Page 71 of Unwritten Rules
“And you’re not really listening either.” She slides her chair out, legs scraping on the linoleum. “You don’t know what it’s like. To want to play so bad. To be so close to it and not be able to get there.”
Something that feels worse than if she punched him. With it the urge to fire back,You don’t know what I’ve given up to play.An accusation he doesn’t want to explain, especially not with his family listening.
She doesn’t give him a chance to respond. “I gotta get changed. Go comb your hair. Wouldn’t want you to look bad in photos.”
Zach goes and puts on his suit, along with the watch Gordon bought everyone on the team last year for winning the division. He only brought one belt—the one he wears for games, banged up in the too-bright lights of his parents’ guest bathroom.
“You okay?” Aviva’s standing in the hallway, already dressed, hair more or less tamed back, the tattoo at her wrist concealed. “I heard yelling.”
“Yeah, all good.”
Eugenio emerges from the room he’s staying in. He’s wearing a suit that sits close to his body, a dress shirt that reflects his midsummer tan. He looks handsome and famous, and Zach tells the second one, Aviva lingering like they both might chicken out and not go downstairs.
Guests are beginning to arrive, and his mother directs him: to shake hands and pose for photos. To go and fix himself a plate of food. To go find Aviva and ask her where the second bag of ice got put. To shake more hands, and pose for more pictures, and sign a few things he’s handed.
His parents’ dining room is packed with guests eating finger foods, balancing clear plastic plates and wineglasses he snapped together earlier. Aviva floats around, adding serving utensils to dishes, clearing abandoned plates, answering questions, and pointing guests his way. He’s wearing his hearing aid, though it’s hard to hear everything with the number of people, all of whom are talking loudly so as to be heard over one another.
His mother separates him from Eugenio in order to, Zach suspects, prevent them from talking with each other rather than the guests. Across the room, Morgan’s greeting people, taking pictures. She’s wearing a forest-green suit, Elephants green, and is animatedly talking to a woman from his parents’ shul who’s there with her young daughter. Her wife, Lydia, is standing next to them in a yellow dress, dark hair piled into a bun, Morgan’s fingers loosely held in hers. And Zach imagines for a second that he could do the same with Eugenio, a daydream he shakes himself out of when another guest asks for a picture and a story about facing big-league pitching.
His mother comes over with a woman about Zach’s age in tow.
“Zach,” she says, “this is Rachel.” She says it the Hebrew way, thechof it in her throat.
Zach shakes her hand, telling her it’s nice to meet her, and his mother retreats. Rachel isn’t tall—she’s at least a foot shorter than he is, with brown hair that reflects the light of his parents’ dining room chandelier. “I hear you’re famous,” she says. “At least, that’s what my mother told me four times in the car on the way over.”
“I play baseball for the Oakland Elephants.”
“She mentioned.” Rachel glances around the room. “I think this might be a setup.” It’s said conspiratorially, with the tone ofparents, what can you do?Part of their families’ active campaign for marriage and grandchildren. She’s also smiling at him like she expects a response other than his awkward silence.
Across the room, Eugenio is talking with some of his parents’ friends, telling a story that Zach can’t make out, but he can hear him laugh over the chatter. And he catches Zach looking at him, flashing a grin.
“Would you excuse me for a second?” Zach says.
He flees upstairs, where he finds Aviva in the hallway outside the guest room sitting against a wall. Her phone is loosely cradled in her hand, though it’s bright with notifications.
“Are you hiding too?” he asks.
“These shoes give me blisters.” She has them off beside her. “Don’t you have photos to take?”
“It’s loud down there. I was just gonna, I don’t know, scroll through my phone for a minute.”
“Well, if you’re up here, I better go back downstairs. Wouldn’t want Mom to come looking.”
“I can go back down.”
She hisses when she puts her shoes back on. “No, it’s all right.” She gets another alert. She answers it, shielding her screen from him, before looking up as if daring him to ask why she’s keeping it from him.
“Is there anything I can do to help? I mean, I’m just mostly standing around and pretending like half these people don’t think I play for the O’s.”
“Must be real rough. Someone asked me if you were Joe Mauer, so, you know, enjoy that.” And she walks off.
Eugenio comes up a few minutes later, when Zach is standing in the guest room, door open so he can pretend he’s not avoiding people. “Everything all right?”
“Yeah.” Though Zach knows he sounds whiny. “Well, no. Everyone is kind of pissed off at me.”
“I’m not pissed at you.” Eugenio looks out at the unoccupied hallway beyond the door before pressing a kiss to Zach’s temple. “I might be if I don’t get to take that suit off you later, though.”
Zach sighs audibly, and Eugenio corrals him over to sit down, taking his suit jacket off and ignoring his protests that his shirt will wrinkle. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
