Chapter 85: The Trial
Elias POV
The formal letter from Northfield Athletic arrives by post on a Monday, three days after the championship, addressed to Noah's flat and signed by someone with a title I do not fully understand, Head of Player Development, which sounds important in the way titles with the word development in them usually are.
Noah reads it twice at the kitchen table while I make coffee.
"Well?" I ask.
"They want me there the second week of June," he says. "Six weeks. Accommodation provided. A small stipend."
He looks up.
"It's real. Properly real. Not just a conversation anymore."
"How does it feel?" I ask. "Now that it's on paper."
He thinks about it for a moment.
"Heavier," he says.
"In a good way."
"Like something I can actually hold instead of just imagine."
I sit down across from him.
"There are things we need to sort out."
"Practical things."
"I know."
"The apartment. We were going to start looking in spring for a place that starts in summer. If you're in Northfield for six weeks of that summer—"
"We sort it before I go," he says immediately.
"Or we sort it together over a weekend when I'm back."
"I'm not disappearing on the apartment plan, Elias."
"I know you're not."
"I'm just naming the logistics."
"Name them," he says.
"I want to actually plan this properly, not just feel good about it in the abstract."
\---
We spend the next hour with a notebook between us, the kind of conversation that is unglamorous and necessary and which I find, somewhat to my own surprise, deeply satisfying.
Dates.
The two-hour train journey mapped against my own summer schedule.
The mentorship programme calendar.
The postgraduate application deadline I am still circling without committing to.
"I could come down every second weekend," I say.
"If that works for your trial schedule."
"It works."
"Sundays are usually light."
"And apartment hunting?"
"We do it in May."
"Before you go."
"Lock something in."
"Agreed."
I look at him.
"You're being very decisive about this."
He smiles.
"I decided something a while ago."
"I'm not going to let the good things in my life happen to me passively anymore."
"I'm going to actually build them."
Something settles in my chest when he says it.
September Noah would have waited.
Current Noah is making plans.
There is a difference between hoping for a future and preparing for one.
This version of him finally understands that.
\---
That evening we tell Ivy everything.
She is sitting cross-legged on her bed with her laptop open before we have even finished explaining.
"Six weeks," she says.
"That's not nothing."
"It's not nothing," I agree.
"It's also not a crisis."
"We've planned around it properly."
"You've planned a relationship logistics calendar," she says, delighted.
"We have."
"It's very romantic, actually."
"It really is," she says.
"And I think that might be the most you thing I've ever heard."
"A romance built on a shared notebook."
I laugh.
"That is exactly what it is."
"I'm making a spreadsheet," she announces.
"For the move."
"Dates."
"Costs."
"What needs to happen when."
"You two are emotionally competent but logistically chaotic and I refuse to watch this become a crisis in July."
"We are not logistically chaotic," Noah says.
"You once forgot you had a match because you were thinking about Elias."
"That was one time."
"Once is enough to establish a pattern," Ivy says serenely.
Then she pauses.
"Now."
"Tell me everything about the trial letter."
"I want details."
\---
Noah signs the acceptance letter that night at my desk with my pen while I watch from the bed.
"This is it," he says, capping the pen.
"This is it," I agree.
He folds the letter carefully and slides it into the envelope addressed back to Northfield.
"I need to post this tomorrow."
"Before I can change my mind."
"Are you going to change your mind?"
"No."
"But I'd rather not give myself the option to find out."
\---
The next morning we walk to the post box on the corner before either of us has had breakfast.
The envelope is sealed and stamped.
Noah holds it like something that might still change its mind.
"Are you sure?" I ask.
"I know."
"Once it goes in, that's it."
"No backing out."
He looks at the post box.
Then at me.
"I have never been more sure of anything that also terrifies me this much."
"That's a very specific kind of sure."
"It's the only kind worth having."
He posts the letter before either of us can say anything else.
The metallic sound it makes dropping inside feels strangely final.
"It's posted," I say.
"Officially."
"No backing out now."
"No backing out," he agrees.
Then he reaches for my hand.
He doesn't let go for the rest of the walk home.
"Can I tell you something?" I ask.
"Always."
"I'm proud of you."
"Not for the trial."
"For deciding to actually want something for yourself and then doing the work to go get it instead of waiting to see if it would happen to you."
He is quiet for a moment.
"That means more than you probably realise," he says softly.
When we get back to the flat, Ivy is sprawled across my bed with her laptop already open.
She looks up.
"Good," she says.
"Now that you've officially changed the trajectory of your lives, I've started researching moving companies."