Page 99 of Unwritten Rules
“Oh,” Eugenio says, again.
“You don’t have to decide right away. Henry says that processing time is important.”
“Tell Henry that I appreciate that.” One of Eugenio’s hands is gripping the fabric of his sweatpants, and Zach covers it, feeling his fingers relax, Zach threading his own between them.
“I don’t want to rush you. It’s not fair that I asked you to wait all those years and not fair if I ask you to rush now. I’m just excited, I guess, or scared. A lot of things I didn’t spend time articulating before, and I figured I’d just shove ’em in a dark cabinet and come back to them when I was done with baseball. It turns out that’s not how that works.”
“It isn’t.”
“Which part?”
“All of it.” And Eugenio’s smiling, a pleased smile.
Zach looks down at their hands, fingers curled loosely together. “I thought about this when we were together, before. After you left. I used to watch you smoke, and I’d be sitting in the bullpen in Arizona trying not to think about what your hands might feel like.”
“I might have noticed you looking,” Eugenio says. “I might have smoked more because of it.”
Zach tips his forehead to Eugenio’s, breath mingling, Eugenio’s hand still interwoven with his. “I know it’s early, but I’m serious about this.”
“It’s been three and a half years,” Eugenio says, with a laugh Zach can feel.
“I’m told processing time is important.” And he kisses Eugenio, on his mouth, on the incline of his neck, the callus on the rise of his palm, on the knuckles of his left hand.
Zach’s parents drive up on Saturday and text him from every rest stop on the Delaware and New Jersey turnpikes, pictures of tourist shlock and the world’s last Roy Rogers. They bring Aviva, who’s five months pregnant and cranky in the September humidity, her hair a halo around her head.
Zach has a game that night, one the next day, and there’s a schedule up in the clubhouse, a bulletin board counting down their magic number until they clinch a postseason berth. His family arrives in late morning. They spend a few hours unpacking, his mother insisting on putting shelf liner in all his cabinets, his father rearranging books Zach didn’t read in Miami and probably won’t read in New York.
Aviva is miserable enough in the heat of his under-air-conditioned loft that he drags her to the little shaded park across the street from him, buys her a gelato that he watches her eat, and then another when she finishes the first.
“Better?” he asks.
“Yeah. How does anyone live in this city without AC?”
“I can go get you a cup of ice.”
“Zach, I’m fine. Just, I don’t recommend being pregnant and in a car that Dad’s driving.”
“Noted.” There are only a few other people at the park, and he has a ball cap on, not a Union one, but an Elephants one old enough to be stained with salt from sweat. “Aviva, I wanted to tell you something before I tell Mom and Dad.”
She doesn’t say anything, but gets up from the park bench they’re on, tossing her gelato cup in a nearby trash can. “It sounds like it’s serious. Are you sure you want to talk about it here?”
Around them, people are walking dogs, wading off late-morning hangovers, moving with the kind of ferocious purpose particular to New York. No one glances their way. “Here’s fine. When you told Mom and Dad about Ivan, how’d that go?”
She fiddles with her wedding band, twisting it around her finger. Near it, her tattoo, uncovered. “You mean, when I had to explain that the Orthodox guy I wanted to marry was Ukrainian Orthodox and not Jewish? About as well as you’d expect.” She curves a hand on her stomach. “Everyone says they’ll be happier once the squidlet here arrives.”
“They were at the wedding.”
“Yes, the fact of which they’ve reminded me several times,” she says. “But they’ve come around to him now that they know he’s not going anywhere. Including conversion class but that doesn’t stop Mom from emailing him.”
And Zach wishes he got something to drink, a soda, a pregame bourbon, something to settle the frenetic feeling of his heart against his ribs as he says, “The guy I’m seeing, his parents are religious studies professors. So he probably already knows what they talk about in those classes.”
There’s a moment of her looking at him in slight disbelief before she hugs him, her hair in his face, a hard big-sister hug. “We do this training, for when students come out to us. What we’re supposed to say to affirm their identity.”
“I have a coach for this. We talked through it a bunch. It didn’t really go like I planned it.”
“It’s okay.” Her hair is soft when she leans against his shoulder. “I’m glad you told me.”
“I probably should have, years ago.” Something that feels easy to say, if only in retrospect.
