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.
“Later,” Kulti repeated. “Keep your head in it.”
I nodded and offered him a weak smile.
He didn’t smile back. Instead, he let go of my wrist and put his hand on my forehead before shoving me gently away. It wasn’t exactly a hug or a pat on the back, but I’d take it.
Sure enough when I turned around, at least eight sets of eyes were on us.
Great.
* * *
A knock at eight o’clock that night had me setting my latest concoction on the kitchen counter, careful not to let the spoon fall out of the bowl. I’m not sure who else I could have been expecting to show up besides the German, so I wasn’t surprised to find him on the other side of the peephole.
“Come in,” I said, already opening the door wide for him to enter.
Right before shutting the door, I noticed that his Audi was parked behind my Honda, the silhouette of someone in the driver’s seat. All right.
“Don’t mind me,” I explained, walking back to the kitchen where I’d left my face mask.
“You have something on your face,” Kulti stated, standing on the other side of the counter with a curious expression.
I had only managed to cover one cheek before he’d knocked so I’m sure I looked like an orange creamsicle. Picking up the spoon, I applied more of the cool mixture to my cheeks and forehead, watching the German as I did it. “It’s a face mask made with Greek yogurt, turmeric, ground oatmeal and lemon.” I raised my eyebrows as I dabbed some over my upper lip. “You want some?”
He eyed me dubiously. Then, he nodded.
All right, then. “Rinse off your face with hot water, and then you can put it on.”
I blindly finished putting the mixture on my target skin as he went to the kitchen sink and splashed water over his face, dabbing it dry with a paper towel. It wasn’t until Kulti took a seat on the edge of the kitchen counter and tipped his chin down, that I realized he wanted me to put the mask on him.
“Are you serious?”
The German nodded.
“You are really something else, you know that?” I asked, even as I stepped forward and began smoothing the gunk over his nose and across each cheekbone, gentle and slow. The facial hair that had grown in over the day prickled my fingers with each pass over his features.