The hotel door had that yellow light from hotel hallways that makes everything look slightly more cinematic than it actually is, and Blaire was leaning against the frame with the keys in her hand, her hair still down from dinner.
"What did you think?" Wyatt asked.
Blaire thought about it for a genuinely quiet moment. "Your mother is going to text me every single day for the rest of my life."
"Probably."
"And your grandfather said exactly five words during the entire dinner."
"That's a lot for him."
"Your dad asked me if I liked football."
"And?"
"I told him the truth."
Wyatt looked at her. "And how did he take that?"
"Better than I expected," Blaire said. "I like your family."
"Even with my mom's interrogation?"
"The interrogation was part of the charm," Blaire said. "And your grandmother pinched my cheeks twice before we could even exchange more than three words."
"Yeah, she does that with everyone."
"I know, but there's something about the way she does it that doesn't feel annoying."
Wyatt nodded without saying anything.
"They're weird," Blaire added. "But in a good way."
"That's the nicest thing you've ever called them."
"Don't start calling them weird like that; it loses the effect."
Wyatt let out a quiet chuckle before taking a step toward her, and Blaire didn't move from the doorframe as he leaned in to kiss her. For a moment, the hotel hallway, the yellow light, and the keys in Blaire's hand vanished completely.
It was Blaire who deepened the kiss, one hand sliding up toward his neck before they pulled apart, catching their breath with the doorway still between them.
"Are you coming in?" Blaire asked.
Wyatt looked at her for a moment, weighing out loud a decision he had clearly already made.
"I can't," he said. "I have to travel to Glendale early tomorrow, and I need to be at the airport at five in the morning. If I'm late for that, then there's a real problem."
"What time?"
"Five in the morning."
"Alright," Blaire said. "That actually is a valid reason."
"And if it weren't true?"
"I would have told you that you couldn't come in anyway," Blaire replied.
"Get some sleep too."
"I'll try," Blaire responded.
The door closed, and Wyatt stood in the hallway for a moment with the yellow light falling over him before turning toward the elevator.
January 11, 2016
The afternoon in Glendale, Arizona, brought that dry desert heat that always catches people coming from the East Coast off guard. Blaire felt it the moment they stepped out of the Uber, which had dropped them off three blocks from the stadium because the road closures around the University of Phoenix Stadium had turned the perimeter into something resembling a maze of jerseys, flags, and mingling food scents.
"How many people are here?" Blaire asked as they pushed through the crowd filled with fans wearing jerseys from both teams.
"Seventy-five thousand inside," Elena said. "And just as many outside who couldn't get a ticket or who simply decided to watch the game from out here."
Ed walked ahead, carving a path with the efficiency of someone accustomed to moving through massive crowds for professional reasons. Blaire followed Elena, who in turn followed Ed, wearing her orange Clemson jacket as her eyes swept across the panorama of a national championship stadium—considerably larger than anything she had imagined when Wyatt told her he had secured them tickets.
Inside, the stadium operated on an entirely different scale: the green field stretched out beneath the towering stadium lights, and the bowl-shaped stands were filling with color, from the orange on the Clemson side to the deep crimson on the Alabama side, with a steady stream of people still pouring in through every gate while the teams finished their final warm-ups on the field.
"We need to find our seats," Ed said, looking down at the tickets in his hand. The stadium possessed that distinct presence where its sheer size is the first thing a person processes before anything else, its bowl-shaped stands clad in crimson and red on one side and orange and purple on the other. The massive video board above the field rotated the College Football Playoff logo alongside the logos of both teams while fans kept filling every available corner of the stadium, which housed over seventy-five thousand people that night.
The ESPN cameras panned across the stands, capturing the pre-kickoff atmosphere as fans of both teams mixed together in the neutral sections with drinks in hand, painted jerseys, and handmade signs ranging from unconditional support to improvised tactical analysis.
"And good evening from Glendale, Arizona," Chris Fowler said from the broadcast booth, with the view of the field stretching out behind him. "Welcome to the 2016 College Football Playoff National Championship between the Number One Clemson Tigers and the Number Two Alabama Crimson Tide, in what promises to be a historic night for American college football."
"And we have to start by talking about the storyline coming into this game, Kirk," Fowler said, turning to his partner. "Because for the first time since his Heisman Trophy victory, Wyatt Sterling is facing off against the Crimson Tide and Derrick Henry, the other Heisman finalist."
"And that alone makes this something special," Herbstreit said. "Sterling arrives with a season that the numbers qualify as historic: 42 touchdowns through the air, 12 on the ground, over 4,000 yards, and a completion percentage hovering around 72%."
"What I wonder," Fowler said, "is whether those numbers can hold up against the best defense in the country. Alabama has allowed under 200 total yards per game on average this season, which means Sterling is likely facing the biggest challenge of his three years at Clemson tonight."
"And on Alabama's side, Henry comes in motivated," Herbstreit continued. "There is a very clear narrative he wants to answer on this field tonight, which is that he lost the Heisman to Sterling, and this game is his opportunity to retroactively change the perspective of that conversation."
"A battle that is going to define the night in many ways," Fowler concluded as the cameras showed both teams wrapping up their warm-ups on the field. "And there's something else we need to mention before this game gets underway, Kirk."
"The coaches," Herbstreit said, nodding.
"Exactly. Dabo Swinney versus Nick Saban," Fowler said. "Two of the finest head coaches in modern college football, facing off directly in a national championship for the very first time, which adds yet another dimension to everything we've been discussing."
"Saban has sixteen championships under his belt," Herbstreit said. "And the way he constructs his teams defensively is almost impossible to replicate. But Dabo has built something at Clemson that is equally unprecedented, and he comes in tonight with the most talented team he has ever brought to a championship game."
"Kickoff in just minutes," Fowler concluded.
In the stands on the orange side of the stadium, Wyatt's parents, along with Blaire, found their seats in the visitor section, drinks in hand, as the stadium big screen projected highlights from Clemson's season.
Ed stood with his arms crossed over his chest, watching the field where the teams were completing their warm-ups with that same sharp focus he had brought to every one of Wyatt's games since he was ten years old back in Katy—regardless of the level or the size of the stadium.
Elena, on the other hand, held her phone ready, camera at the position, having already taken sixteen photos of the field before Wyatt had even come out for warm-ups. She documented everything with a discipline that no family member had questioned in decades.
Blaire sat beside her, wearing the orange Clemson jacket Elena had handed her that morning, telling her she couldn't go to the game without representing the team's colors. Blaire had accepted it without arguing, having learned over her last forty-eight hours in Texas that certain conversations with Elena were much simpler if you just accepted the outcome from the start.
The three of them had arrived together in the rental car Ed picked up at the Phoenix airport. During the drive, Elena had talked almost non-stop, Ed had driven, and Blaire had looked out the window at the Arizona landscape in January—a setting completely different from anything she had seen in Massachusetts or South Carolina, with its dry soil turning almost golden in the late afternoon sun.
Yet she looked pale, and had been pale since they arrived at the stadium—a paleness that wasn't entirely explainable by the morning flight, though that was the excuse she had given when Elena asked her at the Houston airport before boarding, and the one she repeated when Ed noticed it in the car on the way to the stadium.
Elena noticed it again in the stands with that instinctual ability to register the physical well-being of the people she cares about—an instinct that didn't switch off even at the College Football National Championship.
"Are you okay?" she asked in a low voice while Ed kept his eyes on the field.
"I'm fine," Blaire said. "The heat here is just different from Texas."
Elena looked at her for a moment longer before pulling a pack of crackers from her bag and handing them over without a word. She responded to almost everything with food, and Blaire took them because it was easier than arguing.
"There he comes," Ed said suddenly.
All three of them turned their gaze toward the field, where the Clemson players were beginning to gather for final instructions before kickoff.
On the field...
The Clemson huddle carried the specific silence of groups that no longer need anyone to tell them what comes next, having spent weeks preparing for it. Laquon was to Wyatt's right, the other receivers closing the circle, and the offensive line forming the outer perimeter, shoulder pads clacking in the tight space while the stadium's roar filtered through as something distant—a reality that existed, but at this specific moment belonged to another universe entirely.
Wyatt looked around at the helmets surrounding him, one by one, before speaking.
"Listen," he said in a completely calm voice. "We've spent months preparing for this game. Months watching film on this defense, studying every tendency, every formation, every player who's going to be across from us tonight."
Nobody said a word.
"Alabama has won this championship sixteen times," Wyatt continued. "Sixteen times because they're good, because they work hard, and because they have a culture of winning that's been built over decades. You have to respect that."
"But listen to this too," Wyatt said. "Clemson hasn't won the national championship since 1981. There are guys in this huddle who have been working four years for this exact moment, and there are people in those stands who have waited forty years to see it happen. We are the only ones who can give it to them tonight."
Laquon's jaw was clenched tight.
"We didn't come here to try to win," Wyatt said. "We came here to win. Which is completely different. Trying means reaching your limit and hoping it's enough. Winning is deciding that the limit doesn't exist."
A brief pause hung in the air, the roar of the stadium a constant backdrop.
"Seventy-five thousand people out there, and millions watching on TV," Wyatt said. "Everyone is going to see exactly who the Clemson Tigers are tonight."
He extended his hand into the center of the circle.
The team met his hand without needing to be told.
"Tigers!"
The chant didn't break out from everyone all at once; it started with one voice, and the rest followed a fraction of a second later, sounding in unison as a single roar. It was loud enough for the stadium cameras pointed at the huddle to capture, even if the audio was completely swallowed by the noise of seventy-five thousand fans.
The circle broke.
The Clemson players dispersed toward their positions on the field, and Wyatt stayed in the center of the huddle for one second longer, helmet in hand, before putting it on, buckling his chinstrap, and stepping toward the line of scrimmage with the exact same stride he had taken into every game since he first picked up a football back in Texas.
In the stands, Ed uncrossed his arms.
Elena lowered her phone for a moment.
Blaire, who had been watching the field since the players emerged from the tunnel, saw Wyatt step behind his offensive line for the first snap of the national championship. She recognized that level of intense focus—a look she had learned to identify in him over two and a half years as the sign that whatever was coming next was the only thing that existed in his world right now. And she thought to herself that the paleness she had carried with her since that morning was something she was going to have to bring up at some point once the game was over.
But now, the referee was standing at mid-field, the coin was in the air, and seventy-five thousand people in the stadium held their breath all at once, alongside every viewer tuning into the game around the country.
Author thought
For those of you wondering, I'm planning to have Blaire get pregnant by Wyatt, which is why she's starting to show symptoms. I know there's an author on Webnovel who's also using this literary device, but the idea had already been floating around in my head. Let me know what you think in the comments, and give it a like.
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