Page 47 of Unwritten Rules
“I hear the weather’s better. The food’s better. The drinks are better.” And Zach leans up to kiss him at the point of his jaw. “Everyone’s hot. You’ll fit right in.”
“You sure you have space for me?” He smiles as he says it, and Zach reaches for his phone.
“Here, I’ll buy your ticket.” Like it’s the money that would stop him. “We’ll spend a couple days in bed. You can pick the restaurants.”
Eugenio takes the phone from him gently and puts it down on the nightstand. “You’re making a lot of promises. Ones we’ve made before. And if things haven’t changed with you, then you know why this isn’t a good idea.”
“Fuck, I know, I know.” Zach takes a sip of his drink and then another, swirling the diminishing ice cubes against the walls of the glass. Whatever clock that started when he first saw Eugenio in the clubhouse feels like it’s about to chime. He’ll wake up tomorrow and drag himself back to Miami, to disappear into the pleasures of the city—its weather, its food, its people. A place where he feels like he’s already disappearing. “I’m sorry,” he says, finally. “I figured it would be easier with, I don’t know, time. Distance.”
“Is it?”
“No.”
“I’m not going to go to Miami for the break, Zach.” And Eugenio’s voice is kind, making it somehow worse.
“Yeah, it was worth a shot.” Even if he knew what the answer was going to be before he asked, something as predetermined as the Swordfish not making the playoffs, as any other bad outcome he doesn’t have the power to change.
The bed is a mess, sheets damp, crooked, bedspread kicked to the floor. It’s also at least ten feet from the window, under vents pumping cold air-conditioned air, under the staring blank of the ceiling, close to a cut of light from the hallway. All things that, in another place and time, might mean Eugenio paced restlessly in front of the window, or got up and scrolled through his phone on the couch, unable to sleep.
“Are you gonna stay here?” Zach asks a little desperately.
“No.” Though Eugenio is yawning, “I should get back to my hotel.” He puts his glass down on the nightstand, and then begins scavenging on the floor for his discarded clothing.
“Really, I didn’t mean that I want you to leave.”
Eugenio’s shoulders stiffen at that. “Please don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Be nice to me. Ask me to stay. It’ll make things harder for both of us.”
“Sorry.” And something about it makes Eugenio wince.
Zach considers the bed, the rapidly cooling sheets. How the room confuses space with luxury, everything too spread out, Eugenio standing on the other side, pulling on his slacks. The dull game they just played, how he’ll fly back to Miami to play equally dull games in front of bored spectators. To water his plants and scroll through his phone and count down the days waiting for the kinds of injuries that beset old catchers to come and take him too.
“I wasn’t going to come to the game,” Eugenio says, “but I wanted to see how you were. To see if I could be done with all of this. But things haven’t changed.”
“No, they haven’t. We’re still good together.” And Zach feels like something’s expanding in his chest, whatever’s been constricting him for the past year loosening by a notch. “If you want to give it another shot.”
Eugenio doesn’t say anything for a long second, just stands there and looks at Zach, his expression shuttered. “Things haven’t changed.” He sounds defeated by it, or worse, resigned. “If you still wouldn’t tell anyone about us.”
“I think you think this stuff is supposed to be easy for me—that I can tell my parents or my teammates and expect them to accept it.”
“I didn’t say it was easy.” Eugenio’s voice is even, though his hands curl a little at his sides. “I just said they haven’t changed. And they haven’t. I stopped hoping they would a long time ago.”
It hurts to hear, maybe more than if Eugenio yelled at him; hurts more when Eugenio stuffs his socks into his pants pocket, shoving his bare feet into his shoes. And he kisses Zach’s cheek before he leaves. “See you in a few weeks.”
“What?” Zach says.
“Check the schedule.” And he leaves, pulling the door softly shut behind him, like he doesn’t want guests in the surrounding rooms to know he was there.
Chapter Fourteen
April, Three Years Ago
Despite its name, the Elephants Coliseum resembles its Roman counterpart only if you look at it quickly as you’re driving past—possibly with an unwashed windshield. Baseball’s only remaining “concrete doughnut” ballpark sits overlooking a scenic set of parking lots, the Nimitz Freeway cutting off any real view of the water. It is, in the words of aNew York Timesreporter, the game’s last real dive bar.
Zach’s mother, spoiled by the cozy bricked confines of Camden Yards in Baltimore and having forgotten watching the Senators play at RFK Stadium in DC, summarized it best when she first saw the park in person. “Wow, that’s ugly.”
