Leo heard the words, and for a mont, he went quiet.
"I feel the sa," he said. "But we shouldn’t rush into sothing we’re not ready for just because it’s hard right now."
She was quiet on her end, and he could tell she was nodding even though he couldn’t see it.
"Okay. Let’s do this," Leo said, causing Vittoria’s ears to perk up.
"Three months," he said.
"If you still feel the sa after three months, and it’s not just the distance talking, then we try it. Okay?"
The tone of her voice changed imdiately, the warmth returning.
"That’s not a bad suggestion," she said.
But after that, she was off.
She had been handed the opening and intended to walk through it fully, so she even began listing living terms.
She wanted them sleeping in the sa bed.
She wanted a cat, and apparently she had already nad the cat.
"Whisker von Pounce," she said with a tinge of mischief in her voice
Leo stared at the phone.
"That’s the na?" Leo questioned genuinely.
"Don’t judge him."
"Him?"
"Of course, him."
"Okay, princess. We can do all of that," Leo said with a laugh and for a mont after that, all he heard was her breathing.
"Thank you," she said suddenly after a while.
"For accommodating . I know I can be troubleso sotis!"
"You’re not Tori. And even if you are, you are my trouble," Leo said, and that caught Vittoria a bit off guard as she went quiet for a second.
"What a flirt," she said softly, but Leo could feel the shy tone in her voice.
"You were so ek before."
"I couldn’t scare you away before I had you."
"I’m going to end this call," she said, "before I book a flight for tomorrow morning."
"That wouldn’t be bad," Leo said as Vittoria’s laugh ca through again.
"Goodbye, Leo."
"Goodbye, princess!"
He held the phone after the call ended and looked at it for a mont, then looked at the screen for a second before dropping the phone onto the cushion beside him.
Suddenly, the apartnt was quiet again.
"Now that I think about it, it wouldn’t be so bad," Leo said as he stretched, rolled his shoulders, and let his eyes wander around the living room until they landed on the TV unit.
The PS5 sat exactly where he’d left it.
Untouched.
Neglected.
Even abandoned.
Leo nodded slowly.
"Yeah," he said.
"I’ve been a bad friend."
He got up, grabbed the controller, and pressed the button and a second later, the startup sound of the PS5 filled the apartnt.
.....
The next morning saw Leo strain a bit as he carried the bin stroller down to the front of his complex.
He dropped the bag in and turned back, but before he could go, he noticed the mail slot beside the main entrance, which he had walked past enough tis to have stopped seeing it.
He opened it and inside was a small stack of envelopes.
He collected them and tucked them under his arm before going back inside.
Once he got there, he looked at them properly for the first ti and then made a sound that was sowhere between a laugh and a sigh.
"Sofia used to do this," he said to the envelopes.
He stood for a mont thinking about why he hadn’t just kept the mail address at Sofia’s so she could help him deal with stuff like this.
He set them on the kitchen counter and went through them standing up.
The first was standard enough.
A letter from his bank about a service update that he didn’t need to action.
The second, though, stopped him.
Inside was a letter about investnt opportunities.
Leo skimd the first page, then the second, before realising the entire thing had been written for people with far more money than he still felt he had.
Unfortunately, the numbers suggested otherwise.
He read it twice, then he set it down.
"It’s never too early," he said quietly, thinking about it properly.
The idea of money working while he worked wasn’t sothing he’d had the luxury of thinking about before this year, and now here was a letter treating it as a given.
He picked it back up and set it to one side.
"I should talk to Noah first," he said to himself, and moved on.
The third envelope was thinner than the others, and as he opened it, all he saw was a single blue page.
A payslip, and at the top was his na, his employee number as well as the club na.
And before he’d finished reading the rest of it, his eyes went to the number at the bottom right corner.
£225,000.
That was what he had gotten, after tax, for the past month.
That ant that he’d paid 100,000 pounds in taxes.
The deductions were still eye-watering, but not quite as bad as so of the older players had warned him.
It seed that what Noah had put in place- while Leo didn’t really focus on it- had done its job.
But that wasn’t what Leo was thinking about.
He stood at the counter and looked at the number and said nothing for a long ti.
Then he pulled out the stool and sat down as all that those numbers represented ca to him.
It was his results.
What he’d gotten as a result of his hard work.
He bowed his head while sis shoulders rose and fell with a breath that was slower than the ones before it.
He looked at the number again, and it hadn’t changed.
His thoughts began to run wild, but his phone set off a mont later, bringing him to himself.
It was a number he didn’t have saved but recognised from the previous call, and he cleared his throat once before answering.
"Mr Calderon," the voice said.
"Just calling to confirm whether you’re still planning to co in today to collect your license."
"Yeah," Leo said, and his voice ca out slightly uneven in the way voices do when they’ve been sowhere close to the surface for a mont.
He pressed the back of his hand against his eye briefly.
"I’ll be in," he said. "Give an hour."
He ended the call and set the phone down beside the payslip and sat in his kitchen in the quiet of a Sunday morning, letting everything be for a while!
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