Harper's Rules 1 & 2

Chapter 22: Jake

"Fuck," London cursed quietly, leaned back in his seat on my right, and bumped my arm with his elbow as he slouched down.

"Emily shut you down again?" Evan's smug voice hit my left ear as he leaned over the aisle space and smirked.

My eyebrows couldn't have lifted higher since Drake never associated with anyone outside the team and, in fact, last night he'd practically bolted from the room when Sophia had brought her roommate over for the house's movie night. "Emily, huh?"

"No," he muttered but lifted his eyes and glared daggers at Evan, who just laughed and leaned over further.

Like the rest of the one-hundred-plus crowd of USC's team and staff, after a four and a half hour direct flight from LAX, we rode on a bus from Boulder, Colorado's airport to the University of Colorado for our season opener game.

"Which game will London Drake choke in this year?" Evan's blonde-haired head leaned over my chest, which gave me an unwanted whiff of his cologne and hair products. The dim lighting from Drake's screen illuminated his angular jaw and cheek bones as he read off it, "You gotta ignore that shit, bro."

"One fucking clutch miss last year," Drake groaned as the bounce of his last year's kick that bounced off UW's goalpost replayed in video embedded in the article. "There's even a fucking poll on a couple games... UW, Notre Dame, UCLA, or BYU."

My eyes narrowed at the UCLA option, I shoved Evan back into his seat, and reminded my kicker's sensitive ego, "Drake, you killed it the rest of the season." With a light punch into his shoulder for extra emphasis, I added, "Whatever you're feeling, use it tonight."

"Says the asshole with last year's Heisman sitting on his mom's coffee table," he mumbled dryly.

"Doesn't matter this year," I shot back right away, although I think he was right in that's where Mom kept it. "Trust me, turn off that shit so it doesn't get into your head."

Like two days straight before all game days, I isolated and blocked myself completely off from any and all external distractions. My phone was shut off from all calls and messages, my social media DMs and email inboxes went ignored, and I only focused on school and football. Between classes, I slipped in my earbuds so that, other than a quick nod or thanks, I avoided conversations centered around the upcoming game.

Better this way.

If anyone asked me, then I would've answered that I preferred all of our games were played in the Colosseum. USC's stadium created the most electric atmosphere I'd ever witnessed, when more than ninety-three thousand insanely loyal fans filled shoulder-to-shoulder up to three sections deep. With the horseshoe-shaped seating, all seats seemed like they faced the white monolithic-background for the Peristyle and Court of Honor behind the east-facing endzone.

Internally though, I was relieved that our game opener was an away game even if that location was the 5400ft high-altitude Folsom Field in Boulder, Colorado. Their stadium was also horseshoe-shaped but the alternated darker and lighter grass between the ten-yard line marks and the Rocky Mountains that framed distantly around it were of course different than the backdrop of Los Angeles.

Not to mention the actual buffalo that the team charges out behind.

Even though the thin, pressurized air led to most of us sucking oxygen through masks by half-time, I preferred that we worked out our first game nerves and uncertainty at an away game so that once we played at home, we clicked on all cylinders. The pressure to perform was always on the home team, which was the Buffs when our bus pulled up to the stadium.

A thrill rushed through me the same moment a cold, dry gust of wind whipped against my cheeks and blew against the back of my neck as I stood on the sidewalk outside the bus. I flipped my sweatshirt hoodie up over my head as we worked our way inside Folsom Field. Like every time I approached a field since I first strapped on a pair of cleats and clutched a football in my hands at age seven, the same heightened sense of awareness tingled the skin on the back of my neck, pulsed the blood faster in my veins, and drew my focus inward.