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“Okay,” I said, scooting away and carrying my laptop to the counter where Sam was staring intently down at his phone. “Hey,” I whispered, nodding toward the far end of the counter where Hale wouldn’t be able to overhear us.
Sam smiled at me, a question in his eyes as he followed along, waiting for me to explain.
“That guy over there,” I started. “Clearly you know him.”
“Hale?” Sam nodded. “Yeah, I know him.” The words were clear enough. Why did I feel like there were other things he wasn’t saying?
I forged on. “And would you say he’s trustworthy?”
Sam actually laughed, exhaling a single noisy breath before nodding. “Yeah, I’d say so. You don’t need to worry about Hale. He’s definitely been through some shit lately, but he’s a good guy. Heart of gold type.” As he said this henodded at me, as if I’d somehow understand what he was getting at, which I didn’t exactly, but I found myself nodding along.
There was something there Sam wasn’t telling me, but I was too tired to play detective. He sounded absolutely sure. And Sam had been here as long as I had. I trusted him. And if he trusted Hale? I guessed I did, too.
“Fine,” I said, sitting back down. I met Hale’s dark eyes. “You can help.”
He cocked his head to the side with a grin. “I would have expected something more like a thanks.”
“If this were a perfect world, you’d certainly get one,” I said, parroting his arrogant words from the first time we’d met.
A wry smile crossed his full lips.
“I’ll save the gratitude for afterward,” I added. I turned the screen to face us both and watched his eyes as he scanned the amateur schematic I’d been working on.
“The design needs modification,” he said, glancing at me. “This isn’t terrible, though. What can I look at to see the application? What stats are you planning to pull?”
I pulled up the sales presentation I’d been working on, demonstrating how measuring the movement of the throwing arm, rather than the ball, could have training applications as well as provide game statistics that could be useful for assessing player performance and for bookmakers looking to set up bets. Hale scanned through my slides, a slow smile taking his lips again. After a minute, he sat back, crossed his arms and looked at me. “Whyare you in sales?”
“The only job I could get here,” I told him honestly. I was too tired to evade his questions anymore. Besides, it felt good to have someone to talk to about work. I didn’t have any allies in my own department, that was for sure. “Cody Tech isn’t exactly known for its gender-equal hiring practices.”
Hale’s eyes narrowed at me, and he cocked his head slightly to one side. “What do you mean?”
“When I came out of grad school, I was second in my class. This was the only place I wanted to work. I wanted to do stuff like this.” I pointed to my screen, held up the sheaf of notes where I’d worked out the complex algorithms converting data into numbers that could be compared, analyzed, applied. “This is what I’m good at. But the three statistician positions, as it turned out, had already been promised. To men. One of whom came out of my program at the very bottom.”
Hale’s hands had clenched on the tabletop and his spine had straightened. He looked furious. Was he really that angry on my behalf? “How?” he asked, biting out the word.
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. I was past being angry about it. “Drug deals, family arrangements, whatever. Doesn’t matter now. The bottom line is that sports is a man’s world. All the Title IX funding in the world isn’t going to change that any time soon. And this company exists in that world. So I took the only position I could get here, knowing if I could find a way to prove myself, then I could get theposition I want. And deserve.”
“The guy they hired doesn’t have to prove himself,” Hale said through gritted teeth.
“Not in the same way. But he does now. If he doesn’t know what he’s doing, they’ll figure it out. Despite my annoyance about the hiring,” I explained, “I still think this is one of the most interesting companies in the country, and the applications for the tech are insane. They have the potential to change the way people play.”
He nodded, his eyes never leaving mine.
I was surprised at the way I felt, talking to this man. With his eyes fixed on my face, it was easy to open up to him, to talk to him about my career, what I wanted. I felt as if there was something connecting us, or surrounding us—a shell separating us from the rest of the world as we sat here in the coffeehouse, inches away from each other. It was strange, but it was nice, too.
He turned back to my screen, pulling up my drawings again. “Mind?” he asked, taking the mouse. I shook my head.
For the next hour, I sat back and watched as Hale modified hundreds of tiny parts of my work, moved small pieces around and redesigned the crude attachment mechanism I’d come up with to keep the device coupled with the moving arm. “It’s not one hundred percent,” he told me, swinging the screen back to me so I could see what he’d done more closely. “But the guys upstairs will know how to get it there now. If you sell it first.”
I stared at what he’d designed. It was worlds above what I’d begun, which made sense if he was once a developer. “Wow,” I said, and turned my gaze back to him. “Thank you,that’s amazing. I could never have gotten it there myself. Now they might really believe this is possible.”
“It is,” he said. “And it’s a really good idea.”
I glanced at the clock hanging over the coffee counter. It was after ten. Sam sat behind the counter, reading a novel. Surprise made me close the laptop and start shuffling my papers into my messenger bag. “It’s late,” I said, feeling like I was resurfacing after being underwater for hours. “The coffeehouse usually closes at eight-thirty. I have no idea why Sam didn’t kick us out!” I pulled my things together and stood as Hale got to his feet. “Sam,” I said, “I’m so sorry. You could have told me the time, I’m sure you have other things to do.”
Sam stood and smiled, his blond hair flopping into his eyes as he looked quickly at Hale and then back at me. “It’s not a big deal,” he said. “Looked like you were getting stuff done.”
I grinned at him, feeling closer to my goals than I had in a long time, thanks to Hale’s help. “I was.” Hale bumped against my shoulder with his own. “We were,” I corrected. “Thanks.”
