What could I tell her? Nothing. I couldn’t tell her anything without bringing up that I’d driven him home a few times. “I have no idea,” I told her.
“Did something else come up with Eric?”
“No.” I’d been getting fewer and fewer messages about Eric and Kulti over the course of the last few weeks. I seriously doubted that the team photos with us standing by each other had anything to do with it, and Sheena hadn’t brought up anything else about releasing clips from the press conference I’d done with Gardner at the beginning of the season.
Jenny scrunched up her face, wiping at her neck with her shirt collar. “Bring him a cupcake or something then Sal, because this is getting out of control. I don’t know how you haven’t started crying yet.”
That’s how bad it was. My whole body was tight before practice began and it stayed that way afterward. Marc went out of his way to tease me more often to get me out of my exhausted funk.
It barely helped.
And then, I finally had enough.
“If you would have—“
If I would have. If I would have done something differently, we could have won by five points instead of one.
He was being unfair and everyone knew it. Did anyone say anything though?
Of course not. No one wanted to be the one getting their ass chewed out, and I couldn’t exactly blame them.
Most importantly, did I say anything? Nope. I stood there as Gardner and Kulti went back and forth over what we could have improved upon in our last preseason game. I stayed quiet as Kulti hung the weight of an almost-loss on my shoulders and nodded when I was supposed to.
He was right. I did miss a few opportunities. I wouldn’t deny it.
But so did half the members on our team. Yet did anyone bring that up? Gardner made some generalizations, but he didn’t name anyone directly even when it was obvious someone had messed up big time. He didn’t get a kick out of embarrassing players, and instead would pull a person aside and talk with them.
And this fuckingfrankfurter…
I swallowed the fucking bratwurst bitch,sauerkrautshit, German pieceofshit Chocolate Cake insults, which were all throwing a party in my mouth. They each begged me to let them come out and play.
Inside, oh my God, inside I was raging and trying to talk myself out of doing something that would land me in jail. I wouldn’t cut it. I enjoyed being outside too much.
“Sorry guys,” I said in a deceptively calm voice once Kulti had finished his rant.
Harlow and Jenny’s faces stood out at me from the semicircle we were standing in. Harlow looked like she was on the verge of laughing, and Jenny looked like she was contemplating how quickly she could grab me in case I decided two to fifteen years behind bars wasn’t that long.
None of the girls said a word.
Our post-game meeting finished soon after that, leaving a clammy awkward feeling in the air that I’m sure I was responsible for.
Like a sane rational person, I grabbed my things and casually went about preparing to leave. Harlow gave my arm a squeeze as she walked by me, not saying anything, but I felt like she was giving me her blessing—her inner fearlessness. Jenny crept over to me and wrapped her arm around my shoulders and in a low voice said, “Salamander, please don’t make me visit you in jail. Orange isn’t your color, and I don’t think you’re cut out to be some lady’s… you know…bitch.”
Leave it to Jenny to make me lose focus. I laughed and wrapped an arm around her waist. How did she know me so well? “I swear I’m not going to do anything violent.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
She didn’t exactly look like she really believed me, but eventually she dropped her arm. “Please.” Jenny looked me right in the eye as she pleaded.
I couldn’t help but smile at her and nod. “Promise.”
Her eyes dropped low but she eventually nodded. “See you tomorrow?”
I assured her I would, and she bid me goodbye. The area had mostly cleared out by then, but the person I was looking for was still there. Taking a deep breath, I calmed my nerves and told myself I was doing the right thing. I couldn’t keep doing this crap with him.
I wouldn’t. I knew exactly what I needed to do to resolve it.