Everyone in the conference room seemed to be buzzing around. The players were all keeping an eye out, an air of expectancy saturating everything. I had to remind myself a couple more times to quit doing it too. I caught Jenny glancing around as she dug in her purse for a tube of lipstick, and she blushed when she noticed that I saw what she was doing.
“I really don’t think this is that big of a deal,” she said, and I believed her. “But… you know, I’m half-expecting him to come here with Hermes wings on his shoes and a halo over his head since everyone thinks he’s some kind of god.” Jenny paused for a moment before quickly adding, “On the soccer field, I mean.”
I winked and nodded. Adding, “Uh-huh, whatever you say,” just to mess with her. I was familiar with her type and it wasn’t brown-haired men who played soccer. Her boyfriend of two years was a six-foot-two beast, a sprinter who had won a bronze and a silver medal at the last Olympics and had quads the size of my ribcage. Show-off.
Jenny frowned. “Don’t make me bring up those pictures I saw.”
Damn it. She had me, and from the smirk on her face, she knew it. My mom had busted out the pictures of me in my younger days during a visit Jenny had taken back home with me. In several of them, my Kulti obsession was well-documented. I think it was the three birthday cakes in a row with his face on them that really sealed the deal.
“Hi, Jenny,” a familiar voice said from above my head. Almost immediately, two hands grabbed my face from behind and squished my cheeks together. Then two brown eyes appeared over the top of my head. “Hi, Sally.”
I poked at the space between the two brown eyes. Her dark blonde hair was trimmed short like always, in a style that would be called a pixie-cut on any other person in the world but her. “Harlow, I missed you,” I told the best defender in the country.
Harlow Williams really was the best and for good reason. She was a little scary. Incredibly nice off the field, but on it, those ancient survival instincts every being is born with begged you to run the other away when she was barreling toward you.
We called her The Beast for a reason.
Her reply was in the form of pinching my nostrils together with one hand, cutting off my air supply. “I missed your face too. You got any food on you?” she asked, still peeping over the top of my head.
Of course I had food on me. I pulled three Kind bars out of my purse and handed her the peanut butter one, her favorite.
“That’s why I always have your back,” she said with a satisfied sigh. “Thanks, Sal. I’ll harass you later so you can tell me what you’ve been up to.”
“You got it.”
Harlow patted the top of my head a little too hard before taking her seat down the side of the table. She leaned over the edge and waggled her fingers at us as she bit into the bar. Jenny and I made faces at each other. The three of us had played on the national team together back when I was still on it, so more than anyone else we knew each other the best.
“She’s a nut.”
Jenny nodded. “Yeah, she is. Remember that time she clotheslined you during practice?”
My shoulder throbbed thinking about it. It was Harlow’s fault I had chronic pain in it. “I couldn’t play for three weeks afterward. Of course I remember.” She’d dislocated it when I tried to sneak a ball around her. Never again. While I didn’t usually run from an aggressive player, Harlow was in a league of her own.
Coach Gardner clapped his hands once everyone had shown up and welcomed us all to preparation for this season’s training. Nearly everyone in the room looked around, surprised that he was starting when someone was so obviously missing. Either Coach Gardner didn’t realize no one was really paying attention or he didn’t care, because he jumped right into it.
If anyone else thought it was strange that the man who had played through games with the flu and fractured bones wasn’t around for our first team meeting, no one said a thing. His attendance record had always been impeccable. It would have taken a force of nature to keep him off the field.
“Coach Marcy took a position with the University of Mobile this summer, so upper management reached out to a few different people to fill in the assistant position she left us open with. We were lucky enough to get a commitment a few days ago. Reiner Kulti—who we all know needs no introduction—will be taking over assistant coach duties.”
There was a small collective of sucked-in breaths before Gardner continued. Were these people not checking their emails or at least watching some television? “Although I know you ladies are all professionals, I’m going to say it anyway: this is Coach Kulti. Not Reiner, not King, and if I hear any of you calling him Führer, you’re out of here. Understood? Sheena from PR will be in here to talk about what you can and can’t post on social media a little later, but please exercise sound judgment.”