Page 43 of Unwritten Rules
He presses against Zach’s arm where he has it across his hips, before Zach releases him, letting him push deeper with the kind of urgency that will mean a sore throat. And he tugs hard at the hair on Eugenio’s thigh and doesn’t release him until he comes.
“Fuck.” Zach pulls off, wiping his mouth, Eugenio letting him at the sink to gulp a palmful of water and spit it out. “That was—fuck.”
Zach’s voice is shot, and he’s unmistakable in the bathroom mirror, hair wild, lips swollen. Eugenio doesn’t look much different, his mouth red from Zach’s teeth, and Zach kisses him, slowly, petting the exposed skin at his hip. Like they can spend time here without the world intruding like it always does.
“Are you gonna—” Zach says, pulling back, gesturing with the circle of his fist.
Eugenio shakes his head. “Lean against the door.”
Zach does, undoing his pants, easing them down, and in the bathroom mirror, he looks flushed and desperate. “You’re really not going to help?” he asks, a little incredulously. “I could do this on my own.”
“Could you?” He takes Zach’s hand, spitting twice into Zach’s cupped palm. “There, I helped.” Though he’s also watching Zach watch himself, jaw a little slack.
It’s no different than what Zach would be doing in his hotel room, except for when he closes his eyes, Eugenio says, “Don’t.” Except for Eugenio breathing next to him, hand skimming over Zach’s stomach, into the opened vee of his pants.
Except for when Zach gets close, Eugenio reaches and stills his wrist, thumb and forefinger circling it. “Wait. Don’t you remember how to be patient?” He says it teasingly, like they’ve just been separated by a few weeks, and not almost two years and a thousand miles and all the things they said to each other.
Zach breathes through his nose, holding himself in an insufficient grip in his wet hand. “Can I—”
“Look at me.”
And, fuck, Zach does, in the mirror and then to where he’s standing next to him. Eugenio reaches up, pressing the pad of his thumb over Zach’s bottom lip, rubbing it there and pushing in, just the tip of it, and Zach comes into his own hand in a few long pulses, shivering through them.
After, Eugenio kisses him, wrapping his hand on the back of Zach’s neck, tongue sweet in his mouth. It goes on longer than it probably should, like they did back when they had time. Zach doesn’t pull away, because he knows, if he does, that will be it. They’ll go their separate ways and see each other in the hazy and unpromised future.
Eugenio lets him go eventually. “We should get cleaned up.” His voice is low in Zach’s ear, his hand still resting at Zach’s side.
It takes them a few minutes. Zach futilely tries to finger-comb his hair, making it worse. Eugenio untucks and re-tucks his shirt. There are tender patches on Zach’s neck from Eugenio’s late-in-the-day stubble. When he turns to ask Eugenio if he has similar ones on his legs, Eugenio is leaning against one of the walls, eyes closed.
“You all right?” Zach says.
“Everyone said this was a bad idea.”
“Who’s ‘everyone’?”
“I didn’t bring your name into it.” And he sounds resigned. “I was supposed to come out here, see you, and that would be an end to it. Out of my system. Easy.”
“Easy?”
“Yeah, Zach. You know us.Easy.” He blows a breath out through his mouth. “I should go.” He peels himself off the wall, re-tucking his shirt once more. And if Zach didn’t know what to look for, he’d just look like a ballplayer on a night out, his expression as carefully arranged as his clothes.
“Come back with me to my hotel. I got a suite. My agent sent champagne.”
Eugenio looks at him for a minute. “You think that’ll fix anything?”
“No.” Because there are some things that can’t be fixed or, at least, Zach doesn’t know how to fix them. He searches for a way to say that the room’s too big without someone else there, that he doesn’t want to sleep in a cold bed or fly back to the reality of his over-air-conditioned apartment in Miami to sulk with his dying plants. “Just come back with me, okay?”
“Let me think about it.”
Zach digs his spare key out of his pocket, because he always gets two out of habit. He hands one to Eugenio. “I’ll text you the room number. Come by whenever you’re ready.”
Zach takes a rideshare back to his hotel. The driver is chatty to the point where Zach sends the standard “This passenger is Deaf or Hard of Hearing. Please text them instead of calling and let them lead the way with communication” message to the rideshare app, the one he knows people abuse so that they don’t have to make conversation with drivers. He wonders if the driver recognizes him. If there’ll be some story on social media about the audacity of a Miami Swordfish catcher big-timing him or if he’s anonymous here the way he is in Florida.
He shaves and showers when he gets to his hotel room, stuffs his dirty laundry into his suitcase. Makes sure the champagne is chilled. Sits on his bed, face reflected in the blank TV screen. Waits.
It’s late, and he doesn’t want to text Aviva, who’s on a service trip with students. Or Eitan, who will be either asleep or still working.
He has a Twitter DM from Morgan on the burner account he uses to pick fights with randos about basketball. She’s sent a tweet that someone at dinner must have put up, a picture of them all eating together. Eugenio’s arm is thrown around Zach, and he’s leaning in to say something to him; they’re both smiling. A set of question marks is the only other message.
