Unwritten Rules Read online

  “I’m sorry.” Zach lies back on the pile of too-soft hotel pillows, looking at the unblinking white of the ceiling. “You’re right.”

  “We don’t have to stop. I wouldn’t have come over if I didn’t want to.” And he has that shake in his hands, the one he gets late at night when he can’t sleep or before a game working with a new pitcher. The one that makes Zach reach down, sliding his fingers over Eugenio’s, thumb brushing over the familiar shape of his knuckles.

  “Okay,” Zach says. They lie there for a long minute, Zach feeling the rhythm of Eugenio’s breathing at his shoulder, their fingers intertwined.

  “Okay,” he says again, “we can do whatever you want, rook.” It startles Eugenio into laughing, hundreds of games into his playing career.

  He rolls onto Zach, hands on his shoulders, pinning him. He reaches down and pulls his cock out, smearing the wet head at the skin next to Zach’s navel like he’s just gonna rub himself off that way.

  “Oh, it’s gonna be like that?” Zach laughs and uses his elbows to lever Eugenio off, tossing him back onto the bed with a thump and stripping his boxers down, putting his mouth everywhere but his cock, until Eugenio calls him a few choice names and tells him to fucking get to it already.

  From there, it’s loud, mattress frame hitting against the wall, Eugenio laughing when Zach runs his hands up his ribs, to the ticklish spot still below one armpit. When Zach turns him onto his belly and spends time sucking bite marks down the muscles of his back.

  “There’s lube in the front pocket of my suitcase,” Zach says.

  “Is that a suggestion?” And he gasps when Zach slaps him, open-palmed on the meat of his thigh, pinking the skin up a little. “Fuck. I’m going, I’m going.”

  Zach watches him bend down appreciatively, Eugenio rolling his eyes and tossing the lube onto the bed. He allows Zach to encourage him onto his stomach, head turned to the side on one of the pillows. And Zach considers the bottle lying next to him, before leaning in, pressing a kiss to the rise of Eugenio’s ass, then another, then another, before finally committing, tongue against his hole.

  Eugenio reaches back, tapping the top of Zach’s head with one hand. “Why’d you make me go get the lube if you were just going to do that?”

  “You’re too coherent. It’s kind of insulting.”

  “Fix it, then.”

  “Believe me, I’m trying to.” He dedicates himself to wringing sounds from Eugenio, as he licks him, getting him wetter, sliding in the tip of his tongue the way Eugenio gave him his fingers to suck in the restaurant bathroom, enough to make him feel it, but not enough to be satisfying.

  Eugenio’s hands are gripping the sheets, feet restless against the bedspread, whatever control he’s exercising breaking when Zach adds the tip of his lubed index finger and pushes his knuckles against his perineum. When Eugenio gives up any pretense of doing anything other than hump the bed. When he stutters his hips and demands Zach add another finger and another, and Zach slaps him again, a hit against the skin high on his inner thigh, following it with a sharp dig with the edge of his fingernails, leaving half-moon impressions and soliciting a grunt.

  “Please,” Eugenio says, “Zach, please.”

  “I thought I wasn’t supposed to be nice to you.” Though he adds his middle and ring fingers, and Eugenio presses his face into the pillow and pants Zach’s name.

  His cock is dripping on the blankets, balls drawing up toward his body. “Hey, what the fuck,” he says, when Zach withdraws his hand.

  “You were about to come.”

  “Probably.” And he makes a face when Zach reminds him it was his birthday a week ago, making him officially thirty-one. “Well, if you’re not gonna do anything about it.”

  He rolls onto his back, reaching for his cock like he’s just going to stroke himself off and go to sleep, and Zach laughs, grabbing at his wrists and pinning them together before taking him into his mouth.

  He doesn’t go for real suction, just letting the walls of his cheeks do the work, tongue poking at his foreskin, spit rolling down, his weight on Eugenio so he can’t buck into his mouth, his fingers a tight bruising circle around his wrists.

  “Fuck, fuck, okay, fuck,” Eugenio says. “Just fuck me already.”

  “Sorry,” Zach jokes, “the people in the next room couldn’t hear you.” And Eugenio says it again, louder, making Zach laugh, though it’s loud enough that there’s a thump on the wall and a muffled request for them to keep it down.

  There’s lube. Lube but no condoms, not any in Zach’s suitcase when Eugenio practically turns it inside out looking for one.

  “We can stop,” Eugenio says, “or do something else.”

  “There wasn’t anyone serious after you. Or really, other than you. Ever.” And something about the way he says it makes Eugenio walk over and kiss him, sweet, like they’re not supposed to be with one another. His hands cup the sides of Zach’s face, and he traces his finger over the skin above Zach’s ear the way he used to.

  “For me either,” Eugenio admits, and Zach drags him down, into another kiss, and then another. Like he can delay his leaving. Like things can somehow, magically, be how they were.

  Until Eugenio pauses him, hand on his collarbone. “C’mon. Let’s go.”

  Zach slicks himself up and presses inside, relearning the beads of sweat between Eugenio’s shoulder blades. The way he likes to kiss, during, and suck on Zach’s fingers. The way Zach can hear him, chest against Eugenio’s back, encouragements and pleas and the shape of Zach’s name.

  The way that he’s unashamedly loud. The way that Zach lets himself be loud. And there might be a ballplayer staying in the next room, someone getting an earful. Someone who might tell somebody who might tell someone else. Who might spread through the whole fucking gossip-mongering league what they overheard in a hotel room at the All-Star Classic. Something that might follow him back to Miami. To whichever team he plays for next.

  And he imagines Eugenio flying back to New York carrying Zach’s fingerprints on his skin, and comes, gripping Eugenio’s sides hard.

  “Fuck,” he says, pulling out.

  Eugenio reaches for his wrist, grasping it, a wordless request for Zach’s fingers inside him.

  “I want to see you.” He rolls them over, Eugenio sprawled across the bed. He gasps when Zach takes him in his mouth, with each demanding press of Zach’s fingers, when Zach swallows around him a few times.

  When he crawls up Eugenio’s body, kissing his cheek and then his jaw and then his lips, trapping his cock between them, wet smears on Zach’s belly, and it doesn’t take much more than a few twists of Zach’s fingers for Eugenio to come, overwhelmed, his face buried in Zach’s shoulder.

  “We’re still good at that,” Eugenio says, a few minutes later. They’re lying next to each other, neither of them moving, Zach’s hair shellacking itself to his forehead, Eugenio’s skin cool with sweat.

  “You worried we wouldn’t be?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe? Or that it wouldn’t be as good as I remembered.”

  “Was it?” Zach reaches for the pad of hotel stationery sitting on the bedside table, now serving as a coaster under the champagne. “I can take notes. I’m told I’m very coachable.”

  Eugenio sits up, reaching for the champagne, and there’s a bright row of bite marks down his back. He twists, looking at them, wincing. “I’m gonna get no end of shit for those in the clubhouse, you know.”

  “They’ll probably fade.” Though the idea makes Zach a little sad.

  “Yeah.” Eugenio reaches for the champagne, taking a swig and then handing the bottle to Zach, who drinks, and swishes his mouth, and swallows. “I’ve dated around in New York. Men and women. My teammates know—not about us, but about me. The ones tonight did too.”

  “Oh.” Because they didn’t say anything or treat Eugenio any differentl
y than anyone else at the table. “I, um, haven’t told anyone other than Morgan.”

  “I figured.”

  “Did you tell Gordon about us? He said something that made it seem like you did.”

  “After we broke up, I was drunk and upset for a couple days. I felt like I was going to suffocate if I didn’t tell someone.”

  “I got the sense he hates my guts.”

  Eugenio shrugs, not denying it. “He and I still talk. He didn’t tell anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He gets up, going toward the bathroom. “Just, with how things ended, I needed someone to listen.” He studies the door handle, before shrugging again and then going in and shutting the door. He emerges a few minutes later, a towel around his waist, hair dripping down his back and shoulders.

  Zach busies himself with clean up, another shower, his fourth of the day, a quick scrub with hotel shampoo that smells like pine-scented air freshener. He comes out to find Eugenio has liberated a few bottles from the minibar and a pair of Zach’s sweatpants from his suitcase, the waistband rolled up.

  “There’s ice,” he says, indicating the plastic-lined bucket.

  They sit and drink. Eventually Eugenio turns the TV on. He flips through the channels until he finds a cooking show and scrolls through the menu to activate the captions.

  Zach settles against him, ear against his chest, watching chefs on the screen demonstrate their knife skills and listening to the rhythm of Eugenio’s heartbeat. A reminder of how he kept a notepad beside Zach’s bed to jot recipes down. The long-buried memory of how he once burned a meal badly enough that Zach’s neighbors called the fire department, who were surprised to show up and find two coughing major leaguers attempting to air out a condo with a box fan.

  A commercial comes on. “Come to Miami,” Zach says, after muting the TV. “I mean, what are you doing for the rest of the break?”

  Eugenio shrugs. “I was thinking about going to the beach.”

  “We’ve got beaches in Miami too.”

  “Yeah? That all you got there?”

  “I hear the weather’s better. The food’s better. The drinks are better.” And Zach leans up to kiss him at the point of his jaw. “Everyone’s hot. You’ll fit right in.”

  “You sure you have space for me?” He smiles as he says it, and Zach reaches for his phone.

  “Here, I’ll buy your ticket.” Like it’s the money that would stop him. “We’ll spend a couple days in bed. You can pick the restaurants.”

  Eugenio takes the phone from him gently and puts it down on the nightstand. “You’re making a lot of promises. Ones we’ve made before. And if things haven’t changed with you, then you know why this isn’t a good idea.”

  “Fuck, I know, I know.” Zach takes a sip of his drink and then another, swirling the diminishing ice cubes against the walls of the glass. Whatever clock that started when he first saw Eugenio in the clubhouse feels like it’s about to chime. He’ll wake up tomorrow and drag himself back to Miami, to disappear into the pleasures of the city—its weather, its food, its people. A place where he feels like he’s already disappearing. “I’m sorry,” he says, finally. “I figured it would be easier with, I don’t know, time. Distance.”

  “Is it?”

  “No.”

  “I’m not going to go to Miami for the break, Zach.” And Eugenio’s voice is kind, making it somehow worse.

  “Yeah, it was worth a shot.” Even if he knew what the answer was going to be before he asked, something as predetermined as the Swordfish not making the playoffs, as any other bad outcome he doesn’t have the power to change.

  The bed is a mess, sheets damp, crooked, bedspread kicked to the floor. It’s also at least ten feet from the window, under vents pumping cold air-conditioned air, under the staring blank of the ceiling, close to a cut of light from the hallway. All things that, in another place and time, might mean Eugenio paced restlessly in front of the window, or got up and scrolled through his phone on the couch, unable to sleep.

  “Are you gonna stay here?” Zach asks a little desperately.

  “No.” Though Eugenio is yawning, “I should get back to my hotel.” He puts his glass down on the nightstand, and then begins scavenging on the floor for his discarded clothing.

  “Really, I didn’t mean that I want you to leave.”

  Eugenio’s shoulders stiffen at that. “Please don’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Be nice to me. Ask me to stay. It’ll make things harder for both of us.”

  “Sorry.” And something about it makes Eugenio wince.

  Zach considers the bed, the rapidly cooling sheets. How the room confuses space with luxury, everything too spread out, Eugenio standing on the other side, pulling on his slacks. The dull game they just played, how he’ll fly back to Miami to play equally dull games in front of bored spectators. To water his plants and scroll through his phone and count down the days waiting for the kinds of injuries that beset old catchers to come and take him too.

  “I wasn’t going to come to the game,” Eugenio says, “but I wanted to see how you were. To see if I could be done with all of this. But things haven’t changed.”

  “No, they haven’t. We’re still good together.” And Zach feels like something’s expanding in his chest, whatever’s been constricting him for the past year loosening by a notch. “If you want to give it another shot.”

  Eugenio doesn’t say anything for a long second, just stands there and looks at Zach, his expression shuttered. “Things haven’t changed.” He sounds defeated by it, or worse, resigned. “If you still wouldn’t tell anyone about us.”

  “I think you think this stuff is supposed to be easy for me—that I can tell my parents or my teammates and expect them to accept it.”

  “I didn’t say it was easy.” Eugenio’s voice is even, though his hands curl a little at his sides. “I just said they haven’t changed. And they haven’t. I stopped hoping they would a long time ago.”

  It hurts to hear, maybe more than if Eugenio yelled at him; hurts more when Eugenio stuffs his socks into his pants pocket, shoving his bare feet into his shoes. And he kisses Zach’s cheek before he leaves. “See you in a few weeks.”

  “What?” Zach says.

  “Check the schedule.” And he leaves, pulling the door softly shut behind him, like he doesn’t want guests in the surrounding rooms to know he was there.

  Chapter Fourteen

  April, Three Years Ago

  Despite its name, the Elephants Coliseum resembles its Roman counterpart only if you look at it quickly as you’re driving past—possibly with an unwashed windshield. Baseball’s only remaining “concrete doughnut” ballpark sits overlooking a scenic set of parking lots, the Nimitz Freeway cutting off any real view of the water. It is, in the words of a New York Times reporter, the game’s last real dive bar.

  Zach’s mother, spoiled by the cozy bricked confines of Camden Yards in Baltimore and having forgotten watching the Senators play at RFK Stadium in DC, summarized it best when she first saw the park in person. “Wow, that’s ugly.”

  “If it helps,” Zach replied, “it also has possums.”

  It should be a relatively easy drive from Zach’s condo in West Oakland to the ballpark. But he’s learned there’s no such thing as an easy drive in the Bay Area, especially not at nine in the morning. He’s been sitting in traffic for the better part of an hour, his GPS calculating and recalculating his arrival time. And there’s nothing to do but tap his fingers on the steering wheel and wait for an opening in the endless line of cars so he can start moving. At least baseball taught him how to be idle.

  He took the days off between spring training and their first exhibition games to air out his condo, set up all the delivery and cleaning services he needs for the season: Premade meals that won’t spoil in his fridge during a long road trip. A house
keeper who won’t judge him for piles of increasingly ripe laundry. A gym he can work out at other than the one at the stadium, one that will actively discourage its patrons from taking pictures of him when he’s gassed on the treadmill.

  He also looked up the nearby coffee shops with the highest ratings on Yelp and tried a couple before settling on one that doesn’t charge him five bucks for toast, even if the breakfast sandwich was mostly tasteless and needed hot sauce. He jogged in his neighborhood, got takeout from the place he missed, and Skyped with his parents.

  “You look good, Zach,” his mom told him, midway through a call, when he glanced away from his computer at a text that just flashed on his phone. “You’re smiling.”

  They asked him about his expected playing time for the season. “I think it’ll be mostly a tandem. Eugenio—that’s Morales, the other catcher—he’s better against lefties than I am. But I’m better at framing, so I think we’ll split it pretty much equally.”

  His mother printed out their playing schedule, and she talked through each of the series they’ll play in Baltimore against the Oysters, about when he’ll be in town and which relatives or members of their shul to expect at dinner.

  “I was thinking of bringing someone to the fundraiser,” he said, adding, “no, it’s not like that,” when his mother looked hopeful.

  “Why is it not ‘like that’?”

  “Well, she’s married.” And then quickly clarified, “No, it’s definitely not like that,” when she looked horrified. And they all laughed about it afterward and his parents said that Zach’s friends were always welcome, and he wondered how far that invitation extended.

  Now, he’s sitting on the freeway, drumming his hands on the dashboard, listening to music from his phone Bluetoothed into his speakers.

  Almost there, he texts Eugenio. Like three or four more hours max and gets a laughing-crying emoji in response.

  Eugenio spent the brief gap in their schedule moving his stuff from where it was stored in Las Vegas, driving from Phoenix to Vegas, and then Vegas to Oakland, insisting he didn’t mind the distance or the time. “I grew up in the country. You get used to it.”