The twenty-something guy looked friendly enough in khaki pants and a neatly tucked in, button-down blue shirt. He smiled at me, his little handheld recorder ready and waiting. “Thanks for stopping. I have a few questions for you.”
I nodded. “Sure. Okay.”
He introduced himself and the website he was doing the interview for, and let me know he’d be recording our conversation. “You’re about halfway through the season now, how are the Pipers looking?”
All right. “Good. We’ve only lost one game so far, but we’re trying to stay focused and get through the next few weeks so that we can move into the playoffs again.”
“At what point does the pressure really start to get to you?”
“At least for me, it never lets up. Before the season even starts, I’m already worried about how things are going. Every game is important and that’s what our coaching staff has really drilled into us. It’s easier to stay focused when you’re worried about putting one foot in front of the other rather than trying to take on a huge obstacle at once.”
He smiled and nodded. “Who are you looking forward to watching this Altus Cup?”
I smiled at him, feeling a little easier. The Cup was starting in September, right after our season ended. “Argentina, Spain, Germany.” Almost absently I added, “The U.S.” Well that didn’t sound sincere at all. “I’m pretty excited.”
“Any plans for rejoining the U.S. Women’s National Team?” he asked.
That now-familiar rope of anger laced my wrists, and I had to shake it off. It was easy enough to live with not being on the team before, when things had been great with the Pipers, but now not so much. I was on my last reserve of patience. “No plans,” I said in a steady voice, even smiling. “I’m focusing on the Pipers for now.”
“You’ve talked about your work with youth players in the past; are you continuing your camps this year?”
“Those camps are starting up in a few weeks. It’s mainly low-income middle school kids and early high schoolers I aim for. That’s usually one of the most influential ages for kids to really stick to sports, so I love doing them.”
“Okay, one final question so you can get going: what do you have to say about rumors about a relationship between you and Reiner Kulti?”
Dun, dun, dun. I smiled at him and eased my little heart to slow down. “He’s a great person. He’s my coach and a friend.” I shrugged. “That’s all.”
The look the guy gave me was incomprehensible, but he nodded and smiled and thanked me.
I couldn’t help but feel dirty. Just a little. Like I’d done something wrong—or at least something that I wouldn’t want to own up to. I could handle accepting my faults and mistakes. I didn’t have a boyfriend; I wasn’t married. I could be friends with whoever I wanted to. And it wasn’t like he was still married or anything, either.
But…
I swallowed back the weird feeling in my chest, that strange indecisiveness that wasn’t sure whether I wanted to handle all this unnecessary attention or not.
I wasn’t a superstar. I was just me, a little-known soccer player. The equivalent of a bobsledder in Houston, as my sister had called me one day.
All I had ever wanted was to play and to be the best. That was it.
What was I doing?
I tried to block out all these things that didn’t matter when I was at practice, but it was a lot harder than usual for some reason. I couldn’t stop thinking about Gardner’s warning, stupid Amber and her equally stupid husband, the national team, Kulti and all his famous-person crap. I felt like I had a noose around my neck, slowly, slowly, slowly tightening. I couldn’t breathe.
Right after finishing my passing drills, I felt a hand wrap around my wrist when I wasn’t expecting it.
I hadn’t even realized he was nearby. To be honest, I hadn’t been paying that much attention to anything besides soccer: passing the ball, blocking, sprinting. Things I had done a thousand times and would hopefully do another thousand in the future.
A deep line creased between his eyebrows as he tipped his chin down to ask, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing” started to come out of my mouth, but I decided against it at the last minute. He’d know. I wasn’t sure how he’d know, but he would know I was lying. “I’m just stressed, that’s all.” Okay, so that was vague and understated, but it was the truth. I was.
Apparently, it wasn’t enough for him. Of course it wouldn’t be. He got that über serious look on his face, the one that smoothed the angled lines of his cheekbones. Kulti met me eye to eye, not caring that we were so close or that whoever wasn’t busy doing drills was more than likely looking at us. He didn’t care. He simply focused on the object of his attention—me.
It tightened something in my chest that I couldn’t really put together.
“Later,” he stated, he didn’t ask.
I shrugged my shoulders.