Chapter 1

It seemed like such a good idea at the time. Our anniversary was coming up in a few weeks, and I had found a great deal on a vacation to Bermuda that I knew my wife would really love.

You see, six years ago, for her high school graduation, her parents gave her a trip to Bermuda. She traveled with three of her high-school buddies, and it was one of the highlights of her life, she says. Now, for our second anniversary, I was going to surprise her with another trip to her dream destination, a place she calls the most romantic place on earth.

It's a lot easier, according to some of our friends who have already started having their children, to just pick up and go when you aren't tied down with familial obligations. I guess that's true, because the deals I see for people who can travel on short notice to vacation spots are very good, indeed. And this deal was better than even those, provided we leave in two days.

Naturally, I couldn't reach her by telephone, so I left work early to try to catch her before she got too busy. She usually got home from work around 4:00, relaxed for awhile until she knew that I would be on my way home, then start to make dinner for the two of us. We would eat around 6:00, and she would run out the door right after dinner, leaving me to clean up the dishes. She's studying at night to be a chef, so our dinners tended to be on the elaborate side. My wife loves to cook, and she considers it her sacred duty to make sure that everything she prepares is done just right. The result? I've gained 10 pounds since our marriage. My work is sedentary, shuffling paper at a big insurance company, and I try to exercise when I can, but my battle of the bulge is a difficult one. I still tend to eat like I'm still playing football, as I did in high school, and our large dinners and changed lifestyle have conspired to change my profile. I do try to work it off a few times a week doing horizontal aerobic exercises, if you know what I mean, and my little sweetheart is always very cooperative, and even enthusiastic. And I'll tell you, her efforts in the sack must give her an even greater workout, since she's exactly the same size now that she was when she was leading the cheers for good old North High.

It was her cheerleading, actually, that first made me notice her. I loved seeing her in those tight letter sweaters and short skirts, shaking and jumping all over the football field.

I was a junior playing on the football team, and I loved watching all the cheerleaders. I had a lot of trouble concentrating on the game when I got to watching their backsides on the sidelines. Every time one of them would jump up in the air, I would catch a glimpse of white ruffled panties. Drove me crazy, they did. Of course, all the cheerleaders were gorgeous and athletic, and a common conversation among my fellow players when we were at practice or on the bench during a game was to rank the cheerleaders (and all other good-looking girls at school, of course) in the order in which we would like to bop them. All during the season we would revise our lists, taking into account changing tastes, how a particular girl dressed on that particular day, or whatever rumor about a girl's reputation might be running through the school. We based our rankings on such things as "boob-alicious-ness", how a girl used a straw or ate a banana, how easy we thought she might be, if we thought a girl might be a screamer or a moaner, her reputation in the school at large as well as in the locker room, or any of a dozen other crude evaluation criteria. Over the course of the football season my list changed according to my mood: sometimes it was Lisa, a varsity cheerleader who was a junior and arguably the hottest girl in the school, who was at the top of my list; sometimes it was Micki, a petite freshman with big, pouting lips who, it was rumored, was trying to earn her way onto the varsity cheerleading squad by bedding any member of any varsity sports team in school; sometimes it was Nicole, a senior who was on the yearbook staff and had been a member of the student council since her freshman year who, according to my buddies in the locker room, gave her dates exquisite hand jobs on the third date - and no more, ever; but always, among the top 3 on my list, was Melissa, a sophomore cheerleader. No "bad girl" rumors ever surrounded her, no innuendoes about her sexual prowess (or lack thereof), nothing but a general admiration for her All-American good looks and her quiet pursuit of excellence in all she attempted.