I cleared my throat and nodded at him, begging myself to calm down.

“It’ll be fine,” he assured me with a sympathetic smile. “I think I just threw up in my mouth a little,” I muttered more to myself than to Gardner. My leg only shook harder as someone came over a microphone in the other room, “We need a minute, please.” One hacking cough later, I told myself: I could do this. One of the public relations people for the organization peeped around the corner of the hallway and frowned for a second before disappearing again. A hand came down on my shoulder and he gave me a shake. “Ready,” I lied through my teeth.Īnd unfortunately, he knew me well enough to recognize the fact I was lying out of my ass because Gardner laughed loud. I knew shit was about to get real when my leg shook.īut instead of admitting that I was nervous, I stuck my hands in my pockets, thanked the lord above that the sweat pants I’d put on that morning were baggy enough so that no one could tell my legs had a mind of their own, and forced a smile on my face. My hands felt like I’d just rubbed them all over my lower back after a long run, my armpits were sweaty… and my leg was shaking. The three S’s came down to make me look like an idiot-stuttering, sweating and shaking. I was sure there was a video of me making awful hand gestures throughout an interview somewhere. I could play in front of thousands of people, but the instant cameras got within ten feet of me, I just shut down. How the hell had this even happened? I was usually third down the chain of players that got requested for these publicity events, and that was for a reason. The journalists and reporters were so loud in the other room it was making me sick. “You ready?” Coach Gardner asked as we waited for the beginning of the press conference. It’s stupid and irrational and on a scale of one to ten it sucked about a fifty. No one ever says that fear is logical, because it isn’t. This terror, this phobia of mine, was that unreasonable. On the inside, I crumpled into a ball like a dead spider and asked myself to please dissolve into dust sooner than later. Sit a couple seats down from him for the first time ever in front of several television networks. I could be in the same room as Reiner Kulti. This was how Coach Gardner had gotten me to say I’d do the interview. I didn’t like people telling me I couldn’t do something, even if I didn’t want to do it. ‘I can and I will,’ had been the motto I held closest to my heart at all times.

Kulti by Mariana Zapata