Unwritten Rules Read online

  D’Spara comes up next to him. “Looking good there.” He nods to where Eugenio fields a curveball on the outer edge.

  Eugenio drops to one knee, forming a low, steady target, glove and arm frozen. It convinces the umpire that it’s a strike, even though it was outside by at least a few inches. A feat that makes Zach both equally glowingly proud and gnawingly worried that he might have coached himself into a demotion.

  A few guys give Eugenio his slaps when he comes into the dugout after he’s driven in on a bases-clearing single, all head rubs and attaboys. Zach contributes, tapping him on his waistband just above his ass, fingers on the leather of his belt. A long enough touch that Eugenio looks up at him, like he’s not sure if it’s a congratulations or a goodbye. Zach doesn’t know either.

  Johnson pitches the middle three innings. He flaps the last fingers of his glove, no matter the sign that Zach puts down, cruising through San Francisco’s lineup like he’s ready for the bigs.

  That is, until the sixth inning, when Zach puts down the sign for a curveball, and Johnson throws one. There must be something in his delivery that gives him away, because the batter makes hard, definitive contact. It lands on the concrete walkway on the perimeter of the outfield seating, a no-doubter of a home run.

  Johnson yells, voice muffled by his glove, his face showing impending disaster.

  Zach calls time, going out to the mound. “Breathe,” he orders Johnson. “Hold it. Blow it out.” But Johnson’s looking past him, over to the stands where Sara Maria is likely sitting. “Don’t look over there. Look at me.”

  Johnson says something else, glove up over his mouth.

  “I said to look at me.”

  Johnson snaps his gaze up to Zach.

  “I know. It’s one run. It happens to every guy. Stop thinking about what’s gonna happen after this game. Stop thinking about anything else.”

  “It was going fine.” And Johnson’s face is blotchy, either from anger or, worse, because he’s about to cry.

  “Everything goes fine until it doesn’t. That’s how the game is, and you know it. Take a deep breath.” And Zach waits until he does. “We only need to get through two more batters.”

  Johnson manages to induce a pop-up on the next out, one Zach has to run to the netting to catch but snags, the white of the ball blending with the sky above him. And then the next batter hits a screaming line drive—right at their third baseman, who dives to field it, holding up his glove like it’s the last out of the World Series.

  Johnson pumps his fist as he comes off the mound, and Zach rubs his knuckles over his hair as they walk back to the dugout. For a moment, the baseball gods feel kind.

  Zach should ditch his gear, shower off, and think about what he’s going to have for dinner, though the reality is that he’ll check his phone nervously until the lineups are announced. He stands at the dugout railing, watching Frannie catch the last three innings, the remaining outs ticking from nine to six to three to none. He offers Frannie a fist bump when he comes off the field, and Frannie taps his knuckles to his.

  “See you soon,” Zach says.

  “Sure.” Though a confused line digs its way between his eyebrows, one that smooths once D’Spara comes over to talk with him. “See you soon, man.”

  They don’t announce the roster at the end of the game. Players pack the stuff from their stalls that they’ll transport themselves, leaving the rest for the clubhouse crew, a few of the more marginal guys saying that they hope they’ll see Zach in Oakland, and he says the same.

  He shoulders his duffel, prepared to go back to his rental unit and refresh his phone until someone tells him if he should report to Oakland or Nashville, their triple-A affiliate, when he finds Johnson in the parking lot.

  Sara Maria’s standing next to him, a travel pack of tissues clutched in her hand. “They told him he was cut.”

  “Cut?” Zach asks.

  Johnson shakes his head, swiping at his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I’m going to Nashville. But I’m not on the forty-man.”

  “Fuck,” Zach says, and then apologizes to Sara Maria. “You know it’s a contract thing, right? Like, that fact that you’re here at all is impressive. Most pitchers never get this much.”

  “I know, I know, I’m lucky. But I worked all spring, and I haven’t gotten paid to play ball since last September.”

  Sara Maria makes a tsking noise before handing Zach the pack of tissues. “I’m gonna go get us a few waters out of my car.”

  “If it wasn’t for that homer I gave up,” Johnson says, after she walks away, “they wouldn’t be sending me down.”

  Eugenio appears in the doorway to the complex, Johnson’s back to him. And he pauses when he sees them standing there, absorbing whatever spectacle they’re making, the hunch of Johnson’s shoulders, Zach’s attempts to soothe him.

  “It’s probably got nothing to do with that,” Zach says, more aware of his volume with Eugenio listening. “Their minds were made up before the game even started.”

  Johnson rubs his nose on one of the tissues. “I just can’t live on what they’re gonna pay me.”

  “Yeah, it’s a shitty situation for everyone. Sometimes in baseball there aren’t any good choices.” Zach glances at Eugenio as he says it, and Eugenio holds his gaze.

  “I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” Johnson says.

  “Do what the rest of the guys do. Sleep on an air mattress in a crappy apartment, eat a bunch of fast food, get another job, and try to play some baseball in the middle of all of that.”

  “Do you think it’s because I said something to ’em about the money?”

  “I think it’s probably not any one thing. But, yeah, it might be.” Zach lets out a long breath, the kind he told Johnson to practice during the game. “The thing is that you can’t really know, and they don’t want you to know. There’s stuff you just gotta learn to live with.”

  “You ever get sick of that?” Johnson hiccups and then coughs to cover it. “Just having to swallow all this garbage and keep smiling like it’s nothing?”

  And he looks young to Zach most of the time but looks especially so now, his eyes red, looking at Zach like Zach has any answers. “Yeah, you get used to it.”

  “Seems like I shouldn’t have to. That none of us should have to.”

  “This game isn’t about should.” And Eugenio’s still standing there, watching Zach the way Zach watches him when he talks, with the force of his attention. “If you’re thinking it’s gonna be fair somehow—it just isn’t.”

  “Yeah, well, everything’s easier to say when you got money.” Johnson wipes his nose again. “Sorry, they just sit in there making up lists of who’s going where and don’t bother to see us as anything more than names on a screen.”

  “They don’t, but you going and letting ’em have it won’t do anything,” Zach says. “Sometimes you want something, and you don’t get to have it, and you just have to accept it for what it is.”

  And if Zach wasn’t entirely sure if Eugenio heard him, he is now. Because Eugenio is looking directly at him over the breadth of Johnson’s shoulders, his expression defiant. A look that says But what if we don’t.

  Sara Maria returns with three bottles of water, holding one out to Zach and handing another to Johnson, who cracks it open and splashes some onto his face. She casts a glance at Eugenio, catching him eavesdropping. It’s enough to dislodge him from where he’s standing. He shoulders his bag and heads toward his truck.

  Johnson moves similarly, picking up two of his bags that are baking on the parking lot asphalt.

  “Here,” Zach says, once Johnson has his head buried in the open hatch of his truck. He pulls out his wallet, extracting a few twenties and handing them to Sara Maria. “Take him to dinner. Tell him it’s to celebrate making triple-A, and don’t tell him I gave it to you.”

 
She takes the money, depositing it in a slim wallet in her purse, adorned with a few stickers, one of a butterfly, another a red rose. “This stuff is all pretty messed up and could have been handled—” she says, before catching herself. “Thank you for the gift. I’ll make sure we go someplace good.”

  “I think that’s all of it,” Johnson says, after he closes the hatch of his truck. “If we don’t play together again—” he extends a hand to Zach, his previous temper soothed, though he looks overheated and young, his eyes damp from the water he splashed on them “—I wanted to say thank you for working with me this spring.”

  “We’ll see each other.” And Zach pulls him into a back-thumping hug and hopes like hell that, when they do, it isn’t this season in Nashville.

  * * *

  Zach waits on his couch that evening for news of their roster announcements, for his phone to flash an alert to tell him where to report, the big leagues or triple-A. Waits, with an impatience he tried to quash all spring, a mounting restlessness that keeps him from concentrating on whatever movie’s playing on TV, eyes skimming the captions without comprehension, only a vague sense of plot. He reads, or tries to, but the colors of the comic book pixelate, worry overtaking his pulse.

  While he waits, he recounts all of spring training: the extra hours with Johnson, fixing his tipping, his curveball, his confidence. The time with Eugenio that never really felt like work.

  And if Zach’s sent to the minors or shipped off in a trade, never to see him again, except in passing, there’s a question he can’t unknot: Will it have been worth it? To say no, to say, we can’t? To settle for the meager things baseball will definitely let him have, rather than the possibility of what he might?

  An alert appears. Zach swipes at it frantically before seeing that it’s Morgan checking in to see if the team posted the roster. She sends a series of emojis when he says they haven’t. I’m not supposed to say anything but I hope you make it.

  He opens the thread he has with Eugenio, the one where Zach told him to come over and Eugenio did, bringing food, standing in Zach’s kitchen, the one he’s leaving tomorrow. And he considers what he could say in the plainness of a text message, the kind that could get leaked if someone got into his phone. About what he would say to him, if they were face to face, in the bullpen or in the safety of Zach’s apartment, a mere hallway from his rented bed.

  Can I come over, he texts Eugenio.

  There’s a pause, a long one. Then: Did you mean to send this to someone else?

  And Zach’s hands are a little unsteady as he types no.

  Another pause. Eugenio sends his address, one to a rental complex about ten minutes away.

  It’s a short drive, early in the evening, the light beginning to go. Zach could stop at one of the grocery stores along the road, bright signs advertising liquor, but doesn’t know what he would get. If he’d have the courage to keep driving in the same direction or if he’d just slink back to his rented apartment to spend one final unsatisfying night there.

  Eugenio’s rental complex is laid out more or less the way Zach’s is, buildings seated in a circle, a patio off to one side. His truck is sitting in the parking lot, recognizable from a college decal stuck in its back window. Each building is divided into units, a set of stairs up to the second story, an upper porch with a railing. And Eugenio leans against one, smoking a cigarette, its orange tip glowing in the twilight, though he straightens when he sees Zach.

  “Hey,” Zach calls from the asphalt. He climbs the stairs when Eugenio waves him up.

  He’s standing at the corner of the railing next to the last unit, front door propped open, though there’s a screen door that’s shut. Light sifts through it onto the porch, a wedge of darkness in one corner. Eugenio stubs his cigarette out on the porch railing, before dropping the butt in a cup of water next to him.

  “You were right,” Zach says, “about the thing with Johnson’s curveball.”

  “I know.” Though there’s no heat to it. Behind him, the sun’s sinking, casting the mountains in shadow and it’s hard to read his expression in the half-light. “Is that what you came over to tell me?”

  Zach shakes his head. “He got sent to Nashville. He did everything they could’ve asked for, and they still sent him down. And I just told him he has to live with it. I don’t know what I’ll do if they do the same thing to me. Or to you.”

  Zach lets that hang there for a moment between them, trying to find the rest of the words he’s come here to say. “That’s what you asked me. If I ever wanted something so much it feels like it’s choking me. And I’m just sick of it all, of having to push down everything I want in order to play this game.”

  His throat tightens, voice shaking. Eugenio stands a few paces off, an unconquerable distance away. Zach picks up one foot, and then the other, slow, like Eugenio might get spooked.

  He doesn’t say anything, though, not when Zach stands, hands gripping the railing on either side of him. And not even when Zach says, “Please,” before leaning in. When Zach touches their foreheads together, when they’re breathing the same air, Eugenio’s chest against his. “I just wanted to see you.”

  “Is that all you want?” And it’s low, warm, challenging.

  “No, that’s not all.”

  And Zach cannot kiss him, not standing out here, in full view of whoever else is staying at this complex.

  Something Eugenio also registers, guiding them like they’re dancing into the shadow at the edge of the porch. “Is here okay?” Eugenio looks around, his face shaded by the evening darkness.

  “Yes,” Zach says, to Eugenio’s question and to the feel of Eugenio’s hand tracing his jaw, the tilt of his mouth toward Zach’s.

  Their phones interrupt them. Eugenio reaches for his as Zach does the same, pulling it from his pocket. He has to tap it a few times to get it to open, scanning down the list of names.

  There’s a forty-man roster, names bolded for players who’ll make the opening-day team in Oakland. Zach’s name, in bold, Eugenio’s under it, also bolded.

  Frannie isn’t listed. Until Zach sees an announcement about the coaching staff, that he was hired as a catching coordinator with their double-A affiliate in Midland.

  “We made it,” Zach says. And he reaches for Eugenio, to kiss him in celebration, in relief, when Eugenio puts a hand on his chest, stilling him.

  “We shouldn’t do this. Not out here.” And he opens the door, waiting for Zach to follow him before securing the lock.

  Inside, Eugenio looks at him, waiting for Zach to do anything other than stand on the cheap rental carpet, overwhelmed by possibility.

  “Hey,” Eugenio says, when Zach doesn’t say anything. His voice is quiet, no more than a breath, and he touches Zach’s shoulder, sliding down to hold him at his wrist. Zach’s hand is shaking, his arm, his heartbeat, something that hasn’t happened before, enough to make Eugenio say, “Hey, it’s all right.”

  “I want...” Like Zach can put what he wants into words, like he’s not asking for the entire world, the implacable mountains and the fading desert sun. He looks at the door, confirming that it’s shut, the curtains heavy over the windows, the two of them standing there, absent any other witnesses.

  “When was the last time you were with someone?” Eugenio asks, and Zach’s about to mumble something about a hookup, one both fleeting and unmemorable, when Eugenio adds, “With someone who cared about you?”

  “It’s been a little while.” And it hurts to admit, though less so when Eugenio moves his hand to cover Zach’s.

  “I’ve been going about this all wrong,” Eugenio says.

  “What does that mean?” Zach’s heart accelerates, wondering if Eugenio will somehow turn him out into the desert night.

  “I didn’t think about what it was like for you. Growing up or now. For you not to just be able to date. That it wouldn’t be fair to
them either.”

  Zach takes a shaking breath. Because he couldn’t and still play, a compromise he made when he was too young to know its cost, one that feels unbearably heavy now. “No, it wouldn’t be.”

  Eugenio studies his face, raising his hand and arcing his forefinger over the skin above Zach’s ear, the sensation of it new and shiveringly unfamiliar. “I’m going to kiss you.” Like Zach will deny him.

  But he waits for Zach’s nodded assent before bringing their mouths together.

  It’s different than it was before, the desperation and surprise he felt when Eugenio kissed him for the first time replaced with a carefulness, the tenderness of his mouth and the abrasion of his stubble. The support of his palm along Zach’s cheek. Zach’s hands slot along his ribs, like they belong there. There’s a surety to it Zach doesn’t remember having, not the unsteady toppling of an avalanche but its reshaped conclusion.

  When Zach pulls away, Eugenio’s eyes are shining in the dim light, his hand still held against Zach’s.

  “C’mon.” He leads Zach up the underlit hallway, to a room he’s leaving tomorrow, one with his stuff already packed, the closet bare and emptied. The only thing remaining is the bed, covered in a dark gray comforter. Eugenio guides him to it, sitting Zach down, stepping between his legs, and tilting Zach’s face toward his. “Would you have kissed me, out on the porch, before I stopped you?”

  “I don’t know. I wanted to. I knew it wasn’t a good idea, but I wanted to anyway.”

  “You can be pretty determined when it’s something you’re sure of.” He kisses Zach again, a longer kiss, then reaches for the hem of Zach’s shirt before hesitating. “I don’t want this to be just tonight.”

  “Oh.” And he hadn’t thought beyond what would happen if he saw Eugenio, if Eugenio didn’t turn him away, or of the season beyond the next twelve hours. “Are you sure?”

  Eugenio’s eyebrows draw together, a line between them. “Zach—” and it’s gentle, like something carefully held “—yes, I’m sure.”

  “Why?” Zach asks, before he can stop himself.