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It didn’t really work.
One more deep breath, then another and by the third, I was parked. Thankfully my nerves had settled enough for me to get out of the car without looking like I was battling morning sickness. About five seconds after I got my bag out of the trunk, I heard it. “Casillas!”
Fuck my life.
“Sal Casillas! You got a minute for me?” the masculine voice called out.
I slung the bag over my shoulder and glanced around to find a man breaking away from the group of strangers. He waved, and I felt my stomach sink even as I plastered a smile on my face and waved back. It wasn’t anyone’s fault that I got all awkward and anxious in front of a video camera.
“Sure,” I answered convincingly. Our assessment didn’t start for another twenty minutes, but I still had to get ready.
“How you doin’? Steven Cooper withSports Daily,” the man greeted me with a handshake. “I just have a few questions if that’s fine.”
I nodded. “Shoot.”
“I’ll be recording this for documentation purposes.” Showing me the recording device in his hand, he hit the button to start. “What are you looking forward to the most this season?” he asked.
“I’m really looking forward to just starting it. We have some new players and staff on the team, and I’m excited to see how well we all do together.” The fact I sounded like a well-adjusted human being instead of one that was about to shit her pants made me proud.
“How do you feel about Reiner Kulti being hired as the Pipers’ assistant coach?”
It was the same exact question I’d answered during the press conference from hell days before. “It’s still pretty surreal. I’m excited. I think it’s great that we’re having someone with so much experience coming in to help us out.”
“He’s an unlikely choice for a coach, don’t you think?”
I shoved my hands in my pockets when I felt them start to get clammy. Most of the time these things were fine, but every once in a while they turned into ticking time bombs. I’d put my foot in my mouth more times than I could count, which didn’t help my fear with doing these interviews.
“It’s different but there’s nothing wrong with it. He’s been named World Player of the Year more times than anyone else for a reason. He knows what it takes to be the best, and that’s something every player strives for. Plus, I think it’s unfair to discredit him before we even give him a chance to prove himself,” I told him.
He gave me a disbelieving look, like he thought I was full of shit, but he didn’t argue with me about it. “All right. What’s your prediction for this season? Are the Pipers going to the finals again?”
“That’s the plan.” I smiled at him. “I need to get going, unless you have one more question?”
“Okay. One more: do you have any plans on joining the national team again soon?”
I opened my mouth and left it open for a second before closing it. I rocked forward on my heels as I rubbed my palms down the front of my shorts. “I’m not planning on it anytime soon. I want to focus on our regular season for now.” I swallowed hard and thrust my hand out for him. A second later, I was marching toward the field, watching a few of the other girls get corralled into conversations with other reporters. Two other journalists called out for me, but I declined with an apology. I had to warm up before our assessment began.
Today pretty much consisted of running sprints for an hour, upper body endurance in the form of a push-up-palooza, and endless squats from the third circle of hell, among other forms of torture that the old biddy fitness coach developed recently. Some people really dreaded it, but I wasn’t totally opposed to our fitness stuff. Was it fun? No. But I worked out a lot, hard, all year so that I wouldn’t be the one huffing and puffing during the first half of a game, and I liked being the fastest. So sue me.
I worked harder than just about anyone for a reason. I was fast, but I wasn’t getting any younger, and my bad ankle wasn’t getting any better either. Then there was my knee, which had been a problem for the last decade. You had to make up for stuff like that by never getting soft, putting your well-being first, and not taking things for granted.
I’d just finished dropping my things on the side of the field when it finally happened.
It was the “Oh. My. Godddd” out of one of the girls I wasn’t familiar with that suddenly snapped me into paying attention.
I spotted him. He was there.There.
Oh hell. I was dead.
All six-feet-arguably-two inches of brown hair, five-time World Player of the Year, wasright theretalking to the team’s fitness coach, a mean old woman who had no pity on anyone.
Oh snap. I reached up to make sure my hair hadn’t frizzed up in the five minutes I’d been out of my car and then stopped. What the hell was I doing? I dropped my hands immediately. I’d never cared what I looked like when I was playing. Well, I rarely cared what I looked like period. As long as my hair wasn’t in my face and my armpits and legs were shaved, I was good. I plucked my eyebrows a couple times a week and I had an addiction to homemade face masks, but that was usually as much effort as I put into myself. People asked me why I was dressing up if I wore jeans, it was that bad.
I’d worn lip balm and a headband on my last date, and here I was fixing my hair. Sheesh.
For the record and for the sake of my pride, I don’t think I’d ever fan-girled outwardly in my life. There were a few soccer players I think I’d gotten a little red-faced over and there was that one time when I was fourteen at a JT concert, he’d touched my hand and I’d swooned a little bit… but that was the extent of it. But seeing the master of ball control standing out on the side of the soccer field in a blue and white soccer training jersey and track pants was just… too much.
Way. Too. Much.
