Unwritten Rules Read online

  The nails on Zach’s throwing hand are painted white, the kind of lumpy uneven painting he did with his nondominant hand so that Hayek could see what signs he put down. “The first couple times we played here, the stickers kept peeling off in the humidity. I had to reapply ’em between innings.”

  “I should probably do that.”

  “I brought the nail polish along, if you want to borrow it later.”

  “Sure, I can swing by your room.” And Eugenio smiles like he’s getting away with something.

  Their food comes. Eugenio ordered what looks like six things for himself, the unkosher eel, a fava bean salad, potatoes with spicy oil, a couple more things that Zach can’t identify. And Zach sticks his fork into one of them, unthinking, not having asked. Eugenio scoots the plate toward him, Zach eating from it and, when he glances up, Gordon is looking at them.

  Zach swallows his bite of fingerling potatoes, which he didn’t really chew all that well, a lump down his throat that he washes down with a too-big sip of wine. He’s pinned into a corner of the booth, Eugenio on one side, Hayek—who is telling an incredibly loud, incredibly filthy, and almost certainly fabricated story—on his other. And he taps Eugenio’s thigh with his hand, then nudges him with his elbow. “Bathroom,” he adds, unnecessarily, when Eugenio slides out.

  He exits their dining area, escaping into the safety of the underlit restaurant hallway. The bathrooms are both single occupancies, both occupied, so he waits. The restaurant, like everything else in Houston, is over-air-conditioned, ceiling fans stirring the already too-cold air.

  And maybe Gordon looked at him for no particular reason. He’s a nice guy, Eugenio’s landlord even though he refused offers of rent. He hasn’t shown up unannounced with the pack of folks he always rolls with, instead calling and telling Eugenio to clean the place up—not that it was ever really messy—but giving them enough time for Zach to shower and throw clothes on and sit on Eugenio’s couch, pretending to be engrossed in a movie with his hair still wet. A nice guy, but Zach doesn’t want to test the limits of his niceness, especially not in front of their teammates, the restaurant waitstaff. Not with Eugenio there, laughing expansively and pressing his thigh against Zach’s.

  One of the bathrooms opens. Zach goes in and splashes water on his face, trying to cycle his breathing back to normal. He thinks about texting someone—Morgan, maybe, though he doesn’t know what to say. His sister, who would tell him that he picks food off everyone’s plates and always has. Eugenio, to tell him to sit farther away from him and to stop making jokes and having a lower lip Zach has to watch in order to hear them.

  When Zach gets to the table, he slides into his seat, eats his duck mechanically, and keeps his thigh a few inches from Eugenio’s.

  “Your food okay?” Eugenio asks, when he sees Zach sawing a microscopic piece of duck down even further.

  “It’s perfect.” But he doesn’t finish it and declines the waiter’s offer of a box.

  When they get back to the hotel, Zach stops for a small bottle of nail polish remover at the little vending area in the lobby, one selling single-serve pints of ice cream, half bottles of wine, and various toiletries. He should take the nail polish off, especially since they have Eugenio starting the next two games. Especially since the cashier glances at his hands and then up at him in question.

  The light is on in his room when he opens the door, Eugenio on one of the beds watching something on TV. And right, Zach slid his extra key into Eugenio’s stall under his mitt. He tried to be clandestine about putting it there until he realized it was an unmarked black room key for a hotel they were all staying at.

  Eugenio clicks off the television. “I didn’t want to rummage through your stuff.” He wiggles his unpainted fingers.

  It takes Zach a minute to find the nail polish, which is in his travel toiletry kit, sitting under a spare tube of toothpaste. “Here you go.” He tosses the bottle to Eugenio.

  It’s a matte white; he tried a different brand that turned out to be too shiny and hard to see. This kind only takes one coat to be visible but a while to set because, according to his sister, the quick-drying kind is garbage that peels off.

  “It might be easier if you did it,” Eugenio says. “My coordination isn’t great with my left hand.”

  “Uh, get comfortable, I guess. This shit takes forever to dry.”

  They end up sitting cross-legged on one of the beds. Eugenio takes off his shirt when Zach tells him he doesn’t want to wreck it by accident and holds out his hand like Zach’s a manicurist at a nail salon. He has big palms, squared-off fingers, nails filed neatly the way pitchers do to get a good grip on the ball.

  “Sorry,” Zach says, before he starts, “this is probably gonna look like shit.”

  “I’m sure the pitching staff will notice and complain.”

  Zach twists the top off the nail polish, setting the bottle onto the nightstand and holding the brush. It’s different from this angle, Zach pushing a blob of nail polish on the plane of one of Eugenio’s nails, down, and then tracing upward like in a YouTube tutorial he watched on how to do this. He thought about having his nails done at a salon, but he really only needed the one hand, and only occasionally, and didn’t want to deal with guys thinking this was something he went out of his way to do.

  He tries to keep his hand steady, holding Eugenio’s fingers with his left hand and anchoring the pinky of his right on the bedspread to make it easier to paint. Eugenio isn’t watching him—or rather, he’s watching the slow spread of nail polish on his fingernail, Zach re-dipping the brush and beginning the next one. “Have you done this before?” Eugenio asks.

  “Hold still. And no, not for someone else. Why, have you?”

  “A couple times with my ex.”

  Zach finishes the coat on Eugenio’s index and middle fingers. “Quit moving your hand. It’s gonna look jacked up.”

  He takes Eugenio’s ring finger, rotating it to one side, and then the other, applying polish. “Put your hand down on the comforter.” And it only takes two strokes to do Eugenio’s pinky nail. “Do you want me to get your thumb?”

  “Yeah, might as well.”

  Zach does, blowing over it when he’s done. “There, I can set a timer. I usually wait about ten minutes.”

  Eugenio is looking down at his nails. The paint is white, a contrast to his skin, tanned from playing outside. It’s more visible than it is on Zach.

  “Thanks,” Eugenio says. He wets his bottom lip with his tongue, and Zach is about to lean in and kiss him, when he says, “Um, do you think you could do the other hand too?”

  “Guys’ll notice that. Someone’ll probably say something.”

  “You can take it off right after. I just want to see how it looks.” Eugenio is flushed, and his face must actually be burning, looking everywhere but Zach, at the forest-green bedspread, over Zach’s shoulder at the TV on the dresser behind them. “It’s okay. Forget I said anything.”

  “No, um, here.” Zach shifts Eugenio’s right hand—his throwing hand, the one he actually uses to signal specific pitches with—on the comforter, thumb and forefinger circling his wrist without applying pressure. “Don’t move this one, okay?”

  He takes Eugenio’s left hand, the hand he conceals in his mitt when he’s catching, and in batting gloves otherwise, though he usually strips those off and stuffs them in his back pocket when he’s on base. The fingernails he has no practical reason, no justifiable baseball reason, to paint.

  Objectively, it’s no more difficult to do this hand than it was the other. Except for the way Eugenio sucks a breath as Zach starts on his first finger. Except for the way that he’s watching the slow spread of polish on his nail, biting his lip. Except for that he’s moving his wrist, a small motion but one Zach stills, his thumb pressing the tendons in Eugenio’s forearm.

  “Thank you,” Eugenio says, softly, when h
e’s done and Zach places his hand on the comforter, fingers splayed out from one another.

  “They look good.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You look good.”

  “Fuck,” Eugenio says, and Zach kisses him, Eugenio’s bottom lip between Zach’s teeth, his tongue in Eugenio’s mouth, and Eugenio sucks on it, unsubtle, an invitation. “Zach, fuck, c’mon.”

  Zach doesn’t move, though, not for a second, leaning to kiss him, just giving him the tip of his tongue, pulling back when Eugenio tries to deepen it. Not until Eugenio says, “You gonna make me ask to suck you?”

  Zach’s belt is loud in the quiet of the room. He pushes down his pants, his shorts, kicking them off, tossing his shirt somewhere, and knee walks as Eugenio repositions himself with his back against the padded headboard. His hands are still on the bedspread at his sides, unmoving, pressing divots into the quilting and shaking minutely.

  Zach runs his fingers down his arm, tracing from shoulder to bicep to elbow to forearm to wrist before skiing off his knuckle. “Keep those there.” He works himself a few times, but Eugenio is already leaning down.

  “I want to feel you get hard.”

  Zach holds himself, guiding his cock into Eugenio’s mouth. “If you want me to pull off, uh, hit me on the thigh or something.”

  Eugenio nods, eyes closed, eyelashes on his cheeks, tongue rubbing the underside of Zach’s cock. It’s easier at this angle, for Zach to put his hands against the wall, to roll his hips, expecting Eugenio to slap him on his leg when Zach gets fully hard, when he pushes deeper into his mouth. He doesn’t.

  Still, he pulls back, fucking his mouth in small thrusts, then pulling back even further, running the tip of his cock over his bottom lip, smearing it, and then his cheek, a wet mark right where his stubble ends. “You look so good like this. I wish you could see.”

  “Zach.” It sounds a little whiny. When he looks down, Eugenio is hard in his dress pants, hips straining.

  “Stay still.” He nudges at Eugenio’s mouth again, holding himself shallowly without moving his hips, and counting down silently from thirty.

  By the end of it, Eugenio’s trembling, fine shivers Zach can feel, muscles in his biceps and forearms tensing, his breath in short little pants through his nose. There’s sweat at his hairline, and Zach runs his fingers over it, and his temple, and the side of his face where he can feel himself through the wall of Eugenio’s cheek. Presses in with the pad of his thumb until it forces Eugenio’s mouth open wider, jaw going slack, spit running down his chin.

  Eugenio has short hair, cropped close by the clubhouse barber before they got on the plane for this road trip. Zach tugs a few of the hairs between his thumb and index finger, and Eugenio hisses a breath.

  “I’m gonna move, okay?” he says. Eugenio nods.

  He braces against the wall, and works his hips, watching his cock disappear into his mouth, and his hands, which haven’t moved from where Zach set them on the bedspread, bright and intentionally visible.

  He’s about to come and he pulls back, reaching to jack himself, when Eugenio says, “Um, on me?” His voice is rough.

  And Zach spills over onto Eugenio’s chest, a little on his chin and lip. He leans forward, thumbing over one of the white streaks, smearing it into his tattoo. Then up, catching the droplet on Eugenio’s mouth, rubbing it in. “What do you want?” He reaches for Eugenio’s belt, the button to undo his fly.

  “It’s not going to take much.”

  And Zach cups him through his shorts, the fabric of his boxers already stained dark over the head of his cock, sticky when Zach brushes it with the flat of his palm.

  Eugenio is breathing hard, chest working. “Though maybe more than that.”

  Zach doesn’t curl his hand or grip him, continuing to trace Eugenio’s cock with no more than light pressure. Adding a loose unsatisfying circle of fingers but withdrawing his hand when Eugenio starts to move his hips. “Stop,” Zach says, and Eugenio stills.

  He runs his hand up Eugenio’s chest, rolling a nipple between his fingers, scratching lines in one of Eugenio’s tattoos where it won’t show a mark, a dark abstract shape interrupted with a few edges of color. He’s shaking all over with the effort of holding himself in place.

  “That first time,” Zach says, “when you came over to my place at spring training, we went swimming. I couldn’t stop looking at these. Couldn’t stop looking at you.”

  He reaches, shoving his hand under the waistband of Eugenio’s boxers. His palm is probably too dry, but it doesn’t matter, not with the way Eugenio’s leaking, not when Zach says, “You can move,” and gives him the channel of his fist to fuck into, Eugenio coming almost instantly.

  “Kiss me,” he says, after, and Zach does, hands on Eugenio’s sides, up his forearms, on the thick muscles of his back. “That was... Jesus, Zach.” He still hasn’t moved his hands.

  “Your nails are probably dry,” Zach says. “Let me go get the remover. Unless you want to do it in the morning.”

  “No, I might forget.” As if he could just walk into the stadium with both his hands painted, casually, unremarkedly.

  Zach gets the nail polish remover, a box of Kleenex from the bathroom, a wastebasket. He’s about to tip the remover onto a wad of tissues, but stops himself, seeing the way Eugenio is looking at his own hands, admiring and a little regretful, teeth on his swollen lower lip. “I could take a picture of them,” Zach says, “if you wanted me to.”

  Eugenio reaches for his phone where it’s face down on the nightstand. He types in his passcode and then hands it to Zach. “Um, just against the bedspread, I guess?”

  “Maybe lie back?”

  Eugenio is shirtless, pants still opened, though his boxers are a mess. He lies down, and Zach picks his hand up, positioning it against his chest, fingernails bright white on the dark field of his tattoo. The other in the line of hair down his stomach.

  “I won’t get your face in it.” Though it could be an issue if the pictures get leaked, Eugenio identifiable by his tattoos. He clicks the camera, taking a handful of pictures, then shows them to Eugenio for his approval. “Send me that one.” A photo Zach will need to bury, somewhere, behind three different passwords. One he shouldn’t keep but will anyway.

  “I should get cleaned up.” And Eugenio’s voice sounds like his throat is sore.

  Zach motions for him to stay put. “Do you want some ice? Let me go get you some.”

  “Maybe in a second. I can probably take the nail polish off.”

  “It’ll take off the stuff on your other hand too. I’ve got it.” Zach dispenses some of the remover onto the Kleenex, then starts with Eugenio’s pinky.

  “It’s cold,” Eugenio says. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

  Zach works the wad of tissues, polish coming off, though it smears Eugenio’s fingers white at the tips. He gets a fresh sheet of Kleenex and tries to extract the stuff off Eugenio’s cuticles, until it’s finally mostly gone, like it wasn’t ever there.

  “The rest’ll come off in the shower,” Zach says. “But you might want to go and wash your hands.”

  Eugenio does and comes back, holding his pants and boxers, naked except for his still-painted right hand.

  “You gonna sleep here?” Zach asks. He probably shouldn’t, though it would also be a problem if someone sees him coming out of Zach’s room looking wrecked. There are scratch marks on his side, ones Zach thought would be confined to his tattoo but aren’t. “I think I got some Neosporin or something for those if you want.”

  Eugenio looks at the marks. “I’m good. You didn’t break the skin.”

  “You might get shit for those tomorrow.”

  Eugenio shrugs. “So what? Guys talk all the time. Most’ll assume I just snuck a girl up here. Maybe I should download Tinder or something as cover.”

  “Don’t,” Zach says,
and Eugenio laughs.

  He sets his clothes on the desk, then pulls two water bottles out of the mini fridge, handing one to Zach. “I was gonna crash for a while.”

  “Which bed do you want to sleep in?” Because Eugenio has preferences about the distance from the bed to the window, even if they’re high up, sealed off against the Houston streets. From the bed to the door, the rooms lining the hallway where their teammates are sleeping, unaware.

  “Either is fine,” Eugenio says, though he amends it to “the one by the window” when Zach looks at him skeptically.

  Up close, he smells like his cologne and a little like nail polish remover. He settles with his back to Zach’s chest. Different from how Zach’s slept next to people in the past, from the sudden drop of postcoital sleep or the hustled-out morning after. Especially when Eugenio says, “That was... I’ve never... Fuck. It was never like that.” Zach waits for him to elaborate. But his breathing evens as he slides toward sleep.

  “I’ve never...” Zach says, a few minutes later, into the safety of Eugenio’s neck. Softly so as not to wake him. “It’s never been like this for me either.”

  Light wakes him up in the morning, spilling in from the curtains they didn’t bother to close. Next to him, Eugenio’s sleeping, sheets kicked up around his legs. He has a bite mark on his shoulder Zach doesn’t remember leaving, scratches on his sides, a slight bruise around one of his wrists, not a full bracelet, just the impression of Zach’s thumb and forefinger.

  And Zach should have insisted on ice, on Neosporin, on a shower, on Eugenio going back to his room, because there’s no way he can walk out of Zach’s room and not get noticed by their nosy-ass early-bird teammates.

  “Morning,” Eugenio says, rolling up to kiss him, a lazy sort of kiss that deepens when Zach’s cock starts showing interest.

  “You gotta go back to your room. Just, uh, maybe try to do it quietly. Someone might see.”

  “You should go get me coffee.” Eugenio stretches out, arms out at his sides, though he leaves them there when he sees Zach looking at the weight of his shoulders, the movement of muscles in his chest. He examines the nails of his right hand. “These look good.”