Kulti(102)
The fact I had been the one to tell Kulti about the coverage was nuts. The other fact, that Marc was the only one who had any idea that I spent time with the German, was nuts. I wasn’t the type to have secrets—and this one made me feel bad. I was lying to my friends and family, and it wasn’t like I could stop this deep into it.
All I could do was nod, turning around to face her. “Yeah. I don’t see what the big deal is.”
“Me neither.” Jenny shrugged but quickly reached up to tap my elbow. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “He’s been in a horrible mood since then.” She paused like she was really thinking about what came out of her mouth. “In a worse mood. I overheard him tell Grace she should look into retiring.”
My eyes bugged out.
Jenny just nodded.
Jeez. I thought about it for possibly five more seconds and then shook off my Kulti-related thoughts. I had better things to do.
“Come help me stretch. Everything is tight,” I told her.
She reached up and squeezed my shoulder. It took everything inside of me not to buckle my knees in order to get further away from her. As casually as possible, I stepped out of her reach. Seriously, I wondered if her boyfriend let her get anywhere near his privates.
I was in the middle of wondering if she’d ever given a hand job when I spotted Gardner and Kulti walking toward the field together. Whether they were talking or not, I couldn’t tell, but my teeth responded to the sight of the German.
If he’d apologized the next day or the one after that, I would have forgiven him with only giving him a minimal amount of shit. It wasn’t like he was the first person to make an asshole-ish comment to me in my life, and there was no way he’d be the last. My own mom had said some pretty rude things to me at one point or another, but I always forgave her. I wasn’t even going to get started with the stuff Ceci, my little sister, had said to me over the years, which only reminded me of my upcoming trip back to San Antonio for my dad’s birthday; I still needed to get him something.
“I’ll grab you a mini-band,” Jenny said, tearing me out of my thoughts, thankfully.
I needed to focus.
* * *
Squeezing my eyes shut, I fell back against the turf to try and catch my breath after running sprints. My back hurt, my lungs felt like they were wrapped in an iron band that was shrinking by the minute, and as much as I wanted to pull up my shirt to fan off, I couldn’t without showing everyone my belly.
Good grief.
A shadow came over my chest, followed shortly by, “You have more in you, schnecke. Get up.”
I kept my eyes closed. The temptation to ignore him was overwhelming, but I couldn’t do that. Pretending like he wasn’t there would just give him more power. On top of that, schnecke? What the hell did that mean? It didn’t matter. Whatever. “I’ll be up in a second,” I told him on a long exhale.
My own personal eclipse didn’t move despite the fact I had at least responded to him.
I didn’t bother opening my eyes either as I finished catching my breath.
The shadow shifted to the right as something hit the side of my foot. “Are you well enough to play today?” Kulti’s voice was low as he spoke.
His nudge got me to open my eyes and stare straight up at the blue-gray sky. “No.”
Kulti was standing by my feet, his hands behind his back as he looked down at me.
I glanced at him for a second then rolled to sit up gently and get to my feet. Sparing him another look, I gave the German a tight smile I wasn’t feeling at all. “I need to get back.”
That’s exactly what I did.
* * *
At eight o’clock that night, my cell phone dinged with a text.
From my spot on the couch with my socked feet up on the coffee table, I glanced at the screen and saw ‘German Chocolate Cake’ pop up.
I went right back to watching my show. If it was life or death he’d call, and he didn’t.
* * *
At five o’clock the following afternoon, my phone beeped with an incoming text message again.
‘German Chocolate Cake’ appeared on the screen.
For a second I thought about picking it up and possibly reading the message, but I’d ignored the one the day before; during practice today, he’d given me a massive amount of hell during my one-on-one game. Basically, he was acting like nothing was wrong, and like he hadn’t been an ass days before.
Now he was texting me again.
“Did they get your phone number?” Marc asked from behind the wheel.
I set my phone back between my legs and shook my head. Marc already knew about the insanity at practice with the reporters and the mystery behind Kulti’s driving record. He’d been warning me that it was only a matter of time before someone got desperate enough to call, especially since Jenny and I were the only players that had pictures with him floating around the internet.