Chapter 75: Chapter 74: Preparation to Norway
Rafi did not send a player anywhere to be polite, and he did not pad a message to make Garcia feel better about the money already spent on flights.
If he said Jay was ready enough, that meant ready enough, no more and no less. Garcia had learned to trust the gap Rafi always left between what a player could do and what a player had actually proven.
Another message arrived twenty minutes later, this one from Jay.
Jay: should i bring both pairs of boots or just the new ones. also do you know if the airport thing is like 2 hours before or 3
Garcia looked at the screen for a second before answering.
Garcia: Both pairs. Airport 3 hours, not 2, always. Landing prep tomorrow, not the day itself.
Jay: ok. cheers
Nothing about the club. Nothing about expectations, or the fact that in four weeks a stranger in a tracksuit would decide whether the last two years of Jay’s life had been worth anything.
Just boots and an airport window, the two smallest pieces of a very large thing, because those were the pieces a man could still control while the rest of it sat completely out of his hands.
Garcia did not point that out to him. He just answered the question and let Jay have the boots.
His father found the debt page before lunch, the notebook still open where Garcia had left it on the kitchen table while he went looking for the stapler.
His father did not raise his voice about it.
He asked, plainly, how much of the family’s money had gone into G11 by now, and Garcia told him the number without softening it. Three thousand.
His father went quiet for a moment, the kind of quiet that was doing arithmetic behind it, then asked whether Garcia had thought through what happened if this one did not work out.
Garcia did not walk him through representation agreements or evaluation periods or what a written decision from a Norwegian club would or would not mean.
He only said the flights were already booked, the room already paid, and that he understood exactly what he was risking by sending it.
His father did not tell him not to send it. He nodded once and went back to his tea.
His mother asked different questions entirely.
She wanted to know if Jay was travelling on his own. She wanted to know if someone would be waiting for him when he landed, because a boy standing alone in an airport in a country he had never seen sounded to her like the worst part of the whole plan.
She asked whether his mother knew, properly knew, not a version smoothed down to sound less frightening. She asked if he had eaten anything today, as though that mattered as much as any document in the file.
Garcia answered what he could. Yes, alone. Yes, someone from the club would meet him at arrivals, confirmed twice. Yes, his mother knew, or would know by the end of today. He did not know about the eating.
His mother’s face did not settle after that, and Garcia understood why.
She was not asking about logistics. She was asking about a boy whose mother was in a hospital bed while her son packed a bag for another country, and no document on Garcia’s desk had anything to say about that.
By early afternoon the house had gone quiet again, and Garcia sat back down to finish it.
He attached the files one at a time, in order, checking each name against the passport scan before it went into the email. Jay Cole. Jay Cole. Jay Cole.
He checked the flight date against the accommodation confirmation a final time, arrival matching the first night booked, no gap and no overlap, then checked it again anyway, because a mistake here was not the kind you fixed with an apology.
He read the email through once, top to bottom, then sent it.
The reply came back two hours later, shorter than the file he had sent and far less warm than two months of chasing signatures had earned.
Confirmed. Jay Cole cleared for one-month evaluation period, commencing as scheduled. Accommodation and arrival contact confirmed as previously advised. Training access begins day following arrival. Please ensure player reports to reception with passport and this confirmation on arrival.
That was all it said. No welcome, no encouragement, nothing that treated the moment as anything other than administration.
Garcia read it twice and found he preferred it that way. A club that got sentimental about a trialist before he had trained a single session was not a club paying proper attention.
The window opened while he was still looking at the confirmation.
[SIDE MISSION GENERATED]
Mission: Send Jay Cole Across the Border
Objective: Support Jay Cole through his one-month first-team evaluation in Norway.
Conditions: — Jay must arrive with complete travel and trial documents. — Maintain player readiness during the evaluation period. — Secure a written decision from the club before the end of the trial. — Do not treat the evaluation as a contract or registration.
Reward: — Skill Points +700 — Client Management SP +150 — Network SP +50 — Reputation +10
Failure Penalty: — Jay Cole’s trust decreases. — G11’s international credibility decreases.
Garcia read it once, top to bottom, the way he read every mission now.
He did not smile at the numbers. Seven hundred skill points meant nothing while Jay was still in a country he had never visited, waiting on a stranger to meet him at a gate.
The mission would not sit in the airport with him, and it would not run alongside him at whatever pace the Norwegian club decided to test him at.
He closed the window and pulled the accommodation email back toward him to check it one more time.
(Jay POV)
The ward smelled the way it always did — clean in a way that felt used up, the kind of clean that came from wiping the same surfaces too many times a day.
Hard white light. Machines against the wall making their small, patient sounds. A plastic cup of water sat sweating on the tray table, untouched since breakfast.
Jay sat in the chair pulled close to the bed, his jacket folded across his lap, his passport a hard shape inside the inner pocket.
His mum’s hand found his fingers before he had finished sitting down.
He told her about Norway the way he had practised it in the car, small first, the parts that could not scare her leading, the rest tucked in behind.
A month. Training with the first team. Not signed, not yet, just a chance to show them something. He would call. He would be back before she knew it.
He made it sound smaller than it was, because the real size of it would not fit in this room without taking up all the air.
Her hand tightened around his fingers on the word month.
She did not say anything for a second.
Her eyes went to his jacket, to the shape she already knew was his passport, and something crossed her face that she tried to turn into a smile before he could see all of it.
She wanted to look happy for him. Jay watched her want it, watched the effort of it, and understood she was doing the same thing he was — making something enormous sound small enough to survive in this room.
Norway sat there anyway, bigger than either of them could make it.
He reached over and adjusted the edge of her blanket, mostly so his hands had somewhere to go.
Then he checked his jacket pocket, just to feel the passport was still there, and regretted it the second he saw her notice.
She asked the practical things, because that was easier for both of them than the other things.
What time the flight was. Who was meeting him when he landed. When he would call, and whether it would be a proper call, not just a text with a thumbs up. When he thought he would be back.
He answered all of it straight, no jokes, keeping his voice level the way he had been keeping it level for weeks now, because if he let it slip even a little, hers would slip further, and neither of them could afford that today.
She told him to go. Not because she wanted him gone, and they both knew that.
Because staying, watching him orbit this room and this city and every closed door in it, had been costing him more than she was willing to let it keep costing.
He stood when the nurse put her head round the door. He kissed the top of her head, told her he loved her, and did not let his voice catch on any of it.
He walked out into the corridor with the passport a hard shape against his ribs.
The ward door settled shut behind him with a soft, ordinary click, no different from any other door in that hospital.
Only then did he let his face drop.
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