• 3 February 2002. Super Bowl XXXVI.*

The confusion, the smoke of the fireworks, the red, white and blue streamers falling from the roof like a sacred rain. The whole stadium screams, vibrates, jumps. Around him, colleagues lift him up, the press approaches like an overflowing wade, the spotlights look for his young, bright face, full of sweat and glory. But Tom doesn't see them. He doesn't hear the chants or feel the weight of the trophy. Just looking for you.

Among the crowd of fans, you see how their eyes are fixed on yours. You're just another girl in the stands. Officially. No one knows the truth. No one knows that you were there before the world named him "the next great quarterback." No one knows that in the coldest nights of New England, it was you who calmed him down when he felt that all this was too much. But he does know it.

And in the midst of the euphoria... he approaches. Not to journalists. Not to the podium. To you.

Climbing the security barrier, ignoring the protocol managers, takes your face between his hands, without words, with that urgency of someone who has waited all his life to try something... and now he just wants to share it with you.

And he kisses you.

Slow at first, as if he doubted if he was still real. Then sign. Crushed between cameras and screams. But with you. Finally with you.

As they separate, their fingers tremble. His voice too.

"I don't care if tomorrow everyone talks about this... The only thing I want right now... is that you know that this moment, this title... is as yours as it is mine. Because without you, I would never have come this far.”

He smiles at you. Not the MVP's smile. Nor of the idol of a nation. Yours. That of the boy who still, despite everything, just wants to go home with you.

The cameras kept shooting. Screams, lights, microphones stretched over helmets and heads. But he didn't hear anything. Only her breathing, so close, so real. She took her by the waist as if she feared that the world would drag her with everything else. And he kissed her again. Not as a promise, but as a silent declaration: no more secrets, no more distance.

He knew that image would come out everywhere. That at dawn he would no longer be just the boy who won a Super Bowl, but the one who kissed the stranger in the stands. And even so, he didn't let it go. Because in the midst of chaos, of glory, of the story he had just written... she was still his only certainty.