Kulti

“….Does anyone have any other questions?”

You could take a bite out of the tension in the room. No one except Grace had said a word over the last two hours. We all just sat there, listening to the coaching staff go over last-minute details regarding the upcoming season. Awkward and uncertain, every player sitting around the conference room simply watched and nodded. Spending so much time listening to others talk instead of actually playing was painful enough.

The culprit behind the team’s weird behavior was the assistant coach standing in the corner of the room by the projection screen with his arms at his sides. No one had to confirm it, but we knew. We all definitely knew.

It was his fault.

When no one else responded to Gardner’s question, I shook my head and answered. “Nope.”

A frown indented the crease between the head coach’s eyebrows as he looked around the room, waiting for someone to say something else.

Fresh words never came, and I could tell by the way his cheeks tightened that he didn’t understand why, either. For one thing, no one exactly lacked confidence. Secondly, if anyone had an issue, they usually didn’t have a problem voicing it.

Except this time, the main problem had two arms and legs.

Dun, dun, dun.

No one was about to give anything away.

“No one?” Gardner asked again, his tone disbelieving.

Nothing.

“Okay. If no one has anything to say, I guess you’re all free to go. We’re meeting up here tomorrow at eight, and we’ll all ride to the field together,” he announced to a collective of nods before the team got up.

I stayed a few minutes longer talking to Genevieve about running trails nearby and had just grabbed my stuff when I heard, “Sal, you got time to come to my office?”

My instinct said I knew exactly what conversation was about to go down. I’d seen Gardner’s face and my gut was well aware that he knew something was up.

Unfortunately, I also knew I’d be the first and more than likely the only one he’d come to with his questions.

Blah. It was the curse of being a well-known shitty liar.

“Sure,” I told him, even though the last thing I wanted was to talk about it.

He grinned at me and beckoned me forward. “Come on, then.“

Damn it. Slinging my bag over my shoulder, I followed. Within a couple minutes, we were turning down a hallway I was all too familiar with and heading into his office.

Gardner pulled the curtains up in the small window that separated his desk from the hall—it was procedure—and took a seat behind his desk, his smile friendly and his eyebrows halfway up to his hairline. “You know I’m not going to beat around the bush with you. Tell me what’s going on.”

And bingo was his name-o.

Where exactly did I start?

It wasn’t like I wanted to bring up anyone’s issues, much less my own conundrum—again—in front of a man that I trusted and respected but ultimately realized was using me as an informant. Okay, more of a snitch. It was the same thing, damn it. Sliding into the chair with my bag at my feet, I raised my eyebrows up at Gardner. I immediately decided to play the dumb card as long as possible.

“With us?”

“You all. The team. What’s going on?”

“G, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Sal.” He blinked like he knew I was playing dumb. I was, but he didn’t know that for sure. “Everyone is acting strange. No one’s chatty. I don’t see anyone playing around like usual. It looks like it’s the first time everyone is playing together. I want to understand what’s going on, that’s all.”

Once I really thought about it, I realized I shouldn’t be surprised he noticed the differences. Of course he would. He noticed because he cared. I complained because Gardner cared and then complained because Kulti didn’t. There was no winning, was there? I needed to embrace the fact Gardner was still around and noticed.

While practices were usually pretty serious, there had always been a playful aspect to our warm-ups and cool downs. We all got along with each other pretty well for the most part, and I think that’s why we worked so well together. No one was a superstar or had a hot-air-balloon-sized ego. We played as a unit.

Of course that didn’t mean some players didn’t wish other players didn’t twist an ankle from time to time, but that’s just the way it was.

And yeah, practices had been pretty subdued and had gotten more and more quiet with each passing day. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that it wasn’t the fault of the new players to the team. They were great.

It was the German. If even Harlow was wary of opening up her mouth to complain about him not being active, then there was obviously a problem. I don’t think Har had ever thought twice about the repercussions of speaking up. She was that good and that honest. Yet I’d seen her stand back and shake her head while the frankfurter in question paced around the outskirts of practices, silent.

Plus, there was my crap with him.

I leaned forward to rest my elbows on my knees and lifted up my shoulders in a lazy shrug.

“Tell me what to do,” the coach said, seriously. “I trust your word, and I need to know where to start.”

The t-word, goddammit. Trust was my kryptonite.

I suddenly felt my resolve give way and let my head hang down in surrender.

“Well.” I scratched my cheek and gave him a steady look. “What exactly can I say that won’t get me into trouble?”

“What?”

“What will get me in trouble? I don’t want to say something that will get me benched,” I told him carefully, like I hadn’t called the German a bratwurst days before.

The look he gave me was incredulous. Gardner looked as if I’d spit in his face. “Is this Kulti-related?”

Given the fact that I hadn’t been given parameters yet as to what would get me in trouble, I settled for a nod. I could always say I didn’t vocalize anything with his name in it, right?

“You’re messing with me.”

I shrugged.

“Explain. You know how much I respect you as a person. I’m not going to rat you out or get you in trouble for being honest with me, give me a break.” He really did look offended that I didn’t want to come out and say something to him.

And yet…

“Sal, I know you’re aware that I’m not blind or stupid. Tell me the truth. I only caught half of what you told him a few days ago. I know he wasn’t friendly to your dad, but I thought that was it. I want to help, and I can tell that this isn’t working the way it’s supposed to be. Every time we’re out on the field, everyone’s acting tense; no one wants to say anything during our meetings. That’s not like you all,” Gardner said. “Usually someone’s arguing about how inflated the soccer ball is, for Christ’s sake.”

I wanted to slump back in my chair and let my head fall back so that I could stare at the ceiling, but I wouldn’t. Instead, I tugged my Big Girl Socks on a little higher and dealt with what he was saying. “I’m not disagreeing with you. Things are tense and it sucks, G. But you know we have that ‘no whining’ rule, so no one is going to complain.”

“Then tell me what it is. Is it me?”

“Why do you always do this to me?” I groaned.

He laughed. “Because you’re not going to BS me.” Master manipulator, he was a master manipulator. “I want things to get back to the way they should be, so tell me what needs to be fixed.”

Didn’t he understand? You didn’t threaten a career that had been made up of so much sacrifice for nothing. Each and every single one of us had given up birthdays, anniversaries, a social life, relationships, time with our families and more for what we had. It was precious to me, and I’d be a moron to give it away freely. Every other girl on the team had to feel the same way to some extent. “I know, G, but you know we’re all going to be careful. What do you expect? We were warned from the beginning to watch what we say about Kulti, and then we show up to practice or go to the grocery store and get bombarded with him constantly.”

The sigh that came out of him reminded me of a punctured balloon. He still couldn’t believe it. There were people in life that cared about fixing what was broken and there were people who waited for someone else to resolve their problems. Usually, I liked to think that I went for the things that I wanted, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be the one to say something, especially not in this case.

I suddenly felt a little bad that I’d been holding back from telling the truth, just a little bit. Until I remembered the very real threat that the German had given me after I’d helped him out, and then indignation and anger washed over everything. “All right.” I took a deep breath. “I think everyone is just a little unsure of his presence here, G. I think. I can only speak for myself. No one says anything because we’re all probably too scared to put our feet in our mouths and get in trouble. And it doesn’t help that he isn’t exactly Mr. Rogers.”

A smile cracked across the coach’s face.

“I’m serious. I think at some point everyone has had that nightmare coach that calls you a worthless piece of shit who should have quit playing soccer years ago. But somehow, it’s worse to be with someone at this stage that doesn’t seem to care. He doesn’t say anything; he doesn’t do anything. He’s just there.” There was the incident at the photo shoot. And he’d threatened me when all I’d done was try to help him, but I kept that crap to myself. Not because of what he’d said, but just because I wasn’t that type of person.

It was a fact. Kulti didn’t do anything. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t share his knowledge or his anger except that one time, or even his vocabulary.

“Jesus.” Gardner nodded and ran a hand over his head. “I get it.”

Had I said too much? Maybe.

Puffing my cheeks like a blowfish I started yammering. “Look, he’s a great player. I’m not saying he’s not, obviously. But shouldn’t he be coaching us? Bitching? Telling us when we’re doing something good or at least doing something spectacularly bad? Something? I figured maybe he was just getting used to being around girls, but it’s been long enough now. Don’t you think?”

“I understand what you’re saying. It makes sense.” He rubbed a hand over his head and glanced up at the ceiling. “I don’t know why I didn’t think about that before. Huh.” He nodded at himself before looking over at me. “At least now I know where I need to start.”

Fidgeting in the chair for a moment, I sat up and nodded at him. “That’s about it.”

Gardner made a few faces as he thought about what I said but finally gave me a curt nod. “I appreciate you talking to me. I’ll make sure we get this sorted out,” he said finally, my cue to get the hell out of there.

“All right, then. I should get going. See you tomorrow,” I said, grabbing my belongings and getting up.

He gave me a funny look. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you too. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you look like you’re ready to bite someone’s head off. ”

So apparently I needed to work on keeping my game face on a little better. I could do that. I smiled and nodded at the man sitting across the table. “I’m fine, G. Thanks, though.”

His features eased a bit and an emotion I wasn’t sure I recognized crossed his face as I took a step back. “I’m proud of you Sal, for standing up to him. Especially now that I know how you all are feeling about his presence here… I want you to know that. You’re a good girl.”

Gardner’s words made me feel nice at the same time they made me feel guilty. I gave him a little smile and shrugged. “I should have said something to you earlier about the girls, G.”

“It’s fine. You said something now and that’s all that matters.”

Was it?

We said bye to each other one more time and then I was out of there.

Bag over my shoulder, I slowly made my way out, thinking. Had I done the right thing? I wasn’t positive, but what else was I supposed to do? I could painfully go through another five months of tiptoeing around this German dingle-berry, but it was different if I wasn’t the only one being affected by his presence.

The trek back was old and familiar. Down two hallways and head to the elevator. I knew it by memory. I rocked back and forth on my heels as I waited for the elevator.

It was the soft squeak of a foreign pair of tennis shoes on the linoleum floor that had me glancing over. The sound wasn’t anything special in this building; mostly everyone wore tennis shoes unless it was game day or if it was a woman wearing heels. But when I saw a pair of special edition RK running shoes, black with lime-green stitching, my shoulders tensed up.

And I looked.

Of course it was the ass-gobbler I’d just been talking about.

Subconsciously, I started to reach back and make sure my hair was tucked up neatly beneath my headband, but I stopped before I got there. Poop. Plus, what did it matter if my hair was messed up? It shouldn’t.

I cleared my throat when he stopped a yard or so away from me and our eyes met. His eye color was clearer that I’d thought it would be. It was a perfect mix of a honey-brown with a fitting blend of murky green. Bright, sharp and incredibly, unbelievably observant from the weight of the stare it was capable of.

Holy bejesus he was tall. His forearms were big beneath the sky blue training polo he had on. Then I glanced back up at his eyes to see them still locked on me. He was watching me check him out.

Fuck.

Poop, Sal. Poop.

Pee. Stop it. Stopitrightnow.

You dragged him out of a bar and into a hotel room without a single thank you in return. Not even a smile. All you got out of it was a threat.

And suddenly with that, I felt fine.

I swallowed and smiled my sugar-sweet asshole smile, using the only half of my face capable of moving. “Hi,” I said before adding quickly, “Coach.”

That heavy gaze flicked down to the number printed on my chest for a moment before moving its way back up to look at my face. The blink he did was slow and lazy.

I tipped my chin up and blinked right back at him, forcing a smug and closed-mouth smile on my face.

The elevator dinged open as he said in a low tone which sounded like it cost him ten years off his life to use on such a lowly faithless creature like myself, “Hello.”

We looked each other right in the eye for a split second before I raised my eyebrows up and headed inside the small space. I turned to face the doors and watched him follow in after me, taking the spot against the corner furthest away.

Did he say anything else? No.

Did I? No.

I kept my eyes forward, and lived through the most awkward thirty seconds of my life.

The problem with men, or males in general, that I’d discovered over the course of my life, was that they had huge mouths. I mean a whale shark has nothing on the average man with a couple of friends. Honestly.

But you know, it was my fault. Really, it was. I should have known better.

My dad, brother and his friends had taught me the reality behind male friendships and yet I’d forgotten everything that I’d learned.

So I couldn’t blame anyone else but myself for trusting Gardner.

Already more than halfway through that morning’s practice, I had just finished my own one-on-one game against a defender. I went to take my place away from where the sessions were happening, and I wasn’t really paying attention. I was thinking about what I could have done differently to get the ball into the goal quicker when someone stepped right in the middle of my path.

It was a simple side-step that landed the body bigger than mine just a foot away.

I knew it wasn’t Gardner. Gardner had been on the other side of the field when I’d been playing, and there were only three other men on staff it could have been. Except two of them were too nice to do something so confrontational.

The German. It was the damn king of jerk-offs. Of course it was.

The instant I made eye-to-eye contact with him, I knew.

I knew Gardner was a caring, overly blunt bastard who had mentioned my name to the German.

My heart felt like it started to pound in my throat.

He didn’t have to say ‘I know what you said’ because the passive look on his face said it all. If he’d stood through me ranting about my dad without making a face, then I knew whatever it was he’d heard had hit a nerve. A person like him didn’t appreciate being criticized because he already thought he was perfect, hello.

It wasn’t like I’d called him a worthless piece of retired Euro-trash—which was horribly rude. Or said he was an awful player and that he didn’t deserve the job. Nothing remotely similar to that had come out of my mouth, but I put myself into his situation, thought of myself having an ego ten times the size of the one I currently had and asked myself how I’d feel.

I’d feel pretty damn pissed if some kid started saying what I needed to do differently.

But it was the truth, and I’d stand by it. I hadn’t called him Führer or a dick or anything. What was I going to do? Apologize to someone who didn’t deserve it? Nope.

I did what I needed to do. I stayed right where I’d stopped when he first got in my way, and I wrangled my heart into not beating so fast. Calm down, calm down, calm down. Poop. Pee. Poop, poop.

Big Girl Socks? On.

Voice? In check.

Steeling myself, I pushed my shoulders down and looked at him dead-on. “Yes?”

“Sprint time!” someone yelled.

My bravery only went so far because the next thing I did was turn around and run toward the line where sprints began. A whole nice round of conditioning, meaning running sprints at increasing amounts of distances, was my love-hate relationship. I was fast, but that didn’t mean I really loved running them.

I lined up between two of the younger girls who were always trying to run faster than me. The player on my right bumped her fist against mine right before we took off. “I feel like today is the day, Sal,” she smiled.

I wiggled my ankle around and slowly rested the weight on the ball of my foot. “I don’t know, I’m feeling pretty good today, but bring it on.”

One more fist bump and the whistle sounded.

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.