Page 98 of Unwritten Rules
I’ve been looking at arbitration stuff,Womack says. Zach’s expecting more details and sends back a set of question marks when none come.
Just working up to asking a rude question.
You wanna know why my salary got cut my fifth year
Because the Elephants gave him an insult of a salary offer, one his mother, his agent, and anyone with common sense told him to decline, and he took it. The full twenty percent pay decrease, the largest decrease allowable under the collective bargaining agreement. His playing time went up, not that it really mattered.Long story short if your agent tells you not to sign something don’t.
There’s a delay, the message marked as read, and he can see Womack begin typing and then reconsider. And there’s no real way to explain that Zach took a pay cut because he wanted to stay in Oakland, and wanted to stay in Oakland because of Eugenio, at least not over text message.
Zach toggles to the browser on his phone, pulling up the numbers from Womack’s last start—a three-hit gem of a game that the Swordfish still managed to lose through sheer incompetence.You surviving ok down there?
Yeah, it is what it is. Pinelli’s got me working with some of the other pitchers on their mechanics. Don’t know if it helps but I guess it can’t hurt.
That happened to me my fourth year playing. Took a while to see it as a compliment.And Zach tries to imagine how his life would have turned out if Courtland and D’Spara didn’t order him to fix Johnson’s habit of tipping or to work with Eugenio on his framing.Use it at your arb hearing. They like that leadership stuff.
Yeah, we’ll see.
They’ll make you feel greedy just for stating your value. It sucks. Don’t let them get to you
He pauses writing, wondering if he should put Womack in touch with Eugenio, what that might say about their relationship other than that they’re friends. He’s been practicing with Henry for what to say—to Womack, to Johnson, to other former teammates.
And he takes a breath and then another, naming all the fears he has: that Womack could stop talking to him or, worse, try to convince him he’s somehow mistaken, the way players subtly, and then not so subtly, invite him to Bible study groups. That Womack is unlikely to do any of that. That Zach could probably survive it if he does.
When you’re up playing the Gothams next month,Zach writes,I’ll buy you dinner and tell you the whole story about my contract.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
A month into Zach’s tenure with the Union, Eugenio sends him a real estate listing for a loft two floors up from his that one of his neighbors is subletting while they’re out of the country.
“Are you sure?” Zach says.
“I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t. It’s a temporary lease. We’ll see how things go.”
The media has caught on to them being friends. There are pictures, sometimes, in the local tabloids, always with the implications they’re about to go pick up women together or, once, have a threesome with an actress neither of them knows.
Maritza corners him about it one morning. “I thought you said you were boring.” She holds up a picture on her phone of the two of them out, Eugenio with his arm around Zach in a corner booth.
“I didn’t say my friends were boring.”
“Morales is definitely not boring.” And her cheeks go a little red.
Zach nearly falls down laughing when he tells Eugenio later, who also goes a little red. “I told her you and Brito should do a photoshoot. Like, you both in pinstripes. It’d sell magazines.”
“Brito?Really? I didn’t think you were into pitchers.”
“Yeah, well,” Zach says, rubbing the back of his neck, but he laughs too.
He plans to move into Eugenio’s building the first weekend in September, his meager suitcases supplemented by his belongings from storage. His parents insist on driving up to help, despite him saying that he can just hire movers. For once, they accept his offer to put them up in a hotel. Which was an argument or at least the beginning of one, until his mom said, “I worry that people think we’re taking from you,” with the same expression she got after meetings with his teachers when he was in school, her eyes shimmering. Something that made him sit down, heavily, before assuring her that no one at the hotel would think anything of it.
Now it’s early evening. Eugenio and he both had day games, the Union losing, the Gothams winning, though neither by a wide margin. “My parents’ll be here on Saturday,” Zach says.
Eugenio pauses where he’s eating, setting down his fork, and then going to pull a glass of water from the sink, Zach following. “I’ll swing by Monday, I guess. Once you’re settled in.” Eugenio’s voice is tight, shoulders rising, expression carefully shuttered.
“That’s not why I was telling you.” Zach takes the glass of water from Eugenio’s hands and sets it behind him on the counter. “I wanted to know if you were going to be around on Sunday, either before or after the game, so you could see them. If you want to.”
“Oh.” Eugenio looks genuinely surprised at that, his eyebrows up above the frames of his glasses.
“I was gonna tell them on Saturday. Um, to give them some time to get used to the idea. That I’m gay. That I’m seeing someone. I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to mention you.”
