‘It was the first thing I thought of!’ I mouthed back to her with a shrug.

Jenny pinched her nostrils together as her face went red.

“I know, right?” I held my arms out at my sides in a ‘what was I supposed to say’ gesture even though she was too busy trying not to burst out laughing, to see me in the mirror. God, she was no help in our made-up conversation. “I clearly asked for no onions but whatever. I guess. It’s not like I’m allergic to them.”

By that point, Jenny had her forehead to the bathroom counter and her back was arching with repressed laughs.

I kicked her in the back of the knee lightly just as one of the toilets flushed. She looked up and I mouthed ‘stop it’ to her. Did she? No. Not even close.

Yeah, she was too far gone to keep going with the charade. One look and the other girls would see Jenny losing it over onions. God, I really was a horrible liar.

I shoved her out of the bathroom just as one of the latches turned.

* * *

“There’s a rumor going around that you’re going to be rejoining the national team soon, any word on that?”

It was the first official day of practice and my feet were itching. After nearly six months of playing soccer with friends and family, while training and conditioning on my own, I was ready.

And of course I’d gotten waved down by a writer for Training, Inc., a popular e-magazine.

So far, two questions in, it was going fine.

That still didn’t mean that I was going to open my big mouth up and tell him all my deepest secrets. Vague, Sal. Don’t ever confirm or deny anything. “I don’t think so. My ankle still isn’t back to where it needs to be, and I’m busy with other priorities.”

Okay, that wasn’t too bad.

“Oh?” He raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”

“I’m working with youth camps.” I left out the other small parts of my life, the parts that weren’t glamorous and had nothing to do with soccer. No one wanted to hear about our miserable paychecks and how most of us had to supplement our incomes by getting second jobs. That didn’t go with the image most people had of professional players in any sport.

And no one especially wanted to hear that I did landscaping when I wasn’t busy with the Pipers. It didn’t embarrass me, not at all. I liked doing it, and I had a degree in Landscape Architecture. It wasn’t glossy or pretty, but I’d be damned if I ever let anyone give what I did a bad name. My dad had supported our family being the ‘the lawn guy’ or ‘the gardener’ and any and all other things that could put food on our table. There was no shame in hard work, he and my mom had taught me from a very early age when I had cared what other people thought. People would laugh and crack jokes when Dad would pick me up from school with a lawnmower and other tools in the back of his beat-up truck, with his goofy hat and sweat-stained clothes that had seen better decades.

But how could I ever give my dad a hard time about picking me up from school so he could take me to soccer practice? Or he’d pick me up, take me to a job or two with him, and then he’d take me to practice. He loved us and he sacrificed so that Eric and I could be on those teams with their expensive fees and uniforms. We got where we were today, because he worked his ass off.

As I got older, people just found more things to pick on me about and laugh. I’d been called a priss, stuck-up, a bitch, a lesbian and a dyke more times than I could count. All because I loved playing soccer and took it seriously.

Eventually one of my U-20 coaches pulled me aside after some of my teammates had gotten an attitude with me. I’d declined an invitation to go out so I could go home and get some rest. He’d said, “people are going to judge you regardless of what you do, Sal. Don’t listen to what they have to say because at the end of the day, you’re the one that has to live with your choices and where they take you. No one else is going to live your life for you.” Most times it was easier said than done, but here I was. I’d gotten what I had worked so hard for, so it hadn’t been in vain.