Kulti Page 15
This bitch. I made my own eyes go wide and mouthed ‘shut the hell up’ to her, moving my lips the least amount possible.
Like any good friend, she didn’t do what was asked. She kept elbowing me and giving me that crazy, stupid look and strained head-tipping, trying to be inconspicuous and failing miserably. I didn’t look at him for very long, just that first initial glance from more than fifty feet away, and then another quick look right afterward.
Poop. Remember: poop. Right.
The silence on the field said more than enough about what everyone was thinking but couldn’t actually say out loud.
But dumb Jenny knocked her foot against mine while we put on sunscreen, grinning when she caught my eye, which I was purposely trying to ignore because she made me laugh. I knew in my gut that I was never going to hear the end of this. Never. I’d gotten over my crush-slash-infatuation when I was seventeen, when I finally accepted the fact that I didn’t have a single shot of ever playing against him—obviously—and… there was no chance in hell that he’d ever be interested in me, the Argentinian-Mexican-American tomboy thirteen years younger than him. There wouldn’t be a marriage in my future or soccer-playing super-babies.
It was the worst non-break-up ever in the history of imaginary relationships with a man who didn’t even know I existed.
My poor, innocent heart hadn’t been able to handle the only love I’d ever known marrying someone else—Reiner Kulti hadn’t known he was supposed to fall head over heels in love with me one day.
But like every unrequited first love, I got over it. Life moved on. And then all the shit with Eric happened shortly after that, and the posters on my wall had turned into an even bigger betrayal to the guy in my life who had always let me tag along for impromptu soccer games with his friends.
“Keep it up, bitch,” I whispered to Jenny while we she rubbed sunscreen on the parts of my back I couldn’t reach.
She snorted and hip-bumped me as we walked toward our designated stretching area. There was already a small group waiting, their voices still a lot lower than they would be normally. Sure enough, Kulti was standing nearby with Coach Gardner and Grace, our team captain and a veteran defender who had been playing professionally since I was still in middle school. She’d been with the Pipers four years at the beginning of this season, just like me.
“He’s taller than I’d thought he’d be,” Jen muttered just loud enough for me to hear.
I looked out of the corner of my eye at where the coaches and Grace were standing without being completely obvious. With only twenty feet of distance between us, we were closer than I ever could have expected, and I nodded because she was right. He was spectacularly tall compared to a lot of the male forwards—also called strikers by some, or in the way my sister described the position: ‘the people that hung out by the other team’s goal and tried to score.’ The best forwards tended to be a lot shorter, not six-two or six-three depending on what analyst or know-it-all you asked. Considering how unparalleled his footwork was, it was a—
Stop. Stop, Sal.
Right.
Poop.
I could look at him without fan-girling, I could be unbiased. So I tried my best to do just that. He looked bulkier than he’d been a couple of years ago when he’d stepped out of the spotlight. Like most players, he’d been muscular but extra lean and long from all the endless running. Now, he looked a bit heavier, his face was more filled out, his neck looked a little thicker and his arms—
Poop. Fart. Peeing in a urinal. Right.
All right.
The guy was more muscular. A hint of his tattoo peeked out from beneath the sleeve of his shirt and he still had that even flawless skin tone that was somewhere between a creamy white and a perfect light tan.