Page 62 of Unwritten Rules
“The heat here is kind of sneaky. I didn’t think it’d bother me until my legs cramped up the first few times we played.”
“Look—” Eugenio gets up, coming to sit on the bed opposite from where Zach is sitting. “I don’t have to sleep here if it makes you uncomfortable. I guess I wasn’t being that fair to you.”
“We shouldn’t be doing this on road trips. I got the sense at the restaurant last night that Gordon might have figured it out.”
“If he has,” Eugenio says, “he hasn’t said anything to me about it.”
“He could be waiting. For a confirmation or to tell the front office. And if the team finds out, you know it wouldn’t end well for either of us.”
“He wouldn’t do that.” And Eugenio sounds confident in that, like Gordon’s friendship will be some barrier against his disapproval.
“You don’t know that until you know. He’s old school. He might be cool with one of us in the abstract. But together? No.”
“Do you want to stop?” Eugenio looks past him, out the window, into the big open blue of the Texas sky. “We can if you want to.”
“No.” And Zach wishes he got breakfast along with the coffees, for the hot glare of the morning to stop pouring in through the uncurtained window. For the simplicity of falling asleep against Eugenio and waking up with him still there. “No, I don’t want to stop. But we need some boundaries. Ground rules. Something.”
“How have you handled it before?”
“This is my first time—” he searches for a word for what they’re doing together “—with a teammate. With a ballplayer at all.”
“I meant, if you met someone on the road or something.”
“They weren’t exactly sleeping over. Or at the team hotel at all. This is new to me. I don’t know what I’m doing either.” It’s too much to admit. That he’s nearly thirty and his longest previous relationship was measured in weeks.
“I was with my ex for a long time,” Eugenio says. “We were in high school when we got together. It felt like it wasn’t really a choice, just something everyone expected.” He pauses for a second. “And I’ve never really dated anyone other than her or slept with anyone besides her. No one else serious. Before you.”
“Oh.” Because Zach stopped tallying his hookups once it felt juvenile to do so. And Eugenio said before that he hadn’t dated anyone seriously since his ex, but the implications of whatseriousmeant slosh around in Zach’s stomach like cold coffee. “Is it, like, a religious thing?”
Eugenio shakes his head. “I think I’m just built that way. I thought she and I were going to get married, and that would be that. And then we didn’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
“If it helps, I’m not actually that sorry.”
Eugenio laughs. He comes over to Zach, legs interweaving between his, kissing him, hands on either side of Zach’s face. “I can sleep in my room tonight.”
It’s both pragmatic and fundamentally disappointing, enough that Zach wants to say fuck it. But his courage will likely evaporate when their teammates give Eugenio hell for getting laid spectacularly enough to leave marks. Something he’ll have to deny, which will only incite them more. A ritual that Zach is on the outside of, even if Eugenio’s wrist still carries the impression of his fingers. “Does it matter that I don’t want you to?” Zach says.
Eugenio smiles at that. “It does.”
He smells like coffee and the shower. Something about it makes Zach’s chest hurt, different from the rising panic he felt while waiting in line behind Braxton.
“Depending on how things go today,” Eugenio continues, “I might need to actually game-plan tonight.”
“You’d miss me from the other room?” Zach asks.
“I might.” And he winds a hand into Zach’s hair, lifting the curls above his ear, kissing him on his jaw and his temple, on the bridge of his nose, a place Zach can’t remember anyone kissing him before.
Chapter Eighteen
The Elephants are in Michigan playing a four-game set against the Detroit Muscle when Zach gets two phone calls. The first is from his mother, a voice mail that begins by her dictating out her number, as if he doesn’t have it, before saying how excited they are to see him for the All-Star break, which is right after the series.
The second call comes from Johnson.
“Everything all right?” Zach says, when he calls him back. Over FaceTime, Johnson looks older than he did in spring training, mid-season weight loss thinning out some of the puppy fat on his face.
