Page 64 of Unwritten Rules
“We go over scouting reports together.” Zach looks very intently at the floor, willing himself not to flush.
“It’s good that you’re working together,” Eugenio’s father says, as if Eugenio needs Zach’s help.
“Eugenio’s pretty prepared,” Zach says, and then amends to, “very prepared.”
“That’s good to hear.”
Giordano came in on the same bus as Zach, and he rolls into the clubhouse now, music blasting from an old school boombox.
And Eugenio’s father asks something that Zach can’t make out.
“Sounds like it,” Eugenio says, loud, over the din.
“I should go. It was nice to meet you both.” Zach turns to leave.
“I was thinking,” Eugenio says, before Zach can make his escape, still at a higher volume than he normally uses, “Zach, if you’re not busy for dinner, there’s this Cuban place a couple blocks over we were all going to check out.”
And Eugenio was in Zach’s hotel room game-planning the night before. He left a pile of scouting reports and his boxers, which are now stuffed into Zach’s suitcase. It couldn’t have been a surprise that his parents were driving in for the game. Couldn’t have been, and yet Eugenio is standing there, beatifically asking him if he wants to check out a Cuban restaurant in front of them.
“I wouldn’t want to intrude,” Zach says. “But thanks for the invite.” And he walks away quickly, hoping he made his point.
Eugenio finds him later in the tunnel before the game.
“You could have asked me that,” Zach says, “yesterday.”
“You would’ve said no.”
“Yes, I would have said no, but now I look like an asshole,” Zach says, tightly. “To your parents.”
“Zach, I know I can’t tell them about—” Eugenio makes a hand motion between them “—but I wanted my parents to meet you.”
“We should not be talking about this here,” Zach begins, when Gordon comes into the tunnel. And they should be talking about the game, except Zach cannot remember a single thing about the game they’re about to play, not who their starting pitcher is, not a single batter in the Detroit lineup he faced yesterday.
Gordon wanders by them and doesn’t say anything about how they’re standing three-quarters of the way to the dugout having a whispered argument and glaring contest. “Fellas,” he says, walking past.
“Morales,” Zach says, because almost no one calls Eugenio anything but that in the clubhouse, except for Gordon dubbing him “Geno,” which Zach is absolutely not going to call him. “Look, fine, whatever, I’ll do it.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I already said I would, so take the fucking W.”
Which is how he ends up at a four-top in the back corner of a Cuban restaurant trying to make conversation with Eugenio’s parents, who are very polite, and very nice, and very quiet.
Zach can’t tell if they’re not talking because he’s there, or if they just don’t talk in general, but the most they say after sitting and thanking the waiters for their menus is that they’re excusing themselves to wash their hands for dinner.
There’s a dance floor in the restaurant, a stage with a place for a band, and the noise level will get worse if they start playing, not that there’s really anything to hear. Eugenio must see him looking over at the stage. “They’re not playing tonight. I checked.”
“Thanks for thinking of that, you know, with this being a last-minute invitation and all.”
“Zach—” Eugenio says, before throwing up his hands. “You’re myfriendon the team, and I talk about you a lot with them.”
“It just feels like an ambush.”
“I didn’t know how else to do it.” But he doesn’t continue when his parents return.
“Eugenio tells me you’re professors,” Zach says, when there’s been a lull in the conversation between the discussion of how the game went and what each person is going to order to drink. Neither of Eugenio’s parents ordered anything beyond water, and Eugenio stuck with an iced coffee, adding four sugar packets to it and stirring vigorously. “What do you teach?”
“Religious studies, mostly,” his mother says. “A few core courses. Comparative religion, the history of the early church, but there’s a wide variety of electives.”
