Gold Rush

Parade: Part 2

In these parts you could never ever predict the weather, even slap bang in the middle of the summer season. But today was different, there was a buzz in the air and the May sunshine glowed all over the North West, blanketing the entire city in the clubs home colour of sky blue. Crowds of all ages lined the streets and proudly wore the club crest, eagerly holding up scarves, flags, shirts, any Manchester City merchandise they could get their hands on.

Thick blue fog from multiple flares let off by the crowd had collected in the air above them, it looked magnificent. Manchester was well and truly blue.

"CAMPIONE, CAMPIONE, Ole ole ole!!"

The three open top buses began to loudly chorus their way around the city centre, greeted by thousands of blues waiting to not only catch a glimpse of their beloved team, but to celebrate with each other and the Premier League champions.

The third bus held a lucky selection of City supporters who had won the unforgettable experience of the parade from a very unique angle, the second contained the clubs backroom/coaching staff and the bus at the very front swarmed with the squad in its entirety, Pep and the medical/physio team.

Sophie was having the time of her life, enjoying the atmosphere of being at the top of the bus and being in the centre of the fun. Harry, Kate and Cole eagerly gathered around her as she cracked open yet another bottle of Prosecco, waving their plastic glasses under her nose wanting their drinks topped up, like some sort of weird Oliver Twist. Not even grown adults could be trusted with glass flutes on parade day.

"Ayyy have ya told 'em?", Jack loudly asked, as he draped an arm over Sophie's shoulders.

"Told us what?", Kate perked up.

She filled them in.

A couple of weeks ago they had booked a trip to Barcelona together, to celebrate the end of the season and to experience their first holiday together, just them. Their flight was in 2 days, and the rest was a mystery as Jack took it upon himself to sort everything out. Which was just really unlike him, but Sophie went along with it. The shallow part of her brain was just satisfied with knowing that she'd be lounging around with him wearing next to nothing.

~

Jen – 'Congratulations Jacky, your first Premier League medal. Proud of you always x'

He hated it when she called him Jacky. And Jen knew it.

Could he not have just 24 hours free of anything that would piss him off?

He swiped the message away so it flew straight into his 'deleted' folder. She was probably hoping this thing with Soph was short term and that he'd got it out of his system. Never.

Within just short of a year, they'd had more than enough ups-and-downs, but Soph... She was his best mate, smart and obviously banging. He couldn't wait to bundle her on that plane and have 7 days of just them.

Where was she anyway? He'd not seen her since they'd boarded the open top bus.

His already-blurry eyes scanned the top deck. Ah.

He couldn't help the fuckin' stupid dopey smile spreading across his face as he watched her topping up everyone's drinks, before swigging directly from the dark green bottle.

'That's m'girl', he grinned and slung his arm over Kevin De Bruyne's shoulders, dragging him over to where she was standing. Except now she wasn't standing, she was swaying sloppily to 'We are the Champions' and waving a KDB scarf in the air.

'Bab...' he tugged on her scarf, 'if it was anyone else but king Kev, I'd have t'have a word'

'Good answer Jack', Kevin bent down to get them both cold beer from the cooler.