I was neck deep in archival footage from the 2020 season in the media room when Amy called me.

"How far are you from Hilton Head?" was how she opened the call when I answered. No hello, no how's school, all business as usual for my eldest sister.

"Um, it's on the other side of the state," I told her as I moved more game footage onto my hard drive. My laptop's angry fan was already on full blast, and I'd been copying and pasting chunks of footage into my own files for over an hour now, praying she held out so I could finish the video I'd been working on all week. "Four and a half hour drive, less maybe if I book it. Why?"

"Jared and I picked a date and a venue. January 25th at Palmetto Dunes, and we got a good deal there because Jared's grandparents are members of that country club." Amy kept her tone composed, as if she was reading me instructions on building Ikea furniture, not the details of her god damn wedding. 

Sometimes I genuinely forgot that Amy was engaged, mostly because she treated the prospect of having a wedding like it was an inconvenience, but also because it was easy to detach myself while I was here - a place where I was valued and in charge and not just somebody's little kid sister who didn't know any better.

"Also it goes without saying that you're one of my bridesmaids," she added, sensing the unease in my silence. "And at least you don't have to get on a plane."

My aversion to flying never made sense to Amy, who was far too poised and logical to have those kinds of fears.

"And I genuinely appreciate that," I chuckled. There was a knock at the glass door of my office, and I looked up to see JJ waving his hands at me. "Look, I really gotta go, I'm finishing something up for the game tomorrow."

"Alright, alright," Amy sighed. "Love you, text me later."

She hung up before I could tell her I loved her back, and I waved JJ inside.

"You summoned me?" he asked as he leaned over my desk.

"Wait wait, back it up." I shooed him away and tilted my laptop screen down. "No players are allowed to see it, especially you."

JJ scoffed and clapped his hand to his chest. "Me? What did I do?"

I shot him a deadpanned look over the top of my laptop. "Because you're terrible at keeping secrets."

"I..." JJ paused and furrowed his brows. "Did Reid tell you that?"

"Yes, and I have no reason to think he's lying."

"Well if you're not going to show me the video, then what?"

I folded my hands in front of my chin. "I just need you to make sure that Reid is the first person that gets off the bus tomorrow. I don't care how you do it, just make sure he's the first one to walk through the gate and touch the rock. I've already talked to the cannon guys and the guys that do the lighting for the stadium, so everything's gonna be synced up and ready to go."

A faint smirk tugged at JJ's lips. "You really care about him, huh?"

"Reid is my friend," I told JJ flatly. "I want his first home game back to be special, and I also think you and I can both agree he needs a little bit of a confidence boost after last week."

None of that was an outright lie, but somehow I'd become skilled at the art of lying by omission, and I didn't have time to mull over JJ's level of perception.

"Okay, okay," JJ held his hands up, backing himself towards the office door. "I will manhandle him if necessary."

I let out a sigh of relief. "Thank you, you're the best."

"I know!" he called over his shoulder before shutting the door behind him.

I went back to the ever growing pile of files on my screen. Reid had told me he didn't know if he could be the player he once was. Even though he wasn't the same person he once was, Reid was in fact a human highlight reel, and I was going to help him remember that.

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In the world of college football, there are legendary school traditions. In a split second, these traditions pulled together and captivated a crowd of over 100,000 people, and seemed to transcend the sport itself. Virginia Tech's Enter Sandman. Florida State's tomahawk chop. Wisconsin's Jump Around. The Penn State white-out.

But at the top of it all, there was the hill at Clemson - also known as the most exciting 25 seconds in college sports.

Clemson warmed up at home like any other game, but after warmups were done, the team filed back into the locker room and walked out to two buses waiting for them. The buses then circled the stadium to the other side, where the Hill loomed over the end zone. At the top of the hill there was a big iron gate the players walked through to enter the stadium, and through the gate was a rock sitting on a bronze pedestal. The rock (endowed with mystical properties, if you believed in that sort of thing) had been given to legendary Clemson Coach Frank Howard by a friend who picked it up in Death Valley, California - hence the stadium's long held nickname. Howard's Rock had been standing at the top of the Hill for over 50 years, touched before every home game by every single football player at Clemson since then, while his words rang out through the stadium.

"If you're not going to give 110%, then keep your filthy hands off my rock."

After the cannon fired, every player would touch that rock before running down the hill and onto the field. That is fucking tradition, and normally, it was chill-inducing.

Well, no offense to tradition, but I had something different planned today for our opening home game against Wake Forest. While they were definitely a beatable team and nowhere near the caliber that Georgia was, it was still a divisional rivalry game that affected Clemson's standing in the ACC.

"Where the hell have you been?" Mara asked me as I rejoined her on the sidelines.

My knees felt like jello after having run up and down nearly 100 steps from the media booth at the top of the stadium to the field.

"I had to finalize stuff with the guys in the media booth and make sure they had the right file, and that the music and the lights were synced up," I told her, feeling my chest heave from all the unexpected exertion.

"You really are something else," she said with a smirk, handing me my orange Stanley water bottle.

"I try," I grinned. "I try very hard, actually."

The team had just finished warmups and had begun filing back into the locker room for the bus ride around the stadium and to the Hill. The seats had already been filled, packed out end zone to end zone in orange, and the sky was beginning to darken with the setting sun. It was warm for September, but I felt goosebumps prickle at my skin.

We knew the crowd saw the buses as the stadium roared to life, and I held my breath as the lights in the stadium dimmed and the jumbotron screen above the Hill went black. 85,000 people were about to see what I made, and even though I was proud of it, I only cared about the one person that mattered.

I had plucked Reid's best plays from the 2020 season (and some from last weekend's game too) and made him a highlight reel worthy of his first home game back. I'd cheated a little bit and poked through Reid's warmup playlist until I found a song that I thought was appropriate for the video, and I mouthed along to the song as it played with the video.

Something special about me, you can already tell the energy is different

Confidence is at the highest level, I don't ever see it dipping

Try me if you wanna, guarantee though you gonna wish you hadn't did it

That's a war that you could never win, but hey, I like the optimism

As the music swelled, the lights kicked back up, illuminating Reid and only Reid standing at the top of the Hill, hand on the rock, and the crowd absolutely lost it.

Even though I knew he couldn't see me from there, I beamed up at him, and silently thanked JJ for pulling through.

"Holy shit," Mara leaned over to me, having to whisper-yell over the crowd noise. "You are fucking incredible."

I smiled and squeezed her arm, not wanting to take my eyes off of Reid. The video concluded, and the team filed in behind him, linking arms and awaiting the cannon boom. They let Reid go first, running down the Hill and onto the field with his fist up like he'd never been hurt in the first place, and just as I thought the crowd couldn't possibly get any louder, they did for him.

The rest of the team followed, and my heart had swelled so much it could have exploded, and I wouldn't have cared. Everything from the flags, the fireworks, the sound of 85,000 people all yelling in sync C-L-E-M-S-O-N felt so euphoric, drugs couldn't match this kind of high.

Reid's gaze found mine as he made his way down the sideline, and with a smile he mouthed thank you.

Welcome, I mouthed back with the same smile, my heart threatening to burst from my chest just to be closer to him.

A home game had a completely different atmosphere than the kind of neutral site game like Georgia last weekend. It was dead silent while the offense was on the field, not wanting to fuck with Reid's cadance calls or audibles, and when the defense was on the field, the decibels were so loud they could set off a Richter scale. Home games were special because Clemson was truly our home, and we protected it.

Reid and the offense opened the game with a guns blazing, air raid style passing game that had Reid completing throws down field to JJ and Clayton Davis with surgical levels of precision. There was almost a bloodlust smell to the air, and a deadly look to Reid's eyes as they came off the field after scoring far too easily. He didn't care who they were playing - he'd been embarrassed last week and he was about to take it out on Wake Forest with no mercy and no remorse. I almost felt bad for them, but when Reid took his helmet off, his smile beaming and bright under the stadium lights, an intense, almost rage-like feeling took over in me. I wanted him to bury them if it meant he kept smiling like that.

━━━━━━

It was 63-13 by the time Reid finally came out of the game, and as the person who was responsible for posting every time they scored on social media, even I was worn out...but in a good way. Despite the ass-whopping, the energy in the stadium never once shifted. Every time Reid completed a pass, the crowd exploded into cheers, grateful that the rightful king had reclaimed his throne.

During a timeout, I checked my phone to see if ESPN had posted Reid's stats. Sure enough, the ESPN college football account had posted a video of Reid running through Wake Forest defense for one of his several rushing touchdowns of the day, with the caption Reid Donahue's Heisman campaign begins now, accompanied by his insanely impressive stat line - 30 passes for 414 yards and 4 touchdowns with 88% completion, and 10 rushes for 90 yards and 3 touchdowns.

The game ended with the backups in and the score unchanged, but it didn't matter. As victory fireworks boomed overhead, the crowd spilled from the stands to rush the field, as was god damn tradition after a home win. Despite the turbulence of the crowd, I figured it would have been easy to find Reid towering above the average mortal, but I jumped up onto one of the benches on the sideline to scan the sea of people easier, since I was decidedly one of those average mortals. It took me a moment to realize he wasn't there at all.

I jumped back off the bench and ducked through the crowd, getting occasionally bumped and jostled since I was going in the opposite direction as everyone else, but my body moved on its own, instinctually, like a compass needle looking for North.

I made it to the edge of the field and ran for the tunnels towards the locker room, where in the distance an orange silhouette was making its way further from his field of victory.

"Reid, wait!" I called after him, having to jog to keep up with his long strides.

Eventually he stopped and turned around, and I was struggling to breathe again. Maybe it was from more unexpected exertion, but my body knew better this time. Even with his hair stuck to his head in sweaty clumps and dirt marring his cheeks and his neck and his hands, in that moment he might have been the most beautiful person I'd ever seen, and he took the air straight from my lungs.

"Good game," I finally blurted out. "Great game, actually."

"Thanks, Jo," he said softly, gently swaying his helmet back and forth in his hand.

"Why aren't you out there celebrating?" I asked, jerking my thumb back in the direction of the field.

Reid scoffed. "It's just one win."

I heaved out a sigh and shook my head. "You know Reid, it's not wrong to celebrate the victories, no matter how insignificant you think they are. I mean that-" I threw my hand back again with more emphasis "-that out there, that's for you."

Reid nodded, slowly and contemplatively, pinching his lips into a thin line. "Maybe I don't want it to be about me." He paused and rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand. "I was pretty miserable about losing last week, even if I didn't want to really admit it. But someone told me I had to do better. So I'm trying to do better. How am I doing?"

"You're learning," I told him with a coy grin. "You're still allowed to be happy and take credit for...what was it? Something like, 400 passing yards and 6 total touchdowns? That's insane. Like, you're gonna get a 'random' drug test from the NCAA tomorrow for performance enhancing drugs."

That got a chuckle out of him, and he glanced over my shoulder, out towards the field. When he looked back at me, he smiled. "Thanks. I mean, for the video. It made me feel...pretty damn good."

"You deserve it, Reid."

There was something about being in the tunnel that somehow muted all the noise and all the commotion going on outside, and it made it feel like we were the only two people there. I watched a bead of sweat drip down the side of his cheek and drop onto his jersey, his chest heaving up and down with every breath he took.

I wasn't sure how long we stood there, contemplating what would happen if we just took one more step towards each other. Finally, he took a step back.

"I'm gonna, uh..." he gestured back in the direction of the locker rooms. "I mean, I think I smell terrible, and there is sweat in places I really don't want there to be, so I'm gonna go shower."

"Yeah, you do smell pretty terrible." I surrendered a smile, almost relieved at not having to make the decision to step away myself, because I wasn't sure I could have.

"I'll, uh...see you later, I guess." He took a few more steps backwards before turning on his heel and walking away, smacking his helmet against the palm of his other hand.

I watched him walk away until he disappeared behind the double doors towards the locker room. Eventually other guys on the team started filing in, walking past me like I was a ghost, doomed to haunt the halls of this place longing for someone I probably shouldn't.

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[There should be a GIF or video here. Update the app now to see it.]

just wanted to drop this video in here so y'all can really see the whole '25 most exciting seconds in college football thing' - it's real, i've seen it, and it's amazing. jo obviously just improved upon it.

anyway, this chapter made me so happy to write and i am absolutely LIVING for all of the longing, the tension, the uncertainty between them. will they ever actually hook up again or express their feelings? who's to say, not me. i have no idea.

would love to hear your thoughts and comments, still a loooong football season ahead <3