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The next two hours flew by without a trace of the awkwardness that had been blanketing the team since Kulti decided to take his bastard-ness to the next level. We all seemed to block that out of our heads for the time being at least. I snuck glances at the bleachers throughout the exhibition. I had always been one of those kids that liked having her family around for games. There were people who didn’t, but I wasn’t one of them. I played better when they were in the stands, or at least I took it even more seriously—if that was possible. My parents knew more than enough about soccer to catch everything and still make suggestions to me about things that could be worked on.
The sun seemed extra hot and my ankle was only bothering me a little bit, but overall it went really well. Except every time I looked in my dad’s direction he was busy staring at Kulti like a total creeper. I loved him even if he had horrible taste in men.
We wouldn’t even bring up that I’d been just like him many years before.
As soon as we’d cooled down and stretched, a few of the Houston’s men’s team employees—our team was owned by the same people—led the onlookers off the stands and onto the field. It’d been more than a month since the last time I’d seen my family, and I’d missed them. I watched my dad looking around the field for the only person that really mattered. I knew it wasn’t me, ha.
“Ma.” I held out my arm for my mom who quickly glanced at my sweaty training jersey, made a face and hugged me anyway.
“Mija,” she replied, squeezing me tight.
Next, I grabbed my little sister by the brim of her cap and pulled her toward me as she squealed, “No, Sal! You’re all sweaty! Sal, I’m not kidding.Sal! Shit!”
Did I know she didn’t like sweaty hugs? Hell yeah. Did I care? Nope. I hadn’t forgotten she’d called me a bitch the last time we’d been in the same room together, even if she was going to act like no such words had come out of her mouth. I hugged her to me even harder, feeling her smacking me on the back pretty damn hard as my mom said, “Hija de tu madre, watch your mouth” to deaf ears.
“I’ve missed you, Ceci,” I said, peppering kisses all over my baby sister’s cheeks as she tried to pull away, saying something about her make-up getting smudged.
She was seventeen. She would get over it. We were both almost the same height, had brown hair, although mine was a bit lighter, taking after our Argentinian grandma, and the same light-brown eyes. But that was about it as far as our similarities went. Physically, I had about twenty pounds on her. Personality-wise, we were as different as could be. By the time she was fifteen she had mastered wearing heels, while I thought putting on a real bra was fancy, and that was only the tip of the iceberg. But I loved the crap out of her, even when she was a little snobby and whiny… and sometimes she was a little bit mean.
When I finally let her go, I snorted in my dad’s direction. He had his back to us and was busy looking around the field. “Hey, Dad? Give me a hug before you never want to wash your hand again.”
With a startled jump, he turned around and flashed a toothy smile at me. He’d had a receding hairline for as long as I could remember, his facial hair cut short and his green eyes—inherited from a Spanish grandmother—were bright. “I was looking for you!”
“Oh, whatever, liar,” I laughed. We gave each other a big hug as he gave me some commentary on the scissor kicks I’d done during the practice. It was a move that required you to throw yourself in the air and kick the ball over your head or to the side, whatever worked.
“I’m so proud of you,” he said, still hugging me. “You get better every time I see you.”
“I think your vision might be getting worse.”
He shook his head and finally pulled away, keeping his hands on my shoulders. He wasn’t very tall, only about five-nine according to his license, though I thought he was more five-seven. “Alomejor.”
There was a tapping at the side of my leg and when I looked down, I found a little girl and boy standing there with my player profile photograph from last season in their hands.
I talked to them for a little while, signed their pictures and then posed for a few with them when their mom asked. Immediately following them, another three sets of families—most of the time it was little girls with their moms—came over and we did the same. Between the photographs, I asked them questions and passed out hugs because they were the world’s cheapest and most effective currency. I hated talking to the press because it made me nervous and uncomfortable, these strangers, these people made me incredibly happy, especially when the kids were excited. I lost track of my parents but didn’t worry about it too much; they knew how these types of things worked.
What must have been thirty minutes later, once I was done signing a teenage girl’s ball and telling her she wasn’t too old if she wanted to play professionally one day, I looked around, trying to find my family. Off by one of the goals we’d used during practice, I spotted my dad and mom speaking to Gardner and Grace, the veteran. They’d met both repeatedly throughout the years.
By the time I made it over to them, I flung an arm around my dad’s side and smiled up at him. But what faced me was a borderline grim faintly sad smile that tried its best to not look that way. It immediately put me on alert. “Que tienes?”I whispered.
“Estoy bien,”he whispered back, kissing my cheek. He didn’t seem fine to me. “Coach was telling us how good you’ve all been playing together.”
I watched his face really carefully, taking in the sun and age lines from years of working outside, most of the time with a hat and sometimes without it, and I knew that there was something bothering him. He was just being stubborn, which was where I’d gotten it from—him. But if he didn’t want to say anything in that instant I wasn’t going to force him to. I cleared my throat and tried to catch my mom’s eye, but she seemed fine. “I hope we do. I don’t see why not, right, Grace?”
The slightly older woman, turning thirty-five this year, smiled cheerfully back. Completely unlike the look on her face when she’d said who-knew-what to Kulti. “Definitely.”
When Gardner and Grace were gone and it was just the three of us—Ceci was over talking to Harlow about God knows what—I elbowed my dad in the arm and asked, “What’s wrong? Really.”
He shook his head like I knew he would. “I’m okay, Sal. What’s wrong with you?”
Deflection was a talent in the Casillas family. “What happened?” I insisted, because that was another Casillas family trait.
“Nada.”
This man. I could shake him sometimes. “Will you tell me later? Please?”
With two pats to the top of my head, he shook his head once more. “Everything is okay. I’m happy to see you, and I’m happy we’ll get to see the season opener in a couple of weeks.”
He was so full of shit, but I knew it was pointless to argue with him, so I let it go.
