Ten yards, back and forth. Twenty, back and forth, Forty, back and forth. Midfield, back and forth. Then the whole field and back.
My lungs seized up a little by the end of it, but I sucked it up and pushed forward on the last leg. I finished up with enough distance between myself and the next person to sleep okay that night. I thought about how good it was that I always tried to push myself on my own runs a little harder each day.
Rubbing my hands up and down on my upper thighs while I caught my breath, I smiled at the girl who had challenged me at the beginning when she made it. She looked a little annoyed but managed to keep a smile on.
“I don’t know how the hell you do it,” Sandy panted.
I panted right back. “I run. A lot.” When she gave me this expression that said ‘no-shit-Sherlock,’ I snorted. “I do the bike trails at Memorial at six-thirty every day before coming here. You’re welcome to come with me if you get up early enough. I’m not the greatest company to talk to that early in the morning, but it’s better than running alone, right?”
“Really?” she asked a little too incredulously.
“Yeah.”
She wiped at her forehead and gave me this funny look. “Okay. Sure. That sounds great.”
I rattled off where I parked my car in case she really did want to go and wasn’t just saying she did. By the time we finished talking, everyone else had finished their sprints too, even the slower players. Not that anyone was slow exactly, but slower.
Practice finished soon after that, so I finished getting my stuff together, keeping an eye to see where Gardner was so I could give him a tiny piece of my mind. Regular shoes on, a clean pair of ankle socks beneath them, I made my way toward the head coach busy counting balls to make sure they were all there.
“Are you ready for the game?” he greeted me first thing.
“I’m ready,” I agreed, watching his sneaky face for any sign that he felt remorse for taking advantage of my trust.
“Everything okay?” he asked, straightening up when I didn’t move from where I’d been.
Glancing around to make sure that no one was too close, I turned my attention back to the male Gossip Girl and scowled. “Did you tell Kulti what I said?”
The old bastard had the decency to look just a little sheepish. “I had a talk with him this morning on the way here. I figured it was time,” he neither agreed nor denied.
“Did you tell him it was me who said something?”
His brown eyes were careful and consistent. “He must have guessed it was you since you’re the only one that’s ripped him a new one.”
He didn’t deny it. I’d also been the one he saw coming from the offices too. It wasn’t like the cookie trail hadn’t been left behind. On top of that, I had laid into him for being a piece of horse crap to my dad. Once again, it was my fault.
It was done, and there was no point in dwelling on it.
“You can tell me if there’s a problem,” he stated in a careful honest tone that I couldn’t help but believe.
What was I going to do? Tell him oh, he gave me the stare down? Nope. Or worse, tell him about me picking him up from a bar? Yeah, no.
Instead I gave him a reassuring smile that I didn’t necessarily feel. “Everything’s fine, I was just… curious if you said something or not. No big deal.”
“No. I didn’t say anything.”
“Great, thanks G. I’ll see you later then,” I sighed, turning around to walk toward the bathroom, feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders.
I sighed to myself.
The last thing I wanted was to bring negative attention to myself, especially where Kulti was concerned. The team had a lot banking on him, and though I was considered one of the hometown favorites because I was from Texas—and I was the leading scorer for the team—I understood priorities. One of us was a lot more popular than the other, even if it was only me playing, and one of us got paid a lot more.
I would lose every time.
Patting my phone over the material of my bag, I thought about calling my dad to rant but then thought better of it. The bratwurst had already done enough. I didn’t want to bring him up unless I had to. My mom? Jenny? No and no. Plus, I’d have to explain everything for my predicament to make sense, and I wasn’t all about that either.
So I weighed my options and accepted again that keeping it all to myself was the best way to go about dealing with everything.
Chapter Nine
There’s that saying some people use: Be careful what you wish for.
My first coach when I started playing club, a select group of players that wanted more than what their local school or rec center offered, told us almost daily, “A dream is just a wish without a plan.” After you hear it enough times, it grows on you and the older you get, the more you realize how true the words are. So it wasn’t that I didn’t take wishes seriously, I just didn’t put much weight into them. There weren’t a lot of things I wanted, but I knew that if I wanted something expensive, I had to save for it by cutting out other expenses in my life.
The point was: I’d wanted to play soccer professionally most of my life, so I learned what I needed to do to make that happen. I had to practice, commit, practice some more and sacrifice in no particular order. Usually, I tried to apply that to every aspect of my life.
But once upon a time, a young Salomé Casillas had spent three birthday wishes in a row on the same thing: that one day Reiner ‘The King’ Kulti would know that I was alive… and marry me. Third on my list of wishes was that he’d teach me how to be the best.
I would have given just about anything for that to happen. Anything. I would have died of joy if he’d ever touched my freaking hand when I was twelve.
At twenty-seven, knowing what I knew about him at this point, I would have been happy living the rest of my life inconspicuously.
But sometimes fate was fickle and immature, because just a couple of days after telling Gardner about how everyone was being affected by the ex-superstar’s lack of attention, my pre-teen prayers were answered out of nowhere.
He must have either been brainwashed or had his body snatched by an alien because a new man showed up to the field after that. A man with a rigid line to his shoulders, a rod of iron through his spine, and a voice that couldn’t be misinterpreted.
How many times had I thought about how much I wanted Kulti to be the kind of coach that a player of his caliber had the potential to be? It wasn’t a secret that great players didn’t always make great coaches. But my gut, or maybe it was my inner thirteen-year-old, believed that he’d be an exception. That he could do or be whatever he wanted to.
Except I hadn’t anticipated the fact that what I thought of as ‘coach’ he apparently interpreted as ‘Gestapo.’
Those next two days were the most strenuous of my life, both mentally and physically.
Part of it was because the pressure to be perfect was right in my peripheral, pushing, pushing, pushing, and making its presence well-known, zt least to me. The main part though, was Kulti. He showed up to practice with an angry tick in his jaw and hard eyes that seemed to suddenly assess everything.
The first time he yelled, the drill most of the team had been busy executing had come to a sudden pause. I mean, it stopped. For all of two seconds, the players that had been maneuvering around obstacle courses stopped in their tracks and looked up. I was one of them. It was like the voice of God had suddenly come down on us and told a prophecy or something.
“Faster!”
One word. One word had caught us all off guard.
And then Gardner’s, “What are you doing? Come on!” brought everyone back into their right minds.
Jenny, who was busy practicing with the goalkeepers, met my eyes from across the field. And telepathically we communicated the same three words: What the hell?
We kept going.
So did he. His voice was borderline angry, determined and strong, lilting and strangely fascinating with multiple
accents curbing it as he kept hurling things at the group. My stomach churned each time I heard him.
This was exactly what I’d asked for—what I’d wished for.
When I was panting with my hands on my knees because he kept yelling about how we could go faster, I smiled because I’d pushed myself.
And because this is exactly what a younger version of me would have sold ten years of her life for.
Sure, he was a dick. Sure he’d been pressured into caring by me complaining to the head coach. But when I looked around and everyone else was busting their ass on a whole new level, I figured it was worth having the bratwurst hate me.
* * *
Eventually I started to regret ever thinking that Kulti caring was a good thing, because another segment of what I’d always dreamed of came into play and it wasn’t the magnificence I’d anticipated.
I got the attention I’d wanted. Only it wasn’t as fantastic as my dreams had told me they’d be.
“Twenty-three!”
It took me a second to react to my number being called—the day of Dad’s birthday. Eric’s birthday had been my national team number and my sister’s had been my number back when I played club soccer. I’d been using twenty-three for years, but no one ever called me by it.
“Twenty-three, what kind of a slow pass is that? Are you even trying?” he belted.
The hair on the back of my neck prickled up and my mouth might have dropped open just a little.
But I pushed.
He kept going. “Twenty-three, this.” “Twenty-three, that.” Twenty-three, twenty-three, twenty-three…
Shoot me in the face, twenty-three.
There wasn’t affection in his tone, much less pride.
Every single time I looked at him when he called my number, his face was set in a rough expression. Glowering. He was glowering at me. That handsome, handsome face was staring at me with an expression that was definitely not very nice.
Good God.
I stood up straight, wiped my sweat off and just glared right back at him. I could deal with this jack-off that had been mean to my dad. At least that’s what my bones said.
* * *
“He has the worst batting skills I’ve ever seen. No joke. He looks like a lumberjack out there with his bat six feet high and his ass in a different zip code than the rest of his body,” Marc said with a shake of his head as he steered the vehicle onto the freeway. We were on the way to our next jobs—two big houses in a neighborhood called the Heights.
“Worse than Eric?” I asked because as fantastic as he was at kicking a ball and chasing after it, he was pretty shitty at most other sports.
The grave nod Marc gave in response said it all. If the softball player he was talking about was worse than my brother, God help everyone on their team. “Jeez.”
“Yeah, Sal. It’s that bad. He isn’t scared of balls coming at him—“
We both looked at each other the second the two words were used together and we burst out laughing.
“Not that kind of ball,” my friend laughed loudly. “There’s no excuse for being that bad.”
“It happens,” I noted.
He shrugged in reluctant agreement and continued with his story about the new player that had recently joined in on their weekly recreational softball games. “I don’t know how to tell him he’s terrible. Simon said he’d say something, but he wimped out, and most of the time there’s barely enough people to split into two teams,” he said, eyeing me.
So subtle.
I’d played on and off with him for the last two years when I could. While I couldn’t play soccer officially or not-so-officially in any team way besides with the Pipers during the season, no one said I couldn’t join in on the occasional softball game, as long as it wasn’t ‘official.’ That was the keyword I could twist and distort from my contract.
Right as I started to say that I could join in on a few games, my phone rang. On the screen, ‘Dad’ flashed.
Holding my phone up, I told Marc who was calling and answered. “Hey, Pa.”
“Hola. Are you busy?” he replied.
“On my way to a job with Marco Antonio,” I said, using my family’s nickname for him. “Y tu?”
“Okay, I was just calling you quick. I’m going to pick up Ceci from school; she has early dismissal. I wanted to know though, do you think you can get us two more tickets for the opening game? Your tio is going to be in town that day and he wants to go,” he said slowly.
My uncle wanted to go to a game, but he just didn’t want to pay. What was new?
“I’m sure I can get two, but I won’t be positive until later today, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. That’s fine. If you can’t, don’t worry about it. He can afford two tickets. Cheapskate. Call me later when you’re off and tell Marco I said he’s buying me a beer at the game.”
I snorted and smiled, and an instant later I realized I hadn’t brought up the incident with the German. My face flushed and my neck got hot. “Dad, hey. I’m sorry about the open house. If I had known he’d be such an asshole, I would have warned you. I’m really sorry—“
He hissed on the other line, and I didn’t miss the perplexed look Marc shot my way from the other side of the truck’s cab. “Mija, you have no idea how many times someone’s been that way with me. I’m fine. I’m over it now. People are like that because they don’t know any better, but I do.”
“He had no right to act like that. I was so mad, I went up to him and called him a bratwurst,” I admitted aloud for the first time since the incident.
Two howls went up. One was from my dad and the other from Marc. “No!” he cracked up on the phone.
“Yeah. I lost it. I think he hates my guts now. I’ll have to tell you later the kind of crap he’s been telling me on the field,” I said with a big grin aimed at my boss, who was shaking his shoulders with laughter.
Dad kept laughing. “Yeah, I want to hear about it,” he said before pausing. “Pero Salomé, acuérdate de lo que te he dicho. Kill them with kindness, si?”
I groaned.
“Si. Forgive him for not knowing better, okay?”
Forgive him for not knowing better? “I can try but what about Eric? You want me to be nice to the person that hurt him?” The recent memory of Kulti calling him an imbecile was still fresh, but I didn’t tell my dad about it.
“Pues si. It was a long time ago and remember Eric broke that player from Los Angeles’s arm? It happens. You know your brother. He kicks up a fit because he likes to hear himself talk.”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right. I feel like I’m cheating on Eric.”
“It’s okay. You aren’t. I would tell you if you were.”
I wanted to roll my eyes at the thought, but I managed not to; instead I sighed and agreed with him. “Fine. I’ll think about it.” Boo. “I’ll call you later then. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
The second I hung up the call, Marc angled his body against the seat since we were at a red light and blinked at me. “Bitch, you’ve been holding out on me. Tell me everything.”
* * *
“Well that’s fuckin’ awkward,” Harlow whispered.
It was. It really was.
For the last five minutes, the team had stood by the curb outside of the Pipers’ office building waiting for the vans that would take us to the location of our first preseason game about an hour outside of the city.
While we waited for the vans that happened to be running late, we’d all been watching Kulti arguing on the phone saying things in his native language that just sounded… ugly.
Whoo.
“What do you think he’s saying?”
“His coffee was probably too hot this morning and he’s complaining about it.”
“He’s threatening to make a coat out of their skin.”
“Or use their stem cells to lengthen his life.”
That one had me cracking up.
“He’s probably
just saying ‘good morning, I’m having a great day’ and it sounds that bad,” Jenny suggested.
I shot her a smile. “You guys figure it out while I go to the restroom real quick.”
I took off speed-walking toward the restroom on the first floor. No one was there, so I was able to get in and out in just a couple of minutes after relieving my bladder. By the time I made it back out, three white vans had appeared alongside the street.
Two of them were already filled from what it looked like when multiple sets of hands hit the glass windows as I walked by them, freaking zombie-wannabes.
“Come on girl, we’ve been waiting on you!” Phyllis huffed, standing outside of the first van with two other staff members.
I nodded and jumped into the van, instinctively going for the seat the furthest away from the door.
There was only one seat open besides the front bench, and that was in the very back row with Kulti. Kulti and a mesh bag of soccer balls. Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.
Fighting back a groan and an eye roll that was totally over the top, I kept my gaze even and climbed all the way into the back to take the one and only empty seat right next to him. Thigh to thigh.
I could do this. I could be a mature adult. Right.
I had a pep talk with myself yesterday as I drove home after work. I could be an adult and set my pride aside to do what my dad had suggested. Was it going to be easy? Not exactly. But I was sure as hell going to try. I could put aside the fact this ass thought I was a snitch with no morals, and I could put my personal stuff aside and at least try to be cordial.
No one could take away me calling him a bitch in my head at least.
So I took a calming breath and said to myself, patience. Patience, Sal. Kill ‘em with kindness, I’d been told. I could be a bigger person. Easy.
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