“People don’t pay attention. I wear a hat, and the only people that speak to me are the elderly in the motorized scooters who need assistance reaching something.”
Glancing over my shoulder, I shot him a smile. “I don’t know how you do it, honestly. We have fans but it’s different. The only people that wear my jersey are my parents and brother. I don’t like being the center of attention, so it works for me.”
His head moved so that he could look out the window. His voice was so serious, so distant; it made me look at him longer than necessary. “I’ve had enough attention in my life, I don’t miss it.”
That was why he lived in this neighborhood and wore a hat to the grocery store.
I guess you figure that some people have it all. Why wouldn’t they? Looks, money, fame. What else would they need? A friend? Companionship? Something to take the boredom away?
Personally I knew hundreds of people, yet I was only really close to seven. They were all people that I’d known for a long time, but out of those seven I was confident that five would still be in my life even after soccer.
I eyed Kulti again and repressed a sigh. Feeling bad for him hadn’t been part of the plan.
* * *
“Close enough?” I grunted.
Kulti pressed into me even more. “No.”
He was backing me into a corner, defender and striker at the same time, to keep me from stealing the ball from him. Somewhat rough and playing like I was just a smaller man, by not avoiding the full body contact that came so naturally in soccer, he crowded me, he held me back. And I fought for every inch I made it forward, having to tap into my short bursts of speed to try and out-trick him.
It didn’t really work.
With him on me, I only managed to get my feet on the ball about four times during our game, and each time he made me lose it out of bounds or stole it away. It was aggravating and exhilarating at the same time, especially when I ran after him and tried guarding against his big-ass body.
Playing with someone bigger, faster and more talented than you are, isn’t exactly an ideal situation, but I tried and in the end, Kulti won, one to zero, nailing a clean shot right between the two goals we’d made out of sticks and empty water bottles we’d found in my backseat.
Freaking pumpernickel.
“Again?”
Hands on my hips, I took a few deep breaths in through my nose and nodded at the man standing in front of me, breathing just as hard. There weren’t very many people at the park we’d gone to about twenty minutes from Kulti’s house, but there were more than there’d been when we first arrived.
Against my better judgment, I said, “One more.”
We went for it.
We both might have been more tired than we’d been when we started, but it didn’t matter. Kulti was on me from the second I got the ball, constantly less than a foot away. He was definitely slowing down, and I used it to my advantage. I was just as tired as he was, our game the day before had drained me, but he was thirteen years older than me and didn’t train as hard. And I was almost as fast as he was.
“Slowing down?” I panted as I tried to fake him out and make a run to the left.
He grunted, raw and rough. “Quit talking and play.”
Yeah, he was definitely pooped.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a few people sitting along the edge of the small field we were on, watching. But it was right then that Kulti snuck his foot into my path to try and trip me.
“You ass,” I hissed, just barely missing him.
He used me being distracted and pissed, to steal the ball.
In the end I took it back when I summoned the last bit of energy I was willing to spend, and really put in the effort to power toward the goal, scoring. I threw my hands up in the air and stuck my tongue out at The King. “I win.” Yeah, I totally wasn’t being professional or mature about it.
Just to rub it in even more, our audience on the edge of the field began clapping.
Someone wasn’t amused. I’d actually say he looked a little pissed.
I liked it.
“Oye! Muchacha! Es el Aleman?” someone from the field yelled.
“Callate tonto!” someone else replied, telling the guy asking to shut up.
I eyed the sore loser in front of me, not knowing what to do. Now that I got a better look at the people on the sidelines, they were all Latinos, in their late twenties and older. The German didn’t say anything with his eyes or his body language.
“Amiga! Es Kulti?”
There were only about six of them…
I looked at Kulti again but the only thing he did was shrug, damn it.
“Si es,” I admitted. “Pero no le digan a nadie.”
The group erupted. “No chinges!” No shit was right.