Chapter 94 Two Hours, Both Directions

Chapter 94 Two Hours, Both Directions
Elias POV
I take the train to Northfield for the first time on a Saturday in late June, three weeks before the trial ends, with a bag packed for one night and a vague nervousness I do not examine too closely.
Noah meets me at the station looking different than he does on a screen, sun-browned from outdoor sessions, leaner somehow, the particular fitness of someone training at a level that asks more of the body than university football ever did.
He hugs me on the platform without hesitation, in front of commuters and a family waiting for a different train, and something in my chest unclenches that I had not realized was clenched.
"You look different," I say into his shoulder.
"Good different or bad different?"
"Just different. New."
"Six weeks does that," he says. "To both of us, probably."

His flat is smaller than ours will be, a basic two-bedroom shared with the two trialists he has mentioned on calls, Sam and Dele, both of whom greet me with the specific warmth of people who have clearly heard a great deal about me already.
"So you're the one who taught him the scared-doesn't-vote thing," Sam says, by way of introduction.
I look at Noah. "You told them that?"
"It came up," Noah says, slightly sheepish.
"It comes up a lot, actually," Dele says. "He quotes you more than you'd think."
I file that away to enjoy properly later, when I am not standing in front of him while he goes faintly pink.

We spend the afternoon walking the town near the training ground, an ordinary high street with a park where he shows me the bench he sits on some evenings to call me, which I did not know existed until he points to it.
"This bench?" I say.
"This exact bench. I've sat here for probably eleven of our calls."
"You never mentioned a bench."
"It didn't seem like the kind of detail that needed mentioning," he says. "It's just where I go."
I look at the bench properly now, ordinary green-painted wood, slightly worn, facing a duck pond that probably looks unremarkable to everyone except the two of us standing here right now.
"I like knowing it exists," I say. "Even if it didn't need mentioning."

That evening, after Sam and Dele have tactfully disappeared to the cinema, we sit on the small balcony of the flat with the last of the daylight going long and gold across the rooftops.
"Three more weeks," he says.
"Three more weeks," I agree. "Has it gone fast or slow?"
He thinks about it properly, the way he thinks about most things now. "Both," he says. "The days are long. The weeks aren't."
"That tracks with everything else this year."
"Does it?"
"Most of the hard days were long," I say. "Most of the good months went fast."
He looks at me for a long moment in the fading light. "I've missed this," he says. "Not the calls. This. Actually being in the same room."
"I know," I say. "Me too. We'll get the room back soon enough."
"Forty-one Greaves Street," he says, like a small private promise.
"Forty-one Greaves Street," I echo.
We stay on the balcony until the rooftops go fully dark, not saying much else, the kind of evening that does not need filling.

Sunday morning, before my train back, we walk to the bakery he has declared the best one on the high street.
"Did you actually try every bakery here?" I ask, watching him order with the easy familiarity of a regular.
"There are only two," he says. "It wasn't a difficult investigation."
"Still counts as thorough."
"I like being thorough about things that matter," he says, which could mean bakeries or could mean considerably more, and I decide not to ask which.
We eat on a low wall outside, the morning still cool, the town beginning its Sunday routine around us, dog walkers and a man setting up a small market stall two doors down.
"I'll miss this place," I say, somewhat to my own surprise. "It became real to me this weekend in a way it wasn't before. It was just a word on a map. Now it has a bench and a bakery and your flatmates and a duck pond."
"It'll still exist after I leave," he says. "We could come back sometime. Just to see it."
"I'd like that," I say.

He walks me to the station an hour later. On the platform, waiting for the train, he tucks a strand of hair behind my ear in a gesture so unguarded that I nearly miss it happening.
"Text me when you're home," he says.
"I always do."
"I know. I still like asking."
The train arrives. I board, find a window seat, and watch him on the platform getting smaller as we pull away, his hand raised in something between a wave and a salute, equal parts ridiculous and entirely him.
Twenty minutes in I text him: Already miss the bench.
His reply comes fast: The bench misses you too. It told me so directly.
I laugh out loud in a quiet train carriage, earning a look from the woman across the aisle, and I do not care even slightly.

I replaying the small things. The way Sam and Dele already speak about me like I am a fixture rather than a guest. The way Noah said this exact bench like it was a confession. Three weeks left, and then no more counting down. Just the ordinary business of being in the same place.
Three weeks left, and then no more counting down. Just the ordinary business of being in the same place, for good.
I fall asleep that night thinking about a bench by a duck pond, a bakery with exactly two competitors, and how strange it is that a place I had never once visited before this weekend now has a shape in my memory clear enough to miss.