There’s a pass in the air, hanging delectably in crystalline, 1080p goodness. Its arc curves so perfectly that for a moment your mind aches at the geometric beauty of a Hail Mary pass in full-on flight. The scene around you seems to stop. The hand-numbingly cold beer wrapped in your mits, the palm-full of perfectly-too-salty potato chips that you just foolishly ham-fisted into you mouth in a stress eating moment of weakness, your friends around you howling at the midday sun like a pack of stoned werewolves: it all freezes as you watch the pass of your onfield sworn enemies head deep towards the end zone.

“Oooohhhhhaaaarrrrrrgggghhhh!?!?!?”

A collective battle cry ramps up amongst your group of tailgating fans, spinning to life like the blades of a rusty bomber plane that suddenly sputters to a wounded silence.

You can do nothing but watch your beloved Nebraska Cornhuskers give up a brutally horrendous last second touchdown to lose the game. They have just lost on a Hail Mary to a team you should have beaten. To a team you did beat. For fifty nine minutes and fifty nine seconds, anyway.

Forget getting the wind taken out of your sails, losing on a play like this is like ripping off the ship’s mast and then crashing your boat into an oil rig. That explodes; a miracle play that feels anything but holy.

You stumble back into your seat, the folding kind with the cup holders that are always full of two empty beer cans and that used to have a bag somewhere but now you carry slung over a shoulder like a lumberjack toting an axe.

You turn to your friend Nick. He’s also sitting in a recently stumbled-into chair, his eyes hub-capping to such great size they seem ready to encompass his entire face.

“The…fuck…?”

He can muster little more than profane rhetorical questions.

You try in vain to chase down the bitter shock that seems to be clinging to your tongue but the beer is empty, swilled down in the hazy fog of a stunned loss, you tilt the drops of dregs way back, trying to milk the remaining moisture.

Ryan stumbles up, handing you another cold one. He tries to say something, but what comes out is a half-mumbled garble. He shrugs his shoulders and wanders off to the edge of the plastic table to gnaw on some carrots and rapidly-staling ranch.

Alyssa turns to you from her chair near the front of the tailgate, brown curls swinging with her head’s rotation. “We just lost. On a Hail Mary? To those guys? Like that?” Her disgust is so palpable and thick that she could chew it like a second plateful from the taco bar tailgate buffet.

She’s stating the obvious, but it bears repeating. The wildfire of the party, once seemingly untouchable, has been thoroughly doused.

When the Huskers lose in Nebraska: things are not okay.

Even now, 4 lengthy presidential stays at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave removed from national prominence, Saturdays are still holy days of obligation and when the Huskers don’t hold up there end of the bargain, the flock exits the pews in a foul mood.

The party is still in a state of shock, with the pent-up frustration that is so tumultuously wedded to college football fanbases across the country permeating from the beer pong table to the crew milling around the entrance to the RV, when two things happen at the exact same time:

1) you notice that Tim is missing from the group. You last saw him in a pitched battle for tippy cup supremacy sometime right before the start of the 4th quarter, and…

2) A new girl that you’ve never seen before seems to materialize out of the crowd and catches your eye. She’s stunning. Her school-colored lips alluringly curved into a small half-smile; crescent moon smirk that staggers the breath in your chest, stumbling inhalation that threatens to ricochet out in a clumsy cough the moment her eyes catch yours in passing. Her hair cascades down to her bare shoulders, gently waterfalling blonde swaths of color onto her gently tanned skin.

Your mouth is suddenly dry, even though you just took a drink. You become concerned that there may not be enough keg-beer refills in the world to defeat this onrushing cottonmouth. Almost involuntarily you take a step towards her, barely noticing that Dave has stepped up next to you.

“Hey, man. Have you seen Tim?” His question pulls back the walls tunneling your vision. “He was super fucked up. Like A&M Johnny Manziel drunk. And I haven’t seen him since the start of the 4th quarter.”

“Damn it. Me neither.” You pull your cellphone out and dial Tim’s number. It goes straight to voicemail.

You hold it out to show Dave.

“I hate the cell service on game days in this town. Every person in the entire state jammed into a 10-block radius and Sprint can’t keep their shit together. He’s probably fine. Just can’t get signal or something.”

“I don’t know, man. I think I might go check out a couple of his old tailgate spots and make sure he’s alright. You down to help me look?” Dave seems genuinely worried.

You look up to see the mysterious girl starting to turn with her friend to leave the party.