Page 33 of Unwritten Rules
“Oh.” Zach’s pulse kicks up. The wall partitioning them from the rest of the dining room is thin, thin enough that it would be easy to hear them. Especially if they’re going to rehash the last conversation they had years ago, like they could pick up right where they left off, closing the immeasurable distance separating them, even as Eugenio sits next to him, thigh pressed against his.
“Let me just get rid of them first,” Eugenio says. It takes a while, because there’s no such thing as a short goodbye among drunk baseball players who only see each other every few months. They leave silence in their wake, the service staff having delivered an itemized check to Eugenio, then telling them to take as long as they like.
Eugenio smells like the bourbon he’s been drinking, like his new cologne, and he doesn’t move over to give Zach more room, even in their now-vacated booth. Zach tries to remember the last date he was on, where they did more than made sure the other person matched their online profile or actually sat and talked after the bill came, and can’t. Something they used to do in Oakland; something he missed without quite realizing it.
“I should apologize,” Zach blurts, sudden enough to make Eugenio raise his eyebrows.
Because it’s not an apology. Not anything approaching an apology. But the words that he’s rehearsed all die in his mouth. The ones he thought about on the weeklong road trip he took from Oakland to Miami, his stuff in a U-Haul, a flat of plants sitting on the passenger seat. The ones he thinks when he sits on the beach and watches the calm Florida Atlantic, wishing for the cold harsh spray of the Pacific.
Eugenio waves a hand as if he’s brushing crumbs off a table. “I didn’t invite you so I could squeeze an ‘I’m sorry’ out of you.”
“What are we doing then?”
“I thought it was obvious.” Eugenio traces his finger around the rim of his glass.
“Tell me anyway.”
He leans in, breath warm on Zach’s neck, close enough that Zach can feel vibrations against his skin. “We’re here. Celebrating together. Unless—” Eugenio drops a hand down below the table, onto Zach’s thigh, moving upward. “Unless you’d rather just go back to your room. Have a quiet night in.”
Zach cycles through all the reasons this isn’t a good idea: that they’re in public, that they’re going back to their respective cities, that it’s worse to remind himself of what he’s missing than to not have it. All of which feels like ignorable noise, like restaurant chatter heard through a permeable wall, with Eugenio there watching him expectantly, teeth hooking his lower lip. “Did we pay? Can we pay? Let’s go.”
Eugenio laughs that laugh of his, and Zach wants to feel it against his chest again, if only for a few hours. “Yeah, Zach. I’ve already paid.”
He slugs down the rest of his drink, standing. “They have single-stall bathrooms. Meet me at the one closer to the kitchen. But give it a few minutes.” And he walks away before Zach can respond.
Chapter Eleven
March, Three Years Ago
Spring training is spring training. They play under progressively warmer Arizona skies. They run and practice fielding. Their hitting coach insists everyone takes bunting practice, and Zach spends an hour seeing if there’s a pace at which he can run that their trainers will deem too slow for a catcher. There isn’t.
Every few days, more and more players get reassigned to minor-league camp, until it’s beginning to look like an opening-day roster, plus a few guys the coaches want to get a second, third, eighteenth look at.
And when Zach gets to the bullpen in the mornings, Frannie is there, running drills, discussing the finer points of catching with D’Spara. Eugenio gripes to Zach at one point that he’s even getting there before Marti, before remembering he and Zach aren’t really on speaking terms. It stings, made worse when Eugenio starts asking Frannie the same kind of questions he used to ask Zach about game-calling, his back to him in deliberate exclusion.
Zach gets a loyalty card from the coffee place, one of those old-fashioned paper ones that the barista punches holes in, the kind that promises one free coffee for every ten purchased, even if he’s only buying for himself now. Something the barista, whose name tag reads Aiden, mentions.
“We’re doing an open mic night tonight,” Aiden says one morning. He has chipped nail polish, the same set of bracelets; his eyelashes are dark and inviting behind his glasses. “If you want to come by for it, that’d be cool.”
And Zach shouldn’t spend a few minutes in his truck, sitting there, head on the steering wheel, trying to remember to breathe, like there’s a belt constricting his chest, something lodged in his airway that he tries to cough out, making himself light-headed.
Because the guy probably says the same thing to every regular who comes in, and didn’t invite Zach for any particular reason, even though he tries to engage Zach in longer and longer small talk, and occasionally throws in a free pastry with his order. Even if he looks at Zach with an unambiguous appreciation, one too obvious for a coffee shop in the early morning. And it’s definitely not because he can tell that Zach is—
He FaceTimes Morgan, who picks up on the second ring. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” Though his lungs are tight, his pulse excited at his temple, his vision a little blurry. “Um, could you, I don’t know, tell me some shit about training. Even if it’s dry needling.”
“Where are you?”
“Sitting in a parking lot of a strip mall. I’m fine. I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine.”
He doesn’t, even to his own hearing, voice raspy and slightly panicked. Because Eugenio knew, without Zach having to say anything, knew in a way Zach thought he wasn’t being obvious about, and he checks his own reflection in the rearview mirror, studying his face for some sign that Aiden picked up on too.
“Zach,” she says, when he hasn’t responded.
“Can I not talk about it right now?”
