Page 30 of Unwritten Rules
Chapter Ten
July, Present Day
It’s an hour until they have to go onto the field for the All-Star Classic, and they’re getting changed side by side in the clubhouse in Cincinnati. After Zach finished his interview, the social media people asked him to stay—to give Eugenio a focal point just off camera. And so he stood there awkwardly while Eugenio looked at him and answered questions about him, trying not to sink into the manicured grass of the field.
The clubhouse is a chaos of different uniforms. Zach strips down next to Eugenio and catalogs the exact features of the stall they have his stuff in—jersey, batting gloves, uniform pants, tape—and the details of the uncarpeted floor. And not at Eugenio, who has shucked his pregame clothing, even though not looking feels more conspicuous than looking.
“Thanks for covering for me with that question,” Zach says. “The one about how we met. I didn’t hear what they asked.”
“Sure, not a big deal.”
And it’s almost like Oakland. Enough that, for a second, Zach expects to be pulling on the familiar Elephants green instead of Swordfish teal, Eugenio next to him in classic Gothams pinstripes that emphasize the power in his back and thighs.
“That teal,” Eugenio says, when Zach’s got his jersey on. “Wow.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Because Zach knows he looks practically incandescent, even with a South Florida tan. “Weather’s better in Miami, though. Compared to here.”
“Yeah, I hear the weather’s better. The food’s better. Drinks are better. Everyone’s hot.”
“Sure.” Because it’s true compared to Cincinnati, Baltimore, Indiana. Miami is a great city, except for its baseball team, its constant humidity, its distance from every place not in Florida. Like Oakland. Or New York.
“You seeing anyone?” Eugenio says it no more quietly or loudly than he’s said anything else, volume carefully modulated. Casual, in a way that they aren’t. Surprising, given that he has Zach’s number and could have asked that any of a hundred times in the past two years, and not in a packed clubhouse when Zach hasn’t yet done up his belt.
Zach looks around, in case any of the other players are listening in, but no one’s looking their way. Considers how he would respond to his teammates, if they bother asking, rather than with the hope that Eugenio is asking him for a particular reason. That he’s interested in Zach’s response for more than just small talk.
Zach’s torn between saying that he’s not seeing anyone—hasn’t, really, since he left Oakland—and not wanting to come off as perpetually lonely, stuck in a cold apartment in the Florida humidity. “No—” his mind trips over the words, his throat goes dry “—no one serious. Why?”
Eugenio doesn’t answer. Instead he snags his drink from the floor and walks away. “See you after the game.”
And then leaves Zach standing there, like it’s a forgone conclusion that he’ll go to dinner with him, even though Zach hasn’t technically saidyes.
Zach thought the most difficult part of the day would be playing in a screaming stadium, on national TV, as part of what’s likely his first and only shot at being an all-star. Now his heart rate kicks up, from nervousness. From anticipation. From a dreaded kind of hope, one he smothered the last time Eugenio walked away.
All things he can’t process right now, so he finishes changing. And if he sticks his head into the jerseys hanging in his stall, ostensibly looking for something but actually just recovering his breath, no one can tell he’s freaking out. Probably.
It’s still a few hours before the game. His parents text, first demanding a phone call and then a tour of everything, and he has to toggle between showing them the park and its all-star trappings, and seeing them talk.
“You’re going to watch the game later?” He feels a little silly as he says it, like a kid begging his folks to come to a tee ball game.
“Of course,” his mom says. She sends him a picture of the two of them already wearing Glasser jerseys, one from Oakland, one the black-on-black Miami alternate jerseys that make the name hard to read.
“I wish you all had come out here.” He winces, because it’s an argument he doesn’t want to have in public, not with them on speakerphone. He offered to pay for their plane tickets, their hotel. But his mom said they don’t want to be the kind of parents who took their son’s money, something nonnegotiable, even if he can spare it. “A lot of other players are here with their families.”
His mom is making that face, one that precedes a disagreement. “If you met someonenice—”
And it’s another old argument, one he also doesn’t want to have in public. That he hasn’t met anyone in Miami or Oakland who he can introduce them to. Someone he can show off to the baseball world and all the people at his parents’ shul.
“Here, they have an exhibit on the history of the Blues.” He points his phone camera at the one they installed in the area beyond the clubhouse, zooming in on various parts of it, rather than on whatever expression he’s wearing at having disappointed them. Again.
After, there’s not much else to do, so he hangs out with Gordon, who’s still in Oakland, still hitting like he always does, nearing the end of his contract, and when he retires, they’ll probably retire his jersey number. He looks no different than he did when they played together, though he must be nearly forty. He’s there with his entire family and possibly every friend he’s ever met, and he asks Zach what he’s doing after the game.
“Morales invited me out with, uh, a group, I guess,” Zach says.
“Huh, didn’t think you all were still friendly after everything in Oakland.”
Zach hasn’t talked to him outside the Oakland group-chat in years, but Eugenio probably has. It’s possible Eugenio told him the story, the whole story, about what happened, the way Zach did Morgan, when he finally broke down and called her. “He invited me out.” Though it sounds defensive.
Gordon gives ahmmat that, the kind that veteran guys seem to perfect when they hit thirty though Zach can’t really do that convincingly. One that speaks to disapproval without outright saying it. One that indicates Gordon probably knows more about what happened than he can say in a clubhouse. “Well, if it doesn’t work out, I’m sure you’ll find something to do.”
