Page 22 of Unwritten Rules
Zach adds his other hand, one above Eugenio’s wrist and one below it, praying that the next pitch won’t catch him on the finger. He focuses on the sweat on Eugenio’s skin, the position of his stance, the pop of the machine as it lobs baseballs at them. And not how, up close, Eugenio smells like ballpark shampoo and cologne. The way his arm shivers with effort as he tries to break Zach’s hold.
“Wait,” Zach says. “Breathe.”
Eugenio is close enough that Zach can feel it as he cycles his breath, the movement in his shoulders as he inhales, then a measured exhalation. His wrist stops tensing in Zach’s grip. On the next pitch, he adjusts his legs, his back, his ass, all of them working to move his glove, rather than moving the glove itself.
“There you go.” And Zach ignores the cut of Eugenio’s smile. The trust of his forearm as it relaxes in Zach’s hands. “Now, do it again.”
The machine fires, and Eugenio breathes, adjusts, catches, arm steady where Zach’s holding him. He drops the ball, letting it roll away, resting against the pile of them lining the chain link fence.
“Good.” Zach eases his hold on Eugenio’s wrist some, and, shit, he must have gripped harder than he thought, because the skin there is momentarily pale before it regains its color. “Again.”
Five pitches later—all on the same rhythm of breathe, move, catch, breathe, move, catch, breathe, move, catch—and Eugenio says, “Zach, you can probably let go of my arm.”
“Oh, uh, right.”
Eugenio laughs at that as Zach withdraws his hand. “It’s harder than I thought it would be. I thought it’d just be learning to move my glove less. Not this whole-scale revision of what I’ve been doing for fifteen years.”
“That’s baseball. Everything works until it doesn’t, and then you gotta adjust.”
“Fuck,” Eugenio says, though there’s no heat to it. “Yeah, I guess that’s baseball.” He leans down and begins unclipping his leg guards. “It’s funny. I spent years trying to figure this stuff out, and you diagnosed it in a couple hours.”
“Well, hopefully, things are better here than they were in the minors.”
Eugenio glances up so that Zach can see his face as he says, “I mean, some things definitely are.”
“Oh, um,” Zach says, unsure what he’s supposed to say to that, under the weight of Eugenio’s gaze and the increasing heat of the Arizona sun, “glad to hear it.”
“You sound surprised.”
“The Elephants are—I’ve just heard good things about other organizations.”
“I wasn’t really talking about the Elephants, Zach.” And Zach suppresses the urge to glance over his shoulder, to see if Eugenio means someone else, which Eugenio notices, because he laughs a little. “I was stuck in the minors for six years. This all feels like, I don’t know, the best thing that’s happened to me in a while.”
“I mean, you’re gonna have to get pelted by the pitching machine a lot more.”
“Some things are worth the extra effort.”
And Zach swallows, because otherwise he might say something stupid. Like admit how much he doesn’t mind this, even if he should.Objectively. A word that feels more and more out of his reach, compared with the sensation of Eugenio’s wrist in his hands or the echo of his laughter. “Yeah,” he says, finally, resignedly, “if you say so.”
News of the first round of minor-league camp assignments comes that afternoon. Zach doesn’t have to see the list to know who’s being cut or sent down: A few perpetual spring training pitchers now past their usefulness as roster fillers, a bunch of teenagers who’ll probably spend the season in the instructional league. Guys who’ve been kicking around double-A their entire careers and will have to kick around it a bit longer.
Johnson’s name isn’t on the cut list, and he’s practically glowing when he thanks Zach more profusely than Zach really deserves, since all Zach did was tell him not to freak out and get him a job scooping up golf balls.
Eugenio’s name isn’t on the list either, though it’s not that surprising for a guy who spent last year bouncing between triple-A and the majors. It doesn’t stop Eugenio from asking to come by and use Zach’s pool, and if there’s something in particular Zach wants to eat for dinner to celebrate.
“I think Hayek mentioned a cookout later,” Zach says, “if you want to come over.” One he now regrets agreeing to go to, if it means that they’ll be surrounded by teammates.
“Maybe another time then.” Like Zach was the one doing the inviting.
Hayek does cook out that night, with Braxton, Giordano, and Gordon—who rolls in with about fifteen people around him. It’s not so much a cookout as a “we survived” party for the players not sent down and an excuse for those who weren’t ever going to be sent down to get kind of drunk and very loud.
Giordano is the loudest of all of them, blasting something from a set of speakers, pressuring Braxton to dance, as well as Johnson, who for a white guy from Alabama has moves.
“C’mon, Glasser,” Giordano says, “you can’t just sit there.”
Zach has been drinking a beer and trying to determine when he can make an escape, a headache vining around the side of his head and an itch in his ear from having his hearing aid in all day. “I think you’ll find that I can.”
“Leave him alone,” Gordon says, with the kind of authority particular to veteran baseball players. He’s sitting, sipping from a beer, watching various guys dance or wrestle or try to prank each other, shouting occasional encouragements.
