Big Shot | ✓

26 | homecoming

My high school homecoming was one random football game in the middle of October, when it was too cold to really do anything other than go to the game, drink below average cider, and watch the captain of the team and the head cheerleader get crowned homecoming king and queen. We didn't even have a school homecoming dance.

But at a school like Clemson, Homecoming (with a capital H because it was a proper noun) was a weekend long event. There were booths for student groups, entertainment segments, philanthropic efforts, a fireworks display, and more stuff that I was probably forgetting.

For gameday, the football team wore special purple jerseys that they only wore once a season, and each of the seniors walked down the hill one by one to their parents or guardians waiting at midfield to give them a single rose. It was almost poetic. People usually cried.

But that was all tomorrow. It was Friday afternoon, and I was already panicking. In the comfort of my own bedroom, of course.

I groaned and pulled off another Clemson shirt. In theory they all matched the white jeans I wore (I know you're not supposed to wear white after labor day, but this is the South, the rules were different), but nothing spoke to me, and it was blasphemy to not wear Clemson apparel this weekend.

My phone buzzed in my back pocket, and the panic persisted.

REID DONAHUE: be there in 5

REID DONAHUE: my parents already got a table

"Great," I grumbled, putting my hands to my temples and surveying the pile of shirts that had grown at the foot of my bed.

Getting dinner with Reid's parents was my idea. I wanted the Homecoming article to be more about Reid's family life, how he was raised, and what homecoming really meant to him now, in his last year. Something poignant and multifaceted.

Career girl Jo had made those plans, but she was nowhere to be found at present, leaving whatever unfortunate panicked version this was behind.

REID DONAHUE: i'm outside

I had no choice now but to figure it out on the fly. Before anything though, I had to find a shirt. Being loyal to the plain t-shirt, I decided it was better to be comfortable than stylish, so I plucked an orange baby tee out of the pile that had nothing more than a small old school Clemson tiger logo stitched into the top left of the torso. I grabbed my Marc Jacobs bag and quickly smoothed down my hair as I darted past the mirror in our entry hallway and left the apartment.

Reid's obnoxious orange truck was at the curb, and as I approached it, I noticed him fussing with his messy head of hair in the rearview mirror, but all he seemed to be doing was making more of a mess. It was too fucking endearing for me.

"About time," he told me as I climbed up into the passenger seat.

"I couldn't pick a shirt," I admitted, glancing over at his tiger printed button up shirt. I felt my face immediately flush knowing what happened the last time he wore that shirt. "I find it very hard to believe that's the only tiger-themed apparel you own."

"Well it's my only tiger-themed collared shirt," Reid said as he pulled out of my apartment complex. "And if I didn't wear a collared shirt I know I'd get an earful from my mother."

"Oh, I cannot wait to meet this woman," I grinned.

That wasn't a lie - everything Reid had ever told me about his mom led me to believe I'd get along with her. But there was a pressure to keep my cool around a woman who knew him better than anyone else and could probably see right through me and my big stupid crush on her son.