I felt myself nibbling at my bottom lip and looked from side to side. Scratching the tip of my nose, I waved Jenny forward. “Another ball, please.”

She nodded way too sharply and threw a ball overhead. I stopped it with my chest and let it fall to the ground. I backed up even further and intended to let the ball arc up high to make it into the net. Jenny really went for it, the ball tipping off her fingertips, but it still managed to get past her and make it in. I almost cheered, almost, but then I remembered Kulti was there, and I reined it in.

“Let’s do some upper body work today,” the fitness coach called out from the edge of the field.

We went about grabbing things lying around and put them up. I couldn’t help but think about what had just happened. Once we were done, Jenny and I sort of wandered together toward the section of the field where they’d set up some suspension equipment for body weight exercises. The moment we met up, bumping our shoulders against each other, I held a hand out to her, palm facing up.

Jenny slapped her big Hulk-smash hand down to mine in a low-five, each of us giving the other a discreet, sly smile. Sure my palm felt like it got hit with a sledgehammer, but I managed not to wince.

I squeezed her fingers. “Freaking ninja skills.”

She chuckled and thankfully refrained from squeezing my fingers back. “I know, right?”

We both laughed.

I’m not positive why I turned around. Whether it was to check and make sure no one was too close behind to overhear what we were saying, or whether it was because my subconscious had picked up on something being different, but I did. I looked over my shoulder and met that distinctively familiar stare.

Maybe for all of ten seconds, I felt bad for celebrating that Jenny had not only blocked Reiner Kulti’s shots, but that I’d managed to score where he hadn’t. Ten seconds of guilt, possibly.

Then I really thought about it and decided I had no reason to feel bad or ashamed. Whatever the hell was going on with him was his business. Wasn’t it? I practiced and practiced some more to keep my skills on track.

But still… how in the hell had he missed so many shots? What a sucker. What a human, mistake-making sucker.

* * *

The next day, toward the end of practice, I was working on my PKs again—penalty kicks—this time with one of the other goalkeepers on the team. The woman was about my age and it was her first year on the Pipers after playing in New York for the past two seasons. She was good, but she wasn’t on Jenny’s level yet.

That was the point of practice though, wasn’t it?

The goalkeeping coach was standing off to the side, monitoring us as we practiced against each other for the second time since this season had begun.

I reared back a couple of steps and went in with my right foot, only at the very last minute, switching it up to kick forward with my left. The ball went in with a satisfactory journey as the coach stepped forward to talk to PJ, the goalkeeper, about what she could have done differently.

“You’re anticipating it,” she said. “It’s because you know Sal that you think she’s going to keep going to that right foot when she strikes, but if you didn’t know her, you would have noticed…”

When they kept talking for a couple more minutes, I walked over a few feet and started volleying one of the balls lying around on my knee. I used to do it for hours, to see how long I could keep the ball in the air with whatever body part was closest, my knees, chest, head or foot, every and any combination that included those body parts or my feet. For practice, for fun, both were so tightly wound together they were one and the same. Rain or shine, I could do it in the garage or outside.