Page 25 of Unwritten Rules
“I’m okay either way. Mostly I keep them on, but, like, this movie doesn’t really hinge on understanding the dialogue.”
“Really, it’s fine.” Eugenio gets up a few minutes later to go do something in the kitchen, leaving Zach’s right side cold. Zach’s phone doesn’t flash an alert, but there’s a message on his home screen, Giordano, wondering where he went, and then a video sent to the team group chat of Johnson chugging a beer through his own shirt.
“Looks like we’re missing a good time,” Eugenio says, when Zach shows it to him. “We could go back down.”
“Do you want to?” Though he doesn’t, not with Eugenio warm and laughing next to him, but doesn’t know how to say it without it coming out obvious.
“That needs some time to bake.”
“It smells amazing.”
Eugenio has a few freckles on his cheeks that Zach hasn’t noticed before, a scar at his temple, another bisecting one of his eyebrows. He’s wearing gray sweatpants, and Zach doesn’t glance down at his lap or at the way his arms test the confines of his T-shirt sleeves.
“I mean, I figured I kind of owed you something,” Eugenio says. “You know, with all the extra drills. And because I know that...” He trails off.
And Zach’s heart kicks up in his chest, the way it does in a close game when he’s up to bat, sweat blooming between his shoulder blades, not from heat from the oven or from where he’s pressed against Eugenio on this armchair they’re calling a couch.
“It must kind of suck that they’re making you help me,” Eugenio continues. “If they end up with only one of us on the roster.”
Zach doesn’t know how to respond to that. Because it does suck for him, being guaranteed a roster spot and then possibly having it denied. For Eugenio, having to displace him in order to make it. For whatever other catcher the team might slot into the roster: one of the ones from double-A or a late-in-spring-training free agency signing.
But it’s different, having it out there, something actually articulated between them and not just hanging over Zach’s head. He shouldn’t be surprised that Eugenio knows; he’s smart, and even so, you don’t have to be a genius to do roster-moves math, no matter how much front offices like to pretend that you do.
“You weren’t expecting me to actually say it,” Eugenio says. “I’m not nervous about it, when I’m at the ballpark. Or I am but it’s easier to forget. And then I go back to my place and I can’t think about anything else.”
“So you decided to come over and make me fancy dessert instead?”
“You did invite me.”
He asked Zach, when they first met, what he could do to make it easier for Zach to understand him. And Zach watches the drag of Eugenio’s mouth, his tongue against his lower lip, how his eyes look, images from the TV flickering across his glasses, the way they’re sitting close, like they’re breathing the same breath. It would be easy to lean and close the distance between them, to slide his hand between Eugenio’s waistband and shirt. To see what his mouth tastes like, if he has that same singular focus when he’s naked in Zach’s bed.
“You should...” Zach begins. His tongue is dry, his throat, from the heat from the oven, from what’s pouring off Eugenio, up close, in the dark. “You should probably go check on that. I haven’t used that oven before. It could burn or something.”
Eugenio gets up from next to him, thigh brushing against Zach’s as he does. Zach picks up his beer; the condensation is wet against the back of his neck. He cracks the window, night air blowing in.
“It’s ready,” Eugenio says. “It just has to cool off. So we have some time.”
“It might cool down faster outside.” And Zach must imagine the flicker of disappointment on Eugenio’s face before Eugenio picks up the pan, wrapping it with a dishtowel to insulate his hands from the heat.
They eat at the picnic tables on the shared patio, illuminated by floodlights that Zach hopes don’t attract stinging Arizona wildlife or anyone from their bullpen prowling for late-night dessert. Their teammates have, unsurprisingly, left a bunch of stuff out on the tables, bottles of ketchup, a pile of napkins, some of which blow around like ghostly white leaves.
It’s cool out, and Eugenio complains about it until Zach lends him a long-sleeve shirt to wear over his T-shirt, too long in the arms and tight in his shoulders, one of the team branded ones with Zach’s name stretched across his back.
“This is really fucking good,” Zach says around a mouthful.
“Thanks. Though it’s better for breakfast.”
“You gonna leave me the leftovers?” Though at the rate they’re eating, there won’t be many. “You should, uh, bring this around. I know the other guys on the team would appreciate it.”
“All the other guys aren’t teaching me how to frame, Zach.”
Most guys in the clubhouse just call him “Glasser,” a few shortening it to “Glass.” Something that feels different when it’s just the two of them together. “It’s not a big deal.”
“It kind of is.”
Zach doesn’t really flush, but he feels his cheeks go warm, and he looks away from where Eugenio’s eyes are magnified by his glasses or his efficient hands are resting on the table. It would be easy enough to reach across, to rub his thumb over the ridge of his knuckles, an unsubtle invitation. To imagine that that is something Eugenio would want, that Zach can have. To imagine what it would be like if Eugenio meant any of the things he was saying the way Zach wants to hear them. Easy enough, except for the span of the table sitting between them, one laden with all the reasons he can’t.
“Thanks,” Zach says, after, when he’s standing in his half-lit kitchen, watching Eugenio clean up. “You’re pretty good at that.”
