Page 89 of Unwritten Rules
“The first few months in Miami were pretty rough. And the second few months. And honestly, all the ones since then.”
Eugenio leans in, kissing him, a brush of lips against Zach’s mouth. “I didn’t think you were allowed to be sad in Miami.” He looks out at the city lit up with distant parties, boats glittering on the water.
“I mean, tell that to the Swordfish.”
“You could probably get them to trade you. Considering.”
“Considering we’re forty-four and sixty-two,” Zach says. “Is that what you did in Oakland? Stormed into someone’s office and told ’em to send you somewhere else?”
Eugenio looks at him for a minute, then reaches for his beer, finishing it in a long swig. “That’s not what happened. Do you have something stronger than this?”
Inside his apartment, it’s cold, Eugenio rubbing his arms. Zach finds him a long-sleeve shirt, a bottle of bourbon, a heavy-bottomed tumbler to pour it into, then pours one for himself.
Eugenio drinks, doing a lap at the perimeter of the room, looking at the pictures Zach hung, the ones Eugenio got for him, the ones they picked out together. “I can’t believe you kept all this stuff. When I moved out to New York, I think I brought two suitcases and told someone from the team to sell the rest of my shit and send me the money.”
“I remember.” A clubbie called Zach, asking for his help since the team knew they were friends. And Zach spent an awful morning walking through the mausoleum of Eugenio’s old apartment, telling them what to keep and what to sell, feeling like one more piece of abandoned furniture.
“They were already going to trade me,” Eugenio says. “I was going into my arbitration year, and I told them how much I was going to ask for. That I had a case, a good case, and if they weren’t going to pay me, then they should call up other teams and see what they could get back in return.”
“They didn’t get anything back. Nothing even close to what you’re worth.”
“Yeah, well, by then I knew my value.” And Eugenio says it lightly, like he’s only talking about the team, and not about how things ended between them, or how they were for a long time before then. It hurts to hear anyway.
“I’m sorry,” Zach says.
“Zach—”
“No, I am. Sorry. For everything. It doesn’t fix anything but it’s important that you know that. That I am. That I’m trying. That I want to make things right between us.”
“I know. But it’s going to take some time.”
Zach watches the bourbon in his glass, the way the ice melts, sending out little plumes of water, shimmering. “If there’s anything I can do to, uh, accelerate that. Since you’re here.”
“I could think of a few things,” Eugenio says, a smile edging his lips, “if, you know, you were looking to put in some work.” He puts his empty glass down on the coffee table, then walks over to where Zach is standing. He takes the tumbler from his hands and sets it down.
Up close, Eugenio smells like ballpark shampoo and the bourbon Zach bought knowing it’s a brand he likes. He crowds Zach against the balcony door, cold against his back. His fingers slide below the hem of Zach’s shirt, two of them, hooking into his waistband, tugging, his knuckles rough against the skin of Zach’s stomach.
“The, uh, orange really suits you.” Zach nods to where Eugenio’s nails are still painted.
“I thought you might like those.” Eugenio leans in, mouth close but not touching. “Take off your shirt.”
And Zach does, throwing it in the vague direction of his living room. Eugenio rubs the hair on Zach’s stomach with the pads of his fingers and then scratches him right below his navel, hard enough to leave lines, the kind that’ll be as obvious in the clubhouse tomorrow as Eugenio’s nails.
“So, when you said ‘work’...” Zach says.
“I meant work.” Eugenio kisses him, a hard, unsubtle kiss, tongue an intrusion, the sharp points of his teeth and pressure of his palm against the muscle of Zach’s abdomen. He pulls back, picking up Zach’s unfinished bourbon and drinking it. “Touch yourself.”
The button of Zach’s jeans is chilly when he goes to undo it; Eugenio shakes his head. “Leave those on.”
Zach grips himself through the roughness of the fabric, adjusting himself like he did dozens of times that day, his cup in his uniform pants. It hurts a little, the texture of his boxers, the constriction of the denim, the unsatisfying movement of his own hand.
Eugenio watches him, idly drinking, and there’s a chair across the room, an oversized one. He sits in it, flipping through one of the comic books on Zach’s table, ignoring him when his breath hisses or his elbow thumps on the glass door behind him. Enough that Zach wonders if he should just get off this way, head of his cock trapped in the waistband of his shorts, making a mess into his own hand, as Eugenio sits, looking everywhere but at him.
“Should I finish?” Zach asks.
“No. Stop. Come here.”
The floorboards are cold under Zach’s knees, but Eugenio is warm when Zach unzips him, shoving his pants down his legs, rubbing his face on the fabric, sucking him through it, a little frantic. He threads a hand through Zach’s hair, tugging it back.
