18. Cecelia
EIGHTEEN
CECELIA
Solomon is not okay.
No one else seems to notice but then again, I doubt anyone else spends as much time looking at him as I typically do.
At breakfast he sits with the training staff, but I can tell he’s barely talking to anyone.
He goes through the right motions at our morning stretching session, moving around the ballroom we’re using and helping players to adjust their form.
But he avoids me entirely.
Last night, after that horrible interaction by the elevators, he declined my invite to play cards, claiming he wanted to rest. When I offered to keep him company in his room, instead, he gave a clipped no thanks before striding off down the hallway alone.
I hadn’t wanted to leave him, not when I could tell he was so upset, but what was I supposed to do?
Chase him down the hallway? The way he was acting was so similar to his behavior the night of the frat party and the punch debacle.
Such a vast difference from the warm, jokey guy who had just massaged my knee and teased me about getting kicked out of Girl Scouts.
This version of Solomon is completely cold and shut down in a way that scares me.
It’s more of the same during our mandatory study hall on Friday morning.
The athletes have three hours where we’re required to do coursework before our team lunch, and I guess the student staff is included in that because he sits huddled up at a back table with the other student trainer and the team’s student managers.
He doesn’t look at me once, even though I try to catch his eye several times.
I don’t think he looks up from his text book at all.
I have a leaden feeling in my stomach every time I think about that awful woman from last night.
She’s the reason he’s acting like this, obviously.
I almost didn’t believe him when he told me she was his mother.
I didn’t even know he had a mother. When he told me he moved to the ranch to live with his grandfather as a teenager, I’d assumed something had happened to his parents.
There’d been a note in his voice, something tense, guarded.
It gave me the impression that his reason for moving there was something he didn’t want to discuss.
I’d honesty thought he was probably an orphan, right up until he told me I’d just come face-to-face with his mother.
But even if I had known she was alive, I never would have guessed that woman was related to him. What kind of mother would talk to her kid like that? She didn’t even say hello.
I think of my own mother, so warm and funny, with that mischievous glint in her eye.
How sometimes when I’m at home and pass by her, she pulls me into a hug for no reason.
If we’re sitting together, she’s usually making contact of some kind—a nudge of her shoulder, her hand on mine, her fingers absentmindedly playing with my hair.
My dad is the same way. Actually, he’s worse.
The man is the king of spontaneous hugs.
I’ve always known that I have exceptional parents, that I’m luckier than most people. But now, comparing them to the woman who apparently raised Solomon makes me want to cry.
I try my best to put the interaction out of my mind when we board the team bus for the drive to the opposing team’s stadium.
Our opponents knocked us out in the NCAA tournament last year, and their record is better than ours so far this season.
There’s a nervous tension on the bus and it’s my job as captain to try to alleviate that.
Even if I would much rather sit up front with Sol and try to wipe that awful, blank expression off his face.
It’s a little easier once we get to the stadium.
Locking in is basically second nature for me this close to game time.
I go through all my pre-match preparation—the deep breathing and visualization Violet’s older sister Rose taught me, and warm up with the team.
And the whole time I try not to look at Solomon’s blank face while he moves through the locker room, helping players with last minute training needs.
He avoids me, too.
I try not to let that sting. Did I expect a little more attention to my injury, particularly after the swelling and pain I dealt with yesterday?
Yeah, I did. Solomon has been nothing but attentive to the issues with my knee since the day he started working with the team.
I figured he’d at least check in with me.
But as I watch him applying tape to Jenny’s shoulder with a flat expression on his face, a realization settles in my chest. Whatever is going on in his head must be really bad if he can’t even bring himself to come within five feet of me.
Finally, when there’s only a few minutes until game time, he comes over. “Knee feeling okay?”
A month ago, this would have pissed me right off. Him talking to me in that flat, uninterested way, without so much as a hello. I would assume he was being rude, just like I did after the frat party. But I know better now. When Solomon acts like this, it’s because there’s something wrong.
“It’s okay,” I tell him, aiming for my gentlest tone. If he can tell that I’m talking about more than my knee, he doesn’t show any sign of it. He merely nods, not making eye contact, and says, “let someone know if you need anything.”
I force myself to focus when Coach Carla comes in for her pre-game speech, then join the other captains in getting the girls hyped up before we head out to the field.
It’s not my best game. We still win, and I get an assist on Helen’s goal, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little distracted.
It doesn’t help that my knee is killing me.
Solomon is waiting for me when I get off the field. He still doesn’t look like himself, but at least he’s not ignoring me. “Treatment room after coach’s talk, okay?”
Relief rushes through me. “Okay.”
Coach doesn’t keep us too long, thankfully.
I really need to get ice on my knee, and of course I’m too stubborn to skip her talk in favor of going straight to the treatment room.
I wouldn’t get in trouble—obviously the coaches put our health above post-game lectures—but I don’t really want anyone else to know how much it’s bothering me.
I grab my phone from my locker, knowing my parents will be calling soon, and head to the treatment room as soon as Coach is done. Solomon isn’t there yet, so I pull myself up onto one of the tables and wait.
Sure enough, my phone starts ringing with an incoming video call.
When I press accept, I’m only a little surprised to see about ten heads crowded together on the screen.
My parents, uncles, and aunts are all pushing to get their face in the shot.
They erupt in cheers when they see me and I roll my eyes, though I can’t wipe the grin off my face.
“Great game, baby girl!” Dad shouts over the noise.
“I take it you all watched?” I ask.
“Uncle Levi hooked up the internet to the TV so we could livestream it,” Dad says, and I bite back my laugh at how impressed he sounds, like getting internet on the TV is some major technological accomplishment.
“Hey, sweetheart,” Uncle Levi calls, his face nudging past Dad into the frame. “Nice assist.”
“Shoulda gone for the goal yourself,” Uncle Reed says, pushing Levi out of the way. “You could have made it.”
Dad smacks him. “She was being a team player!”
“You looked so awesome out there, sweetheart!” Aunt Paige calls. “So fierce and pretty at the same time. I love when you braid your hair like that.”
“She doesn’t care about looking pretty,” Reed scoffs. “She cares about being a badass. Which she was.”
They all cheer some more. Since none of them actually know anything about soccer, I just shake my head and find my mom’s face in the crowd. “Only one foul,” she says drily. “An improvement.”
“Hey, that was a clean tackle. Ref was blind.”
They all laugh, talking at the same time so I can’t hear anyone. Finally, my mom starts pushing them out of frame so we can actually talk.
“Have they been drinking?” I ask when it’s just her and Dad.
“Of course they’ve been drinking,” she says. “They had to watch sports.”
That makes me laugh. My uncles have always been far too preoccupied by rock music to ever attempt anything remotely sporty. The fact that they so often force themselves to sit through my games makes my insides feel warm and gooey. Damn, I love my family.
Mom talks some game specifics—she thinks our defense is weak on the left side and some of the girls need to work on staying on-sides—while Dad looks increasingly bored.
She notices his attention waning and we share a look before she rolls her eyes.
“You probably want to go shower,” she says. “How ’bout I call you later?”
I don’t tell her that I won’t be showering until after I get treatment on my knee.
It would just make her worried. Instead, I blow them both a kiss and listen as the rest of the family shout their congratulations from somewhere off-screen.
“Keep kicking ass, baby girl!” Dad shouts before they end the call.
I shake my head, grinning, as I set my phone next to me on the table. And then I look up and see Solomon standing there in the entrance to the training room, watching me with an unreadable expression on his face.
“Oh.” I shift in place, caught off guard. “Hey. Sorry, I didn’t realize you were waiting.”
He seems to give himself a little shake before approaching the table, already pulling on gloves. “It’s no problem.”
My brain scrambles for something to say, some way to get that expression off his face and make him seem more like Sol. Before I can come up with anything, he’s gently lifting my leg, just as he had done last night. “Tell me about the pain.”
“Uh.” It takes a moment for me to snap back into player mode. “It’s pretty much the same as yesterday when I got off the bus. Maybe more intense.”