AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It shouldn’t,” he cut me off.
Well… “She just has a different view on how I should live my life, Rey. She always has. I’m not ever going to do what she wants me to do, or be the person that she wants me to be. I don’t know. I just let her say whatever she wants to say and I suck it up. At the end of the day, I’m going to keep living the way I want, regardless of what she says or thinks.”
Out of my peripheral vision, I could see his head turn. “She doesn’t support you playing?”
“She does, but she’d rather see me do something else with my life.”
“Does she understand how good you are?” he asked completely freaking seriously.
I had to smile, his belief in me almost made up for my mom trying to guilt me into having a boyfriend and dressing up to feel like a woman. Blah. “You really think I’m good?”
“You could be faster—“
I knew he was only trying to piss me off by calling me slow. I turned to look at him, outraged. “Are you serious?”
He ignored me. “But yes, you are. Don’t get a big head about it. You still have quite a bit of room for improvement.” He paused. “She should be proud of you.”
I was torn between wanting to defend my mom and wanting to give him a hug for the nice things he was saying. Instead I went with “She is proud of me. It’s just… it’s hard for her with me, I guess. I know she loves me, Rey. She goes to my games, wears my jerseys. She’s proud of me and my brother but…” I scratched at my face, debating whether or not to tell him for a second. It’d been years since the last time I told anyone. Not even Jenny or Harlow knew. Marc and Simon did but that was only because they’d been in our lives forever. It hadn’t helped that Cordero had been the last person to talk to me about it, and he’d left a bad taste in my mouth.Everyone should know, he’d said. He hadn’t liked when I told himno.No way.
My brother Eric had started early in his career putting a stipulation in his contract about the type of personal information that could be released about him. I’d followed in his footsteps with my Pipers contract and fortunately it had paid off to be so secretive. But if there was one person that I could tell, it would be Kulti.
Swallowing, I asked, “Have you ever heard of Jose Barragan?”
“Of course I have,” he said with an insulted snicker.
Jose Barragan was a legendary Argentinian soccer player who had lived as big off the field as he had in real life.
I would know. “He was my mom’s dad.”
The silence in the car was no great shock to me.
“La Culebrawas your grandfather?” he asked me gently. The Snake. My grandfather had been called The Snake for a dozen different reasons by millions of people.
“Yup.” I didn’t say anything else because I knew he was going to need a second to process it.
La Culebrahad been a star. He’d been the king of a generation way before mine. He’d led his country to two Altus Cups; he’d been a superstar in a time before technology and social media. My mom’s dad had been a sport’s shining star, their flesh and bone trophy.
“Does anyone know?” he finally asked, that creepy calm silence still ringing in my ears.
“Yeah, a few people do.”
Another pause. “No one has ever said anything to me about it.” I could see him out of the corner of my eye shift in his seat. “Sal, why is it a secret? Do you understand how much money you could make off endorsements?”
Cordero had asked the exact same question. The only difference was, Cordero was an asshole only trying to make himself look better.La Culebra’s granddaughter on his team? Especially when he came from the same country? He immediately saw dollar signs, but I wasn’t about to let him exploit me or my family. I’d never figured out how he’d found out, but it hadn’t mattered. No meant no.
“I wouldn’t want to put my mom through that,” I explained. I squeezed the steering wheel a little tighter. “Did you ever meet him?”
“Yes.”
“So you know he wasn’t the nicest man in the world.”
His lack of a response was more than enough.
“Rey, I met him maybe ten times in my life. I saw him on TV more than in person. He told me once when I was eleven that I was wasting my time with soccer. He said people didn’t like to watch athletes that were women. He told me I should be a swimmer or a ballet dancer. Fuckingballet. Could you imagine me in pointe shoes? When I was seventeen, he showed up to the U-17 game I was playing with the national team and tore apart my game afterward. When I was twenty-one, he came to the Altus Cup match and asked me why I didn’t play for Argentina instead. Nothing was ever right or enough for him.
“That was just him. From what I’ve heard my mom say, he was a really shitty father and a worse husband. Supposedly, he’d hit my grandma when he wasn’t cheating on her. My mom wasn’t a fan of his, and I know she blamed soccer for his behavior. I don’t blame her. She met my dad on vacation in Mexico; they got married and moved here. The last time I saw him, he called my dad a stupid Mexican and told my mom she wasted her life marrying someone so beneath her.
“I love my dad and I owe my parents everything. They’re the hardest working people I’ve ever met, and I don’t appreciate anyone talking badly about them. When my mom says something unsupportive, I try to be understanding that my mom hates that my brother and I play soccer. She can’t stand that we took after him.
