I rolled my eyes and shook my head.
What was I doing? Really?
I loved playing. I didn’t love the drama that went with it. I’d been doing this long enough to know that no association was perfect and no team was without its bad seeds, but…
“You all right, Sally?” Harlow asked with a slap to my back.
I nodded at my friend. “I’m good, just a little tired. You?”
“I’m always good,” she claimed. “You sure you’re okay, though? You’ve been looking a little pissed off.”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Some of these girls though… they try my patience, Har. That’s all.”
The defender nodded, her lips puckered as she did it. “Ignore ‘em, Sally. They’re not worth it. You do what you gotta do and leave the rest up to other people to deal with.” She slapped me on the back once more. “Now tell me about this Alejandro that went to your camp. Is his rear end as big in person as it looks on TV?”
That had me laughing. “Oh yeah.”
She let out a low whistle. “That ass, Sal. Whew. I’m not gonna even lie, I was a little jealous you didn’t tell me he was going to your thing. I would have shown up with a lawn chair and popcorn.”
“Thanks,” I said sarcastically. “Next time I need you somewhere I’ll make sure there’s a big ol’ butt so you have some incentive to show up.”
Harlow laughed.
“What about Franz?” she asked as we walked toward our bags. “Did he have a good one?”
“Yeah, it was pretty impressive.“ I happened to look up in the middle of my sentence to see Kulti standing right by Gardner, and he was watching me.
What I didn’t say was that Kulti had the best one.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Did you all wake up this morning and decide you were going to play like complete assholes?”
It wasn’t Kulti speaking, it was Gardner.
The game that night had gone that bad. Gardner was a firm believer in positive reinforcement. He complimented players when they did something well, and coached them through when they didn’t.
We had bombed the game. It had been horrible.
He was right. It was like every player on the Pipers had woken up that morning and decided to play like we couldn’t stand each other. There had been no communication between anyone, no sense of teamwork, no real effort.
To be honest, I was more than a little relieved it was an away game. At least our fans didn’t have to watch the disaster unfold in person.
“I have no idea what to say to you all,” Gardner continued his speech. “I don’t want to say anything. I don’t want to even look at you,” he said in a lethally calm voice before looking at the other coaches standing by him. “If any of you can think of something, please feel free to jump in. I’m at a complete loss for words.”
Sheesh.
“You were an embarrassment,” Kulti piped up the second Gardner stopped talking. He was standing two people away from Gardner. His hands were on his hips, his face as serious as ever. “That was the worst game I have ever seen. The only person who knew she was supposed to care tonight was Thirteen, but the rest of you,” his eyes met mine across the room and stayed there, “were disgraceful.”
Yeah. That hit me right in the chest. I was fully aware that he was looking directly at me as he made the harsh comment. Sure it wasn’t my best game, or anywhere close to it, but it wasn’t like we’d lost because of me.
The only thing wrong I had done was snap at Genevieve in the middle of the game. After I missed my second shot of the night, she said loud enough for me to overhear, “I guess you don’t get substituted if you’re messing around with the coaching staff.”
Could I have let it go? Sure—but during practice before the game, she’d run into me during some passing drills for no freaking reason, and then not apologized for it. Immediately afterward, she’d done it again. There’s only so much you can take, really.
I’d figured that telling her to ‘mind your own fucking business and focus on the game’ could have been a lot worse, but apparently not. Gardner had finally taken me out of the game with fifteen minutes left in the second half.
I wasn’t going to make any excuses. I sat there in the locker room and kept my mouth shut as the other assistant coach repeated everything that Gardner and Kulti had hinted at, but in a much more constructive way. His approach was more ‘I’m disappointed in you all,’ instead of the you-all-fucking-suck approach the other two had taken.
Jenny Milton, number thirteen, was sitting next to me; she nudged me with her elbow as she finished taking the tape off her hands. We had lost because we hadn’t scored points and because our defenders hadn’t helped Jenny when the Cleveland team made charges toward the goal. She hadn’t been able to block every attempt, and that was in no way her fault. She really had been the only one who hadn’t blown it.