Unwritten Rules Read online

  And he stands a little straighter as he says it, like he’s challenging the stadium around them to disagree.

  Something about it makes Zach match his posture. “Yeah, I guess here we both are.”

  “I was hoping, if you were okay with it—” Garza tugs on his jersey a little “—if you were up for doing a swap.”

  “Sure, come find me after.”

  Out on the field, it’s loud, though not as loud as it was earlier in the game, elation worn off. Zach waits until the inning break, then sets up behind the plate.

  And proceeds to catch one of the dullest innings of his career. The hulking Toronto first baseman goes down on three pitches. The Crowns’ sure-handed shortstop, who hits well for a shortstop, which is to say adequately, pops up, and Zach catches it in foul territory. The third out takes longer, Garza missing twice with his curveball and then finally delivering a changeup that the batter smokes—right at the second baseman, who’s sober enough to field it.

  All told, three up, three down, and Zach wonders if his parents at home missed it. If they got up to answer the whistling teakettle and didn’t see it. And he feels the same—the slow boil leading up to the game and then a quick anticlimactic release.

  “Good inning,” someone says, when he gets back to the dugout, like it took effort to achieve three outs against players wobbling in their cleats.

  He does his normal cool-down stuff after, though he brings a beer and a feeling of unplaceable disappointment with him into the shower.

  He’s changing into his street clothes when Garza appears. They take a couple of selfies together.

  “Here.” Zach signs his jersey and hands it to him. It’s still clean, having not even worked up a sweat.

  “Are you sure?” Garza asks. “I mean, you don’t want to frame it or something?”

  And Zach doesn’t particularly want a reminder of how deflating this was staring at him from his living room wall. “Just remember this next time I’m hitting against you.”

  Garza laughs and tells him he’ll strike him out on something good.

  They can’t leave for dinner until the last out is recorded, until the game MVP gets the world’s largest participation trophy in the form of a truck.

  The game has barely ended when Eugenio comes to find him at his stall. “We’re going to head out in a few minutes.”

  “Um,” Zach says, though he has a creeping sense that this is a bad decision. That he can’t sit next to Eugenio at a restaurant and pretend that they’re just old friends having dinner. Especially now that Eugenio has changed into his post-game clothes, collared shirt bright against his midsummer tan. “This place isn’t, like, nice or anything?” And Zach glances down at himself, at the clothes he brought that he shoved into a duffel, wishing he at least considered a dry-cleaning bag.

  “Don’t worry, you look just fine.” And there’s that familiar pleased tilt to his mouth.

  “Where should I meet you?” Zach asks, and Eugenio’s smile increases even further.

  Zach leaves his blueberry of a rental car at the stadium and piles into an SUV with a few others, a driver transporting them to the restaurant. There are only ten players with them in total, and he gets the sense he’s crashing a pre-planned dinner, especially when the service staff at the restaurant hustle to set another place at the table for him.

  He’s also the only one in their party not from Venezuela or first-generation like Eugenio. The chatter around him is mostly in Spanish, though he can track enough of it to throw in an opinion about playing at Tampa’s terrible stadium, having banged a home run off its roof in a recent series.

  Eugenio shoots him a questioning look after he answers in halting Spanish. “That’s new.”

  “I figured I should learn. You know, since teams don’t always have a good interpreter.”

  “Yeah, I hear those are hard to find.”

  And Zach tries not to flush at that and fails.

  They’re in a back room, one with a door separating them from the rest of the restaurant, and Zach expected steaks and bourbon and dark leather. Instead, it’s light wood, favorable lighting, bright without being surgical. A booth in a corner, Eugenio on his right, a Sharks reliever diagonal to him. Eugenio’s sitting close, their legs pressed together, big catcher thigh against his. He smells good, different from how he used to.

  “Is that new cologne?” Zach asks it low enough that only Eugenio will hear.

  Eugenio’s got a napkin unfolded on his lap, and it slithers off onto the ground. He reaches for it, snagging it with his middle and index fingers, like he might call for a breaking ball in the dirt. “Why?” he says, close. “You like it?”

  “I thought you were mad at me.” It sounds petulant, like they just had a lingering spat.

  “I’m still deciding.”

  And Zach is unsure how to respond, of what he can say in a crowded restaurant. Of what he would say if they were alone.

  And so he just nods and considers the menu, reading it closely, deliberately, until Eugenio takes it from him, gently laying it on the table. “Don’t worry. I ordered for us.”

  Dinner is loud. It’s ten ballplayers who’ve been drinking since that morning, a few of whom didn’t sleep the night before, and many of whom have known each other since childhood. They eat like baseball players, demolishing plates of food as fast as the service staff can bring them. It’s too loud for him to talk to anyone but Eugenio, which Eugenio doesn’t seem to mind. He reaches past Zach, marshaling plates their way, and telling Zach about this dish or that, laughing when their tablemates propose toasts.

  Zach mostly eats, drinking more than he should, and wonders why exactly Eugenio invited him.

  “C’mon.” Eugenio picks up his drink in one hand and unthinkingly wrapping his arm around Zach with the other, though he doesn’t move it when Zach glances down at where his hand is resting on his shoulder.

  “This is like the only good meal I’ve ever had in Ohio.” Zach is still under the heavy, familiar weight of Eugenio’s arm, which he seems disinclined to move. “How’d you find this place?”

  It’s kind of a date question, the sort of question he would ask someone he met online, in the rare instance they get a meal together before fucking. A polite question. Or not one, because of course Eugenio knows how to find the only quality restaurant in the state, one that serves Venezuelan food and is close to the ballpark.

  “You know,” Eugenio says, smiling, “I have my ways.”

  And Zach cuts an already small piece of beef from his entree even further, eating it slowly, trying to draw out how long they’ll be there, even if most of them are already finished.

  “Something wrong with that?” Eugenio nods to Zach’s plate.

  “No, it’s perfect.” Except for the fact it’s almost gone. But he continues eating.

  “They want to go drinking,” Eugenio says, after the dishes are cleared, nothing left but their drinks and some crumbs.

  “You should go. I might call it a night.” And Zach thinks about going back to his hotel. Scrolling through Grindr, hoping not to match with anyone else at the game who might recognize him, and then taking a couple of pills in an effort not to wake up hungover. As much of a routine as anything else in his life.

  “We could stay here if you want.”

  “Oh.” Zach’s pulse kicks up. The wall partitioning them from the rest of the dining room is thin, thin enough that it would be easy to hear them. Especially if they’re going to rehash the last conversation they had years ago, like they could pick up right where they left off, closing the immeasurable distance separating them, even as Eugenio sits next to him, thigh pressed against his.

  “Let me just get rid of them first,” Eugenio says. It takes a while, because there’s no such thing as a short goodbye among drunk baseball players who only see each other every few months. They leave silenc
e in their wake, the service staff having delivered an itemized check to Eugenio, then telling them to take as long as they like.

  Eugenio smells like the bourbon he’s been drinking, like his new cologne, and he doesn’t move over to give Zach more room, even in their now-vacated booth. Zach tries to remember the last date he was on, where they did more than made sure the other person matched their online profile or actually sat and talked after the bill came, and can’t. Something they used to do in Oakland; something he missed without quite realizing it.

  “I should apologize,” Zach blurts, sudden enough to make Eugenio raise his eyebrows.

  Because it’s not an apology. Not anything approaching an apology. But the words that he’s rehearsed all die in his mouth. The ones he thought about on the weeklong road trip he took from Oakland to Miami, his stuff in a U-Haul, a flat of plants sitting on the passenger seat. The ones he thinks when he sits on the beach and watches the calm Florida Atlantic, wishing for the cold harsh spray of the Pacific.

  Eugenio waves a hand as if he’s brushing crumbs off a table. “I didn’t invite you so I could squeeze an ‘I’m sorry’ out of you.”

  “What are we doing then?”

  “I thought it was obvious.” Eugenio traces his finger around the rim of his glass.

  “Tell me anyway.”

  He leans in, breath warm on Zach’s neck, close enough that Zach can feel vibrations against his skin. “We’re here. Celebrating together. Unless—” Eugenio drops a hand down below the table, onto Zach’s thigh, moving upward. “Unless you’d rather just go back to your room. Have a quiet night in.”

  Zach cycles through all the reasons this isn’t a good idea: that they’re in public, that they’re going back to their respective cities, that it’s worse to remind himself of what he’s missing than to not have it. All of which feels like ignorable noise, like restaurant chatter heard through a permeable wall, with Eugenio there watching him expectantly, teeth hooking his lower lip. “Did we pay? Can we pay? Let’s go.”

  Eugenio laughs that laugh of his, and Zach wants to feel it against his chest again, if only for a few hours. “Yeah, Zach. I’ve already paid.”

  He slugs down the rest of his drink, standing. “They have single-stall bathrooms. Meet me at the one closer to the kitchen. But give it a few minutes.” And he walks away before Zach can respond.

  Chapter Eleven

  March, Three Years Ago

  Spring training is spring training. They play under progressively warmer Arizona skies. They run and practice fielding. Their hitting coach insists everyone takes bunting practice, and Zach spends an hour seeing if there’s a pace at which he can run that their trainers will deem too slow for a catcher. There isn’t.

  Every few days, more and more players get reassigned to minor-league camp, until it’s beginning to look like an opening-day roster, plus a few guys the coaches want to get a second, third, eighteenth look at.

  And when Zach gets to the bullpen in the mornings, Frannie is there, running drills, discussing the finer points of catching with D’Spara. Eugenio gripes to Zach at one point that he’s even getting there before Marti, before remembering he and Zach aren’t really on speaking terms. It stings, made worse when Eugenio starts asking Frannie the same kind of questions he used to ask Zach about game-calling, his back to him in deliberate exclusion.

  Zach gets a loyalty card from the coffee place, one of those old-fashioned paper ones that the barista punches holes in, the kind that promises one free coffee for every ten purchased, even if he’s only buying for himself now. Something the barista, whose name tag reads Aiden, mentions.

  “We’re doing an open mic night tonight,” Aiden says one morning. He has chipped nail polish, the same set of bracelets; his eyelashes are dark and inviting behind his glasses. “If you want to come by for it, that’d be cool.”

  And Zach shouldn’t spend a few minutes in his truck, sitting there, head on the steering wheel, trying to remember to breathe, like there’s a belt constricting his chest, something lodged in his airway that he tries to cough out, making himself light-headed.

  Because the guy probably says the same thing to every regular who comes in, and didn’t invite Zach for any particular reason, even though he tries to engage Zach in longer and longer small talk, and occasionally throws in a free pastry with his order. Even if he looks at Zach with an unambiguous appreciation, one too obvious for a coffee shop in the early morning. And it’s definitely not because he can tell that Zach is—

  He FaceTimes Morgan, who picks up on the second ring. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah.” Though his lungs are tight, his pulse excited at his temple, his vision a little blurry. “Um, could you, I don’t know, tell me some shit about training. Even if it’s dry needling.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Sitting in a parking lot of a strip mall. I’m fine. I’m fine.”

  “You don’t sound fine.”

  He doesn’t, even to his own hearing, voice raspy and slightly panicked. Because Eugenio knew, without Zach having to say anything, knew in a way Zach thought he wasn’t being obvious about, and he checks his own reflection in the rearview mirror, studying his face for some sign that Aiden picked up on too.

  “Zach,” she says, when he hasn’t responded.

  “Can I not talk about it right now?”

  She doesn’t say anything for long enough that he thinks maybe the call froze, her face unmoving on the screen. Then proceeds to tell him, in detail, about some webinar she took on different recovery techniques and by the end of it, he’s a little bored, his breath coming slow and even.

  “Thanks,” he says, when she’s done.

  “You gonna tell me what this was about?”

  “No, but thank you.” And then he hangs up and drives to the park.

  When he gets there, Marti’s in the bullpen chatting with Eugenio. “Glasser, head-shrinker wants to talk to you.”

  Zach drags ass stowing his gear, drinking his coffee, eating the breakfast sandwich he got at the coffee shop. It has chorizo and eggs, neither of which tastes like much. He looks over at the shelf where Eugenio used to leave him a breakfast sandwich, which holds only a bunch of towels, and then counts seconds as he chews. “Have you already been to see him?” he asks Eugenio.

  “Yep.” But Eugenio doesn’t elaborate.

  Marti starts giving Zach looks when it’s been twenty minutes and Zach hasn’t done anything more than eat breakfast.

  “I’m going, I’m going.” And then proceeds to drink his coffee for another few minutes.

  Their mental skills coach is a guy named Todd. When Zach first met him, he was expecting Robin Williams from Good Will Hunting maybe, or a coach with a clipboard who referred to mental exercises as drills. Definitely not Todd, who tucks his polo shirts into his chinos.

  Todd’s door is open when Zach gets there, but he knocks anyway.

  “Hey, Glasser, how’ve you been?” Todd gets up from behind his desk, coming around, giving Zach a back-pounding hug.

  “Good, good. How was your offseason?”

  “Great.” And maybe Todd got his teeth bleached, because his smile seems whiter. “Did a little running, got my laps in, you know how it is.” Because Todd does triathlons. His office is full of pictures of him in a body-hugging suit atop a bicycle, crossing the finish line of a race, possibly to make himself more relatable to athletes who play a sport they eat during. “You look good yourself. How’s camp going for you?”

  “You know how it is.” He sits, waiting to see if Todd will accept that as an answer. There’s a pause, and Zach busies himself reading the titles of the books on the nearby bookshelf, seeing what the smallest lettering is that he can still make out. “Just happy to be here,” he says, finally.

  “This is your fourth year with the team. Does it feel any different?”

  �
�Same as ever,” Zach lies. “Eager for the season to start, trying to get my reps in before then.”

  Another pause. Zach studies the contents of Todd’s desk: a box of tissues, a stack of what look like coloring books for adults, a set of objects that look like they’d be hard to break if flung against a wall.

  “I like to check in with guys before the season,” Todd says, “just to make sure everything’s going well.”

  “Fire away.”

  “Have you been sleeping okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Food treating you all right?”

  “Yep.” Zach tries, and fails, to not pop the p in yep.

  “Girl problems?”

  “No.”

  “Boy problems?” Todd says it with the same tone, the same inflection that he had the previous. As if that was something normal, permitted. As if that wouldn’t mean a PR mitigation strategy, whispered implications in the clubhouse that Zach is unfit to work with pitchers, unfit to play the game itself.

  Todd’s inflection hasn’t changed, but his expression is different—leaning, curious, like Zach might reveal something messy about himself in the neat cage of his office.

  “No.” Zach keeps his voice neutral, the way the school’s speech-language pathologist taught him when he was first adjusting to his hearing aid, volume carefully modulated. He considers adding something else. Do other guys bristle at that? Grow incensed at even the possibility they could ever be thought of that way?

  “Problems with the other players?”

  And it’s enough to trip Zach up for a second. He swallows, possibly audibly. “What kinds of problems?”

  “You know. Lots of personalities. Guys competing for a limited number of spots. Sometimes people can rub each other the wrong way. It happens.”

  “No, it’s all kumbaya so far.”

  “Is there anything else you feel we should talk about?” He holds eye contact with Zach as he says it. “Or anything you want me to know ahead of the season?”

  “Can’t think of anything. But I’ll be sure to let you know if I do.” Zach starts to get up.