“So none of your neighbors know you live here?” I asked again once we’d gotten inside the car.
“No. I leave the house before they do and get back before.”
“What do you do for groceries?” I was really curious about that. “Order them online?”
“I walk. It’s three blocks away.”
All this walking and riding around in cars he didn’t drive and all these mentions of a suspended license from people who got paid to investigate things… I gave Kulti a curious look but didn’t dig in too deeply. So what? Maybe the signs were all there, but it wasn’t my business to ask, the same way I didn’t want to talk about Amber and her dumbass husband.
“I guess I don’t understand how no one has recognized you. I mean, your face is on a billboard off the freeway by my house,” I told him, shaking my head. Then again, I’d seen his face hundreds of times on my walls. I could probably do an inkblot test and find him.
“People don’t pay attention. I wear a hat, and the only people who speak to me are the elderly in the motorized scooters who need assistance reaching something.”
Glancing over my shoulder, I shot him a smile. “I don’t know how you do it, honestly. We have fans, but it’s different. The only people who wear my jersey are my parents and brother. I don’t like being the center of attention, so it works for me.”
His head moved so that he could look out the window. His voice was so serious, so distant; it made me look at him longer than necessary. “I’ve had enough attention in my life. I don’t miss it.”
That was why he lived in this neighborhood and wore a hat to the grocery store.
I guess you figure that some people have it all. Why wouldn’t they? Looks, money, fame. What else would they need? A friend? Companionship? Something to take the boredom away?
Personally, I knew hundreds of people, yet I was only really close to seven. They were all people who I’d known for a long time, but out of those seven, I was confident that five would still be in my life even after soccer.
I eyed Kulti again and repressed a sigh. Feeling bad for him hadn’t been part of the plan.
“CLOSE ENOUGH?” I grunted.
Kulti pressed into me even more. “No.”
He was backing me into a corner, defender and striker at the same time, to keep me from stealing the ball from him. Somewhat rough and playing like I was just a smaller man, by not avoiding the full-body contact that came so naturally in soccer, he crowded me, holding me back. And I fought for every inch I made forward, having to tap into my short bursts of speed to try and outtrick him.
It didn’t really work.
With him on me, I only managed to get my feet on the ball about four times during our game, and each time he made me lose it out of bounds or stole it away. It was aggravating and exhilarating at the same time, especially when I ran after him and tried guarding against his big-ass body.
Playing with someone bigger, faster, and more talented than you are isn’t exactly an ideal situation, but I tried, and in the end, Kulti won, one to zero, nailing a clean shot right between the two goals we’d made out of sticks and empty water bottles we’d found in my back seat.
Freaking pumpernickel. “Again?”
Hands on my hips, I took a few deep breaths in through my nose and nodded at the man standing in front of me, breathing just as hard. There weren’t very many people at the park we’d gone to about twenty minutes from Kulti’s house, but there were more than there’d been when we first arrived.
Against my better judgment, I said, “One more.” We went for it.
We both might have been tired, but it didn’t matter. Kulti was on me from the second I got the ball, constantly less than a foot away. He was definitely slowing down, and I used it to my advantage. I was just as tired as he was, our game the day before had drained me, but he was thirteen years older than me and didn’t train as hard. And I was almost as fast as he was.
“Slowing down?” I panted as I tried to fake him out and make a run to the left.
He grunted, raw and rough. “Quit talking and play.” Yeah, he was definitely pooped.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a few people sitting along the edge of the small field we were on, watching. But it was right then that Kulti snuck his foot into my path to try and trip me.
“You ass,” I hissed, just barely missing him.
He used me being distracted and pissed to steal the ball.
In the end, I took it back when I summoned the last bit of energy I was willing to spend and really put in the effort to power toward the goal, scoring. I threw my hands up in the air and stuck my tongue out at The King. “I win.” Yeah, I totally wasn’t being professional or mature about it.
Just to rub it in even more, our audience on the edge of the field began clapping.
