Page 44 of Bro Code

Louis’ heart jumped. Jesus, was he already getting shafted? There was no way they’d punish him with something as dumb as kicking him off the charter, was there? “Ah…last I checked I was on the charter?”

Holly nodded, business as usual, and he eyed her, wondering if she’d seriously just come to talk about the travel plan, or if there was some ulterior motive for her being there.

“Great,” she said. “Just making sure.” She paused. “Listen, I appreciate the initiative on the Webb thing. But I think you’re confusing cause and effect. Webb’s heart rate is spiking in the proximity scripts because his groin muscle is microscopically fraying whenever he tries to pivot against an oncoming defender. The pain is triggering an autonomic cardiovascular response. It’s a standard Grade One adductor issue.”

“Okay.” Louis restrained a sigh, nodding. It was Star Trek jargon and he didn’t have the energy to argue. Sure. She was probably right. “Sounds good,” he said. “Thanks for clearing that up.”

“No problem.” She smiled tightly and turned to go – then paused. “And Louis?”

He looked up.

“If I ever hear anything else about you going over my head to the GM, I will bury you so deep in this organization you will never see the sun again,” she said. “Okay?”

She smiled again — bared her teeth, more like — and briskly marched away.

Louis sat staring after her, stunned. A few other people in the bull pen had watched that exchange go down, and his face went red hot as he felt them all pretending not to look at him. He hunched over his computer. The woman was a fucking shark. What must she have been like onstage with her hair metal band? Terrifying.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. Chloé. Shit. He dug it out and put it to his ear.

“Hey, Sé, how’s it going, sorry, I got tied up–”

“You said you were gonna call.”

“Yep, I know, sorry.” He shut his eyes and tipped his head back to the ceiling. He was still spinning. He took a deep breath and let it go.

“Sorry. Alright. I’m here. What are we doing? Manman’s test results. What’s the latest?”

He heard her open the door at her end and go out to the front porch. A rooster crowed somewhere, a dog barked. He pictured the view: a tangled patchwork of banana trees and sugarcane down the slope of the island to the turquoise sea. Power lines, abandoned cars along the pockmarked road. That one house that was destroyed by a hurricane years ago and never rebuilt. Rebar coming through the concrete.

He took another deep breath as he pictured it. It helped. Hearing about Manman might be exactly what he needed to take his mind off this shitstorm of a morning. It’s not like things could possibly get any worse.

Chloé didn’t say anything for a long time, and he pulled the phone away from his ear to make sure they hadn’t been disconnected.

“Chlo?” he said. “Are you there?”

“Yeah,” she said. There was a long silence. Then: “It’s cancer.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Riley

He was on the ice at San Jose two hours before the game, alone. Their matchup against the Sharks tonight would be the first game his parents had come to since before the Olympics. He didn’t want to fuck it up.

The team had landed in California the day before. Five games in three cities, beginning in the Bay Area and ending in LA. It was a brutal schedule, and he would only make it harder on himself by scheduling extra solo skates. But he needed to get his shit together. He had to fix his game.

The rink was cold and the ice was smooth as glass. Someone had turned on the overhead lights halfway for him. His footsteps rang in the tunnel as he went to the locker room to put on his gear. It was so quiet it felt like being in church or something. Good. That was what he wanted: he needed the vibe to be right.

Riley wasn’t a superstitious person. Not usually. But he was starting to understand why people were: he was beginning to feel cursed, and he was willing to try anything to break it. This rink in San Jose was the first one he’d ever played in. Six years old, barely able to lace up his own skates, Mom and Dad in the bleachers at every game. He’d never had a bad day here. The vibe was good. If he was going to break this curse anywhere, it would be here.

He started with a slow, easy skate around the rink. Nothing but the sound of the blades on the ice and the deep, low hum of the cooling unit below. Felt good. He set up in front of the goal with a bucket of pucks and started flipping them out of the bucket on his stick and snapping them in. A nice, familiar rhythm. The crack of the stick on the ice like a gunshot. The ping of the puck as it went in the back corner of the net.

Crack. Ping. Crack. Ping. Crack. Wide. Crack.

He was ten pucks in when a door opened somewhere. He looked up and recognized a skinny nerd with an unwieldy backpack traipsing in. He had a gray wool beanie over his puffy hair, and a scarf around his neck. Riley tracked him around the edge of the rink and called out as he started up into the bleachers.

“The hell are you doing here?”

His voice echoed and Louis glanced over his shoulder as he climbed the stairs. “How is that your business?”