His eyes rolled up to the ceiling, a hand going to the back of his neck. “Damn. I didn’t think about that. I’m sorry. That’s not why I want to talk to you.”
Yeah, that wasn’t entirely convincing.
“I’m not worried about the results. I’m sure they’re fine, but I did ask you to come in because of the drug test. I had an interesting conversation with Sheena earlier.”
“Okay.”
“She told me that an email came in this weekend with your name and some pretty wild accusations on it.”
That bitch. That fucking bitch. It didn’t take a genius to know where the email had come from. I squeezed my thighs a little tighter, controlling the rage bubbling up inside of me.
First it was someone on the team tattling on me to Cordero, and now Amber was making crap up? I didn’t think I was a bad person. I did community service work from time to time, I mowed my elderly neighbors’ lawn for free, and I smiled at strangers. Sure sometimes I had bad thoughts about people, but it was never for any reason, though that didn’t make it any better. There were better people in the world than me, and there were sure as hell people a lot worse too. So I couldn’t help but take it a little personally that these miserable hags were taking their crap out on me.
“Any idea where something like that would come from?”
“Amber.” I gritted my teeth. “It was Amber. No one else would do something like this.”
Gardner wasn’t surprised. I’d told him what happened years ago, when I’d gotten back from the last national team tournament and burst into tears in front of him. “Christ. She’s still not over that mess?”
I couldn’t say that if I were in her shoes, I would have gotten over it either, but I liked to think that I wouldn’t go as far as she had. Actually, I knew that I wouldn’t. Only a total ass-wipe would call and make bogus allegations that could jeopardize someone’s lifetime of hard work.
I swallowed the bitterness back, reminding myself of all the good things in my life. “Nope.”
With a sigh, he shook his head and scratched at his neck. “In that case, I’m sorry for asking you over. I kept my eye on her during the game, but it didn’t seem like she was doing anything unusual.”
Of course he hadn’t heard all the names she’d been calling me during the game, but whatever.
“I’m going to give her coach a call and tell him he needs to get her under control.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s fine. If she does something like this again we’ll figure it out, but really, don’t worry about it.” She was a crappy person who had to live with the effects of her awful personality for the rest of her life. That was bad enough.
Gardner’s eyebrows went up in disbelief, but he didn’t argue. “You let me know if you change your mind.”
I nodded and stood up, ready to get out of there so that I could think of as many bad names for Amber as I could in private. “I will. Thanks for letting me know though, G. I appreciate it.”
“Anytime.” He watched me for a second before saying, “Sal, you know you can come to me with anything, right?”
“I know.” It was the truth. “You’re a good guy, Coach.”
Gardner smiled as I made my way out of his office with a wave. “Rest up tonight. I need your head in the game tomorrow.”
“You got it,” I said, closing the door behind me.
I made it about ten feet down the hallway before an amount of anger I didn’t think I was capable of, filled my entire soul. Amber had taken away the national team from me, fine. But now she was stooping low enough to try and jeopardize my career in the WPL?
That bitch.
I went home and took my anger out on the bathtub with a sponge and cleaner.
Alittle more than halfway throughthe game the next day, I accepted the fact that I was playing like complete and total crap.
All right, that was a bit of an exaggeration, but the point was I was playing pretty terrible. I was distracted and angry. For once in my life, I couldn’t push everything else down to focus. The maliciousness in Amber’s actions made my head want to explode. It wasn’t like she hadn’t done enough in the past to begin with either. Talking to her after the last game ended up stirring up some real resentment from me that not even my dirty bathroom could make go away. My head and my heart weren’t in it, and I was too pissed off to give a shit.
So when my number went up on the board in red, and another girl’s number went up in green, I wasn’t totally surprised they were taking me out. I couldn’t get angry about it either. Embarrassed and resigned, yes. I’d only gotten substituted a handful of times, and it had always been for a good reason: unavoidable cramps and torn muscles. There was also that one time I got too aggressive after a player elbowed me in the kidney and hadn’t gotten caught, but Gardner took me out before I did something I might regret. But this time there was no valid excuse for how sloppy I was playing, or how absent-minded I was today.
It was pathetic. I knew better. I did better. I could handle more than this without blinking an eye, and I failed spectacularly.
I slowly jogged off the field, avoiding everyone and anyone’s eyes, as I stared straight forward. Just as I was heading to the bench, the only route available was a sliver between Kulti and Gardner, a hand grabbed my wrist. Gardner wasn’t the grabbing type, so I knew before even looking over my shoulder who it was.