Chapter 22 #3
Between the four of us, we pulled the soccer goals out and set them up. There were only two, but it was enough. The presign-up sheet had fewer kids registered than the week before.
I was busy spraying lines on the grass when I spotted Kulti speaking to two female teachers who would be working the registration table.
He was gesturing at something on the sheet and they were nodding enthusiastically, which didn’t say much because he probably could have been telling them that he pooped golden nuggets and they would have been excited, based on the way they’d been looking at him.
Hookers.
All right, that wasn’t very nice.
I finished spraying the lines just in time for the first of the kids to start showing up with their parents.
“Are you okay with doing this like we did last week? Only working together this time?” I asked Kulti once I’d approached the registration table where he’d been standing.
He tipped his short brown-haired head at me, his eyes directly meeting mine. “We make a good team, schnecke. It will be fine.”
So now he was back to calling me schnecke, whatever that meant.
I eyed him a little uncertainly.
In return, he punched me in the shoulder, which would have made me smile, but him dodging me at the last camp was still a little too fresh in my thoughts.
The facial expression I made—a weak, watered-down smile you gave someone that you didn’t find particularly funny but didn’t want to hurt their feelings—must have said as much, because Kulti frowned. After a beat, his frown deepened.
The German, who had reportedly gotten into a fight years ago when someone called his mother a whore, grabbed my hand, raised it, and hit his own shoulder with it.
What in the hell had just happened?
Before I even had time to think about what he’d done, my oversized bratwurst took a step forward and he did it.
He wrapped his arms around my shoulders, bringing me in so close my nose was pressed against the cartilage right between his pectorals.
He was hugging me.
Dear God, Reiner Kulti was hugging the shit out of me.
I just stood there with my arms at my sides, frozen. Completely freaking frozen in place. I was stunned, beyond stunned. Stupefied.
“Hug me back,” the accented voice demanded from up above.
His words shook off my paralysis. I found myself wrapping my arms around his waist, gingerly at first, our chests meeting in a real, honest hug. My palms went flat against the twin columns of his lower back, arms overlapping.
“Am I dying and I don’t know it?” I asked his chest.
He sighed. “You better not be.”
I pulled back and looked up at his face, completely unsure about what the hell had just happened. “Are you dying?” I blurted out.
“No.” Kulti held that same serious expression that was so innate for him; I wasn’t sure what emotion he was feeling.
“I’m sorry that I hurt your feelings. I only stepped away because Alejandro is…
competitive. He wants what he can’t have.
It was my mistake inviting him.” He glanced up quickly before looking back down and adding in a lowered voice, “I’m sorry for all the problems my presence has caused in your life.
Soccer has given me everything, but it’s also taken away just as many things. ”
He gave me a sad, determined look. “I don’t want it to take you away as well. You are the least shameful thing in my life, Sal. Understand?”
He was dead serious.
If we had not been around strangers watching our every move, I might have started tearing up. It was bad enough I had to press my lips together to keep from doing something I would regret.
I managed to suck in a tiny breath and aim a smirk at him. “Can I give you another hug or is that over your daily allowance?”
The German shook his head. “Have I told you that you remind me of a splinter I can’t remove? You’re incredibly annoying.”
“Is that a yes?” I blinked up at him.
“That’s a stupid question, Sal,” he stated. But was it a yes?
I didn’t get a chance to ask for clarification because I spotted four kids making their way across the field from the parking lot, and I knew I’d have to put off this conversation for later.
I still didn’t completely understand why Kulti had been such a douche the other day with the kids, but he’d apologized, and in his book that was the equivalent of giving me his kidney, so I’d take it and demand an explanation later.
More importantly, what had inspired him to give me a hug right then?
I squeezed his hand and gave him a nod. “Let’s start, all right?”
“Yes.” He didn’t break eye contact with me once. “I brought shoes for everyone. I think it would be best to give them to the kids at the end.”
“You brought….” I shut my mouth and got it together. “In that van? There’s shoes for the kids?”
“Yes. I asked the volunteers to take their size information during registration. There should be more than enough for everyone. I brought nearly every size.”
It was funny how things work sometimes. It really was.
I had learned and accepted my place in a stranger’s life a decade ago. I’d grown up and accepted what would and could happen, and I had known that there was no future for me and a man who didn’t know I existed.
And then one day, that same man for some reason decided to step into my circle, of all the circles in the world he could have chosen.
Slowly, slowly, slowly, we became friends.
I knew and understood that procession. I was okay with my place.
Friends. Not so simple or easy, but those were the best things in life, the hard things that didn’t fit perfectly, weren’t they?
In one instant, in one kind deed and unexpected gesture, something inside of me woke up. There was a reason I put up with his shit and forgave him for being a dick so quickly.
I was still in love with this man.
I had no right to be. No sound reason to.
I liked to think I made wise decisions, but reviving my childhood adoration for him was one of the dumbest things I could ever have let myself do.
But, obviously, I couldn’t take it back.
My heart hadn’t completely forgotten what it was like to feel this way for him, but no matter how much I tried to pretend otherwise, it had swelled and grown over the years.
Now, I understood. I had loved Reiner Kulti as a kid.
I had loved my ex-boyfriend as a young adult, learning and growing.
And the Sal Casillas I was today knew that I couldn’t love someone who didn’t deserve it.
It was the shoes for the kids whose parents couldn’t afford them that tied the noose around my neck.
Him bringing his friends to my soccer camps. Kulti buying my dad the trip of a lifetime.
Calling me his friend in front of people who he genuinely knew he didn’t give a single shit about.
I was in love with this pumpernickel. God help me, I wanted to cry.
I tried to find something to say—anything, and I hoped my face didn’t say, “You are a fucking idiot, Sal.” Because I was.
I really was. There was no escaping the truth when it was looking at you from two feet away, brown haired, bright eyed, and six-foot-two-inches tall.
I scratched my cheek and fought the urge to look away, to find my breath and sanity wherever it had gone.
“I didn’t think your sponsor would do something like that. ”
Here’s the thing about the German: he wasn’t one to beat around the bush or play coy or be modest. He looked me right in the eye and said it. “They didn’t. I bought them.”
He….
“Ms. Sal!” one of the teachers by the registration table called out.
“You,” I poked Kulti in the stomach, knowing I only had a second before I needed to haul it back to the table. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Don’t.”
“Ms. Sal!”
Gaze to gaze with the bratwurst, I told him in a rush, “Thank you.”
He gave me a heavy-lidded glare but didn’t say anything before following me over to registration.
Needless to say, the kids went wild when they saw the German.
Me, they couldn’t have given less of a shit about.
Kulti, they were losing it over. They listened to him and were excited out of their minds when we began different drills and exercises.
The bratwurst was right. We were a good team.
I had just as much fun with him as I had with Franz, if not more, because of the amount of playful shit-talking we had going on with each other.
A crowd triple the size of the one we had on the field formed on the far end of the school’s blacktop throughout the duration of camp.
Camera flashes continued going off, but luckily no one approached us—and by “us” I mean Kulti—while we were busy.
I just pretended they weren’t there and told myself to keep acting normal.
When the time came around for us to wrap up, I let Kulti tell his young fans that they were all getting a pair of his latest edition RK running shoes.
Any passerby would have thought the kids had been told that they’d won the lottery from the way they reacted.
The German hadn’t been joking. There were more than enough shoes for all the kids.
“Can I get one of just the two of you?” the mom of one of the kids asked after we’d taken a picture with her son.
“Sure,” I said, right before the German threw an arm around my shoulder and hauled me up to his side, roughly and deliberately.
Well.
I whacked him in the hard slab he called his stomach with a smile.
“I know this isn’t my place to say anything,” the lady gushed once the picture was taken. “I thought the age difference was a little strange, but seeing you together, it makes perfect sense. You two are stinking cute.”
My face went hot. “Oh, it’s not—” I started to say before the German reeled me up against him.
“Thank you for bringing your son,” he cut me off.
Thank you for bringing your son?
I almost choked.