Page 8 of Unwritten Rules
Eugenio leans away, returning to the safety of his chair a full two feet from Zach. “It’s a little confusing that red means hit on one chart, and swing and miss on another.”
“Oh,” one of the analytics guys says, like it didn’t occur to them that using color-coded charts where red means bad on one and good on another might not work for players. Or that Eugenio would know what he’s looking at. “We’ll fix that for the next set of these.”
They hand out another set, and Zach doesn’t bother to look at his, just scoots his chair over toward where Eugenio is already marking them up. “This is like math class all over again,” Zach says. He ignores the curve of Eugenio’s mouth, the blink of his eyelashes behind his glasses, his faintly pleased look when Zach moved into his space. “Tell me what I should be seeing.”
After, Eugenio is actively yawning, even though it’s early afternoon and they have stuff scheduled for another few hours.
“If you want to pass out in one of the trainers’ rooms,” Zach says, “I’ll come wake you up before the next thing.”
“Thanks.” Another yawn, this one big enough that he laughs at the end of it and then shuffles off.
Zach considers, briefly, letting Eugenio sleep through their next set of drills, but he spent the previous hour making hitting analytics explicable to Zach, so waking him up is the least he can do. He hangs out, plays some cards with Braxton and Giordano, and Morgan when she demands to be dealt in, though that just devolves into Giordano pestering Morgan to see her vacation photos. And it turns out he’s scuba-certified and Braxton is afraid of even the smallest sharks and that more or less takes up his hour.
Zach goes to wake Eugenio, who doesn’t stir when he flicks the light in the room to get his attention. His shirt is rucked up on his stomach; he has tattoos extending down his side. They’re not the kind most ballplayers get—trucks, names, praying hands. Instead, abstract shapes that look like brushstrokes wrap around his ribs, interrupted by a few splashes of brighter colors. And Zach tells himself that he has an aesthetic appreciation for good design work and nothing more. That he can’t have anything more, not in the clubhouse. Especially not when the team is still making roster decisions.
Eugenio doesn’t wake up when Zach flicks the lights again, or when Zach says his name a few times, at increasing volume. Zach contemplates touching his shoulder, what his arm might feel like or his wrist or the valley of his palm. He settles for grabbing Eugenio’s shin, a few inches below the hem of his compression tights, though wishes he didn’t when Eugenio is warm there, hairs soft against Zach’s fingers, leg corded with catcher muscles.
Eugenio blinks his eyes slowly open. He reaches for where his glasses are sitting next to his phone and puts them on. They’re square framed, and they magnify his eyes, which are the same light brown as his hair, and also somehow emphasize the fullness of his mouth.
“Hey, thanks.” Eugenio’s voice is thick with sleep, lower than it normally is, like he might sound late at night. “I must have been pretty out of it.”
“You didn’t set an alarm?”
“Did I need to?” Eugenio laughs a little, then gets up. He pulls down his T-shirt where it rode up, then adjusts his shorts, his hand coming to cup himself like they all do a hundred times a day, an unthinking baseball gesture. Finally, he swipes his fingers through his hair, trying to reshape it into place.
And Zach’s tempted to chirp him about it, to ask him who he’s trying to look good for. But he doesn’t when he realizes it’ll mean telling Eugenio that he looks good. So he mostly just looks at where Eugenio is reflected in the glass window inset into the door, trying neither to watch nor not watch him too obviously, impassive except for the slight sweat that pricks the back of his neck.
They have their meeting, and after, Zach heads one way and Eugenio the other, and they don’t see each other until Monday morning, when the rest of the team reports.
Pitchers and catchers report always has the feel of the first day of school—if it’s the first day of a small school. Whole-team report has the energy of walking into a mall the day after Thanksgiving. There are guys everywhere—and a bunch of them brought their wives or girlfriends and kids. A few brought their extended families. John Gordon, their best hitter, seems to have brought his entire neighborhood.
It’s loud.
It’s loud enough that Zach’s hearing aid starts picking up on whichever guy is yelling the loudest at any particular moment—which is inevitably always Giordano—rather than what he wants to hear, which is inevitably always someone other than Giordano. Zach’s jaw starts complaining about how hard he’s clenching it, and his temples start to complain about the throbbing in his jaw, and he finds himself wandering out to the bullpen to just get away from the entire mess.
He expected to be alone, but instead there’s Johnson sitting with his head down. He looks up when Zach opens the creaking bullpen gate; his eyes are red.
“You doing all right?” Zach asks.
Johnson looks embarrassed to be caught sitting there. He’s got a book open next to him—a Bible, on closer inspection, pages edged in gold, various passages underlined. He flips it shut when he sees Zach notice it and puts it on the ground, something Zach would never do with a religious book, even if he ate pork that morning in what Eugenio brought him.
“I’m fine.” And Johnson’s voice sounds like it might crack.
“Nerves?”
Johnson nods. In daylight, he looks especially young, a few stray pimples, a farmer’s tan that darkens his forearms but ends well before his T-shirt sleeves. He’s pale even under that.
“I threw up the day before pitchers and catchers my first year,” Zach says. “My family came down with me. We went for a huge dinner. And I just ended up puking my guts out. I thought it was food poisoning, but no one else got sick and we all ate the same thing.”
“Yeah?”
“Point is, if you’re here, someone thinks you should be here. Try to enjoy some of it.” There’s a Gatorade cooler, and Zach goes, pulls a cup for himself, a cup for Johnson, who drinks it like he’s taking a shot. “You got people who’re staying with you?”
“No, my folks can’t miss the time.”
“That sucks.”
“It is what it is. Do they need us to do something?” Johnson asks.
