Zane sat in the far corner of his couch with one leg stretched out in front of him and the other tucked beneath him. His phone rested against a small stand on the coffee table, angled upward so he could comfortably see the screen. On the other side of the video call was his grandmother, Mary.
Her own phone appeared to be propped up on the kitchen counter, giving Zane a slightly crooked view of her kitchen. She moved in and out of frame as she worked, occasionally disappearing entirely before reappearing with a wooden spoon in hand or a pot lid balanced against her hip.
Just seeing her face made him smile.
For the last few weeks, their schedules had somehow managed to miss each other completely. Between football, classes, travel, and whatever else life decided to throw at him, every attempted phone call seemed to end in a voicemail or a promise to try again later. Finally getting her on the screen felt strangely comforting.
"I'm so glad I finally got ahold of you," Zane said, shaking his head with a grin. "I was starting to think you were avoiding me."
Mary laughed softly as she stirred whatever was simmering on the stove.
"I could say the same thing about you."
"You know that's not true."
"I do know that's not true," she admitted. "And I agree. It's nice to finally talk."
She paused for a moment before her expression softened.
"I should apologize, though. I've been a little scarce lately. I haven't been feeling all that great the last week or two."
The smile immediately disappeared from Zane's face.
He straightened in his seat, concern flashing across his features.
"What do you mean you haven't been feeling great?"
Mary shrugged, though she notably avoided looking directly at the camera.
"Oh, nothing dramatic. I'm probably just worn down from everything that's been going on lately. Life's been busy. Stress catches up with people. I am old after all."
The answer did little to reassure him.
"You should've told me."
His voice carried more concern than he intended.
"If I'd known you weren't feeling well, I would've come home and checked on you."
That finally earned him a look.
Mary glanced over her shoulder as she lifted the lid from a pot, releasing a cloud of steam into the kitchen. A knowing smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth.
"That is exactly why I didn't tell you."
Zane rolled his eyes.
"Grandma-"
"Nope."
She pointed the spoon at the camera.
"You need to focus on finishing your season. Not dropping everything because your grandmother has a cough and is tired."
A reluctant smile pulled at his lips.
He sank back into the couch cushions and shook his head.
"There isn't much of a season left to focus on anyway. We've been terrible."
Mary hummed thoughtfully, returning her attention to the stove.
For a few moments, only the sounds of cooking filled the silence.
Then she asked, almost casually, "You still planning on transferring?"
The question didn't surprise him.
Mary had always been able to cut directly to whatever was occupying the most space in his mind.
Zane nodded instinctively before remembering she couldn't see him from her angle.
"Yeah," he answered. "I think it might be what's best."
He folded his hands together across his stomach and stared at the ceiling for a moment while organizing his thoughts.
"Tyson's putting together all my options. Once the season's over, he's going to present everything and we'll go through it together. If I decide to transfer, I'll start scheduling official visits right away."
He paused.
"I'm not dragging it out this year. Last year's recruitment was stressful enough."
Mary nodded slowly.
The spoon continued moving through the pot.
"Still thinking about Michigan?"
The question lingered in the air. Long enough for Mary to stop stirring and glance toward the camera. Long enough for Zane to feel exactly why she had asked it.
He took a breath before answering.
"No."
Mary turned fully toward the phone this time.
She leaned down slightly, studying him through the screen.
"Are you sure?"
Zane met her gaze.
This time he didn't hesitate.
"Yeah. I'm sure."
His voice sounded firmer than he expected.
"I have to move on."
The words felt strange saying aloud.
"Even thinking about Michigan when I know it's not the right fit for me isn't really moving on from Bianca."
Mary remained silent, allowing him to continue.
"I'm dating Marie now. Things are going well. I like where we're at."
The admission brought a small smile to Mary's face.
She nodded in understanding.
Then, because she was Mary, she immediately followed up with another question.
"Have you told Bianca that?"
Zane barked out a short laugh.
"No."
Mary's eyebrows rose.
"No?"
"There hasn't really been room for that kind of conversation."
He rubbed the back of his neck.
"We text here and there. Mostly checking in. Nothing heavy."
His expression became thoughtful.
"I think the expectation is that we'll talk when we're both back home for the holidays."
Mary's smile widened into something bordering on amusement.
"Oh, this sounds messy."
Zane groaned immediately.
"It's not messy."
"It sounds very messy."
"It isn't."
"You're dating one girl while trying to figure out how to have a conversation with another girl you used to date."
Zane pointed toward the screen.
"See? You're making it sound worse than it is."
Mary laughed.
Before she could respond, her expression suddenly tightened.
A cough escaped her throat.
Then another. And another. The fit hit her hard enough that she had to brace herself against the counter.
Zane instantly sat upright again.
"Grandma?" The concern returned immediately.
"Grandma, are you okay?"
Mary raised a hand without looking up.
The universal signal to stop talking. Several seconds passed before the coughing finally subsided. She took a deep breath and reached for a glass of water.
Zane looked thoroughly unconvinced.
"Seriously, maybe you should-"
Mary pointed at him again.
"This is not a distraction."
"What?"
"This isn't a sign that you get to use my little cough as a red herring."
A smile immediately tugged at Zane's lips despite himself.
"We were discussing your messy love life."
"My love life isn't messy."
Mary waved the comment away entirely. "We're not done talking about it." The sternness of the statement was completely undercut by the grin on her face.
Zane finally laughed, the tension easing from his shoulders.
For all his worrying, for all the stress that had piled up throughout the season, there was something grounding about moments like this. Sitting on a couch hundreds of miles away while his grandmother cooked dinner and interrogated him about his personal life felt remarkably normal.
Mary settled back into her cooking and stirred the pot again.
Then she glanced toward the camera.
"Tell me more about this Marie girl."
The smile that spread across Zane's face came effortlessly.
***
Bianca sat on the floor with her back pressed against the side of Katie’s bed, her knees drawn up loosely toward her chest. Across from her, Katie sat atop the mattress with her legs folded underneath her body, shoulders slumped forward as though she was carrying a weight too heavy for her frame.
The most recent episode of Love Island UK played on the television mounted across the room, filling the silence with artificial drama, forced flirtation, and bright tropical scenery that felt entirely disconnected from the mood hanging over the dorm room.
Neither of them had paid attention to the show for nearly twenty minutes.
The television had simply become background noise, something to fill the spaces where neither of them knew what to say.
Katie's mascara had long since betrayed her. Dark streaks ran down her cheeks where tears had carved paths through her makeup, and every so often she would sniff quietly and wipe at her face with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Bianca found herself staring at the floor between them, unable to hold Katie's gaze for very long. Every time she looked at her friend, she felt another wave of guilt crash into her chest.
Finally, Bianca shook her head.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
The words felt inadequate the second they left her mouth.
Katie immediately shook her head.
"No."
Her voice cracked slightly.
"There's nothing for you to be sorry about."
Bianca turned to face her fully. The tears gathering in her own eyes made Katie's face blur for a moment.
"Yes, there is."
Her voice grew stronger as she continued.
"I should've been there for you."
Katie opened her mouth to object, but Bianca kept going.
"Even if I wasn't there that night, I should've shown up better afterward. I should've noticed sooner. I should've pushed harder. I should've realized something was wrong."
Katie looked down toward her lap, blinking rapidly.
"You couldn't have known."
"But I should have."
The conviction in Bianca's voice surprised even her.
She had replayed the last few weeks over and over in her head. Every ignored text. Every strange interaction. Every moment she had accepted Katie's explanations instead of challenging them. Looking back, the signs felt obvious. At the time, they hadn't.
Katie wiped at her eyes again and took a shaky breath.
"It was a stupid mistake."
Bianca frowned.
"What was?"
Katie's jaw tightened. For several seconds she didn't answer. When she finally did, her voice was small.
"I put myself in awful situations all the time."
She swallowed hard.
"I keep doing dumb things. Going to parties. Taking risks and doing drugs. Hanging around people I barely know."
Her fingers twisted together nervously.
"Something like this was probably bound to happen eventually."
Bianca stared at her in disbelief. For a moment she couldn't even formulate a response. Then she pushed herself off the floor and climbed onto the foot of the bed, needing to be closer so Katie could see exactly how serious she was.
"No."
The word came out firmly.
"No, Katie."
Katie glanced up.
Bianca's eyes were shining with tears now.
"I don't care how reckless you think you've been."
Her voice trembled slightly.
"I don't care how many 'bad' situations you've put yourself in."
She leaned forward.
"No one asks to be assaulted."
Katie looked away.
Bianca wouldn't let her, physically pivoting herself to keep her gaze on Katie’s face.
"No one."
The tears finally spilled over.
"And none of those choices make what happened okay or understandable."
Katie remained silent.
Her gaze dropped back to her hands, where she began absentmindedly fiddling with her fingers one at a time.
The room fell quiet again except for the voices coming from the television.
Bianca kept staring at her.
The longer she sat there, the more overwhelmed she felt.
Every protective instinct she possessed screamed at her that she had failed somehow. Rationally, she knew that wasn't true. Emotionally, she couldn't stop herself from carrying the burden.
She wiped quickly at her eyes.
"I just keep thinking I should've been there."
Katie didn't respond.
Bianca laughed bitterly through her tears.
"And meanwhile I'm wasting time worrying about some guy that I'm not even sure I want to be dealing with."
That finally earned a reaction. Katie lifted her head. For the first time in several minutes, there was something resembling curiosity in her expression.
"Do you actually have feelings for Bryce?"
Bianca blinked.
The sudden change in topic caught her off guard. She leaned back slightly and considered the question.
"I don't know."
The answer came honestly.
"I genuinely don't know."
Katie waited. Bianca sighed.
"I like spending time with him." She shrugged. "He's funny. He's kind. He's obviously attractive."
A faint smile crossed her face before disappearing.
"But every time I think about taking things further." She struggled to find the right words.
"Even just hooking up with him."
Her shoulders lifted helplessly.
"It's like my body won't let me."
Katie studied her carefully.
The answer seemed to confirm something she'd already suspected.
After a moment she asked quietly, "Do you think that has anything to do with Zane?"
The question settled heavily between them. Bianca looked away. For a long moment she didn't answer until she slowly nodded.
"It has to."
Her voice barely rose above a whisper.
"It would only make sense."
She stared at the paused reflection of the television screen across the room.
"I know breaking up was the right thing. At least at the time - I was driving myself nuts trying to keep things afloat."
The statement sounded more like something she had repeated to herself a hundred times than something she truly believed.
"I know we needed space."
She rubbed at her eyes. "But Zane was the first guy who ever really saw me."
Katie remained silent, listening.
"The first guy who understood me."
Bianca swallowed hard.
"He knew when I was stressed before I said anything. He knew when I was pretending to be okay. He knew how to push me when I needed it and leave me alone when I didn't."
Her voice cracked.
"And then everything got busy."
She shook her head slowly.
"He got distant because of everything with his grandfather. I got busy. We stopped being able to reach each other the same way."
The tears were flowing freely now.
"And for it to end because of that just feels-."
She stopped. The sentence died before she could finish it because she didn't know how to describe it.
Katie simply nodded. She understood. Perhaps better than anyone else could.
The room fell silent once more. Neither woman had answers. Neither knew what the future looked like.
Katie still had wounds she hadn't begun to heal from. Bianca was still sorting through feelings she wasn't entirely sure she understood herself. The uncertainty sat heavily between them, but for the first time in weeks, neither of them was carrying it alone.
So they sat together on the foot of the bed, tears running down both of their faces as Love Island UK continued playing forgotten in the background. Outside, life on campus moved forward as it always did. Students hurried to classes, athletes went to practice, and the world carried on without pause.
***
The late autumn air carried a sharp chill across the Syracuse practice fields, the kind that bit at exposed skin and hinted that winter was no longer approaching - it was arriving.
Players' breath drifted into the sky in pale clouds as they moved through drills, helmets glinting beneath the overcast afternoon light. The season had come down to this: one final regular-season game against California. Win, and Syracuse would earn bowl eligibility. Lose, and the season would simply end.
That reality had become the coaching staff's entire message over the previous few weeks.
Every meeting. Every practice. Every film session.
One game.
One opportunity.
One last chance to salvage something meaningful from a season that had started with so much promise before spiraling into frustration.
For Zane, it was the only thing he had allowed himself to focus on. With transfer speculation growing louder by the week and Tyson regularly updating him on the opportunities waiting beyond Syracuse, it would have been easy to mentally check out. Plenty of players already had. He could feel it every day he walked into the facility.
Something had changed.
After the North Carolina victory, the team had felt united. Focused. Dangerous. There had been a collective belief that they were building toward something. Even after difficult losses, there had still been urgency in the building.
That urgency was gone now.
The Clemson loss had shattered whatever fragile momentum remained.
Players joked through drills. Veterans cut corners. Coaches who had spent the first half of the season demanding perfection now seemed content simply getting through practice. The details that Coach Brown constantly preached - the little things that separated good programs from great ones - were disappearing. The energy felt hollow. Dotting the I's and crossing the T's no longer seemed important to anyone.
Anyone except a handful of players.
Zane happened to be one of them.
The offense lined up against the defense during the team period of practice. It was standard work: no tackling to the ground, defenders tapping off ball carriers after a catch. The drill was designed to sharpen timing and execution.
Instead, it became the final straw.
Zane lined up wide on the far right side of the formation and glanced across from the cornerback pressing him at the line. He settled into his stance and waited for the snap.
The ball was snapped.
He exploded off the line.
A quick stutter step froze the defender for half a second before Zane accelerated inside. Just ahead of him, Johntay broke into a corner route, creating natural traffic that Zane used perfectly. He slipped underneath it and snapped into a deep slant across the middle.
The separation came immediately.
The window was there.
As he turned his head, he expected to see the football arriving.
Instead, he watched it skid helplessly across the turf toward his ankles.
The ball bounced twice before coming to a stop.
Incomplete.
Zane stopped running and stared. For a moment he wondered if someone had gotten a hand on it. He looked toward the line of scrimmage.
Ajani stood near the pocket shaking his head while talking to Coach Nixon, the offensive coordinator.
Zane slowly lifted both hands in disbelief.
Across the field, Fran Jr. was already jogging back toward his linebacker spot.
Zane pointed toward the backfield.
"Ball get tipped or something?"
Fran shook his head.
"Nah."
His expression suggested he already knew what Zane was thinking.
"Looked like it just slipped out of his hand."
Zane closed his eyes briefly.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me."
The coaches immediately reset the play.
"Again!" someone barked.
Players hustled back into position.
Zane returned to the line of scrimmage, forcing himself to take a breath. One bad throw happened. Even good quarterbacks had ugly reps.
The ball snapped again.
This time Zane adjusted the route slightly.
He knew the cornerback would anticipate the same slant after the first rep, so he pushed vertically a few extra yards before breaking. Johntay ran the same route combination in front of him, creating traffic once more.
Zane planted hard.
Snapped inside.
Created even more separation than before.
Then he looked up.
The football sailed high overhead.
For a split second he assumed Ajani was targeting Johntay deeper downfield.
Then he watched the ball continue flying. And flying. And flying. Until it landed several yards beyond everyone.
The pass wasn't merely inaccurate.
It wasn't even close.
Zane genuinely couldn't tell who the intended receiver had been. The frustration that had been building for weeks finally boiled over.
He stopped dead in the middle of the field.
Enough.
Before anyone could say anything, he ripped off his helmet and began stalking toward the offensive huddle.
Ajani clapped his hands together in frustration near the line of scrimmage. Several offensive linemen exchanged uncomfortable looks.
Nobody spoke.
Zane pointed directly toward one of the freshman quarterbacks standing nearby. Weston McHale. A tall, wide-eyed kid who hadn't come remotely close to seeing the field all season.
"Put him in."
His voice cut across the practice field.
Several heads turned immediately.
Coach Nixon folded his arms across his chest. His expression hardened.
"What?"
Zane didn't hesitate.
"Put him in."
He pointed again.
"Anything's better than that."
Coach Nixon stared at him.
"Freshman wide receivers don't tell me what to do."
Zane shrugged.
"Anything is better than a quarterback who clearly can't fucking throw."
The words hit like gasoline on an open flame.
Ajani immediately turned.
"What the fuck you say?"
He began walking toward Zane.
The entire offense went silent.
Zane didn't back away. Instead, he stepped forward. The two met chest-to-chest in the middle of practice.
Months of frustration condensed into a single moment.
"Back down, bitch" Zane said.
His voice was low but stern, laced with something fueled by months of frustrations finally boiling over.
"A quarterback who throws four interceptions in a game multiple times got no business stepping to me."
Ajani's eyes flashed.
Players from both sides of the ball started drifting closer. Johntay arrived at Zane's shoulder first, placing a hand against his chest.
Ajani laughed bitterly.
"You know why I we waste so many fucking attempts?"
He pointed directly at Zane.
"Maybe because my 'star wide receiver'-"
He made exaggerated air quotes with his fingers.
"-doesn't get open."
Several players audibly reacted. Ajani wasn't finished.
"Maybe if you stopped giving up on routes every time something don't go your way-"
Zane scoffed loudly. The sound dripped with disbelief.
"Maybe you should stop throwing suicide balls."
The words came instantly.
"Maybe stop trying to take your receivers' heads off because you can't read a defense."
Ajani surged forward. Johntay tightened his grip. Several players moved between them.
Voices began overlapping.
Then Coach Brown arrived.
"Y'all motherfuckers done or are y'all finished?"
The head coach physically stepped between the two players before things escalated further.
His eyes immediately locked onto Zane.
"Cool off."
Zane was breathing heavily now. His chest rose and fell beneath his practice jersey. The anger he had been carrying all season finally had somewhere to go. Before anyone could stop him, he launched his helmet.
The equipment smashed into the turf with a violent bounce.
"I'm tired of being the only one who wants to fucking win!"
The words echoed across the field.
Coach Brown's expression didn't change. If anything, it became sterner.
"Go cool off."
Zane locked eyes with him. For a moment, he considered arguing. Considered saying everything he'd been thinking for weeks. Instead, his gaze shifted past Coach Brown toward Ajani, who was still glaring from behind the crowd.
Zane shook his head.
Without another word, he turned and began walking toward the training facility.
No one stopped him.
Behind him, practice eventually resumed.
@
(5:56) Abram Murray, 38-yard field goal [CUSE 0 - 3 CAL]
(7:58) Yasin Willis, 14-yard run (Jaydn Oh kick) [CUSE 7 - 34 CAL]