Page 42 of Bro Code

He gathered up the laptop and tablet, and went down the hall to find Holly.

She was in her office with a breakfast smoothie on the desk beside her. As Louis knocked and stepped in, she looked up, and Louis’ stomach dropped with nervousness. He steeled himself, remembering what Nic had told him yesterday about her hair metal band. Terrifying, yes, badass, yes, but this was just a person. Just a normal human being with a slightly embarrassing past. No reason to be nervous.

“Hey, Holly?” he said. “I was wondering if you have a sec?”

She looked impatient – she always looked impatient – and pulled her glasses down with one finger to look at him over the top of them. “What for?”

“I wanted to run something by you about Webb.”

“What is it?”

Louis stepped decisively forward and took a seat, opening the laptop on the desk and turning it to face her. He walked her through what he saw. He only realized as he was doing so that he didn’t actually have a good explanation for what he thought it was. Riley’s gay: that was basically his explanation, which was a terrible explanation. He wished he’d taken more time going through things before he came in here.

He was in the middle of a sentence when Holly waved her hand. “I’m gonna stop you there,” she said. “Thanks.”

And then she just put on her glasses and went back to her laptop.

“Oh. Uh…kay,” Louis said slowly. “So what do you think?”

“I think if I need a physiological analysis from the guy who writes the SQL queries, I’ll let you know.”

Louis sat staring at her. Did she just blow him off? He indicated the laptop again. “But the proximity scripts – that’s completely new. It’s only happening when people get close to him, and it started after he took that hit. He’s–”

“Louis, I don’t have time for this.” Holly sat up, removing her glasses. “Everything you’re telling me is just as easily explained by an injury as by anything else. Here’s what I’m hearing: you’re telling me he didn’t have issues during preseason training. Great – then we’ve pinpointed that the injury must have occurred during Game One. Thank you.” Louis started to protest, but she went on, “Next, you’re telling me his metrics went to shit after he took that hit in Tampa. Fine – then the injury was aggravated by that blow, or he’s taken on an additional injury somewhere else.” She held the glasses in front of her eyes as she leaned in and read from the laptop. “I see a three-hundred millisecond latency drop and a four-degree loss in pelvic rotation. That’s a Grade One adductor strain, or a labral tear, exactly like we thought.”

“But what about the media–”

“New York’s psych evaluated him before he came here. You can read the transcripts – Webb told them himself he wasn’t feeling any pressure on the ice since the first game.”

Louis scoffed. “Oh, so you trust New York’s psych to do a proper eval, but you think their physician is full of shit?”

He immediately wished he hadn’t said that. Holly’s face went bone-tight as she glared at him across the desk and said, “Excuse me?”

“Never mind,” said Louis.

“Do you maybe wanna try that again without the attitude?”

“Look, all I’m saying–”

She pointed over her shoulder at the wall. “What’s that on the wall behind me there, Louis?”

Louis blinked. “Uh…”

“It’s a degree in kinesiology,” she supplied. “And what’s that one beside it?”

He stared at her in disbelief. Was she seriously pulling out her degrees to shut him down? He could feel the blood beginning to boil at the back of his neck. He couldn’t even come back at her with his degree in data analysis. Because he didn’t have one. Because he was self-taught. She knew that.

“Right,” he said, stiffly. “Got it.”

He snapped the laptop closed and shoved his chair back from the desk. His heart was racing as he stalked out of the room, but he wasn’t sure if that was fury, fear, or embarrassment. He shut the door behind him and stood in the corridor outside, breathing in the cool air and trying to calm down.

Fucking degree in kinesiology. Merde, what a bitch. He started walking. As if a degree made a fucking shred of difference. As if a person’s intelligence could be measured by a piece of paper on a wall. Except probably kinesiology was the kind of thing you needed an actual degree in, because it wasn’t like you could teach yourself that like you could teach yourself to code for free on the internet – or at least, you could ten years ago when you were in high school in Guadeloupe and had one teacher who saw who you were and let you eat lunch in the computer lab every day so you didn’t get the shit kicked out of you by football players.

He arrived at his desk in the bull pen, still fuming, and stood in front of it, the laptop clutched under his arm.

Then he turned and marched back down the hall.

He hadn’t been in the general manager’s office since the day he was hired, and only then to say hello and sign some paperwork. What he remembered of the guy was a big watch and a lot of hair gel. Had he been friendly? Louis couldn’t remember. But now wasn’t the time to be worrying about ‘friendly’. Riley Webb was a multi-million-dollar asset with a defect they needed fixed. If Holly wouldn’t listen to him, maybe her boss would.