Page 62 of Kulti


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“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Kulti’s voice was laced with just a bit of anger.

He’d finally dropped a ‘fuck.’ How about that.

I was almost in awe—almost, and I definitely couldn’t find it in me to get all bent out of shape at his ugly tone and words. “You know what I mean. Look, you don’t need to get an attitude. All I was asking was why you haven’t played in so long. It’s none of my business, fine. Sorry I asked.”

There was a pause. “Explain what you meant.”

He wanted to understand, but I knew in my heart he didn’t really want me to tell him. I kept my attention forward and shook my head, the laughter and amusement dying off my face. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters,” he insisted.

I kept my mouth shut.

“Say it.”

Yeah, I wasn’t saying anything. Nobody was handing me the shovel to dig my own grave.

“You think I’m lying?” Kulti asked in a cold voice.

I swallowed. Well he asked, right? I picked my words carefully and answered. “I’m not saying you’re lying. I’m sure your knee hurts, but there is no way that’s why you haven’t played. Even if you’re only back at sixty percent, fifty percent, it doesn’t matter; you still would have played with friends at least, or something. Kicked the ball on your own. You have the money to build your own field, I’m sure, if you don’t want everyone in your business. It seems like you’re selling yourself out. You already told me you miss playing. I just don’t believe something like a little pain would stop you from at least… you know what? It doesn’t matter. I’m glad you finally started kicking some balls around. Good for you.”

Hours later, I’d realize how differently I could have handled the situation. How horribly I’d actually gone about it. I knew better.I knew better. I understood people who held their pride and arrogance like a shield and how they handled someone attacking them. Or worse, someone feeling sorry for them.

I knew because I was well aware how much I hated anyone feeling sorry for me.

Pitying a man with the ability to make my life a living hell on the field, a man who had once upon a time held a passion for soccer that seemed to light him up from the inside out, it was like I turned a force of nature against me.

Forget that I’d tried to be nice to him, that I’d driven him home and never insisted on knowing why he had me take him instead of his driver or a taxi or Gardner or Grace, or just about anyone else that had more of a relationship with him than I did.

In the words of my brother, I did it to myself. I brought the attention of a perfectionist down on me, and there was no one else to blame for it.

The next twoweeks of my life could be summed up in three keywords: physical and emotional hell.

Any kind of bond I’d formed with Kulti had been shattered the day I pressed him for answers in my car. Proceeding to give him shit for using his injury as an excuse was just the icing on the cake.

Since then I hadn’t given him a single ride home. I wasn’t surprised after that initial first practice, following what I would call Interrogation Day, when he took ripping me a new one to a totally different level.

Seriously.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Listen to me!”

Blah, blah, blah, fuck, blah, blah, blah, something-something-shit, blah, blah, blah.

But my favorite thing that came out of his mouth was “Is that how girls play soccer?”

Oh man.

I’d heard that one before. It still got me every time.

But if what he wanted, was for me and the team to show him just how girls played, he got his wish. We were all out for blood. Most of us had grown up playing with boys and from experience, we all knew their asses got kicked just easily as other ladies did.

I couldn’t remember the last time any coach had been on top of me with such a vengeance. There wasn’t anything friendly about the things that came out of Kulti’s mouth. It was all business. All tough-love, I’m-going-to-break-you-down-to-get-what-I-want love.

Each day was worse than the one before. Gardner didn’t say anything. He patted me on the back and told me to hang in there.

It got hard to keep my head up and brush off the ugly words. I tried my best to focus on the things that came out of his mouth that had knowledge beneath them, but it wasn’t easy. Toward the end of the first week Jenny, the world-class athlete, was the one who panted out, “What did you do to him?” after Kulti yelled at me for passing the ball to another player when he felt like I should have taken a difficult shot instead.

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