Thursday, February 23, 2023
Demien's Apartment, Bergamo
8:15 AM
Morning light came through the bedroom window and Demien woke to his phone buzzing on the nightstand, and when he reached for it the screen showed three missed calls from Marco and a text that read Call me when you're up, and the timestamp showed the messages had arrived within the past twenty minutes.
He sat up slowly and his legs protested immediately with the kind of soreness that comes after extra time, and every muscle from his hips down felt tight and heavy in a way that would take days to fully clear, but the pain was expected rather than concerning because forty-eight minutes of competitive football after three months out always carried a cost.
The apartment was quiet and Sophia had left sometime before dawn because her schedule required early meetings in Milan, and the note on the kitchen counter read You were amazing last night. Talk later. S with a small heart drawn beside the initial.
