“It took you long enough,” he grumbled, when I stopped close but not too close to them.
I was looking at him, instead of the woman who was obviously still trying to get his attention.
Could she be any more desperate? Jeez.
I just stared back at him, not exactly wiping off the irritated look on my face. Was he planning on chewing me out? Did he really think this was the right time to do it?
Pulling together an amount of bravery that I really didn’t have in me, I forced a calm look on my face, relaxed my shoulders to not give away how tense I was, and I blinked at my coach, Reiner Kulti.
“Yes, Coach?”
His luminous eyes bore down on me with the power of a strobe light, the biggest strobe light in history. By the shape of his mouth and the tic of his jaw, I was about to get reamed.
He didn’t even bother looking at the woman next to him, hopeful and still attentive to a man who wasn’t giving her the time of day, before he lowered his voice. Unfortunately I recognized that he wasn’t lowering it to be inaudible, he was just that pissed, before laying it down for me. “What the hell was going on with you tonight?”
He was just as to the point as I expected. All righty. I licked my lips and gave him a solid shrug. “My mind wasn’t in it and I’m sorry about that.” It was implied that I wouldn’t let that happen again.
“That’s it?” he spat.
“There’s no excuse,” I told him, watching the woman look back and forth between us. “I know better, and I’m sorry.”
His lids got heavy. If I didn’t know him any better, I would have assumed he was sleepy. He wasn’t anywhere close. “You played like an imbecile.”
Seriously? Did he have to call me that in front of another person?
“Kulti?” The woman waved her hand around in his face.
The German turned his head and stared at her long enough that she scrunched up her face and stepped back.
“God, I forgot how much of an asshole you can be. I don’t even know why I bother,” she hissed at him.
The man who guarded his words like they were gold didn’t let me down. He didn’t say a word. Kulti looked at her for maybe five more seconds and then turned his attention back to me as if she hadn’t spoken.
What an asshole.
“Your team deserves your attention, and I deserve better from you. Do that shit again and I’ll have you coming in as a sub for Thirty-Eight,” he threatened, oblivious to the woman who shook her head as he spoke, before finally turning around to walk off.
That time, I flinched and winced. I probably sucked air in through my nose. Thirty-Eight was one of the younger forwards, Sandy, a rookie on the team who would be a force to be reckoned with in the near future.
“Learn to compartmentalize your life, do you understand me?” he asked in that somber crisp voice I had a feeling he had learned to wield perfectly in the last few weeks.
As much as I hated to admit it, my face went hot, and I knew I was blushing with humiliation. He would try to take starting a game away from me? For playing crappy during one single game? More embarrassment flooded my system, lined carefully with anger.
The idea that I thought we were friends floated right up and center.
But Pipers time wasn’t friend-time. It never had been. The man who called me Taco, and played soccer and softball with me, was a completely different person from the one standing before me in that moment.
Learn to compartmentalize your life, he’d said. Do what he did.
The only thing I could do was nod jerkily and accept the ultimatum he’d given me. I wasn’t going to remind him this was one bad game out of so many. I wasn’t going to promise anything or apologize. It hurt my pride, but I balled it up and tucked it neatly into my sternum. In a voice that I was extremely proud of for how solid it sounded, I said, “Okay. Fine. But maybe next time call me an imbecile when I’m not in front of your girlfriend, would that work for you? ”
When he closed his eyes and began grinding his teeth together, I wondered if I said the wrong thing. It wasn’t until he started scratching at his cheek and then erupted a second later, I figured the answer was: yeah. I had.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he burst out.
I took a step back and gave him a crazy look because seriously, what else did he want from me? “No.”
“I’m threatening to bench you, and you’re complaining about who overheard?”
I’d bet a dollar that my hair kind of blew back a little bit at his question, but I wasn’t going to puss out. No fear. “Yeah, I am. If I’m playing bad consistently, then I don’t deserve to start. That sucks, but I understand. I’m not going to argue with you over an obvious fact. What I do have a problem with, is you being rude to me in front of other people, and you were a dick to her. Jesus F. Christ. Manners, Germany, ever heard of them?”