Kulti(16)

The first few questions were normal. How my off-season had gone. How training was going. Who I thought were going to be our biggest competitors.

It was right around the time that I was finishing his last question, preparing myself to tell him that I needed to go, when I heard the reporters I’d bypassed start chattering loudly. Again it was no big deal. The journalist’s eyes started darting to the area behind me even as I spoke, watching and waiting for his next victim. There weren’t usually reporters or journalists waiting around before practice unless it was playoff time. At least that’s what it had been like before the former German superstar showed up.

Now apparently, they all had bottle vision whenever he was nearby. And from the look on the journalist’s face when he saw his next subject, I knew who had caught his attention.

Two eyes swung from whatever the journalist was looking at behind me… to me and then back again.

A strain of dread-like anger saturated my belly when Kulti walked by, waving off the three media people that were trying to get his attention by asking questions and shoving their cameras and recording devices in his face.

He could get away with being antisocial, but I couldn’t?

“Isn’t your brother a pro too?” the journalist asked slowly.

I swallowed and forced myself to hope that this wasn’t going the way it seemed to be. And yet, I knew it was. “Yeah. He’s a center back,” or as I called him, a center bitch. “He plays for Sacramento normally, but he’s on loan to a team in Europe right now.” This was the only reason I was sure he hadn’t called me to complain about Kulti yet. Did he know? He had to. But he was cheap and wasn’t going to call until our standing phone-date every other Sunday.

The man’s eyes swung back over to me, so low-lidded I knew I was screwed. “Wasn’t his leg broken years ago?”

It was his left tibia and fibula to be exact. Just thinking about it made my own shins hurt, but I settled for a nod in reply. The less I spoke, the smaller my chances were of incriminating myself by saying something stupid. “Ten years ago.”

“Did it happen during a game?” he was asking, but we both well aware he knew the answer.

Asshole.

Did I look that dumb? I wasn’t about to let him steer me into looking like an idiot. When I was in college, they made athletes for every sport take a class in public speaking. Sure I’d barely passed, but they had taught me one thing I hadn’t forgotten: how important it was for you to keep the interview under control. “Yep. Ten years ago, he went in for a loose ball during a game against the Tigers and was hit in the leg by an opposing player.” The journalist’s eyes twitched. “He was out for six months.”

“The player got yellow-carded, didn’t he?”

And… there it was. Since when were sports bloggers sneaky little shits looking for drama when it was uncalled for?

I plastered a smile on my face, giving him this look that said yeah, I know exactly what you’re doing, dingle-berry. “Yes, but he’s perfectly fine now. It wasn’t a big deal.” Well that was a lie, but whatever. My smile grew even wider and I took a step back. Being an asshole didn’t come naturally to me. I didn’t like it, but I wasn’t about to roll onto my back and show someone my belly. Coach Gardner had already made it painfully clear to me that I needed to keep attention on the team and not Kulti, especially not Eric and Kulti. “I need to get going. You have anything else you need to ask about training, though?”

The reporter’s eyes slid over in the direction Kulti and his followers had gone. “We’re all done. Thanks.”

“Anytime.” Not.

I took another step back, snatched my bag off the ground and started walking in the direction of the field. I still had to collect the uniform they wanted us to wear for our profile shots and put it on. Someone with the organization had set up two tents on the outskirt of the field, one with long flaps to provide some modesty for changing, and the other more basic, without flaps, where the uniforms could be found.

“Sal! Come get your stuff!” someone yelled from beneath the smaller tent.

I made my way over there, looking around to see who had survived the gauntlet, aka the media, and waved at the players and staff members who made eye contact with me. There were only a few people under the uniform tent where we needed to go before our player photos—two management employees handing out uniforms, two players and three staff members.

One of the staff members was Kulti.

Poop.

Okay, I was fine.

“Good morning,” I said as I came up to the group in the tent, rubbing my hands down the front of my pants.