I’d gotten to the field for practice early, but not early enough. Damn it.

“Come on, one minute. Please!”

With no one to hide behind or any other way to pretend like I hadn’t heard the guy calling out to me, I took a deep breath and resigned myself to getting this over with.

The twenty-something guy looked friendly enough in khaki pants and a neatly tucked in, button-down blue shirt. He smiled at me, his little handheld recorder ready and waiting. “Thanks for stopping. I have a few questions for you.”

I nodded. “Sure. Okay.”

He introduced himself and the website he was doing the interview for, and let me know he’d be recording our conversation. “You’re about halfway through the season now, how are the Pipers looking?”

All right. “Good. We’ve only lost one game so far, but we’re trying to stay focused and get through the next few weeks so that we can move into the playoffs again.”

“At what point does the pressure really start to get to you?”

“At least for me, it never lets up. Before the season even starts, I’m already worried about how things are going. Every game is important and that’s what our coaching staff has really drilled into us. It’s easier to stay focused when you’re worried about putting one foot in front of the other rather than trying to take on a huge obstacle at once.”

He smiled and nodded. “Who are you looking forward to watching this Altus Cup?”

I smiled at him, feeling a little easier. The Cup was starting in September, right after our season ended. “Argentina, Spain, Germany.” Almost absently I added, “The U.S.” Well that didn’t sound sincere at all. “I’m pretty excited.”

“Any plans for rejoining the U.S. Women’s National Team?” he asked.

That now-familiar rope of anger laced my wrists, and I had to shake it off. It was easy enough to live with not being on the team before, when things had been great with the Pipers, but now not so much. I was on my last reserve of patience. “No plans,” I said in a steady voice, even smiling. “I’m focusing on the Pipers for now.”

“You’ve talked about your work with youth players in the past; are you continuing your camps this year?”

“Those camps are starting up in a few weeks. It’s mainly low-income middle school kids and early high schoolers I aim for. That’s usually one of the most influential ages for kids to really stick to sports, so I love doing them.”

“Okay, one final question so you can get going: what do you have to say about rumors about a relationship between you and Reiner Kulti?”

Dun, dun, dun. I smiled at him and eased my little heart to slow down. “He’s a great person. He’s my coach and a friend.” I shrugged. “That’s all.”

The look the guy gave me was incomprehensible, but he nodded and smiled and thanked me.

I couldn’t help but feel dirty. Just a little. Like I’d done something wrong—or at least something that I wouldn’t want to own up to. I could handle accepting my faults and mistakes. I didn’t have a boyfriend; I wasn’t married. I could be friends with whoever I wanted to. And it wasn’t like he was still married or anything, either.

But…

I swallowed back the weird feeling in my chest, that strange indecisiveness that wasn’t sure whether I wanted to handle all this unnecessary attention or not.

I wasn’t a superstar. I was just me, a little-known soccer player. The equivalent of a bobsledder in Houston, as my sister had called me one day.

All I had ever wanted was to play and to be the best. That was it.