Unwritten Rules Read online

  “Before you go, you know anything you tell me, within reason, I’ll keep in confidence. So if there are guys who maybe aren’t doing as great as you are, or who aren’t handling their transition to the organization as well as they could, and you want me to touch base with them, now’s a good time to mention it.”

  Zach considers Johnson and his problems. The dark circles under Eugenio’s eyes, and the look in them when he walked away from Zach. Considers who signs Todd’s paycheck and what “reasonable confidence” means to a team that owns Zach’s contract. “Has anyone said anything about me?”

  “Are you expecting that they would?”

  Which isn’t an answer. It could mean any number of things, ones Zach shouldn’t think about, not here, with Todd studying him as Zach tries not to make expressions beyond vague annoyance. Most pressingly, the possibility the team senses friction between him and Eugenio beyond two guys who want the same job. The added layer of if he’s been as obvious in his hurt feelings as he’s been with that barista—something he’s tried to hide about himself and fundamentally can’t. “No, just wondering.”

  “My office is always open, if you ever just want to chat. Some guys find it helps to check in regularly just to get into the habit. Think of it like practice.”

  “Thanks.” And Zach shuts the door behind him on his way out.

  Morgan finds him after they’re done for the day, after he’s caught five innings, secured two hits off a double-A starter, done his cool-downs, and showered off. “C’mon.” And she doesn’t wait for him to agree.

  He expects they’ll go grab a burger. Instead she navigates them to a driving range nearby. It’s the one he worked at his first year, manning the ball picker and unfucking the vacuum robots that were supposed to collect balls but instead mostly turned themselves over on the green like beached turtles.

  She has a bag of clubs in the back of her car, and he rents some of questionable quality, though it doesn’t really matter when it becomes clear that they’re just gonna whack golf balls as far as they can. They hit for a while, falling into the rhythm of setting the ball on its tee, ignoring the targets the course has set up and just trying for the farthest distance marker.

  It’s hot out, and he’s sweating, the desert air drying his skin. Morgan orders them a round of beers, some chips and guacamole, and the combination of salt and alcohol don’t help.

  “Did you and Morales have a fight or something?” she asks after a while.

  “Why?”

  “Because I asked him where you were earlier today and he said, ‘Fuck if I know.’”

  “Yeah, well.”

  Morgan eyes him like she’s going to point out that that isn’t an answer but doesn’t press him.

  “Sorry, today fucking sucked,” Zach says. “I had to go see Todd. Can you tell him to be less Todd?”

  Morgan laughs. “He’s a good guy. Though he asked me why you don’t like him, and I told him you hate anyone who can run.”

  “Thanks.” He drinks his beer, the same kind he keeps at his rental place, the one Eugenio left half-undrunk on his counter a few weeks ago, strips of the label pulled off and gathered in a pile next to it. He came by a few times, not to Zach’s, but to the cookouts that have now become a regular thing, sitting as far from Zach as the picnic tables allow and mostly talking to the other Spanish-speaking players. He brought store-bought dip.

  It’s enough of a rift that Gordon pulled him aside at one point, asking if Zach was doing all right, something he couldn’t blow off the way he did Todd, even if the answer was no. “I’m working on it,” he said, and left it at that.

  Morgan seems to sense similar discontent, though he’s also making less of an effort to hide it. “Hey, look, if you ever need to tell me something, you know you can, right?”

  “You work for the team.” He says it sharply enough that she leans away from him.

  “Fuck the team. Honestly, Zach. When you called this morning, you sounded pretty bad. And I’ve been in some places where I needed people to tell me ‘Hey, buddy, we love you and we’re here to help you.’”

  “I’m fine.” Even though his throat is tight, the carbonation from his beer painful on his tongue.

  “Hey, buddy...” She trails off but holds his gaze.

  “I’m just having a bad day. I’m allowed. I just need a couple of drinks and to get the hell out of Arizona.”

  “Sure. I don’t want to make too much of it, if you’re saying it’s nothing.”

  Zach looks out at the cloudless Arizona sky, hills dotted with patches of trees, the kind stubborn enough to grow in a desert.

  “Look, if—” But there’s a metallic burn in the back of his throat that he has to swallow around. “If I was gonna tell anyone something, Morgan, I’d tell you. But I can’t, and you know I can’t. And you of all people should know why I can’t.”

  She sits for a second before rising, arms out as if asking permission, and then he’s enveloped in one of her hugs, not one of her bone-crushing ones, but something gentler that somehow hurts more, standing while he’s sitting and wrapping her arms around his shoulders. “Thank you,” she says, after a while.

  She goes and gets another round, even though he’s not done with his beer, bringing back a pile of extra napkins that she pins to the table with the guacamole dish. She doesn’t say anything when he blows his nose with one.

  “There’s this fundraiser my parents are having,” he says a few minutes later, once his throat feels back to normal, his lungs like they can pull enough oxygen into them. “It’s over the All-Star break. They keep pestering me to put in an appearance. It’s just for some local politician, but I was wondering if you wanted to come.”

  “A vacation in Baltimore? How fancy.”

  “I don’t know if you have plans already, but I figure I’ll go out there for the week, maybe go to the beach.”

  “We don’t have plans. Plus, I hear they got rum at beaches on the East Coast, even if they suck.”

  “Lydia would be invited too. If she wants to come.”

  “Your parents—” Morgan fiddles with her ring. “I mean, would they be all right with her being there?”

  “They wouldn’t give you a hard time. Maybe ask some shit you don’t want them to, probably about having kids because my brother has one and they want everyone to. But, no, I wouldn’t put you in that situation.”

  “I figured they were...” She catches herself, shaking her head as if to dispel the thought. “Let me talk with Lydia about it. But yeah, you never know. Maybe it’s good to get a change of scenery midway through the season.”

  * * *

  D’Spara finds him out in the bullpen one morning. It’s late enough in the day to be spring-warm, the sun pleasant on his face. His pleasant feeling doesn’t last when D’Spara wastes no time in getting to his point. “Are you still training with Morales?”

  And Zach’s stuck between the lie—that of course they’re still working together, why wouldn’t they be, and there’s no reason they wouldn’t be—and the truth that he sometimes catches Eugenio looking at him, mostly when Zach’s trying, and failing, not to look right back. “I didn’t think we really needed to. He’s gotten pretty good at framing.”

  It sounds defensive, Zach making excuses for why he’s no longer doing something the team told him to do. D’Spara frowns at him, the edges of his mustache drooping, giving a sigh like Zach’s one of the many, many problems he’ll need to deal with in his day. An expression that Zach wants to avoid if the team is still considering who’ll be on the roster for the season and who’ll be sent down.

  “We can keep working on it,” Zach says.

  “Glad to hear that, son.” D’Spara gets up. “Johnson’s still tipping his curveball.” And Zach waits until he leaves before draining his coffee and scrubbing his hand across his closed eyes.

  Eugenio doe
sn’t do more than shrug when Zach tells him D’Spara wants them to keep working together. And their practice is like before: a pitching machine, Eugenio squatting and moving his mitt, trying to massage balls into strikes. Except that Zach stands at a careful distance away from him like they’re being monitored by chaperones at a school dance. Like if he gets any closer, they’ll be inevitably drawn together by forces Zach is helpless to resist.

  “Quit flapping your glove,” Zach says, for the third time.

  “Stop telling me and come show me.” Like Zach is being ridiculous standing there, more than six feet away. Which he probably is.

  Up close, Eugenio looks good, less tired than he was at the beginning of spring training. It’s warm enough that a drip of sweat traces its way down his face, down toward the neck of the T-shirt, and Zach doesn’t watch it or the way he licks his lips to wet them in the dry Arizona air.

  “If you keep your thumb up, it’ll be less obvious when you’re moving your glove.” He reaches to adjust Eugenio’s arm, clasping Eugenio’s wrist, rotating it, his fingers bright points of contact.

  It shouldn’t be anything. It shouldn’t be anything. But it’s both better and worse than it was before, obvious in the way they both pause, Eugenio looking down at Zach’s hand.

  And Zach can feel the tattoo of Eugenio’s pulse, the strength of the muscles in his forearms, the way he inhales, shoulders expanding. He has his mask tipped up on his forehead, and Zach almost wishes he were wearing it now so that he didn’t have to see his expression: impassivity mixed with something more heated. Something Zach can’t want, not shielded from the rest of their teammates only by chain link, especially when he remembers the hunger with which Eugenio kissed, the way he looked at Zach like he was worth looking at.

  Especially not when Johnson comes in, placing his bag obliviously by the fence and wishing them both a good morning.

  It’s enough to make Zach drop where he’s holding Eugenio’s arm. “Move your hand like we, uh, talked about.”

  From there, it’s practice, Johnson setting up near Eugenio, Zach’s attention divided between them, bouncing from assuring Johnson that he’s flapping his glove correctly to conceal his pitch types to convincing Eugenio to stop moving his when he catches.

  “You’re fine,” he says to Johnson, when Johnson throws, wiggling the last three fingers of his glove so as not to reveal how he’s holding the ball.

  “He’s tipping.” Eugenio gets up from where he was squatting and clicks off the pitching machine, then walks over to where Johnson is standing on the tilted bullpen mound.

  “I don’t see how,” Zach says, a little impatiently.

  “Throw a fastball,” Eugenio says to Johnson, who waits as if for Zach’s say-so. And Eugenio doesn’t roll his eyes at that or do anything else, but Zach can sense the annoyance in the set of his shoulders, especially when Zach nods to Johnson, who throws a fastball.

  “Now a curveball,” Eugenio says; Johnson throws one obediently. “See that.”

  Zach doesn’t see much of a difference between the two—his stride or release point or the flap of his glove.

  “You’re doing a thing with your delivery.” Eugenio mimes Johnson’s windup and follow-through, though he’s shorter than Johnson by about half a foot, less rangy, so the motion is truncated. “Any decent hitter will be able to tell what’s coming.” He says it in a tone that implies Zach isn’t one, enough to make Zach bristle.

  “Here,” Eugenio says, approaching Johnson, “give me your glove.” And Johnson hesitates again.

  “You could just tell him what to do,” Zach says.

  “Sometimes people don’t believe something will work until you show them.” And Eugenio says it pointedly, more to Zach than to Johnson.

  “Sometimes you gotta let people figure things at their own pace,” Zach says before he can stop himself.

  “It took a half an hour for you to show me what I was doing wrong with framing, after years of people trying to tell me.” And Eugenio is looking at Zach with the kind of stubborn glare he gets when an umpire doesn’t call a strike his way. “What’s the harm in trying something new?”

  Johnson’s glancing between them, turning from one to the other like he’s watching a prolonged at-bat. “Uh, here.” He holds out his glove.

  Eugenio takes it, slipping it on. “Your fastball.” And he shapes the glove to his hand. “And your curve. See how that’s different?”

  “Uh, I don’t,” Johnson says, either because he doesn’t or out of some misplaced loyalty to Zach.

  “See, like this.” And Eugenio moves his hand again.

  “Nope, don’t see it,” Zach says, before Johnson can say anything. “And even if there were a difference—and I’m not saying there is—there’s enough variation in his mechanics that no one’s gonna pick up on it.”

  “Uh, guys,” Johnson says, “it’s really not a big deal or anything. We can do this tomorrow—”

  Eugenio interrupts him. “You sound very sure of that,” he says to Zach.

  “I know what I’m doing.” And Zach can hear his own voice rising. “Even if you don’t think I do, I’ve been at this a lot longer than you have.”

  “Oh, it’s like that?” And Eugenio steps closer to Zach, close enough that Zach’s pulse kicks up, closer than they’ve been since that time in the equipment room, chest to chest.

  “I think I’ll see y’all later,” Johnson says. There’s the sound of something—the gate to the bullpen swinging closed, Johnson apparently not sticking around long enough to see the resolution of whatever this is.

  “You know, you can be pretty determined when it’s something you’re sure of.” Eugenio says it almost teasingly, though his temper is up, color in his cheeks, hands clenched, like they’re gonna come to blows. And he taps Zach once in the shoulder, the blunt pressure of his fingers, a glance, a challenge, one made different from a normal provocation by the way he crowds Zach’s space. By the flicker of possibility in his expression.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this out here.”

  “Doing what, Zach?” Eugenio’s tone is innocent. But he looks over at the storage structure next to the bullpen, the one they keep buckets of balls and various pieces of equipment in. The one that has its doorway shielded from the rest of the complex by a low awning. “I guess we could go somewhere else.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Too bad. I did.”

  “Fuck.” He should step back. Back to the safety of two feet away from Eugenio, back where every breath won’t be a reminder that Zach was the one who said no. Even if Zach wants to kiss him, to drop to his knees, to cash in every bad decision he’s been saving up all at once.

  He should step back—but he doesn’t. “Johnson might be going to get someone,” Zach says.

  “You think he’s gonna tell on you?”

  “No.” And he’s about to say fuck it and to tell Eugenio to get into the shadows, to find out what he tastes like, if he’ll tug Zach’s hair or tell him how good he is at that when—

  There’s noise, a chatter of approaching players crossing the outfield to run drills. It’s enough to deflate the moment, Zach stepping back, Eugenio doing the same, though he reaches and adjusts himself in his shorts, the kind of unthinking motion they all do a hundred times a day, except he watches Zach watch him as he does it.

  “I’m right about the curveball thing by the way.” Eugenio goes and picks up his stuff, leaving Zach in the bullpen to cool off. “Come find me when you figure it out.”

  Chapter Twelve

  They play their last game of spring training on a summer-hot Sunday.

  “At least it’s a dry heat,” Eugenio says to no one in particular. He’s at his stall next to Zach’s, changing into his uniform, and he’s checked his phone a half dozen times, waiting for final roster announcements.

  Ma
nagement has winnowed the clubhouse to mostly the actual big-league team, the opening-day players plus the fifteen or so who’ll make up the forty-man roster, the replacement players who play in the high minors but still get livable salaries. They’re platooning most remaining players for the game: Eugenio is slated to get the first three innings, Zach the middle ones, and Frannie that last. And Zach doesn’t know what that means in terms of the final roster, or if it means anything other than he’s catching Johnson who is, surprisingly, still there and looking more like a bona fide major leaguer each day.

  Johnson comes by Zach’s stall right before game-time. There’s a pretty, dark-haired girl with him, wearing a white T-shirt and modest skirt, a tiny cross necklace. “Um, Zach.” He sounds nervous, testing out calling Zach by his first name like he would with a teacher. “This is Sara Maria.”

  “It’s nice to meet you.” Zach shakes her hand. “You coming to see this guy pitch?”

  “Yes.” She says it softly, though increases her volume when Johnson gives her a slight nod. “It’s really exciting. We live near the stadium, but I haven’t been since I was a kid.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll make him look good.” Which makes Johnson go a little red and Sara Maria laugh.

  They talk for a while, about the weather, about what Sara Maria’s studying.

  “History.” Johnson lowers his voice like it’s a secret. “Focusing on labor movements.”

  The conversation has a meet-the-parents vibe Zach can’t shake. And Zach can’t imagine bringing anyone into the scrutiny of the clubhouse, even if he’s never had someone serious to bring around. Can’t imagine showcasing some transient hookup from an app or even the coffeehouse barista, the one who stopped asking him questions when Zach didn’t come to his open mic night.

  He spends much of the game leaning on the dugout railing, watching Eugenio catch. He focuses on the pitches Eugenio calls for and not on if this is the last game they’ll play together this season.