33. It’s not just a game. It’s a lifestyle.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
it’s not just a game. it’s a lifestyle.
PRESENT
In the morning, because it takes several attempts to actually get out of bed, we are sleep-deprived and satiated but late when we finally leave our hotel room.
“But isn’t the game at seven?” Forrest asks as we head to the car, not having had the big college experience and not quite understanding the gravity of today.
Sure, the Desert City, Southern Arizona football game isn’t until this evening, but for our rivalry game, it’s a full-day experience. When we were students, we’d say you can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning!
It was extremely healthy.
Today might be less boozy than when I was a teenager with a fake ID and a liver made of steel, but I will be no less dedicated to screaming my head off until I completely lose my voice.
“The game is more than just the game. It’s a whole day. And we have to get you outfitted first.” While I’m game day ready in my tank top with our mascot, a cactus named Prickly Pete, on it and bright green shorts, somehow Forrest didn’t bring even a single plain green shirt with him.
“As long as I’m not wearing Southern Arizona’s colors, shouldn’t I be ok?” Forrest asks. And it’s a fair question for any game other than this one.
“You need to trust me. Everybody will be in green today. You’ll see more green than St. Patrick’s Day in Boston. The idea is to completely drown Southern Arizona in the color. I want them to taste green.” I cackle a little to really drive home how insane we behave as a school for this game.
“This whole thing is feeling an awful lot like a cult,” Forrest says when we reach the car.
“Yes, and?” I challenge. “What of it?”
“Absolutely nothing,” Forrest wisely answers before holding the driver’s side door open for me. “Just wanted to make sure you knew.”
After a quick stop at the campus bookstore to get Forrest his own Prickly Pete shirt and me a new DCU baseball cap, we head to Melina’s apartment.
She’s already waiting outside for us with Jenna, both head-to-toe in green.
Jenna even clipped green streaks into her hair.
Or maybe she dyed it outright. Both would be reasonable for today.
We park, and Forrest quickly changes his shirt when we hop out. I don’t realize I’m staring until Melina elbows me. When I look at her, trying my best to feign innocence, her eyes go wide.
“You two!” She gasps before grinning slyly. “How was the rest of your night?”
She knows.
“It was fine!” I answer, my voice all high-pitched and squeaky for no reason whatsoever.
“Mmhmm,” she hums, looking rather pleased with the whole situation.
“Let’s get out of here. I don’t know how long Tyler can hold a table for us,” I say, shoving her toward the bus stop and ending her nosy questioning, knowing full well Tyler would give our table away over his dead body.
When we get on the bus, and it’s filled with green DCU shirts, I give Forrest a satisfied smirk.
“You were right. I was wrong,” he admits, hands up in defeat.
When the entire bus of us bursts out into the fight song halfway through our trip, I think he starts to understand what today is going to look like. Forrest doesn’t know the words, but the way he cheers at the end tells me he’s on board with joining the cult for a day.
Jenna and Forrest slip off the packed bus first while Melina and I get caught in the sea of green. When we reach them, I can tell Forrest is apologizing to Jenna again, and I appreciate that.
“I get it,” Jenna says, looking over at Melina with pure love. “I’d probably act the same for her.”
“Yeah,” Forrest says, his eyes finding mine.
And that’s when I decide. Fuck hiding anything.
When we arrive at El Lobo, finding Ava, Liam, Cristian, and Santi waiting for us at a high-top on the back patio, it’s with my hand in Forrest’s and the biggest smile on each of our faces.
“There we go.” Melina pats me on my shoulder before turning to Ava. “Close your mouth before you catch a fly,” she says with a laugh.
Ava snaps her mouth shut before pushing up on the table and looking around.
“Tyler,” she calls when she sees him. “I think we need shots!”
Forrest raises his arm to check his watch, but I cover the face of it with my hand.
“Time doesn’t exist today,” I say. “It’s game day, and happy hour started at sunrise.”
I think he’s going to protest, but he lowers his hand and takes a resolved breath.
Of course, Tyler feigns being wounded when he arrives with a tray of vibrant pink prickly pear cactus tequila shots and sees me cozied up beside Forrest.
“I have to know. Is this something new in the past two weeks or were you lying to me?” He still can’t keep the smile off his face.
“Tyler, I already know better than to lie to you, so I swear we didn’t, but this is something very, very old,” Forrest says with a knowing look at me.
“Fine. If it has to be, then it has to be,” Tyler acquiesces, passing out drinks.
Forrest raises his first.
“To the DCU Fighting Cacti?” he offers.
“To the DCU Fighting Cacti!” we all chorus around him and throw back our shots.
Tyler even takes one with us. Is he allowed to? No, not really. But nobody here is going to rat him out.
Poor Santi, newly twenty-one, coughs on his, not realizing the danger hidden in the pretty pink color. Cristian thumps his brother on the back and passes him a water, and we all cheer again when Santi gives a thumbs up.
We drink. We eat more tacos than seems humanly possible. We make friends with complete strangers, so long as they’re in DCU green.
Then we wander as a stumbling pack of lunatics through campus to the parking lot across from the stadium to do it all over again. In every direction is green, as far as the eye can see—shirts, shorts, hats, banners, flags, turf, painted bodies. No Southern Arizona red would dare come here.
For today, campus has become a festival, and even those who couldn’t give a crap about football on any other day find it in themselves to care today. It’s hard not to when even the air is buzzing in anticipation. I can practically feel the energy under my skin.
At one point, we end up splitting up for a bit when Jenna and Melina want to stay by a pop-up band and dance, but Ava, Liam, Cristian, and Santi somehow still want to search for more food.
Forrest and I are scanning the lot to figure out where to go when a pack of students pull us into a cornhole tournament to fill out the bracket.
By the time we reconvene to head into the stadium, we’re all sufficiently buzzed with warm skin and full hearts, and half of us have little cacti painted on our cheeks. Santi opted for the enormous cactus across his whole face.
It’s game time.
The game itself is a fucking rush. Forrest keeps up with all of our insane traditions and superstitions to assure our victory—standing for the whole game, shaking our keys at kickoff, chanting for each first down, losing our goddamn minds whenever Prickly Pete visits our section.
Obviously, all of this works because when time runs down, with the marching band playing “The Final Countdown,” Desert City is up 24 to 20 over Southern Arizona, and the entire stadium explodes with noise.
Cristian grabs Forrest, yanking him across our row to hug the man like they’re blood brothers. Forrest, the only one who isn’t and wasn’t a student here, is cheering as loudly as the rest of us. When Cristian releases him, he turns back to me, eyes bright, and a dreamy smile on his lips.
Melina brushes her arm against mine and leans in close so I can hear her over the roar around us.
“And that’s the look, by the way,” she says as I turn toward her.
When I look back at Forrest, it’s plain as day. He’s willing to scream with my friends for a school he has no loyalty to, paint a green cartoon cactus on his face, and stand for over three hours on hard concrete just to avoid the insane risk that his butt in a seat would jinx our team.
I think this man would move mountains for me.