They were still talking about me, and giving me looks. Murmuring. There was nothing I could do.
Someone was seatedat the bottom of the stairs leading up to my apartment by the time I got home from work that evening. It took all of a split second once I got out of the car, to recognize the brown hair and the long body that stood up, brushing off the back of his loose workout shorts.
He didn’t say anything to me as I parked my car a couple feet away from him, and he didn’t say a word as he took my duffel bag, even as he eyed the baggy pants and the long-sleeved shirt I had on. He hadn’t seen me in my work clothes before, and I couldn’t find it in me to care that I had dirt and grass stains all over my knees and that my hair had doubled in volume since that morning.
“Hey you,” I said with a smile as we climbed up the steps to get to the front door.
Unlocking the door, he followed after me, locking it as soon as he was inside and dropping my bag in the same place I always left it. I sat on the floor and yanked off my work boots, too exhausted to even bother trying to do it standing up. They got tossed in the direction of the door harder than they needed to be.
The German held out his hand to me.
I took it and got to my feet, not moving an inch when we stood maybe four inches away from each other.
I’d been telling myself the second half of the day that this was technically his fault. That if I hadn’t been nice to him, we wouldn’t have started spending time together and become friends. If he was anyone else in the world, save for a handful of other people, no one would have given a single shit what we did together. I had spent my entire career trying to get through day by day and improve. I didn’t want fame, and while a fortune would have been nice, it wasn’t what got me going every morning. I’d been careful, always careful, always sacrificing whatever I needed to, to succeed.
Kulti had come in and doomed all that.
I had put time and effort into building a working relationship with the girls I played with. I helped them out, wanting them to do well, and all that hard work was now pretty much in the shitter. No one except Jenny and Harlow had bothered to—
The German squeezed the hand that I hadn’t even noticed he hadn’t let go of. Palm to palm, his thumb rubbed over the back of my hand, once. Just once. “If you would like me to apologize, I won’t.”
I closed my eyes and stood there, letting him hold my hand and not letting myself think about it too much. I was an affectionate person, and even though Kulti hadn’t really been one in the entire time we’d been getting along, you couldn’t be a soccer player and be weird about physical contact. So I would take everything he was willing to give me.
“What do you have to not be sorry about?” I asked him, eyes still closed.
His long fingers squeezed again. “Forcing you to be my friend.”
I felt myself smile. “You didn’t force me to be your friend.”
“I did,” he argued.
“You didn’t. I was nice to you when you were still being an extra-large pain in the ass.”
There was a pause. “Was this before or after you called me a bratwurst?”
I opened an eye. “Both.”
The corners of his mouth tipped up just slightly, but he stayed serious. “I won’t let them bench you.”
I nodded, staring straight at the man who mastered the resting bitch face, and I said, “All right.”
Words hung in the air between us. I felt compressed, squeezed. I was torn between knowing that I wasn’t going to tell him to beat it and knowing that I probably should.
Was this worth it? Was this worth being ostracized by my teammates? Being on my general manager’s hit list? Having my photo plastered on fan pages with the words ‘die bitch’ at the bottom?
I really had no idea.
I hoped so.
“Sal! You got a minute?”
My fingers gripped the nylon strap of my bag, and I felt my insides stir. The day before I had managed to avoid the two reporters loitering off the side of the field by hauling ass while they were busy talking to other people, but now… I hadn’t gotten so lucky.
I’d gotten to the field for practice early, but not early enough. Damn it.
“Come on, one minute. Please!”
With no one to hide behind or any other way to pretend like I hadn’t heard the guy calling out to me, I took a deep breath and resigned myself to getting this over with.