Harbinger Of Glory

Neither of them paid much attention to the passing days while in the comfort of the other.

Then one morning, they woke up, and it was already time to go.

With the airport drop-off lanes crowded as ever, the car had barely stopped before someone behind them gave an impatient tap of the horn, but that didn’t bother them.

Leo’s bag was already in the boot.

His flight was boarding in a little over an hour, and everything that needed doing had been done.

Still, neither seemed in much of a rush to open the door.

Leo turned towards her.

”See you soon,” he said as Vittoria looked back at him.

There was a smile there, but it wasn’t quite reaching her eyes.

”Gosh, I feel so reluctant. How about I work for the both of us?” she joked, which earned a laugh from Leo.

”Call me when you land,” Vittoria finally said with a sigh.

”I will.”

She nodded once, and then she leaned over and wrapped her arms around him.

Leo hugged her back, and for a moment neither made any effort to let go.

Around their car, travellers hurried past with suitcases rattling over the pavement as announcements drifted faintly from the terminal entrance, and somewhere behind them another horn sounded.

Eventually, Vittoria pulled back first.

”Go,” she said softly. ”You’re going to miss your flight.”

”I’ve still got time.”

”Leo.”

He laughed.

”Alright, alright.”

He pushed the door open and stepped out onto the pavement.

The driver was already at the rear of the vehicle, lifting his bag from the boot.

Leo took it, thanked him, and then looked back through the open door where Vittoria was still watching him.

He raised a hand and waved, and she did the same.

A second later, the door closed as the car pulled away from the curb and merged into the slow-moving airport traffic.

Leo stood there for a moment, bag in hand, watching it disappear between a taxi and a shuttle bus before it finally turned a corner and was gone.

Only then did he adjust the strap on his shoulder and make his way towards the terminal.

The city of Manchester was exactly as he’d left it.

The same traffic.

The same grey skies threatening rain without fully committing to it.

The same people hurrying past with places to be.

Leo got home, unpacked, put a load of washing on, and spent ten minutes trying to remember why he’d left a half-empty cereal box on top of the fridge before giving up on the mystery entirely.

The next morning, he was back at the training ground.

And just like that, his little holiday was over.

Training returned first, and so did the video session.

This was the practice the players began to live with.

The season was close enough now that everyone could feel it, and so Dawson had pushed the intensity up another level, but not recklessly.

Every hard session seemed to come attached to a recovery day or lighter workload somewhere else.

There was a logic to it all.

Three days on, and then a day off.

Then back to work again.

While all this went on, Leo heard about Dortmund on a Tuesday afternoon.

A video session had just ended when Xavier, together with Dawson, caught him in the corridor.

The former of the two let Leo know about an inquiry from the German club about him, which Xavier let Leo know that they had declined, but they were still obligated to let him know.

Leo listened for some time and then walked away, saying they’d done the right thing, and that was very reassuring to Xavier and Dawson because that was an offer most players would take without question, even if they had just committed to a club.

Eventually, football started finding its way into every conversation in the town of Wigan.

A trip to the shops became a discussion about formations.

A stop at the petrol station somehow turned into an argument about who should start up front on opening day, and local papers couldn’t get enough of it.

Neither could the radio stations.

All over talk shows, questions like ”who would score Wigan’s first goal in the Premier League” were being asked, as well as predictions for where Wigan would end in that season.

Amidst all this, Leo was asleep on his couch when the doorbell rang.

For a second, he stared at the ceiling, trying to remember why he was on the couch instead of in bed.

Then it rang again.

He pushed himself upright and walked to the door, where four large boxes sat outside in the corridor.

Each carried the Skechers logo across the side, simple and understated, the same branding he’d been seeing more and more since the partnership had started.

Leo brought them inside one by one and stacked them beside the coffee table before fishing his phone out of the cushions.

On it sat a delivery notification at the top of the screen.

Beneath it was a message from Noah.

A voice note, specifically.

Leo already had a pretty good idea what expression Noah had been wearing when he’d recorded it.

That suspicion was confirmed the moment he pressed play.

It seems like your partner is really paying attention to you. They’ve been watching the pre-season, and they’re very happy with what they’re seeing, and they want you to know that. There are twelve boots in those boxes with various colourways, split across the first half of the season. Wear them well and call me if anything needs adjusting.

After that, Leo set the phone down and looked at the boxes.

He opened the first one and worked through it methodically, the boots coming out in their individual wrappings, each pair sitting in the colourways he recognised from the initial delivery and several he hadn’t seen yet, new additions that Skechers had developed in the couple of months since the deal was signed.

He sat with them spread across the living room floor for a moment, which was an objectively strange thing to be looking at, and then he began collecting them back into their boxes and dragged them one at a time down the hallway to the storage room, stacking them against the wall in the order he intended to rotate through them.

He closed the storage room door and stood in the hallway.

His mind couldn’t help but drift towards the first match of the season, which, as it stood, was 6 days away.

After standing there a moment longer, he went back to the couch and let himself drift into slumberland again.