And then less than a year later, he did other things that I couldn’t forgive.
Gardner had no idea about any of this.
Isatup straight in the chair across from the same head coach I’d been working with for the last four years and shrugged.Why was I looking like that?Like I wasn’t excited at all? “G, you know what happened between him and my brother, right?”
At that point, I guess I was expecting him to not know, because he’d been way too excited to tell me about Reiner Kulti getting hired.
But Gardner nodded and shrugged, his face still a canvas of confusion. “Of course I know. That’s why you’re the perfect person to do this conference, Sal. Besides Jenny and Grace, you’re the most well-known and well-liked player on the team. What do they call you, ‘the home-state sweetheart?’”
Home-state sweetheart. Gross. It made me feel like I was back in high school running for homecoming queen instead of the kid that skipped every homecoming because she usually had a game.
“Kulti broke—“
“I know what he did. PR already brought up what happened with Kulti and Eric during our meeting last night when they told us he was hired. No one wants this season to be a soap opera. You going on camera and smiling and giving everyone that Sal-smile is exactly what the team needs. This isn’t a big deal, and everyone needs to get on board so that the focus is on the team and not drama from years ago. It’ll be ten, maybe twenty minutes, maximum. You, me and him. You’ll answer a few questions and that’s it. I won’t put you through this again, I swear.”
My initial thought was simple: this was all Eric’s tibia and fibula’s fault.
I wanted to bang my head against the desk that separated me from Gardner, but I managed not to. Instead, dread pooled a bloody lake in my belly. It made me cramp, and I had to press a hand over it like that would help ease my suffering. Then I sighed again and accepted the reality behind Gardner’s words.
The league was all about family values, morals and everything wholesome. I learned that lesson the hard way, and the last thing I needed to do was ignore what had to be done to uphold that façade. Realistically, there were girls out there who would slit my throat for my position. And maybe meeting Kulti right before a press conference was exactly what I needed.
Just get it done, get it over with and move on with my life. I hadn’t really followed his career in the last decade, and he’d retired from the European League two years ago. Since then, he’d fallen off the celebrity wagon he’d been adopted into with all of his endorsements. At one point, you couldn’t go to the mall without seeing his face on an ad for something.
“I get it,” I moaned and dropped my head back to stare at the ceiling. “I’ll do it.”
“That’s my girl.”
I only just barely won the fight to not call him a sadistic asshole for making me do something that almost made me break out in hives. “I can’t promise that I won’t stutter my way through the entire interview or throw up on the first row, but I’ll do my best.”
Then I was going to punch Eric in the fucking kidney the first chance I got, damn it.
You can do this, Sal. You can do it.
When I was a little and my dad would ask me to do something I didn’t want to, which usually only happened if it was something I was horrified by—example, trying to kill those gigantic flying roaches that snuck into our house—he’d point his finger at me and tell me in Spanish, “Si puedes!”You can. Then, even if I cried as I went into the room housing the creature from the bowels of hell with a shoe as a weapon, I did whatever it was that I didn’t want to.
‘I can and I will,’ had been the motto I held closest to my heart at all times. I didn’t like people telling me I couldn’t do something, even if I didn’t want to do it. This was how Coach Gardner had gotten me to say I’d do the interview.
I could do it. I could be in the same room as Reiner Kulti. Sit a couple seats down from him for the first time ever in front of several television networks. No biggie.
On the inside, I crumpled into a ball like a dead spider and asked myself to please dissolve into dust sooner than later. This terror, this phobia of mine, was that unreasonable. No one ever says that fear is logical, because it isn’t. It’s stupid and irrational and on a scale of one to ten it sucked about a fifty.
“You ready?” Coach Gardner asked as we waited for the beginning of the press conference. The journalists and reporters were so loud in the other room it was making me sick. How the hell had this even happened? I was usually third down the chain of players that got requested for these publicity events, and that was for a reason.
I could play in front of thousands of people, but the instant cameras got within ten feet of me, I just shut down. I was like the Ricky Bobby of the WPL. I was sure there was a video of me making awful hand gestures throughout an interview somewhere. The three S’s came down to make me look like an idiot—stuttering, sweating and shaking. All at once.
My hands felt like I’d just rubbed them all over my lower back after a long run, my armpits were sweaty… and my leg was shaking. Both my legs were shaking. I knew shit was about to get real when my leg shook.
But instead of admitting that I was nervous, I stuck my hands in my pockets, thanked the lord above that the sweat pants I’d put on that morning were baggy enough so that no one could tell my legs had a mind of their own, and forced a smile on my face. “Ready,” I lied through my teeth.
And unfortunately, he knew me well enough to recognize the fact I was lying out of my ass because Gardner laughed loud. A hand came down on my shoulder and he gave me a shake. “You’re a wreck. It’ll be fine.”
One of the public relations people for the organization peeped around the corner of the hallway and frowned for a second before disappearing again.
I couldn’t do this.
I could do this.
One hacking cough later, I told myself: I could do this. I really could.