Chapter 70: Offers

CALEB

Halifax called on Monday afternoon, Not scout this time. The actual development director. Which made the whole thing feel immediately more real.

I was halfway through folding laundry when my phone lit up on the couch cushion. I answered on the third ring.

"Caleb. Good to finally catch you."

"Yeah. Sorry. Things have been busy."

"I can imagine." A short pause. "We wanted to talk timelines."

I leaned back against the couch and stopped folding.

"Okay," I said.

"We know you have graduation coming up. We know there are family considerations. But we would ideally like you in Halifax by July."

He kept talking after that. Training schedule. Housing options. Development structure. Travel possibilities depending on placement. Every answer made the opportunity sound larger and more permanent. I listened carefully because it mattered and pretending otherwise would have been stupid.

"You still there?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said. "What does the summer schedule look like?"

We went another fifteen minutes. By the end my head hurt from trying to hold all of it at once.

"We are excited about you, Caleb," the director said before hanging up. "You have real potential here."

The call ended.

The apartment went quiet.

I sat on the couch with the phone in my hand and the laundry still unfolded beside me and the window half fogged from the cold outside.

My phone buzzed.

Mia: How bad is your overthinking level today

I typed back. Advanced.

Mia: Concerning

Caleb: Halifax called

The typing bubble appeared immediately.

Mia: Oh

Caleb: Yeah

Mia: You okay

Caleb: Not really

A few seconds.

Mia: Come over tonight

I tried working out after that. Could not focus. Tried watching film. Retained nothing. Eventually I gave up and drove to her apartment earlier than I probably should have.

Jamie opened the door holding a plate of toast.

"You look emotionally expensive today," he said.

"Good evening," I said.

He stepped aside. "They are in the kitchen. Mom made soup because apparently everybody here is dying emotionally."

The apartment smelled like garlic and broth. Mia was at the table with textbooks open in front of her. Her mother was at the stove stirring something slowly.

Her mother looked up first. "There he is."

"You sound disappointed," I said.

"You tracked snow inside already."

Fair.

Mia looked up from her notes and her expression shifted the moment she saw my face.

"You talked to them," she said.

"Yeah," I said.

Her mother glanced between us once. "I am going to pretend I suddenly remembered laundry."

"There is no laundry left," Mia said.

"I will create some."

She disappeared down the hallway anyway.

Mia closed her textbook. "How bad."

I sat down across from her. "July."

She nodded once like she had already expected that answer. "They want confirmation soon."

"Basically."

Silence settled between us. Not uncomfortable. Just careful.

"They kept talking about opportunity," I said. "Structure. Potential."

"How did it feel hearing it," she said.

"Exciting," I said. "And then terrible immediately after."

"That makes sense," she said.

"I do not want it to make sense."

"Life ignored your preferences on that one."

I exhaled. "I hate that this is becoming real."

"It was always real," she said.

"I know."

That was the problem and we both knew it and neither of us said so out loud.

Mia reached across the table and took my hand. No speech attached. Just steady pressure and her eyes on mine.

"You do not have to figure out your entire future tonight," she said.

"It feels like I do," I said.

"You are allowed to take a second before changing your whole life," she said.

From the hallway Jamie shouted, "ARE WE STILL GETTING SOUP OR IS THIS A SADNESS MEETING."

Mia did not turn around. "Five minutes."

"I am starving."

"You ate toast ten minutes ago."

"That was emotionally separate."

Something loosened in my chest enough that I actually laughed. Short and real. Mia watched it happen and smiled, small and genuine.

"There," she said. "You look human again."

"Debatable," I said.

She squeezed my hand once before letting go and stood to get the soup bowls from the cabinet. Her mother reappeared from the hallway with no laundry and sat back down at the table like she had never left, which she probably had not.

Jamie came in and dropped into the chair beside me and put his empty toast plate in front of him expectantly.

"So," he said. "Halifax."

"Jamie," Mia said from the counter.

"What. We are all thinking it."

"We are not discussing it over soup," she said.

"We are absolutely discussing it over soup," he said.

Her mother set a bowl in front of me and sat down and picked up her spoon. "Jamie," she said quietly.

He stopped.

That was the end of that.

The kitchen settled into the ordinary sounds of four people eating. Spoons, the stove ticking, snow against the window. Mia sat across from me and did not look at me like I was a problem to be solved. She looked at me the way she always did, directly and without performance.

Her mother asked me about the game on Friday. I answered. Jamie contributed an opinion nobody asked for about defensive zone coverage and somehow that turned into a ten minute argument between him and Mia about a game she claimed he had misread and he claimed she had not watched properly.

I sat there and ate my soup and let the noise of the apartment run around me.

By the time the bowls were empty the future still existed and July was still coming and none of the actual decisions had been made.

But sitting in that kitchen with snow against the glass and Jamie still arguing his case and Mia halfway laughing despite herself, it felt like something that could be survived.

That was enough for tonight.