Kulti (4 page)

He gave me a disbelieving look, like he thought I was full of shit, but he didn’t argue with me about it. “All right. What’s your prediction for this season? Are the Pipers going to the finals again?”

“That’s the plan.” I smiled at him. “I need to get going, unless you have one more question?”

“Okay. One more: do you have any plans on joining the national team again soon?”

I opened my mouth and left it open for a second before closing it. I rocked forward on my heels as I rubbed my palms down the front of my shorts. “I’m not planning on it anytime soon. I want to focus on our regular season for now.” I swallowed hard and thrust my hand out for him. A second later, I was marching toward the field, watching a few of the other girls get corralled into conversations with other reporters. Two other journalists called out for me, but I declined with an apology. I had to warm up before our assessment began.

Today pretty much consisted of running sprints for an hour, upper body endurance in the form of a push-up-palooza, and endless squats from the third circle of hell, among other forms of torture that the old biddy fitness coach developed recently. Some people really dreaded it, but I wasn’t totally opposed to our fitness stuff. Was it fun? No. But I worked out a lot, hard, all year so that I wouldn’t be the one huffing and puffing during the first half of a game, and I liked being the fastest. So sue me.

I worked harder than just about anyone for a reason. I was fast, but I wasn’t getting any younger, and my bad ankle wasn’t getting any better either. Then there was my knee, which had been a problem for the last decade. You had to make up for stuff like that by never getting soft, putting your well-being first, and not taking things for granted.

I’d just finished dropping my things on the side of the field when it finally happened.

It was the “
Oh. My. Godddd
” out of one of the girls I wasn’t familiar with that suddenly snapped me into paying attention.

I spotted him. He was there.
There
.

Oh hell. I was dead.

All six-feet-arguably-two inches of brown hair, five-time World Player of the Year, was
right there
talking to the team’s fitness coach, a mean old woman who had no pity on anyone.

Oh snap
. I reached up to make sure my hair hadn’t frizzed up in the five minutes I’d been out of my car and then stopped. What the hell was I doing? I dropped my hands immediately. I’d never cared what I looked like when I was playing. Well, I rarely cared what I looked like period. As long as my hair wasn’t in my face and my armpits and legs were shaved, I was good. I plucked my eyebrows a couple times a week and I had an addiction to homemade face masks, but that was usually as much effort as I put into myself. People asked me why I was dressing up if I wore jeans, it was that bad.

I’d worn lip balm and a headband on my last date, and here I was fixing my hair. Sheesh.

For the record and for the sake of my pride, I don’t think I’d ever fan-girled outwardly in my life. There were a few soccer players I think I’d gotten a little red-faced over and there was that one time when I was fourteen at a JT concert, he’d touched my hand and I’d swooned a little bit… but that was the extent of it. But seeing the master of ball control standing out on the side of the soccer field in a blue and white soccer training jersey and track pants was just… too much.

Way. Too. Much.

Reiner Kulti nodded at something the old, sadistic demon said, and I felt… weird.

To my absolute horror, my inner thirteen-year-old, the one that had planned on marrying this guy and having soccer-playing super-babies with him, peeked in and reminded me she’d been around once. I’d swear on my life that my heart clenched up and my armpits started sweating simultaneously. The best term to describe what was going on with me: star struck. Totally star struck.

Because…
Reiner Kulti.

The King.

The best player to come out of Europe in…

All right. This wasn’t going to work, not at all, not even a little bit. Rationally, I knew that mooning over him was stupid. I was too old for this crap, and I’d gotten over my crush on him a decade ago when I said ‘screw you’ to the man who had married someone else, and then nearly ended my brother’s career right after it started. Kulti was just a man. I closed my eyes and thought of the first thing that could get me out of my
holyshitit’sKultistandingrightthere
.

Poop.

He poops.

He poops.

Right. That was all I needed to snap out of it. I pictured an image of him sitting on the porcelain throne to remind me he was just a normal man with needs like everyone. I knew this—I’d known this for the longest. He was just a man with parents that pooped and peed and slept like the rest of us. Poop, poop,
poop, poop, poop
.

Right.

I was good. I was really fine.

Until Jenny tapped her elbow against my lower ribs unexpectedly, her face getting up in mine while she did these huge goofy eyes, barely tipping her head in Kulti’s direction. It was the universal friend sign for
there’s that guy you like. Do you see him?

This bitch. I made my own eyes go wide and mouthed ‘shut the hell up’ to her, moving my lips the least amount possible.

Like any good friend, she didn’t do what was asked. She kept elbowing me and giving me that crazy, stupid look and strained head-tipping, trying to be inconspicuous and failing miserably. I didn’t look at him for very long, just that first initial glance from more than fifty feet away, and then another quick look right afterward.

Poop. Remember: poop. Right.

The silence on the field said more than enough about what everyone was thinking but couldn’t actually say out loud.

But dumb Jenny knocked her foot against mine while we put on sunscreen, grinning when she caught my eye, which I was purposely trying to ignore because she made me laugh. I knew in my gut that I was never going to hear the end of this. Never. I’d gotten over my crush-slash-infatuation when I was seventeen, when I finally accepted the fact that I didn’t have a single shot of ever playing against him—obviously—and… there was no chance in hell that he’d ever be interested in me, the Argentinian-Mexican-American tomboy thirteen years younger than him. There wouldn’t be a marriage in my future or soccer-playing super-babies.

It was the worst non-break-up ever in the history of imaginary relationships with a man who didn’t even know I existed.

My poor, innocent heart hadn’t been able to handle the only love I’d ever known marrying someone else—Reiner Kulti hadn’t known he was supposed to fall head over heels in love with me one day.

But like every unrequited first love, I got over it. Life moved on. And then all the shit with Eric happened shortly after that, and the posters on my wall had turned into an even bigger betrayal to the guy in my life who had always let me tag along for impromptu soccer games with his friends.

“Keep it up, bitch,” I whispered to Jenny while we she rubbed sunscreen on the parts of my back I couldn’t reach.

She snorted and hip-bumped me as we walked toward our designated stretching area. There was already a small group waiting, their voices still a lot lower than they would be normally. Sure enough, Kulti was standing nearby with Coach Gardner and Grace, our team captain and a veteran defender who had been playing professionally since I was still in middle school. She’d been with the Pipers four years at the beginning of this season, just like me.

“He’s taller than I’d thought he’d be,” Jen muttered just loud enough for me to hear.

I looked out of the corner of my eye at where the coaches and Grace were standing without being completely obvious. With only twenty feet of distance between us, we were closer than I ever could have expected, and I nodded because she was right. He was spectacularly tall compared to a lot of the male forwards—also called strikers by some, or in the way my sister described the position: ‘the people that hung out by the other team’s goal and tried to score.’ The best forwards tended to be a lot shorter, not six-two or six-three depending on what analyst or know-it-all you asked. Considering how unparalleled his footwork was, it was a—

Stop. Stop, Sal.

Right.

Poop.

I could look at him without fan-girling, I could be unbiased. So I tried my best to do just that. He looked bulkier than he’d been a couple of years ago when he’d stepped out of the spotlight. Like most players, he’d been muscular but extra lean and long from all the endless running. Now, he looked a bit heavier, his face was more filled out, his neck looked a little thicker and his arms—

Poop. Fart. Peeing in a urinal.
Right
.

All right.

The guy was more muscular. A hint of his tattoo peeked out from beneath the sleeve of his shirt and he still had that even flawless skin tone that was somewhere between a creamy white and a perfect light tan.

His hair was that same perfect brown as it’d always been and if it hadn’t been for the touches of gray at his temples, that familiar aspect would have been the same. Basically, it was obvious he’d gotten older and he wasn’t on his feet as much as he’d been for the largest chunk of his life. His build had become more gym-rat than swimmer, and there was not a single thing wrong with that.

But when I zeroed in his face, something just seemed… off. He’d always been good-looking, really good-looking, in his own untraditional way. Kulti didn’t have the symmetrical high-boned features that companies usually looked for when they endorsed athletes. His facial structure was more raw, smart-assedness oozing from the fullness of his mouth and from the bright color of his eyes. He was such a supreme athlete it had never mattered during his career that he didn’t have a patrician face. His confidence was blinding. Clean-shaven for once, the sharp bones of his jaw and cheeks that made his profile so masculine were on all-out display. A few more lines creased out from the corners of his hazel-green eyes than had been there before.

I forgot he was turning forty this year.

The puzzle pieces were all there, but it was like they weren’t put together properly. I knew it wasn’t anything different outward about him. Being in stealth mode, I couldn’t figure out what it was, and it bothered me. My gut recognized a difference in him, but my eyes couldn’t. What was it?

“Will someone pass me a band?” a girl nearby asked, snapping me out of the human Rubik’s cube I was playing.

Realizing I was the closest person to the mini-bands we used for stretching, I grabbed one and passed it to my teammate.

“Everyone circle around!” Gardner called us, like a shepherd calling his sheep.

Which I don’t think any of us really appreciated but all right. Like zombies, the group flocked to him silently, hesitantly. We were bugs being called to the bug zapper, the shiny bright thing that could potentially kill us, only with a man as the attraction. Gardner and Kulti stood together along with the fitness coach and a few other staff members shaking hands and greeting each other.

I fought the urge to swallow because I knew one of the idiots around me would see, and I didn’t need to give Jenny any more room to give me shit about my former Kulti obsession.

“Ladies, I’m pleased to introduce your new assistant coach for the season, Reiner Kulti. Let’s break the ice real quick before we start. If you could go around and introduce yourselves and tell him what position you’re playing…” Gardner trailed off with an eyebrow that dared us all to tell him how stupid and elementary school this was. I hated it then and I wasn’t a fan now.

Without missing a beat, one of the girls closest to Gardner started off the circle of introductions.

I watched him, his face and his reactions. He blinked and tipped his head down each time a player finished talking. One after another, half the group went, and I realized I was near the middle of the semi-circle when Jenny piped in.

“I’m Jenny Milton,” she grinned in that way that always had me grinning back no matter what kind of mood I was in. “Goalkeeper. Nice to meet you.”

I didn’t miss the way his cheek hiked up a millimeter more in reaction to her greeting. You’d have to be the freaking Grinch to not appreciate Jenny. She was one of those people who woke up in an excellent mood and went to sleep with a smile on her face. But when she was mad, I wouldn’t hold murder past her.

Then it was my turn and when those light-colored eyes landed on my face expectantly, I thought
poop
. Lots of poop. Clog-the-toilet amount of poop.

Like a pro, I amazed myself by not squeaking or stuttering. Those green-brown orbs that were said to be the windows of a person’s soul were right on me. “Hi, I’m Sal Casillas. I’m a forward.” More like a winger, but what was the point in being specific?

“Sal did your press conference,” Sheena, the public relations employee, commented.

I cringed on the inside, and I didn’t miss the tiny snort that escaped Jenny. I ignored it. Bitch.

By the time I looked back at where he was I’d been dismissed. His attention had gone right on to the girl next to me without a moment to spare.

Well. Okay.

I guess I should have been glad I cancelled our wedding preparations years ago.

I gave Jenny a look out of the corner of my eye. “Shut up.”

She waited until the next player stopped talking before replying. “I didn’t say a word.”

“You were thinking about it.”

“I haven’t stopped thinking about it,” she admitted in a whisper that was way too close to a laugh.

My eye twitched on its own. Neither had I.

I
had just laid
down on my bed after dinner when my phone rang. My legs ached after my morning run, our fitness test and then the landscaping job I helped Marc with most of the afternoon. Considering it was eight at night and I had a tiny number of friends that actually called me occasionally, I had a pretty good idea of who it was. Sure enough, a foreign area code and number showed up on the screen.

“Hi, Dad,” I answered, sliding my cell into the crook between my shoulder and ear.