Page 4 of Unwritten Rules
“I could say the same thing to you. You’re up, what, fifteen pounds?”
“Twenty,” he admits.
She pokes him in the arm like she’s expecting him to be wearing a muscle suit under his clothes. “Wow, what’d you do?”
“Picked up heavy stuff and put it back down, so that my team’s strength and conditioning coach didn’t yell at me for slacking ass in the offseason.”
“You could have just asked me for pointers. Though I guess you did okay on your own.”
They sit and talk for a while about their winters. She shows him pictures of her wedding, which Zach attended dateless—despite his parents’ cajoling to bring someone—and various underwater photos taken during her honeymoon trip to Fiji. She fiddles with the silicone band she’s wearing on her ring finger, gray with a tiny rainbow emblem printed on it. It must be recent, because she doesn’t yet have a tan line when she adjusts it.
“What’d you do?” she asks after he’s seen the tenth photo of a nurse shark.
“Mostly saw my family, guys from back home. Did my throwing at the high school near my parents’ house. You know, normal ballplayer shit.”
“Jeez, Glasser, anyone ever tell you that you need to have some fun? Though I heard arbitration went well for you.”
“It was, uh, contentious.” Zach glances around. Because of course Oakland made him argue for every penny above his base salary in front of a panel of arbiters, rather than just giving him the pay bump most guys get once they have the service time to qualify for one.
“Yikes,” Morgan says, though it occurs to Zach he’s making twice whatever the rookies are and five or six times what she is as a coach. “You get a chance to meet the new guy?” She nods over at where Eugenio’s sitting, already in the midst of a card game.
“Yeah.” He tries, and fails, not to sigh as he says it. “We’ve met.”
“Oh, it’s like that?”
“I looked up his numbers. He’s pretty good.” Zach can’t actually say “I came in excited about finally securing a roster spot and now there’s some guy here to take it” without sounding like an asshole, and so he says, “Tell me how I’m gonna keep all this weight on,” instead and listens as Morgan details her plans for their strength training for the season.
“Seriously, though, if you’re gonna do shit like putting on that much muscle, call me,” she says, after telling him about some seminar she took on dry needling.
“It’s my normal offseason stuff.” Though that’s a lie. Because Zach spent his time going from the gym to his parents’ house, and then using the gym to escape his parents’ house, and then using the gym to escape the inside of his under-decorated apartment and the feeling of not knowing what to do with himself when he wasn’t playing baseball. A restlessness that evaporated in the dry Arizona air as soon as he landed.
“I do know what I’m doing,” she says. “Just in case you’re paying some scam artist without a degree who tells you that platelet therapy or howling at the moon is gonna make you hit good.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not. I just didn’t want to bug you with the wedding and everything.”
She looks around at the room, at the clusters of guys greeting one another, talking over each other, jostling, one-upping. No one comes over to say hi to Zach, which isn’t that strange because he’s already seen most of them, either at the ballpark or at the rental complex a lot of the team is staying at. But no one comes over to see Morgan either. Something noticeable even if she’s clearly pretending not to notice.
“Really,” he adds, “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Okay, I guess I can forgive you.”
“Thanks for being all magnanimous and shit.” Which makes Morgan laugh and punch him in the arm.
Eugenio brings him breakfast the next day. He’s out in the bullpen early, greeting Zach when he arrives, and they stretch side by side in the early morning cool. Whatever first-day nerves he had dissipated, because he’s quieter than he was the day before, grunting vaguely at Zach while he stretches, taking occasional sips from a cup of coffee.
“I’m not really a morning person,” Eugenio says after a while.
“Sure,” Zach says. What ballplayer is, given night games and long travel schedules?
“I brought food if you want it.” Eugenio nods to a paper bag sitting up on a shelf next to a tangle of green canvas stretch-out straps. Inside there’s something encased in aluminum foil, a few packets of hot sauce, a pile of napkins already absorbing a puddle of orange grease.
“You didn’t have to.” Because Zach assumed this was one of those things guys promise to do and don’t follow through on.
“I said I would.”
The foil is still warm, meaning Eugenio hasn’t been there much longer than he has. Zach unwraps it and takes a bite. “It’s good.”
“You thought it wouldn’t be?” And the way Eugenio says it is a little familiar, like they’ve known each other for more than a day. “It’s got eggs, potatoes, cheese, machaca—it’s like rehydrated beef.”
