Kulti

by Mariana Zapata

  “He also broke your brother’s leg.” At least this guy wasn’t pretending to have amnesia when bringing up Eric, unlike the last guy I’d talked to.

  “It happens.” I shrugged because it was the truth. “Harlow Williams dislocated my shoulder once. Another friend of mine broke my arm when I was a teenager. It’s not unheard of for stuff like that to happen.” And then there were the dozen other injuries my brother had caused me over the years.

  Was I full of shit? Only about half. While it was true that Harlow had dislocated my shoulder and that a teammate had hit me so hard during a scrimmage game that I got a hairline fracture, they had been accidents. What happened between Eric and Kulti… not so much, and that was the problem. Kulti had played dirty—real dirty—and all he got was a yellow card. A yellow card in that situation was pretty much a warning after you’d hit someone with your car, backed up to hit them a second time and driven off afterward. It was insulting.

  He had almost ruined my brother’s career, and all he got was a miserable yellow card. It was the biggest bullshit call of the last century. People had gone nuts over it, claiming that he’d been forgiven because of his status and popularity. It wasn’t the first time a superstar had gotten away with something, and it wouldn’t be the last.

  But could I say that on record? Nope.

  “I really need to start warming up,” I said carefully before he had a chance to ask anything else.

  “Thanks for your time.” The writer for Training, Inc. smiled as he extended his hand out for me to shake.

  “No problem. Have a nice day.”

  This guy had done enough in my life.

  * * *

  “What’s going on with you?” Jenny asked me while we were off to the sidelines, waiting for the rest of the team to finish their ball-touch drills.

  I pulled my shirt up to use the bottom to wipe my upper lip and mouth off. The temperatures and humidity were out of this world in Houston—no surprise. The tension headache I’d been rocking all morning didn’t help any either; the conversation with the reporter kept picking at my nerves. “I’m fine,” I told her before snatching a bottle of water off the floor.

  She raised a single eyebrow, her cheeks puffing out as a disbelieving smirk crossed her face. Who was I trying to fool? Regardless of whether we’d been friends for five years or fifteen, she still knew me better than almost anyone. “You know you can talk to me about anything.”

  She gave the worst guilt trips because she was so nice about it, but still. Sometimes I didn’t want to talk about things. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Sal, you’re not fine.”

  I squeezed another mouthful of water out as a few more players made their way around to wait where we were. “I really am all right,” I insisted in a lower voice so only she could hear me.

  She didn’t believe me and for good reason.

  I was a little bit pissed and a little bit annoyed.

  I wanted to play, not have people digging up stuff from the past. I didn’t want the world. The most I’d ever gotten out of playing was a deal with a major athletic clothing company that basically just took pictures of me playing and paid me for it. But that was it. Kulti’s presence could potentially put me at risk when the past wasn’t even my fault.

  He’d hurt my brother seriously and that was that. I could learn to put it behind me for the time being, especially when he didn’t seem to either know or care about who I was related to.

  With that thought I accidentally looked over to where Mr.-Silent-Superstar stood, arms crossed over his impressively sized chest, looking at the players on the field with a plain expression. It was the same unemotional demeanor he’d been portraying since he arrived. He annoyed me, but I was also annoyed with myself for letting his attitude bother me. All I needed was to focus on getting through preseason training.

  I wasn’t totally surprised when Jenny blinked slowly. “You’re bitch-facing out there. You only bitch-face when someone pisses you off during a game.”

  She had a point. I could feel myself bitch-facing. Smiling and smirking were two expressions my facial muscles were used to. Scowling was newer territory. I took a deep breath and tried to relax my face by stretching my jaw and mouth. Sure enough tension eased its way out of those small muscles, going even all the way up above my eyebrows.

  “Told you so.” Jenny smiled gently at me. “You looked like you had during the Cleveland game last year, remember that?”

  How could I forget? A defender on Cleveland had twisted the hell out of my nipple when I’d landed on top of her after a play and hadn’t gotten caught. That bitch. I didn’t get her back during that first half, but I sure as hell did in the second when I scored two goals on her team. I couldn’t wear a bra for a week without being in pain, but at least we won.

  “My nip still hurts,” I said to Jenny with a small worn-out smile on my face.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Is your ankle bothering you?” she asked, looking around once more to make sure other players weren’t around. Injuries were like shark bait. On one hand we were all teammates with the same objective, but I didn’t for a second think someone wouldn’t try to exploit an injury for their own benefit. Competitive people were like that.

  I wiped at my face again and took another sip of water. “A little bit,” I told her honestly because it was true, just not the whole truth.

  Jenny grimaced. “Sal, you need to be careful.”

  This was the difference between venting to Harlow and venting to Jenny. Harlow would have slapped me on the back and told me to walk it off. Jenny worried, she stressed. From now on she’d keep an eye on me, and that was part of the reason why I cared about her so much.

  I scrubbed at my face with the back of my hand. “I’m all right.”

  She eyed me a little critically before asking, “What else is up?”

  Jenny wasn’t going to leave me alone about it. I scratched at the tip of my nose and made sure no one was close enough to hear me. “This morning some writer brought up the Kulti-Eric thing.” Frustration bubbled in my throat. “I’m a little worried about it.”

  My friend let out a low whistle, completely aware of the situation.

  “Yeah,” I agreed to her wince.

  “Why? That’s old news.”

  I shrugged. Yeah, it was. “I know, right?”

  She nodded in agreement.

  “I’m just a little grumpy about it, I guess.”

  “Take a breather,” she demanded easily. “We’re only allowed one person to have looking like a serial killer on the field.”

  At the same time our eyes swung around to search out Harlow. When we looked back at each other, we smirked. Harlow was awesome but… she really did look like a murderer. I could have easily imagined her as a Viking princess, raiding villages and mounting people’s heads on spikes.

  “Who’s ready for some three-on-three drills?” Coach Gardner yelled.

  High-intensity drills, my favorite.

  I must have smiled or something because I heard Jenny clearly murmur, “You’re a monster,” under her breath.

  I pushed my ankle, The King and Eric out of my head, and smacked Jenny on the butt cheek right before I took off toward the coaches. “You coming?”

  She sighed and shook her head before taking off behind me.

  We arranged three different mini-fields for our games. I went into the first group to play a five-minute game. The game finished a blink of an eye later and the groups switched places, the girls off the field replacing the ones who just played.

  I spotted Harlow walking toward the sidelines and started to make my way toward her, bypassing Kulti and Coach Gardner standing together. The other man held out his fist for me to bump the side of mine against. “Have you been working on your left foot?”

  I grinned at him. I’d worked on it a lot. A lot. It was the result of hours and hours spent running with the ball during our offseaso
n. It had always been pretty good, but I wanted it to be better. “I have. Thanks, G.” I bumped my fist against his once more and honestly, I’m not positive why I paused afterward.

  What was I expecting? Maybe a compliment from The King or at least a look, a tiny fraction of acknowledgment? Any of the above would be nice. But it was just a blip of a second too long, long enough to be noticeable, for Gardner to glance at the German out of the corner of his eye like he was expecting him to say something too.

  But he didn’t.

  Those almost-hazel eyes, like a murky pond, didn’t even look at me.

  Embarrassment bled through my insides, my belly and my throat specifically. What could have been acid or just overactive nerves in my cheeks made them feel weird as I forced an easygoing smile on my face that told Gardner it was fine that I’d just been ignored. But really, I was seething and dying a little inside.

  I knew better. Damn it, I knew better. Hadn’t he done the same thing to me before?

  I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had just looked right past me like I didn’t fucking exist, and I didn’t mean that in some vain pretentious way. Most people I met were friendly, and if they were shy at least they’d look me in the eye before looking away. Most assholes were at least dismissive after a quick glance. But this ass-wipe hadn’t even spared the calories he could have burned turning his neck in my direction.

  Nothing, he’d done nothing.

  I smiled at Gardner a little tighter and gave him another quick nod before striding toward Harlow, this ugly feeling clenching my gut.

  “What’s wrong, Sally?” Har asked me in a concerned voice the minute I made it to where she was waiting.

  Was I that obvious? I guess so.

  Chapter Five

  Two weeks went by in the blink of an eye, just like I knew they would. Days became a repetition of each other. They were a steady, reliable daily battle that had to be perfectly planned.

  6:15 a.m. – A run.

  7:00 a.m. – Breakfast.

  7:20 a.m. – Make lunch.

  7:45 a.m. – Attempt to dodge the media / if I failed: talk for ten minutes

  8 a.m. – Pipers practice followed by a protein shake.

  11:30 a.m. – Lunch in the car.

  12 p.m. – Wait for Marc to pick me up so we could go to an afternoon appointment(s)

  6 p.m. – Yoga / weightlifting / gardening / maybe a swim / anything else.

  7 p.m. – Dinner.

  8 p.m. – A shower.

  8:30 p.m. – A snack / television / reading time.

  10 p.m. – Bedtime.

  If you really wanted to get down to specifics during practice, you could add: make sure I won daily sprints, fart around with Harlow, have Jenny mother me, help out the younger girls and stare at the mute that stood in the corner every once in a while. I mean, every once in a while. No one had time to do it all practice, every practice.

  I mean, come on.

  Then off to burn under the sun, despite wearing shirts and a hat with designed to protect against UV rays. The one shower a night was probably the reason I was still single, but what was the point in showering twice if I knew I was just going to get sweaty from practice and work? Nothing said sexy like long jeans, a long-sleeved shirt and work boots. During work, Marc would harass me about Kulti and if I had any gossip to share with him. Needless to say, he was disappointed I didn’t have anything to complain about.

  The man everyone was so curious about hadn’t said a single word to me. Whomp, whomp, whomp.

  In between all of the ways The King had saturated my life, was the annoying conversation I finally had with Eric, my brother, that went along the lines of “blah, blah, blah, that guy is a fucking asshole, blah, blah, blah, don’t listen to a goddamn thing he has to say to you—“ I didn’t even get a chance to tell him that Kulti had forgotten how to speak “—blah, blah, blah, no one here can believe he decided to coach for the WPL. Someone told me he got offered an eight-figure contract to coach for one of the Spanish teams—“ more blah and a little more wah.

  On top of everything else I didn’t get to tell him, he didn’t find out during that biweekly conversation that I’d begun getting passive-aggressive messages from Kulti fans… all because of him and his damn leg.

  * * *

  “…an idiot.” I looked up at Gardner and noted, “He is an idiot. I’m not going to argue that.” Then I continued reading the email I’d gotten the night before. “Casillas had it coming to him. I’m tired of Kulti getting blamed when he was doing what he needed to be doing. You seem like a sensible lady, so I really hope for your sake you don’t start talking a bunch of shit about The King and learn to regret it.”

  Gardner sat back in his chair with a shake of his head. “Jesus, Sal. I’m sorry.” He blinked a few times. “Let’s get someone in here so we can come up with a strategy to get this crap figured out because I’m really over my head here.”

  “I’m sorry too, G. I hate to bother you with this crap, but I don’t know if there’s something I should do, or if I should keep ignoring the messages.”

  He waved me off with one hand, already dialing numbers on the conference phone on his desk. ”Don’t think twice about it… Sheena? Can you come down to my office? I have Sal Casillas in here. She’s been getting some strange emails regarding Kulti, and I’m not sure what the best route to take is.” A second later, the phone was back on its cradle, and he raised both eyebrows up to his hairline. “She’ll be over in a second.”

  I nodded and smiled at him. “All right.”

  Gardner gave me the gentle smile that always reassured me. “How’s your family doing?”

  “Good. How’s your fam—“ and I’d forgotten I’d heard through the grapevine that his divorce had been finalized in January, “—kiddo?”

  “Great. Twelve going on eighteen,” he answered with an easy smile. “You? Planning on taking some time off to have some of your own?”

  I stared at him. Then I stared at him a little longer.

  The fuck?

  “I’m messing with you, Sal,” Gardner laughed dryly.

  “I really thought you were serious,” I said slowly. Jeez. Not that you need a boyfriend to have a baby but… My eyebrows went up. “Yeah. No.” I hadn’t had a date in…. a year? And I hadn’t had sex in…? A long, long time. Not that I didn’t want to—because I did—but because I had a vibrator, and a vibrator never left you hanging. Or had a wife or a girlfriend you didn’t know about. Anyway.

  He snorted. “I’m just messing around. You’re still young.”

  I thought about the other girls on the team and winced a little. Not that long ago, I was one of the new girls, the really young ones that had just finished college and been drafted. Now I was one of the girls that the other ones looked up to. I rolled my ankle and let the stiffness in it answer back, reminding me how precarious its health was.

  Someone knocked on the door, and Gardner welcomed them in.

  Sheena peeked her head through the cracked door. “Hi.” The door swung open and a second later, I spotted the head that appeared above hers.

  My stupid, stupid, stupid traitorous heart remembered what it was like to be thirteen.

  My brain, apparently the only logical organ in my body, said to all of its brothers and sisters: Get your shit together and calm down.

  I put my Big Girl Socks on, took a deep steadying breath, and managed to smile at the two people who made their way into the office, right toward the chairs next to mine. I swallowed and said, “Hi, Sheena, hi, Coach Kulti.” All right, that came out a lot dumber than I would have liked. My cheeks decided right then that they were going to get hot, real hot.

  Damn it. Get it together, Sal!

  “Hello, Sal,” Sheena greeted me as she took the seat right next to mine, glancing over her shoulder for a moment to say, “I asked Mr. Kulti—“

  Mr. Kulti? Really?

  “—to come along.”

  I blinked at the same time my bones
froze.

  The short-haired man, who resembled someone in a branch of the military, shook his head, still silent.

  My knees felt stiff and traitorous as I planted my feet solidly on the ground and got to my feet, thrusting a surprisingly steady hand toward the man that had shaken hands with—

  Poop. Poop, poop, poop.

  Why should I care who he’d shaken hands with? I didn’t.

  With a slow quiet breath through my nose, I tipped my chin up higher, like that would help me keep my dignity intact more. And like that wasn’t enough, I blurted out another “Hi, I’m Sal Casillas, one of the forwards…?”

  Was it time to shut up? Yes. Definitely.

  A large, warm masculine hand gripped mine almost immediately, and I filled my lungs with another steadying breath, smiling at the man standing on the other side of Sheena. It was a normal handshake; he wasn’t limp-fishing it, but he wasn’t trying to break my hand either. He was just a man. He was just a normal man with interesting eyes and a serious face.

  “Can you tell me a little about the emails you’ve been getting?”

  Drawing back the hand that had just touched Reiner Kulti, I settled my gaze on the woman next to me and nodded. I summarized the messages I’d been getting. Insults aimed at my brother, warnings that I should do everything I could to learn as much as possible from the German, and a bunch of other crap that stressed me out a whole lot.

  Sheena’s cheek hitched up high, and it was easy to see on her clear dark skin that she was thinking. Then she nodded sharply. “Okay. I’ve got it—“

  “Your brother was that imbecile?”

  ‘That imbecile’ had been the fourteen-year-old to my seven-year-old who held my hand when I crossed the street, let me tag along when he’d go play soccer with his friends even though he grumbled, kicked the ball back and forth with me in the backyard before he would go out, and he was the same person that would be on his feet in the stands, yelling at the top of his lungs when I had a bullshit call made against me. I loved my brother. Was he an arrogant jackass who thought he was gifted with a talent straight from heaven? Yes.