APRIL
Current record: 0–11
Luis wears a long-sleeved shirt under his jersey to every game, one with a high neck that covers his Adam’s apple and ends just below the perfect, trimmed line of his beard. He also wears a cross, less than an inch long and strung on a thin gold chain, which he keeps on top of the undershirt but tucked under his jersey. A lot of guys who wear crosses kiss them when they step up to home plate, but Gene has never seen Luis do that. His sits between his collarbones, untouched.
He has a small waist, leading into nonexistent hips, leading into impossibly long and curveless legs. The only curve Gene can find on him is that one at the small of his back, enough of a dip to fit a hand, if said hand were on the small side. Gene has caught himself thinking about that dip more times than he can count.
The fact that Luis has the audacity to have gotten hot—and not even yeah-he’s-fine-for-a-straight-guy hot, but legitimately hot—in addition to being the world’s biggest pain in the ass?
Gene doesn’t care for that shit at all.
“You’re staring.”
Gene slides his eyes over to Vince. “I am not.”
“I’m surprised you’re not drooling,” Vince whispers, though he’s never been a great whisperer.
Gene gives an exaggerated wrinkle of his nose. Okay. No more locker room glances, then. They might not have been as glance-like as Gene intended.
“Don’t be gross,” he says. He finishes doing the buttons of his jersey, all the way up to the top. He tucks it neatly into his knee-length pants, before replacing his glasses with contacts and checking that the piercings that line his ears are firmly in place, none of them begging to be snagged. He is careful, as he does so, to look anywhere but Luis’s corner of the locker room. In the final moments before they take the field, he smears eye black on his cheeks, a little unevenly.
Vince watches him the whole time. He won’t pitch today, so he has plenty of time to nag at Gene.
“You want to talk about it?” he asks, when the team has started to filter down the dugout tunnel.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gene says, while he squeezes life into his glove.
“He’s nicer to look at than his dad was,” Vince muses. “If you’re into skinny guys.” Luis Estrada, Sr., an international signee out of Mexico, had played his final season during Vince’s first, right around when Gene got old enough to start keeping track of players other than his own dad.
Gene chances a look across the locker room. Luis pulls a hat on over his hair, facing away from his teammates and toward the wall. Gene can see his shoulders rise, then fall, as he takes a pace-setting breath and tucks that cross into his jersey.
Luis heads into the dugout tunnel, and Vince digs an elbow into Gene’s side. “Hey, do you think he’s—”
“I don’t think about him,” Gene lies. “So I don’t know.”
The implied question being: Do you think he’s queer?
Well.
Unclear, but the thought may have crossed Gene’s mind. Never long enough to decide on a guess, though. But regardless of what the answer might be, Luis isn’t the first teammate Vince has asked this question about. He always means it in the most innocuous, just-curious kind of way and would never ask anyone who isn’t Gene. They’ve both played with other queer men—bi men and gay men and men who don’t label it but aren’t straight. Most of them don’t outright say it, and none of them say it publicly, but it’s there, not exactly a secret.
Gene and Vince are open about it, in their own ways—Vince to the team and Gene to literally anyone who asks, and plenty of people who don’t. That openness has given Gene one of the closest friends he’s ever had.
No amount of closeness, however, would make Gene want to talk to Vince about Luis’s potential queerness. A good thing, too, as they make their way out to the Reno visitors’ dugout and join the rest of their team. Vince shifts effortlessly into his more team-appropriate demeanor, a subtle change. He replaces nosy questions with slightly dad-like teasing and a handful of sunflower seeds. This Vince is still Vince, just through a different filter.
Gene has never excelled at filtering himself like that, and he stopped trying sometime around his senior year of college, right around when he came out and gave up entirely on being drafted.
Twenty-year-old Gene would be amazed by twenty-six-year-old Gene. That thought is enough to distract him from the small of Luis’s back and the cross he doesn’t kiss, at least for a little while.
“Okay, odds on us pulling off literally one goddamn win?” Vince asks as he settles onto the bench next to Gene.
“Tonight, or ever?”
Eleven games into the season, they remain wholly unvictorious. Vince doesn’t sound as sad about it as Gene would expect. “Either,” he says.
Gene pretends to consider. “One hundred percent chance.”
“Which one?”
“Both. We’re going to win tonight,” Gene says.
“You’ve decided?”
“I’ve decided, yeah.”
Some games, he gets a feeling that something special is on the way. Tonight, the only feeling he has is that they’re all overdue for some dumb luck.
“That’s not how it works,” Luis says as he inches between Gene’s knees and the dugout railing to get to the watercooler.
Vince laughs. “Now we’re definitely going to.”
Luis’s eyebrows lower, so Vince explains.
“I swear to God, if Nes says he’s decided to do something and someone else says he can’t, it happens. Every fucking time.” Vince points at the air, emphasizing the words. “Every fucking time.”
Luis looks at Gene, unconvinced. Gene takes it as a challenge.
Maybe Luis has a Gold Glove and a dash more power in his swing. Gene makes contact more; he’s faster, better at stealing. Most important, Gene has an optimistic streak where Luis has instead cultivated an unimpressed, unenthused mien. Gene is bolder, more bullheaded, in the way that befits a baseball player.
Maybe everything feels like a competition, maybe Gene can’t stop thinking about him, and maybe that has frayed Gene’s fragile focus down to a single, tenuous thread. But he will drag this team into the win column all the same.
NANCY: How long of a leash do you think Steph Baker plans to give Estrada before we see Ionescu get a start at shortstop?
DAN: I think this is the lineup we’ll be seeing for a while. Ionescu hasn’t looked much better at second, I can’t imagine that switching them makes for a particularly tempting alternative right now. Estrada’s Gold Glove is bound to show up one of these days.
NANCY: I hope you’re right.
DAN: We’ve got Ionescu leading us off again today—
NANCY: He’s shortened up his swing pretty considerably since last fall. He’s not a power hitter by any means, but he looks more solid this year. He takes strike one, a heater down the middle at ninety-eight.
DAN: Now, you say Ionescu’s not a power hitter—
NANCY: Listen, I think we’d all love for him to turn into the sort of guy who hits fifteen homers a year, but—
DAN: Fifteen! Sure, who’d say no to that?
NANCY: —but I don’t think that’s going to happen. Five or ten, however, isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
DAN: Caught a piece of that one. Fouls it off down the line.
NANCY: Missed his timing a bit on that, but not by much.
DAN: Down to the last strike. Ionescu’s batting .355 out of the leadoff spot so far this season.
NANCY: Right, a lot of growing pains at second, but he’s off to a hot start offensively. He’s also leading the league in walks and stolen bases. Certainly making up for that lack of power with a great eye at the plate. He takes the third pitch for ball one.
DAN: It’s not a surprise Steph Baker isn’t giving Ionescu a day off—not much production coming from the rest of this lineup outside the first two batters.
NANCY: Agreed, Gonzales has more or less lived up to his reputation, though he’s had a bit of a strikeout problem himself—
DAN: Ionescu barrels it up—right into the gap—
NANCY: They’ll hold him at first, and it’s a leadoff single for Gene Ionescu.
DAN: Good at-bat from the kid.
“What did I say?” Vince yells while the team thunders into the clubhouse after the game. He carries Gene in a celebratory piggyback ride. “Twelve to three? That’s not a win, that’s a slaughter.”
It wasn’t just Gene, either. Ernie hit his first home run of the season, a towering, undoubted bomb of a hit. Their starter kept them in the game through six efficient innings. Even Luis managed to make it to base twice, which in and of itself was something of a miracle—something Luis should but won’t celebrate, because he seems incapable of celebration, opting instead to quietly pack his bag as the rest of the team devolves into cheers.
It was a lazy mid-April matchup, but when Baker tells them to grab drinks before their early-morning flight, they listen.
Because he and Luis used to play for Reno, Ernie picks the bar, and they pile into a few overcrowded cars. It is a sign of his inimitable lovability that, when he shows up in a new team’s gear, having thoroughly trounced his old club, the bartender still cheers when Ernie leads Beaverton into the dive bar.
That doesn’t surprise Gene. What surprises Gene is that, when the last car empties, Luis gets out of it, hands shoved deep into the pockets of a bomber jacket and his dog’s leash looped around his wrist.
“What the hell is he doing here?” Gene asks Vince.
“The dog or the man?”
Gene stares at Vince.
“I think you’ll find he plays for our team,” Vince says with a levity that Gene does not appreciate. Then Vince tips his head back and yells, “First round’s on me, boys,” and it’s hard to be all that upset.
Gene didn’t party much in college, but years in the minors and an undying need to be liked have taught him all of the go-to drinking games, and how to participate without getting completely trashed. The trick: if you win, it’s a slower descent into drunkenness, and you can tap out as soon as you get tired, bragging rights firmly established.
That’s the plan for tonight.
“Nes, you’re my partner,” Vince announces as they set up for beer pong.
Gene has served as Vince’s drinking-game first mate since the first time he ever went out with the team, selected out of kindness that first night and out of competitiveness each time after. He has the gentle wrist flick and the ball’s perfect rainbow arc down to a science. When he takes his rightful place at Vince’s side, he gives a lazy salute to the captain.
“Gonzo, you picked the bar. Get a partner, you’re up first,” Vince says.
“Nada,” Ernie says. “Will you do me the honors?”
“Bold choice, going without a pitcher,” Vince taunts.
“Nada has a more accurate arm than any pitcher I have ever caught,” Ernie argues.
Gene resists the urge to roll his eyes. Luis fucked up a routine throw literally last night.
Luis, sitting on one of the stools at the bar, shakes his head. “I’m good,” he says.
The team’s complaints come immediately, a chorus of “Ah, c’mon.” Gene joins in without hesitation. The chance to beat Luis at this meaningless game is far too tempting to resist.
When Luis drags himself to stand next to Ernie, Vince leans in close to Gene and, loud enough for everyone to hear, says, “They don’t have a chance.”
Just as Gene has an uncanny ability to predict a baseball win as it storms into the stadium, Vince has yet to call a drinking game wrong, perhaps because Gene has never seen him lose.
“Y’all can start us off,” Vince offers. “Newbies first.”
Ernie nudges Luis’s side with an elbow and flicks his eyebrows up—Go ahead, those eyebrows say.
Luis sinks his first shot into the top cup of Gene and Vince’s pyramid with ease. He doesn’t even have the goodwill to play it off as beginner’s luck. He simply stares Gene down as Gene lifts the cup and, to the cheers of his team around him, downs it in two solid gulps. When he sets the cup back down, Luis is still staring.
Gene means to throw him a wink, just to be a shit, but he’s sidetracked by Vince’s own perfect opening shot, so exact that the beer in the receiving cup barely moves. If Gene stares when Luis drinks, well, Luis stared first.
He and Vince do win, though not as handily as they usually would.
“Good game,” Luis says, the praise as perfunctory as possible.
“Don’t take it too hard, man. You put up a way better fight than your dad did back in the day,” Vince says.
It’s an offhand remark, said in passing before Vince starts calling for their next challengers. But Luis’s face shutters, and he ducks into the crowd as soon as the attention shifts away from him. Gene, usually good for at least three rounds and the equivalent one-point-five beers it would amount to, taps out, too.
“Seriously?” Vince asks.
And because Gene can’t say, Yes, if I catch Luis Estrada staring at me like that again, I’m going to combust. Also, can you sue someone for being that annoying and that hot? Asking for a friend, he says, “I gotta piss.”
Vince shrugs and ropes one of their relievers into taking Gene’s spot.
In the interest of maintaining appearances, and because he really does need to use the bathroom, Gene scoots down the narrow back hall, praying for a single-stall situation. He’s not in the mood for a drunk man with bad aim trying to suss out his whole deal while also trying to locate the urinal. Gene never hates being trans, but the cramped, under-cleaned stalls of a men’s bathroom put that fact to the test every time.
Still, when he emerges—single stall; Gene must have some good karma today—and finds Luis standing against the wall, hands shoved in his pockets, he would actually rather go back into that bathroom than face the awkward shuffle of trying to get past Luis in a hallway this minuscule. Never mind about that good karma.
“Sorry,” Luis says, nearly squeezing himself into two dimensions to get around Gene. The saving grace of his, well, everything is that nobody seems less happy when Luis walks into a room than Luis himself. That’s one thing he and Gene can get on the same page about.
Out of curiosity, albeit of the masochistic sort, Gene waits around while Luis uses the bathroom, scratching absently at Luis’s dog’s ears until Luis reemerges and startles at Gene’s presence.
“Question,” Gene says, while Luis picks up his dog’s leash.
“Oh,” Luis answers. “No thank you.”
Before Gene can react to that answer, Luis beelines toward one of the sunken couches in the back corner. Gene follows.
“Do you still not drink?” he asks. Luis never did in college, instead seeming to avoid anything that might risk revealing his humanity. No drinking, no smoking, no staying up past two in the morning and spilling a secret or two. For all those hours they spent together on roadie buses or crammed onto dugout benches or hanging out in teammates’ dorm rooms, Gene knows so few secrets about Luis.
“I said no thank you,” Luis says. As soon as he sits, his dog lies across his feet.
“Yeah, but that wasn’t what I was going to ask earlier. This is a different question.”
He’d wanted to ask if it bugs Luis to get compared to his dad so often, but drinking is a safer topic anyway.
Luis’s mouth flattens. Gene had thought it quite flat before, but this takes its flatness to new non-heights. “That is a loophole at best.”
“Yes.”
“I drink sometimes. Usually not lukewarm beer from a pitcher, but mostly I just don’t like”—Luis twirls his finger in the air—“big groups. Or parties. Or…loud places.”
It’s the most words Gene has heard Luis string together all in one go since he got traded. He speaks with the same stilted lilt he used to, if a little more pronounced now—not an accent but a peculiar pattern of pauses, like he thinks everything through before saying it. It’s not altogether charmless.
“Okay,” Gene says. “So you hate parties and groups and loud sounds, and you still picked a career that involves playing a game—”
“I’m aware of the irony—”
“—in a big group, in a loud stadium, literally every day.”
Luis raises his eyebrows. Sunken into the cushions, even without one of his larger teammates nearby, he looks…small. “I am regretting that choice,” he says, and Gene almost wants to laugh. Part of the appeal might be that it’s at Luis’s expense. Still, though, the barest hint of a sense of humor exists in Luis’s voice. So faint it’s like someone’s cologne sticking around in an elevator when they themselves disembarked three floors ago, but it smells so nice that you wish they’d stuck around so you could ask the name of both the cologne and its owner.
Gene does not laugh. Instead, he reasons, “You didn’t have to come tonight, you know.”
“Gonzo asked me to. Have you ever tried to say no to Gonzo?” Luis sounds like someone who has known Ernie for years and has long since given up on disagreeing with the man.
“I have not,” Gene admits. “But I think if you stick around for, like, ten more minutes, you’ve officially met the bare minimum of polite teammate duty.”
“Thanks. I’ll start a timer.”
“For real?” Gene asks.
For real, indeed. Luis sets a timer. He opens his mouth to say something else, but before he can, Vince’s voice interrupts from across the room.
“Nes, get over here. We have challengers,” it says, buoyant.
Luis’s mouth snaps closed.
“Sorry,” Gene says. He’s not sure what he’s apologizing for. It can’t be for leaving Luis’s side, because Gene gets the distinct impression that Luis prefers his side to be vacant.
“I’m leaving in”—Luis checks—“nine minutes and thirty-eight seconds, anyway.”
“Pro-tip? Don’t tell Altzy you’re dipping, or he’ll convince you to stay another hour.”
“Got it.”
When Gene takes his usual spot next to Vince, he almost turns to check if Luis is watching him from the corner couches.
But sometime in the fifteen or so minutes Gene spent away from the table, Vince has tripped toward tipsy. It sharpens his beer pong skills but mildly hinders his ability to stand up straight. Gene acts as something of a buttress, his shoulder jammed halfway into Vince’s armpit to keep him steady. He has done this for Vince plenty of times, but never this early in the night. He makes a mental note to ask him if he’s doing okay when they get back to the hotel room they always share on road trips.
In the meantime, they kick Kyle Rivera’s and Cooper’s asses in a perfect six throws, made all the more impressive by both Gene and Vince using their respective glove hands.
When Ernie asks to tap back in, he trades Gene’s ping-pong balls for a deep brown, chilled bottle. A peek at its label tells Gene that it’s not beer but cider.
“You didn’t have to bribe me. I wanted a break,” Gene says.
Ernie shakes his head. “No, this is from Nada. He told me to give it to you when he left.”
Gene can’t help it. He looks at the door like he might catch Luis on his way out. He stares at it, as if the worn-down wood grain will tell Gene why this guy, this teammate makes him feel like his stomach is falling out his ass.
He sits on a stool, holding the drink Luis bought him, and reminds himself why he can’t trust that moment of ease between them.
Luis’s team-worst batting average could be excused, but not the fact that he has done seemingly nothing to improve upon it. Every time he steps into the dugout after he strikes out, his bone-deep, palpable displeasure makes the team wilt. He distracts Gene from enjoying what could be his last five months playing with his best friend.
More than any of that, two minutes of half-pleasant conversation can’t negate Luis’s sudden departure from Gene’s life all those years ago, or how inconvenient it is to have him here again; it can’t make Gene forget how it felt when Luis shrank away from him on that bench, how he’d brushed off the very idea of Gene playing shortstop like it had never been a real possibility. His dismissal and discomfort have snagged at Gene’s equilibrium and left a quiet resentment where any new trust might have been able to grow.
It doesn’t matter if he signs baseballs for kids before games. It doesn’t matter if he still has some semblance of a sense of humor hiding somewhere in there. It doesn’t matter—because Luis is going to leave again, and this time, Gene is determined, his life will be better for it.
Gene sets the cider on the bar, untouched, and joins the crowd of Beaverton Beavers at the beer pong table, cheering on both teams at once.