I complain about using pre-fab code as it's generally too much work to reverse-engineer and tweak but that's what I was doing right here. Came up with a straight CSS/jQuery solution in like 30 minutes versus the hours I was working on the previous code. Plus I can expand with GSAP if need be but works great just like this if anyone else is looking for the same thing (and can add in GSAP)
*I'll add to this CodePen if I end up infusing some GSAP though to keep it relevant to the community
See the Pen ExJOvga by ilrobinson (@ilrobinson) on CodePen