Page 42 of Unwritten Rules
“It does.” And Zach swallows around all the things he wants to say. About how it is different, Eugenio next to him, the world a distant ocean, all the things he’s feeling but doesn’t quite have the capacity to put into words. And so says only, “It does.”
Chapter Thirteen
July, Present Day
After Eugenio leaves the table, Zach sets a timer on his phone for four minutes. The wall separating this part of the restaurant from the other side of the dining area is translucent; he watches silhouettes through it like shadow theater. And he regulates his breathing for the last minute of the timer, seconds erasing themselves, at once too quickly and too slow.
There’s a set of bathrooms near the kitchen entrance, each marked with aW.C.in fancy script. He pauses outside the door, wondering if he should knock. Wondering if he should go back down the narrow hallway, out into the warm Cincinnati night, to summon a rideshare and to text Eugenio that this was a mistake. Another apology he owes in a long ledger of them.
A server comes out of the kitchen carrying a tray of food, the doors swinging behind her as she negotiates her way into the dining area. And something about it, even if Zach’s doing nothing more than standing in the hallway outside a restroom, makes him open the door.
Inside, Eugenio’s leaning on the counter, scrolling through his phone. “I thought you chickened out.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Eugenio seems to absorb this, his eyebrows raised, and whatever conversation they need to have they probably shouldn’t in a restaurant bathroom. Especially not when Zach’s hands feel suddenly empty, the distance between them insurmountable.
“Is the door locked?” Eugenio asks.
Zach confirms it is, jiggling the handle. It’s a small bathroom, small enough that, leaning against the door and with Eugenio against the sink, there isn’t much room to maneuver.
He doesn’t know if he should move first, or wait for Eugenio, and so they stand for a minute, looking at each other, before Eugenio says, “Come here,” and tugs Zach to him by the placket of his shirt.
Up close he looks a little older, the creases they all get from sun exposure beginning to form around his eyes. He’s tan, the kind of tan that comes from playing in an open stadium in the midsummer heat. There’s a scar Zach didn’t notice earlier, a nearly invisible one at his hairline, maybe from taking a bad slide and having his batting helmet cut him.
But he kisses like he did before, teeth sharp against Zach’s lips, demanding as he sucks Zach’s tongue into his mouth, as he reaches and tugs Zach’s shirt from the waistband of his pants. Like he did years ago and with new immediacy, hands on Zach’s ass, encouraging him forward, Zach’s thighs interposed between his.
He yanks at the buttons on Zach’s shirt. One of the small ones at his collar skids away before Zach undoes the others. He bites at the juncture between Zach’s neck and shoulders, hard enough to leave a mark. And Zach might have to cover it with a band-aid when he gets back to the clubhouse, the edges visible from the collar of any Miami-appropriate shirt. He licks over it, grabs at Zach through the cloth of his pants, a sudden sharp squeeze to his thigh.
“Your hair’s gotten long,” Eugenio says, and tugs on a handful of it.
“Do you mind?”
“Clearly, I don’t.” He tugs at it again, unsubtle, and Zach has no idea how he’s going to walk out of here without everyone in the restaurant knowing what they’ve been doing, and maybe that’s been Eugenio’s plan all along.
“What do you want?” Zach asks.
Eugenio looks like he’s about to say something before pressing at Zach’s shoulder, sending him to his knees.
Zach rubs his face against where he’s hard in his pants, earning another impatient hair-tug, and undoes Eugenio’s belt, unbuttoning and unzipping him, leaving his shorts up. He licks through the line of hair leading to his waistband, cups Eugenio through his underwear, making his stomach muscles tense, his hips buck up.
There’s a squeeze on Zach’s forearm, once, twice, and Zach looks up. “We don’t really have time for finesse, Zach.”
“Finesse.” Zach rolls the word around in his mouth, hoping to make Eugenio laugh the way it used to.
Instead, he says, “Finesse can wait until later.”
As if they’ll even get alater.
Eugenio tugs down his own shorts, one-handed; his cock is leaking against his belly. He urges Zach forward. It’s rough, insistent, wet, Eugenio’s hips braced by Zach’s arm across them, the hand in Zach’s hair familiar with the limits of Zach’s breathing. He doesn’t press further than what Zach can take, just exhales audibly when Zach pulls off and spits, working a glob of it with his fist, the callus on his thumb a counterpoint.
Another set of squeezes to his arm, these harder, and Eugenio is flushed, color up on his cheeks, an impression of teeth on his lower lip. “Suck me.”
And Zach is torn between wondering if someone is listening in the hallway and not caring, so long as he can stay there kneeling in the spotlight of Eugenio’s attention.
Zach leans forward, applying himself to the skin of Eugenio’s hip, hard suction right at the constellation of birthmarks there. A challenge, especially when he insinuates two knuckles up behind Eugenio’s balls and presses, making him pulse.
“Zach, unless you want to walk out of here with my come in your eyelashes—” Eugenio gasps when Zach rolls his knuckles, unrelenting and unfair, and takes him shallowly in his mouth.
