Page 46 of Unwritten Rules
“For me either,” Eugenio admits, and Zach drags him down, into another kiss, and then another. Like he can delay his leaving. Like things can somehow, magically, be how they were.
Until Eugenio pauses him, hand on his collarbone. “C’mon. Let’s go.”
Zach slicks himself up and presses inside, relearning the beads of sweat between Eugenio’s shoulder blades. The way he likes to kiss, during, and suck on Zach’s fingers. The way Zach can hear him, chest against Eugenio’s back, encouragements and pleas and the shape of Zach’s name.
The way that he’s unashamedly loud. The way that Zach lets himself be loud. And there might be a ballplayer staying in the next room, someone getting an earful. Someone who might tell somebody who might tell someone else. Who might spread through the whole fucking gossip-mongering league what they overheard in a hotel room at the All-Star Classic. Something that might follow him back to Miami. To whichever team he plays for next.
And he imagines Eugenio flying back to New York carrying Zach’s fingerprints on his skin, and comes, gripping Eugenio’s sides hard.
“Fuck,” he says, pulling out.
Eugenio reaches for his wrist, grasping it, a wordless request for Zach’s fingers inside him.
“I want to see you.” He rolls them over, Eugenio sprawled across the bed. He gasps when Zach takes him in his mouth, with each demanding press of Zach’s fingers, when Zach swallows around him a few times.
When he crawls up Eugenio’s body, kissing his cheek and then his jaw and then his lips, trapping his cock between them, wet smears on Zach’s belly, and it doesn’t take much more than a few twists of Zach’s fingers for Eugenio to come, overwhelmed, his face buried in Zach’s shoulder.
“We’re still good at that,” Eugenio says, a few minutes later. They’re lying next to each other, neither of them moving, Zach’s hair shellacking itself to his forehead, Eugenio’s skin cool with sweat.
“You worried we wouldn’t be?”
“I don’t know. Maybe? Or that it wouldn’t be as good as I remembered.”
“Was it?” Zach reaches for the pad of hotel stationery sitting on the bedside table, now serving as a coaster under the champagne. “I can take notes. I’m told I’m very coachable.”
Eugenio sits up, reaching for the champagne, and there’s a bright row of bite marks down his back. He twists, looking at them, wincing. “I’m gonna get no end of shit for those in the clubhouse, you know.”
“They’ll probably fade.” Though the idea makes Zach a little sad.
“Yeah.” Eugenio reaches for the champagne, taking a swig and then handing the bottle to Zach, who drinks, and swishes his mouth, and swallows. “I’ve dated around in New York. Men and women. My teammates know—not about us, but about me. The ones tonight did too.”
“Oh.” Because they didn’t say anything or treat Eugenio any differently than anyone else at the table. “I, um, haven’t told anyone other than Morgan.”
“I figured.”
“Did you tell Gordon about us? He said something that made it seem like you did.”
“After we broke up, I was drunk and upset for a couple days. I felt like I was going to suffocate if I didn’t tell someone.”
“I got the sense he hates my guts.”
Eugenio shrugs, not denying it. “He and I still talk. He didn’t tell anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He gets up, going toward the bathroom. “Just, with how things ended, I needed someone to listen.” He studies the door handle, before shrugging again and then going in and shutting the door. He emerges a few minutes later, a towel around his waist, hair dripping down his back and shoulders.
Zach busies himself with clean up, another shower, his fourth of the day, a quick scrub with hotel shampoo that smells like pine-scented air freshener. He comes out to find Eugenio has liberated a few bottles from the minibar and a pair of Zach’s sweatpants from his suitcase, the waistband rolled up.
“There’s ice,” he says, indicating the plastic-lined bucket.
They sit and drink. Eventually Eugenio turns the TV on. He flips through the channels until he finds a cooking show and scrolls through the menu to activate the captions.
Zach settles against him, ear against his chest, watching chefs on the screen demonstrate their knife skills and listening to the rhythm of Eugenio’s heartbeat. A reminder of how he kept a notepad beside Zach’s bed to jot recipes down. The long-buried memory of how he once burned a meal badly enough that Zach’s neighbors called the fire department, who were surprised to show up and find two coughing major leaguers attempting to air out a condo with a box fan.
A commercial comes on. “Come to Miami,” Zach says, after muting the TV. “I mean, what are you doing for the rest of the break?”
Eugenio shrugs. “I was thinking about going to the beach.”
“We’ve got beaches in Miami too.”
“Yeah? That all you got there?”
