Unwritten Rules Read online

  There’s a moment, right as a batter hits a ball late in a game, a ball that’s going to be a home run. A silence like a collective inhaled breath before the inevitable explosion of noise. A pause, a stillness, one Zach feels now.

  Eugenio’s lips are a little chapped. His stubble is a pleasant sting, his groan a pleasure that vibrates against Zach’s chest when Zach edges his tongue into his mouth. He kisses like he’s been waiting for this with the same blossoming want. The kind of kiss that yields the next and the next.

  Zach’s fingers are resting against Eugenio’s hand, and he digs them against the meat at the base of his thumb. It’s enough to dislodge Eugenio from where he’s standing, hand on the side of Zach’s face, whatever lingering control he has splintered by the touch. There’s a shelf behind Zach, one that will apparently take his weight because he’s shoved against it. Eugenio’s mouth is an impatient scrape of teeth at Zach’s jaw and neck, his hands determined at his sides, up under his shirt, thigh interjected between his in a hard press, one Zach grinds into.

  “Fuck,” Zach says. Because he’s wearing shorts and exercise tights, because they’re in an equipment room with an unlocked door.

  Because the shelf hits the wall behind it with a sudden ringing clang that makes Eugenio stop, taking a purposeful breath.

  “We shouldn’t—” Zach says, pulling back.

  “Does the door lock?” Eugenio looks over at the knob like he can move the gears and tumblers just by staring at them.

  “This is a bad idea.” But Zach goes, and it takes a few tries, fingers clumsy at the latch. He tests it, twice, like one of their teammates is going to rip the door from its frame in an effort to get a fresh tube of pine tar.

  Eugenio’s shirt is rucked up, and his face is flushed, his mouth distractingly red, incongruous among the stacks of equipment. Zach doesn’t know how long he stands there, letting himself look. Eugenio’s face begins to flush even further, and Zach realizes that, if he wanted to, he could suck a mark on one of Eugenio’s tattoos and have it not be noticeable.

  “This is a bad idea,” Zach says, again. Something he knows, objectively. Because they shouldn’t be doing this here or at all. But his feet carry him across the room, his hands move to Eugenio’s sides, pressing their hips together, a slow demanding rhythm punctuated by Eugenio’s mouth on his, the slide of his tongue against the skin of where Zach’s shirt collar meets his neck.

  “Don’t give me a hickey,” Zach says. “Someone’ll say something.”

  “I won’t.” Eugenio’s hands come up under his shirt, and Zach tugs it off, shedding it, and then motions for Eugenio to do the same. Up close, his chest is smooth, maybe an artifact of swimming, tattoos curling in dark distracting shapes, one across a pectoral, another circling his ribs. A line of hair traces down his belly to the waistband of his shorts; Zach runs his hand through it, feeling the intake of Eugenio’s breathing, his eagerness as he bucks up into the touch.

  “I could,” Zach offers, making the familiar hand gesture, and Eugenio nods, before encouraging Zach’s hand into the confines of his compression tights, Zach’s face buried in the muscle of where his neck meets his shoulder.

  He’s hard, wet, leaking; he pants when Zach moves his hand, at the friction from Zach’s calluses. Zach withdraws his hand, spitting into his palm, returning, wrist cramping with the angle. Eugenio smells like sweat and the coffee Zach brought for him, and grasps at Zach’s hip, his ass, making little noises.

  “Fuck.” He thrusts up into Zach’s fist a few times before stilling, and then Zach withdraws his wet hand, smearing it on a towel sitting nearby, one he’ll need to throw into a laundry bin.

  Eugenio’s leaning against the shelf, a little dazed, eyelids darkened, lips bearing the imprint of his own teeth. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he admits, in a rush, making Zach pause. “Show me what you like.”

  And he reaches for Zach’s shorts, careful but not hesitant, pushing them down, along with Zach’s compression tights, halfway to his knees, shorts sliding beyond.

  “Here.” Zach reaches for one of Eugenio’s hands, running his tongue over his palm, getting spit between his fingers. He gasps when Eugenio touches him. He curls his hand over Eugenio’s; their fingers overlap. Zach’s hand is still wet enough to be sloppy, movements loud, their breath in rhythm together. Eugenio leans to kiss him and bite at his lips and says something Zach can’t quite discern as he comes, spilling over their combined fingers.

  Eugenio wipes his hand on the mess of the towel, before sliding down to sit on the floor, where Zach joins him, shorts and tights pulled back up. “I didn’t mean for that to happen,” Eugenio says.

  It hurts, a stinging kind of hurt, to hear that out loud even before his breathing has calmed. Zach should get up, haul himself off the floor, unlock the door into the long narrow hallway to the training complex. Go scald himself in the shower. Do something other than sit here, his dick still wet in his tights.

  “I mean,” Eugenio says, “I was working up to it. I don’t know.”

  “You were working up to it?”

  “I didn’t think I was being subtle.” He taps his shoulder amusedly against Zach’s.

  And Zach rewinds their interactions over the previous weeks, Eugenio sitting by him on the couch in Zach’s living room, next to him in the early-morning bullpen, trading breakfast for his cup of coffee, their hands brushing. Things that Zach hoped, futilely, meant something beyond what they did. And now a dawn of a realization, enough of one that when he brushes a finger against his mouth to see if his lips are swollen, he finds that he’s smiling. “Oh,” he says, belatedly, which makes Eugenio laugh.

  “This is kind of new for me,” Eugenio says. “It was just my ex, really. Off and on from high school. I’ve dated a little since her but no one serious.”

  Serious, and the word sticks in Zach’s mind. Like this is more than a hookup. He studies the shelves of equipment around them, the windowless walls, wondering how long they could be here and not be missed. Wondering if this is something he could just have with all the simplicity that’s afforded to other guys. A hope that will probably blow away in the dry desert air, the denied possibility worse than if Eugenio never kissed him at all.

  Outside, there’s noise in the hallway, a reminder that they’re not alone in the training complex. That someone will eventually come looking for an unengraved bat, a roll of tape—and can’t find them sitting there, staring at one another, Eugenio’s lips swollen from Zach’s mouth.

  “I didn’t, um, realize,” Zach says. “You know we can’t do this. For about a hundred reasons.”

  “Can’t? Or shouldn’t?”

  “Can’t. It’s not a good idea.”

  “It could be a good idea.” And Eugenio is smiling that persuasive smile of his, one that makes Zach want to say fuck it and barricade the door against reality.

  They can’t, though, even if Zach is the only one thinking clearly. “If anyone finds out about it, it’ll tank your career.”

  Eugenio gets up. His clothing is mussed, and he neatens his shorts and tights, and straightens the stretched-out collar of his T-shirt. His shoulders are tense, mouth a line.

  “You don’t know what it’s like, okay?” Zach says. “If this is your first time.”

  “It’s not the first time I’ve thought about it.” His voice sounds tight.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Zach says, though everything within him is screaming not to. To instead tell Eugenio how much he wants the same thing. The words feel stuck in his throat; he swallows around them. “I didn’t mean to give you the impression that we could do this. I’m sorry if I did.”

  Eugenio takes out his phone and examines himself in the camera before shutting it off and returning it to his pocket. He walks to the door, hand on the knob, then says, “Wait a few minutes before you come out of here, okay? I wouldn’t want anyone getting th
e wrong idea.”

  And Zach waits there among the equipment, the coils of belts and unworn batting gloves and blank jerseys, like something also hidden away. Eventually, he gets up and goes and finishes the rest of what he needs to do.

  Chapter Ten

  July, Present Day

  It’s an hour until they have to go onto the field for the All-Star Classic, and they’re getting changed side by side in the clubhouse in Cincinnati. After Zach finished his interview, the social media people asked him to stay—to give Eugenio a focal point just off camera. And so he stood there awkwardly while Eugenio looked at him and answered questions about him, trying not to sink into the manicured grass of the field.

  The clubhouse is a chaos of different uniforms. Zach strips down next to Eugenio and catalogs the exact features of the stall they have his stuff in—jersey, batting gloves, uniform pants, tape—and the details of the uncarpeted floor. And not at Eugenio, who has shucked his pregame clothing, even though not looking feels more conspicuous than looking.

  “Thanks for covering for me with that question,” Zach says. “The one about how we met. I didn’t hear what they asked.”

  “Sure, not a big deal.”

  And it’s almost like Oakland. Enough that, for a second, Zach expects to be pulling on the familiar Elephants green instead of Swordfish teal, Eugenio next to him in classic Gothams pinstripes that emphasize the power in his back and thighs.

  “That teal,” Eugenio says, when Zach’s got his jersey on. “Wow.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Because Zach knows he looks practically incandescent, even with a South Florida tan. “Weather’s better in Miami, though. Compared to here.”

  “Yeah, I hear the weather’s better. The food’s better. Drinks are better. Everyone’s hot.”

  “Sure.” Because it’s true compared to Cincinnati, Baltimore, Indiana. Miami is a great city, except for its baseball team, its constant humidity, its distance from every place not in Florida. Like Oakland. Or New York.

  “You seeing anyone?” Eugenio says it no more quietly or loudly than he’s said anything else, volume carefully modulated. Casual, in a way that they aren’t. Surprising, given that he has Zach’s number and could have asked that any of a hundred times in the past two years, and not in a packed clubhouse when Zach hasn’t yet done up his belt.

  Zach looks around, in case any of the other players are listening in, but no one’s looking their way. Considers how he would respond to his teammates, if they bother asking, rather than with the hope that Eugenio is asking him for a particular reason. That he’s interested in Zach’s response for more than just small talk.

  Zach’s torn between saying that he’s not seeing anyone—hasn’t, really, since he left Oakland—and not wanting to come off as perpetually lonely, stuck in a cold apartment in the Florida humidity. “No—” his mind trips over the words, his throat goes dry “—no one serious. Why?”

  Eugenio doesn’t answer. Instead he snags his drink from the floor and walks away. “See you after the game.”

  And then leaves Zach standing there, like it’s a forgone conclusion that he’ll go to dinner with him, even though Zach hasn’t technically said yes.

  Zach thought the most difficult part of the day would be playing in a screaming stadium, on national TV, as part of what’s likely his first and only shot at being an all-star. Now his heart rate kicks up, from nervousness. From anticipation. From a dreaded kind of hope, one he smothered the last time Eugenio walked away.

  All things he can’t process right now, so he finishes changing. And if he sticks his head into the jerseys hanging in his stall, ostensibly looking for something but actually just recovering his breath, no one can tell he’s freaking out. Probably.

  It’s still a few hours before the game. His parents text, first demanding a phone call and then a tour of everything, and he has to toggle between showing them the park and its all-star trappings, and seeing them talk.

  “You’re going to watch the game later?” He feels a little silly as he says it, like a kid begging his folks to come to a tee ball game.

  “Of course,” his mom says. She sends him a picture of the two of them already wearing Glasser jerseys, one from Oakland, one the black-on-black Miami alternate jerseys that make the name hard to read.

  “I wish you all had come out here.” He winces, because it’s an argument he doesn’t want to have in public, not with them on speakerphone. He offered to pay for their plane tickets, their hotel. But his mom said they don’t want to be the kind of parents who took their son’s money, something nonnegotiable, even if he can spare it. “A lot of other players are here with their families.”

  His mom is making that face, one that precedes a disagreement. “If you met someone nice—”

  And it’s another old argument, one he also doesn’t want to have in public. That he hasn’t met anyone in Miami or Oakland who he can introduce them to. Someone he can show off to the baseball world and all the people at his parents’ shul.

  “Here, they have an exhibit on the history of the Blues.” He points his phone camera at the one they installed in the area beyond the clubhouse, zooming in on various parts of it, rather than on whatever expression he’s wearing at having disappointed them. Again.

  After, there’s not much else to do, so he hangs out with Gordon, who’s still in Oakland, still hitting like he always does, nearing the end of his contract, and when he retires, they’ll probably retire his jersey number. He looks no different than he did when they played together, though he must be nearly forty. He’s there with his entire family and possibly every friend he’s ever met, and he asks Zach what he’s doing after the game.

  “Morales invited me out with, uh, a group, I guess,” Zach says.

  “Huh, didn’t think you all were still friendly after everything in Oakland.”

  Zach hasn’t talked to him outside the Oakland group-chat in years, but Eugenio probably has. It’s possible Eugenio told him the story, the whole story, about what happened, the way Zach did Morgan, when he finally broke down and called her. “He invited me out.” Though it sounds defensive.

  Gordon gives a hmm at that, the kind that veteran guys seem to perfect when they hit thirty though Zach can’t really do that convincingly. One that speaks to disapproval without outright saying it. One that indicates Gordon probably knows more about what happened than he can say in a clubhouse. “Well, if it doesn’t work out, I’m sure you’ll find something to do.”

  He walks off, leaving Zach without an invitation to whatever block party he’s probably throwing for the entire population of Cincinnati—minus Zach.

  Zach isn’t starting the game, and neither is Eugenio. So they sit next to each other on the packed dugout bench, pushed closer together by the number of players, and then out on the field to stand for the anthem, Zach taking his hearing aid out as fighter jets scream overhead in a flyover.

  The stadium is loud, fans cheering as each player is introduced. There’s enough ambient noise that Zach doesn’t want to put his hearing aid back in, so he cups it carefully in his hand. “Can you let me know when they say my name?” he says to Eugenio, who’s standing next to him. “Just nudge me or whatever.”

  Eugenio nods, and when they get to Zach, he wraps his hand around Zach’s forearm, squeezing twice, an old signal. It surprises Zach enough that he takes a second to start waving, taking his cap off and gesturing to the handful of Miami fans who bothered to attend.

  “Got a couple of Oakland faithful here,” Eugenio says, when they get back to the dugout, after a thunderous burst from the Gothams fans at his introduction, and a healthy scattering of boos from what are probably Philadelphia loyalists.

  After that, it’s a baseball game. A few players hang out at the railing, nudging each other, gesturing to whatever’s happening on the field. Zach doesn’t need to hear their exact conversations to know what
they’re about—the stuff players talk about whenever they get together, the rhythm of it comforting and familiar. Others come and go out of the tunnel between the clubhouse and the dugout, some of the starters who’ll only be in for one inning already done for the night, loud in their intentions to go get drunk.

  He and Eugenio don’t say much to one another beyond commenting on this pitch or that, and it feels the way it did back in Oakland, a nostalgia settling over him like warm summer air.

  “I’m going to go stretch out,” Eugenio says, and heads off, gear in tow.

  Zach moves to the dugout railing, trading war stories about facing a quirky ace pitcher back in the day with St. Louis’ third baseman, who asks if Zach played for Oakland.

  “Yeah,” Zach says, and braces for questions about Eugenio. About how he left Oakland, the rumors that he demanded to be shipped out of town. About how they were friends, that they were close until they weren’t.

  “Gordon, man, that guy sure can swing it.”

  Relief washes over Zach. And he tells him about the time he saw Gordon hit a ball so far out of their spring training practice field, it shattered a car windscreen.

  Zach goes to get loose in the fourth. He stretches in the tunnel, watched by blown-up black-and-white pictures of Bluestockings’ greats, then makes his way to the bullpen.

  They have him paired with Garza, a young pitcher on the Pittsburgh Rivers. He isn’t that tall for a pitcher, probably listed as six foot and actually that height, unlike Eugenio, who’s listed at that but a few inches shorter. And he hurls fire into Zach’s mitt.

  “Save some of it for the actual game.” Zach pops up, walks over to Garza, who laughs, though his eyes wander toward Zach’s ear.

  “I saw you taking it out when we were on the field for the anthem.” Garza takes off his glove. He’s missing the last two knuckles of his middle and ring fingers, replaced by a set of black and gold prosthetics with his number on them. “Accident when I was fourteen. Didn’t think I’d get to play, but here I am.”