Page 44 of Unwritten Rules
Yeah, Zach sends back.
She responds immediately, another row of question marks, this one bordering on absurd in number.
Yeah, Zach says again, because he’s not going to justify his decisions, especially not in the middle of making what’s probably the wrong one.
If Eugenio decides to come around.
Zach’s text with his room number is marked as read, but he hasn’t heard anything since they parted ways in the restaurant hallway. So he sits, staring at the beige-on-beige striped wallpaper, considering whether Eugenio somehow got a better offer between the restaurant and getting here. Zach could just go to sleep on the tundra of his hotel bed and go back to Miami, to the emptiness of his apartment, to play in a half-full stadium.
There’s a movement, the click of the electronic lock on the door disengaging. Light from the hallway slices in, a brief cut into the room. Eugenio stands in the doorway, like he’s debating if he’s going to actually take the last step.
It’s possible that, if other players are staying in the hotel, someone will see them together and make something of it. It’s possible that, if given time to reconsider, Eugenio will turn around and walk up the dizzying hotel corridor, leaving Zach to look at the outline of his shoulders, his impatience at the slow elevator.
Zach ushers him inside.
But they don’t make it much farther into the room; he crowds Eugenio against the closed door, tucking his face into his neck, taking a long inhale. He smells like his new cologne, like his life after Oakland. “I didn’t think you were actually going to come.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t sure either,” he says, when Zach pulls away. He looks around the room, and Zach follows his gaze to the big bed occupying most of it, linens neat except for the dent where Zach was sitting. There’s a wood-panel headboard, a couch against one wall. Artistic lamps.
“You want a tour?” Zach asks.
“No.”
“How about one of just the bed?” Zach grabs the bottle of champagne from the chiller, showing it to Eugenio like a sommelier at a restaurant.
Eugenio takes it by the neck, peeling back the foil and untwisting the little wire cap. He has to work the cork out. It pops, overflowing onto his hand. He takes a swig directly from the bottle, champagne running down his lips and chin, drops lingering at his shirt collar.
“You got some on your shirt.” Zach points to where it glistens on Eugenio’s neck. “Better take it off.”
Eugenio does, and Zach saw him in the clubhouse hours before. But it’s different, standing here, Eugenio shirtless, his belt unlooped. Knowing that he’ll have to leave after. That he’ll go back to his glamorous real life and Zach to his disappointing one, and they’ll see each other when they see each other.
Eugenio reaches for the bottle again and drinks, mouth wrapped obviously around it.
And Zach watches him, with the kind of focused attention involved in consciously putting something to memory, an image he won’t have to conceal or erase later.
“C’mere.” Eugenio sets the bottle on the bedside table, motioning for Zach, who leans down to kiss him. He also starts to say something against Zach’s neck, lips buzzing on his skin, before catching himself.
And Zach didn’t bother to put his hearing aid back in after he showered. “I couldn’t hear whatever that was.”
Eugenio slides his hand up Zach’s arm, up his shoulder and the tendons of his neck, across the ridge of his collarbone, resting his fingers there. “I said I need to go soon.” Like he didn’t just get there.
Zach leans down, letting himself be pulled back onto the bed. Stripping off his shirt, his pants, until he’s lying naked, Eugenio down to boxers. He has a new tattoo, an outline of California on his ribs.
Zach traces his fingers over it. “That must have hurt. Being so close to the bone or whatever.”
Eugenio doesn’t answer, just continues running his mouth along the side of Zach’s neck, licking over the mark he left earlier, now mottled purple in the shape of his teeth.
“California?” Zach asks.
“Why do you think, Zach? And yes, it hurt like a motherfucker.”
“Oh.” Though something in his chest unknots, knowing that Eugenio didn’t just walk away from him the way he did the unsold furniture abandoned in his condo, things left on the West Coast to gather dust.
Zach kisses him instead, ducking down, aligning their bodies. He didn’t expect them to still fit together, but they do, like the parts of a lock. He kisses Eugenio like they didn’t back at the restaurant, no urgency to it. Like he doesn’t have to get on a plane tomorrow and fly back to his real life. Kisses him and touches his sides, the thin skin at his wrists, runs his finger under the waistband of his boxers but doesn’t go further.
He moves to mouth at the California tattoo, expecting his skin to taste somehow different, when Eugenio pulls back. “Hey, I don’t know if being together like this is a good idea.”
“It probably isn’t,” Zach says.
