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By the time I’ve cleaned up the mess I made and successfully transferred the rest of my coffee atop what little remains of the ice, Beck’s drink is being handed to him. I’m tempted to ask the barista for more ice, but she looks frazzled enough already. Tepid will have to do. And of course, I’m now stuck exiting the coffee shop with Beck right behind me. I was hoping I’d be able to put at least a block between us before he departed for our mutual destination. No such luck. My only option to gain any lead would be to sprint. Doing so would put my coffee in peril again, not to mention I’m wearing flip-flops to show off my vivid pedicure.
Side by side it is.
Beck slips on a pair of sunglasses as we walk along, which make him look a little more like an insanely attractive guy and less like a world-renowned soccer superstar. Meaning there are stares, but no autograph requests or photos. Getting kicked out of Scholenberg for trespassing on Kluvberg’s field would be nothing compared to anyone at Lancaster seeing a photo of me with Adler Beck.
“It sounded like you were talking to a baby,” Beck states, seeming oblivious to the attention we’re receiving. The attention he is receiving, rather. I look like the poster child for American tourist in my baseball cap and the Statue of Liberty T-shirt Emma bought me. Or maybe he’s just really used to it.
I make a face as some coffee sloshes onto the back of my hand. “Yeah, I was. He belongs to my older sister.”
“Are you two close?”
“Yes. No. Sort of,” I blurt, caught completely off guard by his question. What does he care if I’m estranged from my sibling or calling her every twenty minutes? I’m not a sharer, and I never encourage sharing. Which makes my next couple words a surprise. To me. “Are you?”
“Close with your sister? No, but I’d love to meet her.”
Wow. He does have a sense of humor.
“She’s married and inherited the morals in the family,” I tell him. “I meant yours, obviously.”
I’m giving away more than I meant to. Yeah, I know exactly who he is. Know his accolades and the basics of his background. But I’ve mostly pretended like I know nothing about him, and it’s a facade that’s cracking more with each interaction.
“We get along fine.” A vague answer to rival my own.
I don’t press, turning my gaze ahead to watch the imposing shadow of Kluvberg’s stadium appear in the distance.
“She’s younger,” he states.
“What?”
“My sister. She’s younger than me.”
“Okay…not sure if that’s her fault.”
His tone implies it is.
There’s a ghost of a grin. “Obviously. But it means she gets all of the perks and none of the pressure.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s never played football. Never had to deal with the expectations. I mean, do you have any idea what it’s like to walk on the pitch and see your parents sitting there, expecting you not to fuck up their legacy?”
“No, I don’t,” I reply honestly. “My dad’s idea of exercise was walking from the couch to the fridge for a beer. He couldn’t win a gold medal for anything except ‘Absentee Parent of the Year.’” Yeah, didn’t mean to say that much. I never talk about my dad. Thankfully, Beck doesn’t know me well enough to know that.
“Is your sister close with your dad?” he asks me.
Rather than none of your fucking business, what I should say, I reply, “Closer than me. Especially since she got married, had a kid.”
“Maybe the same thing will happen to you.”
I snort. “Doubt it.”
“You don’t want kids?”
“I don’t want distractions.”
“Plenty of successful athletes have families.”
“Plenty of male ones, maybe. Your contribution to the whole making-a-human endeavor would be thirty seconds of fun. Not nine months of nausea and vomiting and swollen ankles and sore boobs and then pushing a watermelon out. Maybe, once I was retired, I’d consider it. But we women also have this fun thing called a biological clock, so I probably couldn’t get pregnant by then.”
