Game Day
Home games in Tuscaloosa are a different kind of animal. Even before sunrise, the Promenade was crawling with tents and grills, the air thick with hickory smoke and fight songs. From my dorm window, I could hear the Million Dollar Band already running scales, tubas booming like a war horn. Everyone else felt nervous-excited. I just felt exhausted.
Not because of the game, but because of the message that was waiting on my phone.
rtide8889:
Briggs Chevrolet? Fuck me, my dad just bought a truck from you guys in Huntsville this summer. If I had known I would have told him to ask for that insider deal. Now this is why you better keep quiet about last night. Or I might tell my dad the way to get more than just a free oil change.
I wasn’t shocked. Honestly, I’d been waiting for it. Last night, I’d played the scenarios over and over in my head, imagining exactly how Jordan would cash in once he realized what my name meant. He had leverage. So did I. We both knew it. Mutually assured destruction.
And perhaps that was what made it hotter.
Still, I wasn’t stupid enough to run it back. Jordan was dangerous. Too close now, too smart, too connected. I stared at the screen for a long beat, then tapped the thumbs-up emoji. One silent acknowledgment. Then I deleted the chat. Not blocked, that would’ve screamed panic. Just erased. Like wiping down prints on a doorknob.
That was lesson one: never let anyone get that close again.
By noon, the family invasion was in full swing. Dad pulled the new Silverado High Country into the booster lot like it was a parade float, Mom waving from the passenger seat. Caroline had already snagged a wristband for the skybox, and she was in her element, tugging me along by the sleeve like we were the perfect couple for her Kappa Delta tags.
Inside the skybox floor at Bryant-Denny, everything was crimson and white noise. Old men in polos toasted bourbon with their wives, little kids ran around in signed jerseys five sizes too big, and every five minutes somebody clapped my dad on the shoulder and said, “Henry Briggs! Hell of a deal on that Escalade last spring!” My dad grinned like a politician, though it was my Uncle Jeff who was in the middle of launching a State Senate campaign for next year, and I stood there with my smile locked in place.
“Emily,” they also called to my mom. “Lord, you haven’t aged a bit since homecoming in ’94.” She laughed like she’d been waiting for the line, tilting her chin just enough to catch the box lights. I realized no one here was really talking to my mom, they were talking to the memory of her, frozen in a yearbook smile.
We were already in our seats an hour before gametime, with the ‘Briggs’ sign from my grandfather’s first car lot in Vestavia Hills mounted to the wall behind us. From the box window, the stadium spread out below us like a living organism, 100,000 people breathing in unison. I should have felt lucky. Blessed. Whatever word mom would’ve used in her postgame Facebook caption. Instead, my mind kept slipping away from the field.
I needed control.
I pictured my screen from the morning again, the smirk in Jordan’s text. One Grindr profile, one phone, one mistake, that was all it had taken. Never again. The next time I chased my fantasy, I’d be smarter. Cleaner. Untouchable.
Meanwhile, the skybox was a stage, and my family had all been given parts.
Dad stood by the window like he was at the GM Proving Ground, and the field was his lot. He clapped a hand on my shoulder every time someone called his name, laughing with the ease of a man accustomed to deals and applause. “Wyatt, you see that drive. Totally worth that Hummer EV!”
Mom was already arranging us for a photo, angles, smiles, hair tucked behind our ears. “Wyatt, chin up,” she coached, phone held high. “Macy, come closer. Phil, no, not like that, Henry, put your arm around him.” Her voice was warm but thin; everything was a caption waiting to happen.
Caroline perched near the coolers with a guest wristband and a grin like she’d been waiting for this all summer. She squeezed my hand when Dad stepped back and gave me a look that said, I fit into this picture, and she meant it as protection and as positioning. She loved the family pageantry almost as much as Mom did.
Uncle Jeff drifted in and out of the skybox like an airborne campaign sign, shaking hands, dropping policy nuggets into every conversation. He clipped me into a selfie with a donor and didn’t bother asking. “This is Wyatt Briggs, my freshman Bama nephew, future leadership, right here!” he announced, loud enough for half the floor to hear. “Education, jobs, that’s what District 15 needs! And the young generation is ready.” He beamed like the words were already a speech on the stump, even though the GOP primary was months away.
Phil, my rebellious Auburn cousin in his blue and orange, hovered by the concession tray with a beer in one hand and a grin that suggested he was cataloguing everything he could use later. “Dad still has you in that flashy Denali, huh?” he jabbed when he caught my eye. “Don’t worry, when they send you to run the Huntsville lots, you can pick any car you want. Gotta keep the cash cow happy. That’s where your dad really gets the money for all this.” He laughed at his own joke; the box laughed with him, and for a second, I felt like I’d been tipped out of a boat.
My sister Macy, who flew in from her residency at Emory, watched from the sofa, arms folded, scanning the room like she was observing symptoms for a chart she didn't want to fill out. When Dad paused and everyone turned to him, she tugged at my sleeve and said, quietly, the way only family can make a question a confession, “You okay, Wyatt? You look tired; hopefully, you aren’t still recovering from pledge week.” Her eyes were soft but unyielding. It wasn’t a demand; it was a mirror. I looked nowhere near as polished as the family photos would make me appear.
Between my dad’s roaring laughs and Uncle Jeff’s political cadence, the message from rtide8889 pulsed in my mind like a metronome. Briggs Chevrolet? Fuck me, my dad just bought a truck from you guys in Huntsville this summer…
Caroline squeezed my hand again, oblivious to my internal spin. “You coming out after the fourth quarter? My friends want to go to the Strip,” she said in that airy way she had. “It’ll be fun. We can get pictures, do the postgame thing. You look great tonight, by the way, like the blazer was made for you.” She meant it. Her approval should have felt like oxygen. It didn’t. It felt like another requirement.
Dad barreled back, clapping his hands. “Do it, Wyatt, we’re up 52-0. If there’s anything I learned in sales, it's to celebrate the wins.”
I smiled. I parroted the lines. I felt like a man behind glass, performing a biography written before I was born.
Under the hum of conversation and the cheers from below, I made a quick inventory. Jordan had my name; he could point me out in a sea of faces; he’d already joked about my dad’s dealerships in his text. Mutual destruction, sure, but mutual only if I let it be. I wasn’t going to be careless again. I wouldn’t let a piece of my life be the price of a hook-up.
I finalized the plan I'd been turning over since last night, the way these things do when you’ve been practicing for avoidance: neat, tactical, and antiseptic. A second phone: prepaid, cash bought, no apps tied to my name, nothing that could be traced back to the Briggs ledger. Compartmentalize: friend and family in one life, anonymous profile around Mal M Moore in the other.
I could already see the logistics. Not a burner phone. That would look desperate, shady, like I was hiding something. If Caroline saw me pull one out, she’d never let it go. No, it had to be respectable, normal. No contract. No connection to my bank. Throwaway SIM. Keep it off the campus wifi and use Proton Mail to forward to my UA email like a shadow relay. Keep receipts? No. Keep passwords? No. The effort to keep a distance would be small compared to the cost of exposure.
Caroline leaned in and ruffled my hair, smiling at a man in the box who’d complimented my father. “You’re lucky,” she said to me, loud enough for a few people to nod. “You look like your daddy. Must be nice.”
“Yeah,” I said, the word as empty as Monroe’s side of the scoreboard.
In the moments between Phil gloating about only blowing out a Sunbelt school and my dad shaking hands, I finalized the details: Tomorrow. ATM. Walmart. A prepaid phone that wouldn’t look suspicious on a legacy kid. Grindr on it. Burn it if it ever begins to smell like trouble.
My family chatted on, the warm background track to my plan. The Million Dollar Band hit a rolling crescendo, the stadium went wild, and in the middle of our noisy, gilded box, I plotted a small, private firewall that might keep the rest of my life from burning.
When the win chant washed through the glass and Caroline whooped, I stood and put on a smile that could survive a campaign or a dealer’s luncheon. Inside, I felt smaller, but with a sharp, new resolve: less a Briggs heir than a kid finally learning how to hide his own fingerprints.
After the stadium emptied and the skybox had been scrubbed of bourbon cups and rib bones, we trailed back to the lot in little knots of family. Dad gave goodbyes by the Silverado, Mom gushed about the pictures she’d already posted, and Caroline slipped into step with Macy like they were sorority sisters catching up at rush.
“KD, right?” Macy asked her, adjusting her tote on her shoulder. Her voice was tired but still sharp, the way she always sounded after too many hours on call.
Caroline brightened immediately. “Yeah. We just had our philanthropy kickoff, and it’s been amazing! You?”
“Zeta,” Macy said, with the faintest smile. “Feels like a lifetime ago, but the machinery is no different. You’ll learn, half of it’s parties, half of it’s politics. The trick is knowing which half you’re in when.”
Caroline laughed, nodding, eager, maybe a little too eager. Macy’s eyes flicked to me before she added, “You’ll do fine. You’ve already figured out how to wear the smile.”
They hugged like old friends, and I saw Caroline basking in it: accepted, confirmed, validated by the only Briggs who wasn’t all dealership gloss and booster pride.
Then Macy tugged me a few steps away while Dad got into his truck. Her tone shifted.
“You look like you’re carrying something, Wy,” she said again, even lighter this time. “And not just from pledge stuff. When I was here, it was like every day was a stage play. Sorority house, football games, Dad questioning why I wanted pre-med. I kept waiting for somebody to let me off script. Nobody ever did. That’s why I left as soon as I could.”
I shrugged, tried to play it off, but her eyes pinned me. “Don’t let this place eat you alive, Wyatt,” she said. “You’re allowed to be more than the role they handed you.”
She hugged me once, quickly, before sliding into her Uber. The moment where it felt we all still lived under one roof was gone, swallowed up by Mom calling for one more family photo and Caroline looping her arm through mine like we’d been cast together.
Sunday was clean-up day. The quad was littered with beer cans and flattened tents, and I was just another hungover-looking freshman with a Walmart bag tucked under my arm. Inside: a Boost Mobile S24, paid for with cash after a long pause at the ATM. I’d driven thirty-five minutes to the Brent Supercenter, and the receipt was already in a dumpster behind the store. Not sleek enough to flex on Instagram, not cheap enough to scream burner. Respectable. Normal. The kind of phone you could show someone something in Starbucks with, and no one would bat an eye.
Back in my dorm, I spent the afternoon setting it up, registering the SIM with a reloadable prepaid Mastercard I’d loaded with twenties at the customer service desk. 659 area code. Grindr downloaded. No link to my name, no contact list, no Apple ID. A firewall in my pocket.
By the time the install bar finished crawling across the screen, the afternoon heat was already fading, and I had less than an hour before DKE’s Sunday chapter meeting. But I couldn’t resist. I had to christen it. I needed a new profile and a new picture.
After a quick shower, I slipped on my gray Bama sweatpants and went back into the bathroom with the S24. The mirror was still fogged, the air warm and heavy like it wanted to keep my secret. I wiped a streak with my palm, just enough to frame the shot, then cleared the counter of anything that could identify me: razor, toothbrush, my Crimson Tide lanyard.
I looked at myself for a long second. Just me, damp hair, water still running down my back. The guy in the glass looked too bare, too ordinary. I needed something that wasn’t Wyatt J. Briggs. I needed a signal.
The waistband went down once. Twice. The cotton clung, heavy from steam, rolling low on my hips. One more inch and I could feel the cool air touch skin that usually stayed covered. It was calculated, not careless. Just enough to suggest, not enough to show. The “whale tail.” Every straight boy's signal packed into a single line of fabric.
I angled the phone over my shoulder, thumb hovering. The reflection caught the slope of my back, shoulders sharp in the light, the curve down into shadow. My face vanished completely, blurred out by steam and angle.
I hesitated. This was the moment: the shift from accident to intention. With Jordan, I was forced into another narrative. Here, I was drawing my own line, shaping how the world would see me.
The flash went off. White glare, then afterimage.
I lowered the phone and looked. The screen showed a stranger. No smile, no name, no dealership, no family skybox. Just a body, anonymous, available. A secret I could choose when and how to reveal.
I wanted to finish my train of thought before I had to walk over to the DKE house, so I sat at my desk with the S24, still only in those sweat pants, to think of a new handle. bamabooster? No, too obvious. After a few more options, I typed out and settled on crimsonboi2648, just put ‘UA” in my profile and saved it before shoving the Samsung into my desk drawer. That way, I wouldn’t have to deal with the thirsty messages until I got back.
To get in touch with the author, send them an email.
