Unwritten Rules Page 16

  He divided the drive unevenly, going from Vegas to Carson City in a day, and sending Zach pictures of the Nevada highway, buttes and scrub brush and faraway mountains. He also sent a few pictures that Zach saved to a hidden album on his phone, co-opted from saving pics from random hookups.

  They haven’t seen each other since the last night of spring training, or more accurately, about six the next morning, when Zach crept out of Eugenio’s apartment and drove back to his rental place in order to throw all his stuff in boxes and vacate by noon.

  But there’s a hickey on his hip, though it’s mostly faded to the point where it looks like it could have come from an encounter with the pitching machine. A reminder that this isn’t something he’s imagining.

  Whatever has been clogging the freeway starts moving. Zach makes it to the ballpark a few minutes before they’re supposed to officially report. It’s a high clear day, good baseball weather—warm enough to play in, cool enough that every fly ball won’t be a home run. They’ve got an intra-squad game that day, just to shake off the rust from a couple days’ rest, Zach catching for one team and Eugenio for the other.

  He finds Eugenio standing by his stall. Each of them has an open wooden locker, partitioned by shelving to hold their uniforms and equipment, all the various piles of junk necessary to play the game. Eugenio is staring at his jerseys, each stitched with Morales curving around the numbers; a row of baseball cleats tucked below; pants, belts, gloves, tape; the mitt he favors and the one he doesn’t like as much, like it’s all going to disappear if he stops looking.

  Zach hands him his now-cold cup of coffee. “Sorry traffic was a nightmare. I should get a thermos or something.”

  And they’ve seen each other on FaceTime, but it’s different, here, in their real clubhouse about to go play a game on the actual diamond, even if it’s just a scrimmage.

  Eugenio’s been to the barber, hair cropped closer than it was in spring training, and Zach gets the slightly absurd urge to kiss him in greeting. “You look good,” he says instead, and then amends to, “nice haircut.”

  “Thanks.” Eugenio glances around at the clubhouse. “This all feels like a dream.”

  “Just wait until the plumbing breaks, or a possum chews through some of the wiring.”

  Eugenio laughs that big laugh of his. And clubhouses don’t usually echo, especially when they have twenty-five players there along with all the staff and trainers. But it sounds big to Zach, like it fills every space and cubby in the room.

  “Where’s everyone else?” Zach asks.

  “We’re meeting on the field in a couple minutes. I think most guys are eating.”

  “Oh, yeah, about that, where’s my breakfast, rook?”

  And Eugenio laughs again, but he rummages in his stall for something, careful not to disturb the jerseys, like moving them will somehow dislodge the letters of his name from their backs. “I got you this.” He hands Zach a box. “It’s not a big deal.”

  Inside, there’s a tiny succulent with spiked leaves, a pot, a little bag of soil. A miniature sign that says Arizona.

  “You said you didn’t have any plants,” Eugenio says, though Zach doesn’t remember saying that to him, “so, I figured I’d start with something small. Relatively hard to kill.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  And Eugenio smiles and shrugs, color up in his cheeks, the kind of smile he got when Zach kissed him goodbye a few days earlier, one that makes Zach wonder if their teammates won’t notice something is going on between them.

  Zach examines the box, the care instructions that don’t seem particularly complicated. “I’ll let you know when I get it set up. You can come over and visit. Make sure I’m treating it right.”

  Eugenio glances around like their teammates are hiding in their stalls, waiting to burst out and catch them. “Maybe tonight. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve planted anything before.”

  “I wouldn’t want to mess it up, right as it’s just getting started and all.”

  Eugenio looks like he wants to say something else, or possibly, like Zach, wants to sneak into a nearby training room and get reacquainted. Which is of course when Giordano walks in and yells at them that they’re due on the field and to stop beating off or whatever and to come play some goddamn baseball.

  * * *

  “Nice place,” Eugenio says later, when they’re at Zach’s condo.

  “You want a tour?” He’s mostly joking, but Eugenio nods, and Zach shows him the exciting features of the sofa he sits on to watch TV, the bookshelf that holds the books his parents send him that he doesn’t read, the stack of comic trade paperbacks that he does actually read, the table with too much junk mail on it. And the rooftop patio that’s the reason he moved here in the first place.

  There’s a long table, a stack of chairs under a cover, a few box planters, a couch with sun-bleached cushions. “This would be nice,” Eugenio says, “you know, to come out here, have a cup of coffee in the morning.”

  “Yeah, there’s a pretty good coffee place nearby. I maybe checked a few out.”

  “I thought you lived here last year.”

  “I did. I just wasn’t going to get coffee for anyone else.” Zach scratches the back of his neck with his hand. “That’s, uh, okay, right?”

  And he doesn’t really know what he’s asking, but Eugenio kisses him and says, “Yes, Zach, that’s okay.”

  They actually do end up repotting the plant, which turns out to be aloe, Zach laughing as he pours half the soil onto the counter before using a paper towel to funnel it back into the pot.

  “It says to give it a teaspoon of water,” Zach says. “Do you think a measuring spoon or like a spoon-spoon?”

  “Do you even have measuring spoons?” Eugenio asks in the same tone that someone might use to ask if Zach has a spleen—something necessary that Zach doesn’t really understand the function of.

  Eugenio digs a little disposable plastic medicine cup out of the kit that has the measurements printed on the sides, drawing tap water from the sink that Zach sprinkles onto the soil.

  “What now?” Zach looks at the plant, half expecting it to start growing visibly.

  “Put it in a window, water if it looks sad, and then mostly forget about it. They’re hard to kill unless you overwater them. If it’s still alive after a couple months, I’ll get you something else.”

  “A couple of months?” Like it’s a foregone thing they’ll still be together. Something that makes him feel like he does about this season: the irrepressible hope that this is going to be their year. “I can probably do that.”

  They order pho from a nearby place and eat in the outdoor seating area until Eugenio starts complaining about being cold. “Wait until you play in San Francisco.” Zach hands him a shirt to wear over his, watching the ripple of his shoulders as he puts it on.

  “I played for the Rocking Horses. Two years freezing my ass off in Binghamton.”

  “Looks fine to me from here.”

  And Eugenio glances around to make sure Zach’s neighbors—some of whom have waved to them as they’re eating—aren’t around before leaning up to kiss him.

  They make out, on Zach’s couch while ignoring a movie, and then on Zach’s carpeted living room floor, on one of the handful of throw blankets Zach lays out like they’re having a sleepover, Eugenio kissing him and kissing him. Zach shoves his sweatpants down his legs, and Eugenio’s too, jerks them off together. He’s looking down at the slide of them, slick, pressed together in his hand, when Eugenio says, “Hey, look at me,” and Zach comes watching expressions flicker over Eugenio’s face, Eugenio following soon after.

  They lie like that together, on Zach’s floor until Zach’s hip starts to complain. He offers Eugenio a hand up, a glass of water, asks if he wants to sleep over or head out, and Eugenio smiles and tells him he’ll see him at the ballpark. The
y kiss against Zach’s closed front door, saying and not meaning goodbyes. And that’s his first real day of the season in Oakland.

  They play an exhibition game in the cold pea soup that San Francisco likes to pretend is weather, the crowd a fifty-fifty split between Oakland fans in green and San Francisco ones in orange. A handful of lost spectators in Los Angeles blue get booed by both sides.

  It’s a bullpen game, a chance to test them both out with various relievers, one in which Zach catches as many warmup pitches as actual pitches. Eugenio grumbles about squatting in the fog and then spends an hour warming himself up in Zach’s bed before leaving.

  “Where are you staying anyway?” Zach asks, when Eugenio is gathering his stuff off the floor. He has to feel around for his wallet, which fell out of his pocket and got kicked under the bed at some point, giving Zach an up-close view of his ass.

  “Gordon owns a condo in Uptown. He usually rents it out but he told me I could crash there until I found a place. It’s a little nicer than what I can afford right now.”

  “I’m sure it is.” Because Zach spent his first year living in the same kind of place he lived when he was in the minors. The shower had mold-stained grout and the fridge leaked, but it was a short drive to the ballpark. “You haven’t been scouting places?”

  “It felt like bad luck.” Eugenio pats down his pockets, then takes out his phone and texts something. Zach’s phone flashes where it’s sitting on his bedside table. “Come by and see it. I’ll cook. Let me know what you want to eat.”

  “I could think of something right now.” Zach paws at him, and Eugenio laughs, insisting that he needs to go. “Hey, when you made me that tarte thing, were you trying to tell me something?”

  Eugenio gives him one of those looks he sometimes gets when they’re game-planning, the kind that says that Zach should extract some meaning out of whatever chart they’re looking at that he’s clearly missing. “Yes, Zach, I was trying to tell you something. What do guys normally do when they’re interested?”

  “Um, there’s usually not a lot of ambiguity. You know, if someone wants to hook up.”

  “That’s not quite what I meant.”

  “It hasn’t really come up much.” Which feels like too much to admit, even if Eugenio already knows, and Eugenio leans down and kisses him, and promises to come over the next day.

  They play their home opener against Chicago, splitting a four-game series with them. A few more wins against the soft meat of the Seattle Pilots, and then another series, and another. They divide games more or less evenly—if Zach starts two against Anaheim, Eugenio has the next two against Detroit, each taking two for four-game sets, one DH-ing while the other one catches.

  The team’s playing well enough that commentators start to take note of it. Zach’s mom sends him articles clipped from the physical edition of the San Francisco Chronicle she gets, bright highlighter circles around his name when he’s mentioned, like he can’t read the paper online.

  And so Zach puts his head down and plays. Because baseball is like that. An endless number of games, a grind, a pleasure. When he looks up, it’s May, and they’re winning more games than they’re losing, and Eugenio has brought him another plant.

  “Since you didn’t kill the last one.” He puts a basil plant on Zach’s kitchen counter next to the nested stack of mixing bowls, a canister of various cooking utensils Zach doesn’t know the functions of but bought when Eugenio mentioned wanting to cook.

  The plant is in a black plastic pot covered in purple foil, which Zach unwraps, moving the aloe, bright green and fat with water, over on the windowsill to accommodate the basil.

  “Looks good,” Eugenio says. “You’ll have to water it more frequently than the aloe.”

  Zach looks up care instructions on his phone. “I’m worried I might actually kill this one.”

  “Just pay attention to it.” Eugenio puts his hands on either side of the counter, leaning into Zach’s space. His breath smells like bubblegum and sunflower seeds, and his hair is still a little damp from his post-game shower. “It’ll tell you what it needs.”

  “That right? What does it need right now?” Zach glances over to the basil, which is sitting on the ledge, leaves soaking in the late-afternoon sunshine.

  “I could think of a few things.” And he laughs when Zach pulls him down the hall and into the bed Zach increasingly thinks of as theirs.

  * * *

  They’re wrapping up a planning meeting, looking over scouting reports for their next series against Detroit, when Morgan snags him by the back of his shirt. “Hey, you got a sec?”

  Zach studies the debris of their meeting: printouts, some annotated with Eugenio’s notes, some defaced by his own, a few different iterations of a graphic that the stats department has brought to show them. His gut churns a little at whatever Morgan might want. “I’ll come find you in a minute.”

  “Which of these is better?” one of the analytics guys says. And despite Courtland calling them “pencil necks,” he looks more like a linebacker in a set of business-appropriate khakis, occupying one side of the table with Zach and Eugenio squeezed on the other.

  “They’re all saying the same thing, right?” Eugenio says.

  “In this one,” the analytics guy continues, like he didn’t hear him, “we decided to represent the ground ball percentages and flyball percentages separately from a hitter’s likelihood of making contact, and in this one we combined them.”

  “They’re saying the same thing, right?” Zach narrows his eyes. Next to him, Eugenio is leaning away from the table, his arms crossed.

  “Exactly,” the guy says, sounding pleased.

  “So, what Morales just said.”

  The analytics guy glances between them, like he’s surprised to see Eugenio there.

  And Zach opens his mouth to say something else when Eugenio taps his foot against his, shaking his head slightly as if to tell Zach not to belabor the point.

  “You sure?” Zach asks, trying to lower his voice in the otherwise echoingly quiet room.

  “Don’t,” Eugenio says tensely, his expression that neutral he gets when he’s truly pissed off. “It’s fine.” He shuffles and reshuffles the stack of papers in front of him. “We good here?” And doesn’t wait for a response before getting up and leaving.

  “Looks like the big leagues are agreeing with him,” the analytics guy says.

  And Zach is about to ask him what the fuck that’s supposed to mean when Morgan ducks her head in.

  “You done?” she asks.

  “Yep,” Zach says. And he shuts the door on the way out a little more forcefully than he needs to.

  Zach follows her through the warren of the clubhouse: training rooms, equipment rooms, massage rooms, the cryotherapy chamber that Gordon uses religiously after every game, the hot tubs where a few guys are boiling off aches from a workout.

  A handful of players sit around playing cards; a few more argue over a half-filled sudoku puzzle. Someone’s taking a nap—Giordano from the look of the skinny white feet sticking out from under a blanket—on one of the couches, Braxton sitting next to where he’s lying, his head against Braxton’s thigh like that’s a just thing they do. Like that’s something any of them could do without getting comments.

  By the time they get outside, Zach’s heart feels like he’s trying to run. His hands are damp, and he wipes them on his chest, every excuse he’s ever thought of—”It’s not like that” and “How did you know?” and “Please don’t say anything”—sitting in his mouth.

  “Please don’t tell anyone I asked for your help with this,” Morgan says. “I mean it.”

  “I won’t.” And Zach’s shoulders, which have been up by his ears, untense.

  “I haven’t even asked you anything yet.”

  They’re standing in the makeshift area that serves as a bullpen, tucked int
o the sidelines on the edge of the field. Morgan gets a tripod, one of the portable ones D’Spara uses to record pitch mechanics, and fumbles with the setup before clipping her phone to the mount, twisting the knob to secure it. “I need to get some video of me pitching,” she says.

  “Do you want me to, like, hit Record or whatever?”

  “I want you to catch me.”

  “I’ve never actually caught softball pitching.” He looks around for a bag of large, neon-yellow balls and finds only baseballs. “I mean, I might have at some point in high school, but not since then.”

  “This wouldn’t be softball pitching.”

  “Um, all right. I guess let me go get my gear.”

  When Zach comes back, Morgan’s up, stretching, the kinds of stretches relievers do when they’re told to get loose in the middle of a game, striding off the mound and whipping a towel to check her release point. He’s never seen her throw overhand before; she does a leg kick, power pushing off her back leg, sending the towel gripped in her hand in an arc halfway between true overhand and a sidearm release.

  “You got a good motion,” he says. “When was the last time you pitched?”

  “Last week.” But she doesn’t elaborate.

  And it’s one thing to know that, to see the windmilling softball motion in videos that the local TV channel sometimes plays before airing interviews with her. It’s another to see her take the mound like she’s any other guy.

  He gets his gear on and squats where he normally would, but it occurs to him that softball field dimensions are probably different, the distance between the pitcher’s circle and the plate shorter. “Should I, uh, move in?”

  “No, there’s good. I’m gonna start the camera.”

  “What’re you gonna throw?” he asks, and then clarifies when he sees her glance at the bag of balls, “Fastballs, sliders, whatever.”