The season ended in May.
Villa finished fifth. Champions League qualification secured for the following season. The Premier League campaign strong, consistent, the kind of season that a club with Villa's ambitions needed to produce in order to maintain the trajectory that the ownership and the manager and the supporters demanded.
Armani's first season at Villa:
Premier League: 33 appearances (28 starts). 8 goals. 9 assists. Champions League: 10 appearances (8 starts). 2 goals. 3 assists. All competitions: 45 appearances. 10 goals. 13 assists. Distance covered per match: 10.7 kilometers. Average match rating: 7.0.
The numbers were good. Not spectacular. Good. The numbers of a player in his first season at a new club, adjusting to a new system, competing in the Champions League for the first time, producing consistently without producing exceptionally. The foundation of a career at Villa that would, the numbers suggested, improve in the second season when the adjustment was complete and the understanding with teammates was deeper and the Champions League's specific demands were familiar rather than new.
Frank had said something similar at Brentford. "The first season is arrival. The second season is establishment." The pattern repeating. The truth holding.
The end of season meeting with the manager was brief and positive. "You have adapted well. The Champions League education was valuable. The Premier League output was consistent. The second season will be the season where we see the full player."
"The full player."
"The player who has adjusted to this level and who is no longer adjusting but performing. The player whose output matches the talent. That player is coming. I can see him in training. I saw flashes of him in matches. The second season, he arrives."
June arrived and the garden was full.
The apple tree had bloomed and the blossoms had fallen and the small, hard fruits were forming, the green nubs that would, by September, become apples. Nicole had designed the garden over the spring, the architect applying her professional skills to the domestic space, the result a place that was structured without being rigid, the planting and the paths and the seating areas creating a space that felt intentional but natural.
She had planted herbs along the south wall. Rosemary and thyme and basil and mint, the Mediterranean plants that the English climate accommodated grudgingly but that produced, in the summer months, enough growth to be useful.
She had installed a bench beneath the apple tree. Reclaimed oak, the same wood as the kitchen table, the grain visible, the surface weathered. The bench faced east, toward the fields, the morning sun hitting it from seven until nine, the specific window of warmth that the English summer provided before the clouds reasserted their authority.
They sat on the bench on the first morning of the summer break. Coffee in hand. The garden around them. The fields beyond. The Warwickshire countryside doing its quiet, persistent, green thing.
"The season's over," Nicole said.
"The season's over."
"How do you feel?"
He thought about it. The honest answer.
"Unfinished."
"Unfinished how?"
"The Bernabéu. The touch over Mendy. Courtois saving it. The feeling of being close to something extraordinary and not quite reaching it. That feeling is still here."
"That feeling is called ambition."
"I know what it's called."
"I know you know. I'm naming it because naming things makes them manageable. The ambition is real. The ambition is healthy. The ambition is the thing that will drive the second season. But the ambition needs to coexist with the satisfaction. You played forty five matches this season. In the Premier League and the Champions League. You scored ten goals and created thirteen assists. You played at the Bernabéu and you did something that made eighty one thousand people hold their breath. That deserves satisfaction."
"It does."
"Then feel it. The satisfaction and the ambition. Both at the same time. One doesn't cancel the other."
She sipped her coffee. Looked at the apple tree. The fruits forming. The slow work of the natural world, the growth that happened without urgency, the patience that trees possessed and that humans struggled to replicate.
"The tree doesn't worry about next season's apples," she said. "The tree produces the apples it can produce this season and then it rests and then it produces more."
"You're comparing me to a tree."
"I'm comparing you to the best designed thing in this garden. Take the compliment."
He took the compliment. Sat on the bench and drank his coffee and looked at the apple tree and felt the season sitting inside him, the full weight of it, the forty five matches and the ten goals and the thirteen assists and the Bernabéu and the San Siro and the Milan defence and the Madrid defence and the touch over Mendy and the clearance off the line and the World Cup qualification and all of it, the whole season, the whole year, present in his body the way all the years were present, layered, accumulated, the geological record of a career.
The summer was Jamaica and rest and the specific quietness that the body demanded after ten months of professional football at the highest level.
He went home with Nicole. Montego Bay. His mother's house. The repaired roof, the new stove, the crack in the wall. The kitchen table where every important conversation had happened and where the conversations continued, the family gathering, the food arriving in waves, the specific warmth of a Jamaican household in June.
Kofi came for a week. The friendship continuing its rhythm, the dawn runs on the hill, the conversations that ranged from football to life to the future, the two of them still building the thing they had promised to build, the parallel careers, the shared dream.
"Second season at Villa," Kofi said, on the hill, the sun coming up.
"Second season."
"The full player, the manager said."
"The full player."
"And United?"
"Bailey says their scouts were at both Madrid legs."
Kofi processed this. The information landing in the specific way that information about Manchester United landed, with weight, with significance, with the particular gravity that the club's name carried for both of them.
"They're watching."
"They're watching."
"Then the second season is the audition. Not just for Villa. For United."
"Every season is an audition."
"But this one is the audition. The one where you go from being watched to being wanted. The one where the scouts stop observing and start recommending. The one where the conversation inside United changes from 'we're aware of him' to 'we need to sign him.'"
"That's a lot of pressure."
"That's not pressure. That's purpose. You've had a purpose since you were eleven years old. The purpose hasn't changed. The proximity has."
The proximity. The distance between where he was and where he wanted to be, measured not in miles but in performances, in goals, in assists, in the specific quality of a season that would either confirm the trajectory or plateau it.
"Score fifteen goals," Kofi said. "In all competitions. Fifteen goals and ten assists and a Champions League campaign that goes further than this year's. That's the number. That's the output that changes the conversation."
"You've done the analysis."
"I've done the analysis. I'm a centre back. We analyse everything. It's what we do instead of being exciting."
They ran down the hill. Through the streets. Past Cornwall College. Past the beach. Past the life that had produced them and that was still producing, the island still sending its children into the world, the world still receiving them.
July. Pre season. The return to Bodymoor Heath. The second time through the arrival process, the difference between the first and the second visible in the body's response: no nervousness, no uncertainty, just the specific readiness of a man returning to a place he knew and to a job he understood.
The changing room. Locker eleven. WILSON. The metal plate. The same boots. Dave the kitman nodding from the boot room. "Welcome back. Your boots are in your locker. Don't leave them on the floor."
"I know, Dave."
"I know you know. I'm reminding you because reminding is my job."
Bailey was already there. Same locker. Number seven. The morning drive resuming, the convoy on the Warwickshire roads, the conversation picking up where it had left off in May, the friendship continuous, the thread unbroken by the summer's distance.
"Second season," Bailey said.
"Second season."
"The full player."
"The full player."
"Let's go find him."
They walked onto the training pitch. The Birmingham summer warm and green. The squad assembling. The pre season beginning. The second year at Villa starting the way the first year had started: with work.
The apple tree in Knowle was still producing. The fruits growing slowly, the summer's warmth converting sunlight into sugar into apples that would be ready in September. The tree did not worry about the harvest. The tree did the work and the work produced the fruit and the fruit was the evidence of the work.
Armani Wilson. Twenty three years old. Aston Villa. Champions League. Premier League. Jamaica international. World Cup qualifier.
The second season beginning.
The full player arriving.
The dream ahead. The work underneath.
Still running. Still becoming. Still the boy from Montego Bay who ran on the beach with his arms out because running was the thing his body wanted to do.
The story continuing. The chapters accumulating. The wall not yet full.
Old Trafford waiting. Patient. Like the crack. Like the tree.
The boy from Montego Bay, still running toward the red.