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And suddenly with that, I felt fine.
Iswallowedand smiled my sugar-sweet asshole smile, using the only half of my face capable of moving. “Hi,” I said before adding quickly, “Coach.”
That heavy gazeflicked down to the number printed on my chest for a moment before moving its way back up to look at my face. The blink he did was slow and lazy.
Itippedmy chin up and blinked right back at him, forcing a smug and closed-mouth smile on my face.
The elevator dingedopen as he said in a low tone which sounded like it cost him ten years off his life to use on such a lowly faithless creature like myself, “Hello.”
We lookedeach other right in the eye for a split second before I raised my eyebrows up and headed inside the small space. I turned to face the doors and watched him follow in after me, taking the spot against the corner furthest away.
Did he say anything else? No.
Did I? No.
Ikept my eyes forward, and lived through the most awkward thirty seconds of my life.
The problem with men, or males in general, that I’d discovered over the course of my life, was that they had huge mouths. I mean a whale shark has nothing on the average man with a couple of friends. Honestly.
But you know, it was my fault. Really, it was. I should have known better.
My dad, brother and his friends had taught me the reality behind male friendships and yet I’d forgotten everything that I’d learned.
So I couldn’tblame anyone else but myself for trusting Gardner.
Already more than halfway throughthat morning’s practice, I had just finished my own one-on-one game against a defender. I went to take my place away from where the sessions were happening, and I wasn’t really paying attention. I was thinking about what I could have done differently to get the ball into the goal quicker when someone stepped right in the middle of my path.
It wasa simple side-step that landed the body bigger than mine just a foot away.
Iknewit wasn’t Gardner. Gardner had been on the other side of the field when I’d been playing, and there were only three other men on staff it could have been. Except two of them were too nice to do something so confrontational.
The German. It was the damn king of jerk-offs. Of course it was.
The instant Imade eye-to-eye contact with him, I knew.
Iknew Gardner was a caring, overly blunt bastard who had mentioned my name to the German.
My heart feltlike it started to pound in my throat.
He didn’t haveto say ‘I know what you said’because the passive look on his face said it all. If he’d stood through me ranting about my dad without making a face, then I knew whatever it was he’d heard had hit a nerve. A person like him didn’t appreciate being criticized because he already thought he was perfect, hello.
It wasn’tlike I’d called him a worthless piece of retired Euro-trash—which was horribly rude. Or said he was an awful player and that he didn’t deserve the job. Nothing remotely similar to that had come out of my mouth, but I put myself into his situation, thought of myself having an ego ten times the size of the one I currently had and asked myself how I’d feel.
I’d feelpretty damn pissed if some kid started saying what I needed to do differently.
But it was the truth, and I’d stand by it. I hadn’t called himFühreror a dick or anything. What was I going to do? Apologize to someone who didn’t deserve it? Nope.
Ididwhat I needed to do. I stayed right where I’d stopped when he first got in my way, and I wrangled my heart into not beating so fast.Calm down, calm down, calm down. Poop. Pee. Poop, poop.
Big Girl Socks? On.
Voice? In check.
Steeling myself, I pushed my shoulders down and looked at him dead-on. “Yes?”
“Sprint time!” someone yelled.
My braveryonly went so far because the next thing I did was turn around and run toward the line where sprints began. A whole nice round of conditioning, meaning running sprints at increasing amounts of distances, was my love-hate relationship. I was fast, but that didn’t mean I really loved running them.
