Emma came and sat next to me, putting her arm around me. I didn't respond. I had given up hope. The dream was over. And in the silence of the darkened room, I felt a profound sense of loss, a grief for a future that had never been.

I felt Emma's hand on my back, rubbing slow, comforting circles. "Talk to me, Danny," she said softly. "Don't just sit there in the dark."

I took a deep breath, the air shuddering in my lungs. "There's nothing to say. They said a week. It's been a week. They've given it to someone else. Someone with a better CV, someone who didn't manage a pub team a year ago."

"You don't know that," she said, her voice gentle but firm. "It's a big club, Danny. They have processes. They have HR. They probably have a department dedicated to deciding what kind of biscuits to have in meetings. It takes time."

"It's over, Em," I whispered, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. "I was stupid to even think…"

She pulled away, and for a second, I thought I'd finally pushed her too far. But then she stood up, turned on the lamp, and stood in front of me, her hands on her hips. She had that look on her face, the one that meant she was about to give me a dose of her journalist-grade reality.

"No," she said, her voice sharp, cutting through my self-pity.

"Don't you dare. Don't you dare spiral. You are not stupid. You are the most brilliant, passionate, and dedicated man I have ever met. You took a team of misfits and losers and made them champions. You walked into that interview, a lad from a convenience store with a UEFA B license and a dream, and you blew them away. I know you did. So you are not allowed to sit here in the dark and feel sorry for yourself. We are not doing that."

She reached down, pulled me up from the sofa, and wrapped her arms around me. I buried my face in her shoulder, the fight going out of me. She was right. She was always right. But right now, I was just tired. So, so tired.

"Okay," I mumbled into her shoulder. "Okay."

"Okay," she repeated, her voice softening. "Now, how about we order another Indian? My treat this time. Since you're currently fun-employed."

A small, watery laugh escaped my lips. It wasn't much, but it was a start. And as I held her, the warmth of her embrace a shield against the encroaching darkness, I knew that whatever happened, I would be okay. As long as I had her, I would be okay.

But even with Emma's support, the waiting continued to gnaw at me. I'd wake up in the morning with a knot of dread in my stomach, and the first thing I'd do, before I even got out of bed, was check my phone. No missed calls. No emails. Nothing. The silence was a physical weight, pressing down on me, suffocating me.

I tried to be productive. I tried to work on my coaching drills, to plan for a future that felt increasingly out of reach. But I couldn't focus. The words on the screen blurred, the diagrams meaningless squiggles. My mind was a broken record, stuck on a single, agonizing track: Why haven't they called?

Emma tried her best to pull me out of it.

She'd come home from work, full of stories about her day, about the articles she was writing for her blog, about the latest gossip from the Manchester football scene. She was trying to draw me back into the world, to remind me that there was a life outside of my own head. But I was a black hole, sucking all the light and energy out of the room.

One evening, she came home to find me in the exact same spot on the sofa she'd left me in that morning, still in my pyjamas, staring at the blank TV screen. She sighed, a sound of pure exasperation, and threw a cushion at my head.

"Right," she said, her voice firm. "That's it. We're going out."

"I don't want to go out," I mumbled.

"I don't care," she said. "You're going to have a shower, you're going to put on some proper clothes, and we're going to go to the pub. And you are not allowed to check your phone. Not once."

I grumbled, I protested, but I knew there was no arguing with her when she was in this mood. So I dragged myself off the sofa, had a shower, and put on a shirt that didn't have any food stains on it. And we went to the pub.

And for a few hours, it was almost normal. We had a couple of pints, we played a game of pool, we talked about anything and everything except the one thing that was consuming me.

And for a little while, I almost forgot about the gnawing anxiety, the crushing weight of expectation.

But then, on the way home, my phone buzzed in my pocket, and the hope, the desperate, foolish hope, came rushing back. I pulled it out, my heart pounding, my hands trembling. It was a text from my mum, asking if I wanted her to do my washing.

The disappointment was a physical blow, knocking the air out of my lungs. I felt like a child on Christmas morning who'd just been told that Santa wasn't real. Emma saw the look on my face and just shook her head, a sad, knowing smile on her lips.

"Come on," she said, taking my hand. "Let's go home."

That night, I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the sound of Emma's steady breathing beside me. I was a fraud. A failure. A joke. I had dared to dream, and now I was paying the price. The silence from Crystal Palace was no longer just a lack of a call. It was a verdict. A judgment. And it was damning.

The dream was over. And in the darkness of the bedroom, with the woman I loved sleeping peacefully beside me, I had never felt more alone.

***

Thank you nameyelus and chisum_ lane for the gifts.

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