Chapter 54: Let Me In
About an hour after the press conference finished, Alex found himself standing in front of the door to his apartment. His hands entered his pockets and lingered for a few seconds, only reemerging when he had his key in his hands. He placed the key into the keyhole and stepped into his hime.
In the quiet of his own home, Alex’s chest tightened as he stepped inside. The front door shut with a dull thud behind him, and the silence that followed was thick, almost alive. He stood in the hallway for a long moment, staring blankly ahead. The air felt still, too still, and the shadows cast by the dim ceiling light seemed to press against him.
With a sudden grunt, he kicked his shoes off violently. One slammed into the wall, the other skidded across the floor until it struck a corner and tipped over. He didn’t care. Every wall, every framed photo of his career, of the past he had buried and the new one he was trying to build, seemed to stare at him. Judging him. Accusing him.
The trophies. The autographs. The shirts in glass cases. They were all there, polished and pristine, like ghosts of a life he once lived.
He stormed through the lounge, his arms swinging without purpose, driven by a rising fury that had no clear direction. A small table went over with a crash, a glass tumbler exploding into glittering shards across the tiles. He didn’t even flinch. A lamp fell next, caught by a careless elbow, and shattered with a dull pop. Sparks from the bulb flickered and died out.
A framed photo of a young Alex Walker wearing a Manchester United jersey teetered on a shelf and fell. It hit the ground with a sharp crack, glass breaking, but the picture beneath it remained intact. Alex’s young face, full of hope and unshakable belief, stared back up at him. A snapshot of purer days. Alex’s jaw clenched. His hand reached down, grabbed the frame, and hurled it against the wall.
The frame split, but the photo stayed unbroken.
Alex backed away, his chest rising and falling, heart pounding. He kicked at the rug, snarling as it twisted under his foot and bunched up. A yell tore from his throat, raw and loud, before he slammed his fist against the wall hard enough to leave a crack in the paint.
"Why didn’t you hold on?" he shouted. "We had them! We had them!" His voice bounced off the empty space, anger blending into something more painful.
He staggered into the kitchen, threw open the cupboard, and started pulling out glass bottles one by one. Wine. Whiskey. Olive oil. Anything with weight. He hurled them at the floor, each shatter like punctuation to a sentence he couldn’t finish.
"I needed that win! The team needed it! I needed it!" His voice cracked, trembling with vulnerability. "It wasn’t just a game! It was our moment! My moment! My moment! My fucking moment!"