tired old insults that we've heard all before from a couple of women who have little to say but a lot of air time to fill.
Now as a woman, I can and often do appreciate the value of self-indulgence and looking good, in fact I'm partial to expensive designer dresses and pretty shoes myself, but I know where that part of my world begins and where it ends. When I step into that ring, I work and I work hard. My work affords me the indulgences and luxuries that you as a pair seem to enjoy, and that in itself is perhaps the most startling of all the differences between us.
I can sacrifice looking good when I need to get the job done.
I don't think you two can.
You two, well I'm sure this wrestling thing sounded good to you initially, or else you wouldn't be here. But I don't think you completely understand what it is that you two have signed yourselves up for. It's all good fun until somebody breaks a nail or has a hair pulled out of place, and believe me in this business, that kind of thing really is an occupational hazard. This is not going to be a Sunday professional hair appointment, this is going to be a professional wrestling match, and whilst I know all about what it is to live in your world, I fear that the two of you don't know a thing about what it is like to live in my world.
I fear that the only time you will get passionate in that ring is when the sweat stains ruin the look of your wrestling attire and quite frankly that's disappointing. As I said, I hope I'm wrong ladies, I hope there is more to you than meets the eye because if there isn't, you will not last long in this business...
It may not be pretty to hear it put quite so bluntly.
But the truth seldom ever is.
A garden shid, and I wiz there again.
It wiz the summer o' '89, only I wiz older now than I had been then. I sat nekid as t' day I wiz born on the grass in mah back garden. The grass wiz taller than I remembered as it concealed mah lower half as I sat with mah knees pressed up against mah chest and mah arms wrapped across mahself.
Suddenly there was a bang n' a crash as the wooden door buckled under the impact o' three sledgehammer shots n, through the splinters, mah hero emerged. His face covered in blood, his clothes torn, his lip swollen and his left eye blackened by a bruise. He coughed up blood as he stumbled towards me.
He dropped the sledgehammer n' offered me his hand. I looked up at him before acceptin' n' risin' slowly out of the grass. He put an arm around mah waist n' pressed his body up against hers tah preserve mah modesty, ever the dashin' English gentleman n' the wind whipped through oor hair as I, Louise McDowell lost mahself in Jake Conway.
Locked in oor embrace, the serenity of mahrgreen eyes locked with the dusky brown of his, moments later, I closed mah eyes and oor lips were millimeters apart as I felt mah body heat rise, it almost became unbearable...
Her eyes shot open as she stared with her head tilted back at the chrome shower head as it snapped her back to reality.
With a frustrated sigh, she twisted the knobs of her shower to cold, and twenty five seconds later, grabbed a white towel from the railing to the side and emerged from behind the frosted glass of the cubicle with the towel wrapped around herself.
She stepped into her hotel room, and walked over to the bed side table, a smile never leaving her face as she replays the daydream in her head. She picks up her cellphone and notes that she has a text message, and what's more, it was from him.
Hey, Loo.
Kat is training today at the gym.
Thought it might be a good chance for you two to bond as a team.
Jake.
Louise texts back a response.
I am no' sure how I feel aboot teamin' up with a lass who made a point owttah beatin' me in my very firs' match in this company. I can understand why. I can respect the lass on some level fur wantin' tah do somethin' with her career, even though it came at mah expense. It iz tha' sense o' respect tha' will see us through this - our firs' match as a team.
I have never been one fur tartin' mahself up like some ponce, I'm a simple lass at heart. Mah partner fur this match, well I know she has a swanky streak in her but I also know tha' she's different from the two lasses we're facin' in tha' she also knows when it iz time tah jus' shut up n' punch some bints right in t' mush!
See Rowe, Jameson, I am no' sure how lang t' two of yoo have been a team, n' tah be quite honest with ye, I dun' much care. All I know is that this is a bizniss of wha' have yoo done lately, n' as far as aye-dubya-eff goes, yoo two haven't done squat. Like it or no' lasses, the fact is yoo two are both as green as Irish grass n' whilst I may not have many matches under mah belt either, with Kathy by mah side I can say I've got her experience on mah side too.
This match izne aboot Team Lockheart or the Board O' Directors fur me, it's more aboot beatin' two people who think they belong in a fight 'cause they can tell a Versace from a Christian Dior n' jus' cause their favourite hobby is prancin' aboot in front of a camera lens pullin' duck faces in selfies.
I cannae believe yah wid go tah all the trouble o' jumpin' on Twitter n' callin' us losers in some attempt tah get attention, but I guess I shidne really be all tha' surprised. There is no denyin' tha' yoo two have youth on your side n' if we ye somehow do manage tah beat us, I know the two o' yoo won't shut up aboot it, but honestly I feel like Kathy n I need tah beat yah even more so than yoo need ta beat us, if only to show the young generation of lasses who look up tah us as role models tha' there are alwiz smarter choices in life than bein' jus' beauty withowt 'ne brains...
Kathy looked over to her husband as she lay in bed, snuggled up beside him. He had one arm under the sheets, wrapped around her naked waist, and the other was busy tapping out a response to Louise's text message on his cell phone. Kathy had her head on his bare chest as she looked up at him.
Kathy: She really means a lot to you, doesn't she?
Jake: Who?
Kathy: Louise...
Jake looked down at his wife.
Jake: Yeah...well, I mean...she's...fragile. I have to look out for her, because nobody else can.
Kathy: What happened between you two, anyway?
Jake: What do you mean?
Kathy: Well I mean...something must've happened between the two of you to make you feel so...responsible for her welfare. Not hiding a secret love child away from me. are you?
Kathy winked and smiled, clearly intending her remark as a joke, but Jake frowned.
Jake: No, as I recall, that's more your style...
And there it was. The first sign that she had been poking around in the bee's nest for a little too long. He always shut her out whenever she or anybody else bought up Louise. He got immediately defensive. It hurt her that very occasionally the man she loved knew exactly where to hurt her the most. She had never been proud of keeping Solitaire's existence a secret from him for two years, and looking back on it, even now it was one of her biggest and most hurtful regrets, and Jake knew it as well as she did.
Jake freed his arm from around her and spun around, sitting on the bed. He got up.
Kathy: Jake, wait, I'm sorry, I was only joking. I know you'd never...
Jake left the room, not letting her finish her apology. His phone was now pressed to his ear.
Jake: Hey Bertie...what's up, mate?
That was the last rhing she heard clearly before she buried her face in the pillow and wondered exactly which seam of the delicate tapestry of her wonderful life she had almost undone for the sake of a bad joke.
Well howdy there pardner.