Kulti

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.

But he was the one that had held on to my shoulder when I’d made a horrible play in my younger years that cost my team a championship and told me that it wasn’t the end of the world. While I looked at Kulti as the type of badass I wanted to aspire to be one day, Eric had been the one to assure me I could be better.

When Kulti had broken my brother’s leg, I made my choice.

I would choose my brother every single time.

Except as my lips formed the shape it took to enunciate the letter ‘b’ for bitch, I remembered.

I remembered what Gardner had warned us of two weeks ago during our first Pipers meeting. If I hear any of you call him Führer, you’re out of here. Fuck me.

Calling him a bitch wasn’t better, was it?

A bag of dicks wasn’t much better either.

My lips sealed themselves together and in response my nostrils flared.

“He isn’t an imbecile, but Eric is my brother,” I answered him carefully. My eye was starting to twitch.

From ten feet away, someone’s green-brown eyes narrowed. “What else would you call someone—“

My eye went full speed twitching and before I thought twice, I cut him off. “That purposely swept an opponent’s leg harder than necessary?” I shrugged. “You tell me.”

My throat clogged instantly and the twitching in my eyelid got worse once the words were out. I’d done it. Jesus Christ. I’d insinuated he was an imbecile but hinting at it wasn’t the same thing as outright calling him one, right?

Sheena let out a low, ringing laugh that had ‘awkward’ written all over it. “Okay, I’m sure we can avoid the name-calling, yes?” She didn’t wait for an answer from either one of us before going on. “I have an idea, and I don’t see why it wouldn’t work to calm things down a little. I spoke to Mr. Kulti’s publicist a week ago and he made it clear to me that his party has been receiving some similar messages, but we were hoping things would calm down eventually. Since they’re not, let’s do this: Sal, we’ll release your part of the press conference we had a few weeks ago—“

My jaw dropped and I’m pretty positive that my heart skipped a single beat. I choked, loud and clear on my saliva.

The PR employee shot me a look. She’d been there. She’d seen what an ass I made of myself. “I’ll make sure it’s edited. We have videographers coming in to film some of the practices for the website, and I’m sure they can catch some footage of the two of you getting along. There are also some promo shots coming up, and with some easy placement,” she grinned and waggled her fingers like she hadn’t just spouted out one of the worst ideas I’d ever heard, “problem solved for both of you.”

I chewed on my thoughts for a minute, glancing at the German sitting four feet away. Mouthing and discarding the curse words that ran through a loop in my head.

The press conference video? No. Hell no.

The filming? I glanced at Kulti again and almost snorted, remembering how he had yet to speak to anyone that wasn’t on staff besides Grace. So the likelihood of that happening? Ha.

The pictures? Those were doable.

But…

The press conference. A shiver used its spindly legs to crawl up the length of my spine. I made a hocking noise in my throat.

“Sheena,” I said steadily, hoping that I wasn’t going to sound like a bitch. She was trying; I knew and appreciated the effort she was putting in. “That video…” I tried to remember the words I was capable of, but all I could do was settle for a shake of my head. Then, just to make sure she really got my point, I shook my head really quickly, too adamantly maybe. “Maybe not the best idea, don’t you think?”

Gardner didn’t even bother to try and mute his laugh. He just went for it.

“It will be fine. I won’t let them use any of the parts you’re worried about. I promise.”

Taking my silence for exactly what it was—wariness and distrust—Sheena said, “I promise, Sal. It’ll be fine. Trust me.”

Trust her? I had this rule about trusting people until they gave me a reason not to. When you play soccer with strangers on a regular basis, leaving your health and safety in the hands of others out of need, being too cynical doesn’t work for anyone. Was it a little intimidating? Yes. But in the words of my sister, ‘you only live once.’

“All right,” I ground out, though some part of my consciousness called me an idiot for not fighting harder.

The smile she gave me in response was wide and bright.

I smiled back at her. Idiot, idiot, idiot.

“Mr. Kulti are you onboard too?” the nice woman asked.

Eventually he nodded. His lightly tanned face didn’t exactly look like he was jumping for joy, but he didn’t tell her to fuck-off like I would have bet my life on him doing years ago. I wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or not.

“We’ll get this all sorted out in no time, Sal. No need to worry,” Sheena added.

What she didn’t know was that telling me not to worry was like telling me not to breathe.

I had been asleep for at least an hour when my phone rang. For a couple of rings, I considered not answering it. Because, really? Who the hell would be calling at almost midnight during the week? It was pretty common knowledge that I had an early bedtime.

Marc’s name flashed across the screen and I narrowed my sleepy eyes. He wasn’t usually a drunk-dialer, so what if it was an emergency?

“Salamander?” This man that was more my friend than my boss spoke. We’d grown up together. He’d been friends with Eric for as long as I could remember and somehow transitioned from being his friend, to being a brother figure and a great friend to me. He’d moved to Houston to get his doctorate, and once I moved too, he’d said, ‘Why don’t we start our own business?’ For two people with insane schedules and my degree and experience to help us out, it worked as an easy way to make our own money and not have a boss who didn’t understand we had other things that came first.

I yawned. “Hey, everything all right?” I answered tentatively.

“Salami,” he hissed, sounding just a little drunk while the sound of loud voices filled the background, making it really hard to hear what he was saying.

“Hey, it’s me. What’s going on?”

There were more sounds in the background, people laughing, what might have been glasses clinking together. “I don’t know what to do.”

Immediately I sat up in bed and threw my legs over the edge. Marc didn’t know what to do? My gut said he wasn’t calling me for shits and giggles. “It’s all right. Are you okay? What do you need?”

“Oh? Me? I’m good. Sorry. I was actually calling because… hold on one sec, I’m trying to get into the bathroom real quick…” All of a sudden the background noise cut out completely and my friend’s voice became clear over the line. “Hey, he’s here.”

Rubbing at my eyes with the back of my hand, I yawned. “Who’s where?” Then it hit me. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?” He had class at eight in the morning.

“My professor isn’t coming in.”

“Okay…”

“I’m at that bar by my house. You know which one I’m talking about?” He didn’t give me a chance to respond, but I knew where he was referring to. We’d gone there together a few times in the offseason. Marc continued, “Kulti’s here. Been here. The bartender cut him off a while ago, but I think he’s asleep. The bartender’s been asking if anyone knows him, but I guess I’m the only one.”

He breathed loud, continuing. “This is some shit, Sal. I thought about taking a picture of him to sell it, but that’s kinda fucked up. Imagine if anybody recognized him.”

I could imagine and I cringed a little. The WPL’s focus on morals and family values flashed through my head. If it got out our brand-new superstar of an assistant coach was passed out drunk at a bar before the season even started… it’d be a disaster.

“I figured you’d know what I should do,” Marc finally ended.

Jeez. What a mess. A small part of me didn’t want to get involved. He wasn’t my friend, and it wasn’t like he’d been particularly friendly or kind in any way. But the point was he was a member of my team. That part of me that battled between being a dick and saying he wasn’t my problem lost to the bigger part of me that made me do the right thing. My mom would be horrified if I was an asshole. I wouldn’t want to give her another reason to be disappointed in me.

I bit back a groan and stood up with a sigh, already looking through my dresser for a pair of pants. “Can you call him a cab?” Please, Jesus. Please.

“I asked the bartender who checked his ID, and he said it wasn’t a Texas driver’s license. He either wasn’t paying attention or doesn’t care who he is,” Marc explained. “I don’t think he has any car keys on him either.”

If I was drunk, famous and what seemed like mainly alone in a foreign country, would I want someone looking through my pockets? Or, I don’t know, videotaping me when I wasn’t at my best? Definitely not.

Pulling my pants up, I sighed. “I’ll be there in fifteen.”

I shoved my phone back into my pocket with a tired and slightly frustrated sigh. Sheena hadn’t answered her phone and neither had Gardner; then again, what had I been expecting? It was almost one in the morning, and apparently I was the only idiot that left their ringer on overnight.

The warm yellow lights from inside of the bar made me sigh again. What the hell was I doing? A man I hardly knew was sitting inside, drunk and possibly on the verge of making an ass of himself if people realized who he was. I wasn’t naïve enough to believe that if he were recognized, people would brush it off. That wasn’t how people worked. I could already envision the videos being uploaded and going viral and all the hell that would come from it.

Was it totally unfair? Of course it was. Most people had too much to drink at some point or another, and no one ever thought twice about it.

Shit.

I sighed and threw the door open, not thinking about the fact I was in gray six-dollar sweatpants and an old, stained sweatshirt that I’d thrown on over the baggy shirt I usually slept in. Marc must have been keeping an eye out for my car because he was waiting at the door for me. In a T-shirt and jeans, he looked like a cleaned-up version of the man I spent nearly every afternoon with. He was showered, his hair was styled, and he had his nice set of glasses on, so that was pretty fancy. He had a striking resemblance to Ricky Martin when he wasn’t dressed in his work clothes. Dark hair, dark eyes, tan skin and he was just… well, pretty.

“Over here,” he said, waving me toward a booth in the back.

The figure hunched over the table was unmistakable, at least to me. That shade of short brown hair was the same I’d been seeing in person for the last two weeks. It was definitely Kulti. The fact he didn’t have on any team-related clothing like the polo shirt he had on earlier in the day was a small blessing, I guess. His beanie was slouched pretty low on his head, another bonus.

For the first time I thought, what the hell was he doing getting drunk at a bar in Oak Forest? This side of town was predominantly a middle-class neighborhood that had slowly been getting taken over by the upper middle-class with small houses being demolished and bigger, near-mansion-like homes taking over. It was a family neighborhood, not one you’d expect a rich single man living in.

“I’m sorry,” Marc said over his shoulder.

”No, it’s okay. You did the right thing calling me.” Well I still wasn’t convinced that was true but… if it were Harlow calling me because she needed a ride home after drinking too much, I would have gotten her without thinking twice about it. Hell, if any of the girls on the team felt desperate enough to call me for a ride home, I would have been there. We were a team. That’s what you did. When you played on a team with people who held grudges against each other, it was a lot harder than it needed to be.

Sigh.

“All right.” I eyed Kulti and tried to guess how much he weighed. If I could throw him over my shoulder I could probably carry him out, but that wouldn’t exactly be inconspicuous. I tapped on his arm, then I tapped on his arm some more. Nothing. Next, I shook his arm. Nada. “Hey you, wake up,” I said, shaking him some more.

And still nothing.

I sighed. “Help me carry him out to the car.”

Marc didn’t even blink; he just nodded.

For a moment I thought about whether his tab was open or not, and then I decided he could figure it out in the morning when he was sober.

“Ready?”

Marc and I dragged my coach across the seat and got him to the end of the bench. Squatting down, I peeled the arm that was plastered to the table and lifted the heavy weight to put it over my shoulders. Over the top of Kulti’s head, I watched Marc do the same thing.

How did I always let myself get dragged into this crap?

“Ready?”

At the count of three, we stood up. Well, Marc and I stood up, and Jesus Christ. I was used to people jumping on top of me, but it was never deadweight. It was also never someone almost a foot taller leaning up against me.

I huffed and I heard Marc make a light grunting sound. He was used to lugging around bags of soil, grass seed and mulch, so that said something. Somehow we managed to circle around and slowly make our way toward the door. I ignored the patrons that were watching us, interested and disapproving at the same time. Whatever. Keeping my eyes forward, I focused on making sure to take as much of Kulti’s weight as I could to save Marc the hassle. My rear passenger door was unlocked and we slowly finagled the big man into the seat, letting him slump over onto his side.

Good enough.

I rubbed at my eyebrow with the back of my hand, closing the door with my hip at the same time. “I tried to call Coach Gardner, but he hasn’t answered, so I’m not sure whether to take him back to my place or take him to a hotel, I guess.”

He gave me this look that said ‘good point.’ “Are you going to stay with him?”

Stay with him? I glanced in the backseat and shrugged. “I don’t know. You think I should?”

Marc lifted his shoulders too, looking into the car as well. “If it was you I was picking up, I’d say yes because it’s you. If it was Simon, I’d pretend I dropped the call because he’s a grown man that shouldn’t have gotten messed up.”

I understood his point. He’d heard me tell him day after day that I hadn’t spoken much with my coach. “I’ll figure it out, I guess.”

“You need any help?”

He didn’t go out often, and I realized he’d already gone above and beyond by calling me. I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it. I can get him in somewhere.”

“Call me if you need me though, okay?” he asked.

I reached forward and pulled at his shirt cuff. “I will. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He grinned, taking a step back. “See you.”

“Goodnight,” I called after him before getting in my car and watching him go back inside the bar.

A single rough snore from the backseat reminded me of the treasure I had there. What in the hell was I going to do with him? Take him home?

It didn’t even take me five seconds to decide that was a shitty idea.

I didn’t know him. He wasn’t my friend. How weird would that be for him to wake up on my sofa in an apartment of a player he’d spoken to once?

One quick search on my phone later and the input of my credit card information, and I was driving down the dark dead streets toward the closest hotel. It took five minutes to get to the chain hotel, another fifteen minutes to check in because my discount reservation hadn’t gone through yet, and then I was back at the car, eyeing what had to be close to two hundred pounds sprawled out on my backseat.

Thank God for squats and deadlifts.

It took a whole bunch of huffing and puffing, breaking out into a sweat, slapping at his cheek in hopes of reviving him futilely, and dropping the F-word every five seconds before I had his arm over my shoulders, my arm around his waist, and a barely conscious man trudging along besides me.

“Come on,” I pleaded with him as we hit the stairs what felt like thirty minutes later.

I was dying. Dying. And that had to say something because I had full-sized women who jumped on top of me, and had me helicopter them around.

Fuck me.

Every other time I’d ever done this, I always had help.

By some miracle, the room assigned was right by the stairs.

His sleepy face was shuttered, and I slowly let him slide down the length of my side to sit on the floor. I opened the door, held it cracked open the back of my foot and snuck my arms under his armpits to drag him in.

I sure as hell did drag him in, his long legs and feet extended out in front of him. Three huffs and a rough hoist later, I pulled him onto the bed and set him on his side with one knee cocked up and his top arm extended across the length of the mattress. I peeled one eyelid open to make sure, what? I wasn’t sure. I stuck a finger under his nose to make sure he was breathing evenly. And then I watched him for a solid thirty minutes, sitting in the chair just to the side of the bed. I’d been around enough over-drinkers in my life, and he wasn’t giving me the impression he was going to puke up blood or anything.

Now what?

The idea of staying with him didn’t seem like a good one. I wasn’t sure how he’d react in the morning and, frankly, a part of me didn’t want to find out. I took a breath and searched for one of those complementary notepads some hotels provided. Sure enough, across from the bed, bingo.

Dear Kulti,

I tore it up.

Kulti,

I tore it up again.

Fuck it. I scribbled a message that was longer than I expected, pulled the forty bucks I had stuffed into my bra out, and set the note and the money on the nightstand next to him.

Then I looked back at the armchair with resignation. I wasn’t going home tonight and I damn well knew it. If I left, I’d stay up worried the whole night. Obviously, I only had one choice: stay in the hotel room for at least a few hours and then get the hell out of there before he knew I was there.

My conscience said it was the right thing to do, but my gut said to get the hell out.

Damn it.