Page 100 of Unwritten Rules
“I worried about you. Mom did too.”
“Worried that I’m gay?”
“Worried that you seemed really depressed after Oakland. It was hard to talk about with her because she was so convinced that you just had to meet someone. You know how she is. She wants everything a certain way.”
“He and I broke up for a while. He wanted to tell his family, and I wasn’t ready for that. But I am now. Or I think I am.”
And Aviva’s looking at him now, an assessing look that she probably uses on students. “I figured it was someone new.”
“No. It’s been on and off for, uh, about three and a half years.”
“Three and halfyears?” Something about that hits her, and she brings up the shoulder of her voluminous pregnancy dress and starts dabbing at her face.
He looks around for the pile of napkins that came with her gelato, but she must have tossed them with her cup. “Let me go get you some tissues or something.” He starts to get up, when she tugs on the back of his shirt.
“Zach, don’t worry about it. It’s just, you could have told me. I wouldn’t have told Mom and Dad. I thought we had a brother-sister pact or whatever.”
“I didn’t want you to have to lie to them. It didn’t seem fair.” And he’s not going to cry, not in public, but can’t stop the tightness in his chest either. “I just didn’t want to keep disappointing them.”
“You are literally rich and famous.” She hugs him again, punctuating it by tapping him lightly upside the head like she did when they were young. “When you’re not there, it’s all, ‘Zach did this, Zach did that, did you see Zach’s hit the other day?’”
“I’m not that rich. And I’m definitely not that famous.” He glances around to see if they’ve attracted onlookers, if there will be photos of him sitting on a park bench, Aviva crying, in thePostlater. “I’m gonna tell Mom and Dad tonight. And my publicist probably later this week. And maybe some other guys on the team. I haven’t decided.”
“That sounds like quite a list.”
“I owe it to him. To myself. I was worried for so long it’d be the end of my career. Or his.”
“His career?”
“You’ve met him. Eugenio—he came to that fundraiser Mom and Dad had for the local park or whatever.”
Aviva goes through a series of expressions, from surprise to something like recalculation. “I wondered about that. When you were there, and we were playing basketball in the yard.”
“I was trying not to be obvious. I guess it was risky bringing him. But it felt like it was too much to go home without him there.”
“God, all I remember about that party was getting blisters from my shoes and being pissed off at you for Mom not making you run around and do shit. And how happy you seemed.”
“Happy?”
“You just, I don’t know, you seemed like you had this weight off you for once. And you kept smiling when you thought no one was looking at you.”
“Mom found us,” he says, adding, “no, not like that,” when Aviva gives him a shocked look. “They tried to set me up with someone, and I escaped upstairs to talk about it with him. She walked in. We were sitting pretty close.”
“And she never said anything about it?”
Zach shakes his head. Something accepted and not mentioned, either because his parents thought nothing of it or everything, enough to trap his voice in his throat. He breathes through it, purposefully, intentionally, as useless as trying to stave off the tide. “I don’t know how it’s gonna go, later. I’m supposed to list out all my fears before I do this, but it’d be easier to list the things I’m not worried about.”
She hugs him again, the kind of hug where her fingers dig into the muscles of his arm like she can keep him together. “Hey, it’s gonna be all right.”
“Thank you.” He pulls back, wiping his eyes with the heel of his palm. “I wish we’d talked about this. I could have used, I don’t know, an ally. Sounds like you could’ve too.”
“Well, you got me now. How do you want to tell Mom and Dad?”
“I was gonna do it after the game. Just be there. Make sure their blood sugar is level. If we get crushed by the Spiders, they’ll be in a mood.”
“I can do that.” She looks across at the gelato shop. “Having a third one is probably a mistake?”
“Probably.” He gets up. “What flavor do you want?”
