Thursday, May 15, 2023Demien's Apartment, Bergamo9:17 AM
The light came through the curtains in a thin strip that fell across the foot of the bed and moved gradually up toward the wall as the morning advanced, and when Demien opened his eyes the ceiling was the pale off-white it always was and the apartment was quiet except for movement in the kitchen — the low click of the gas igniting, the soft scrape of a pan being placed on the hob.
He lay still for a moment while his body registered what the day after a hundred-and-twenty minutes of football felt like, which was specifically that his hips were stiff, his calves had tightened overnight, and both ankles ached with the dull persistence that required movement to clear rather than rest. He swung his legs off the bed slowly and sat on the edge while his feet found the floor, and the medal was still on the nightstand beside his phone and the trophy was still on the kitchen table where he'd set it at four in the morning.
