JULY
Current record: 49–38
The night before they leave for the Futures Game, Luis sees Gene’s bedroom for the first time.
He sits promptly on the floor, crosses his legs, and holds his hand out for the instruction packet that came with Gene’s as-yet-unbuilt bed frame. He doesn’t blink twice at the mattress on the floor, or the pile of clean laundry that Gene haphazardly tried to fold before he came over.
Gene’s apartment isn’t dirty. He keeps it perfectly clean. It’s just that he goes through cycles of messiness, wherein his apartment will be without clutter for two weeks, and then one day he’ll inevitably be too tired to fold a load of towels and underwear, and everything goes downhill from there. The clean laundry in the hamper quickly overflows, taking over the armchair and then the top of his dresser, and if it’s already this messy, he might as well leave six half-finished books on the nightstand, too.
Luis pays no mind to any of that, attention turned in full to the task at hand, so thoroughly that Gene can almost forget about the thing they’re avoiding, the conversation they aren’t having. That night after they kissed—after Luis fell asleep on his couch and Gene tried so hard to shove the memory of those lucky minutes into storage, to be taken out and examined at an easier time—Gene wondered if things would get weird, but instead they’ve been the same, just with an invisible barrier between them, Luis back to keeping his leg a careful few inches from Gene’s on the bench. They’re still themselves, but a little less honest.
On the field, at the stadium, it seems like the smart move, but every time Luis comes to his apartment, Gene wishes he could let himself keep the honesty.
After two hours of exhausted fumbling—and one Sorry about all the noise I swear I will be done soon text typed out and unsent to Vince, the most recent text in their thread a curt congratulations from a few weeks ago, after the Futures Game news—Gene has a bed. Luis helps him heft the mattress into place as Gene tries to find something to look at that isn’t Luis’s arms, or the very tempting bed between them, or the satisfied way Luis likes to look at a job well done.
He doesn’t succeed. But he sure does try.
When Luis tips forward onto the mattress, though, and lets out the longest, most moan-like sigh Gene has ever heard? Gene gives the fuck up.
He climbs onto the other side of the bed and tries not to take it personally when Luis folds his elbows in closer to his ribs. Dodger tucks himself between them, like he knows they need that extra barrier tonight. Even so, the second Gene’s back hits the bed, he knows what it feels like to lie on a mattress dipped by Luis’s weight, to see the rhythm of Luis’s breathing out of the corner of his eye, tantalizingly close. Paired with the knowledge of Luis under him on the couch, the way his hands felt exactly right on Gene’s thighs, how he felt pressed against Gene—
“What time did you want to leave for the airport tomorrow?” he asks Luis. A reminder of where they’re going, and why that last kiss had to stop. Why Gene can’t kiss him again.
“Like, three? If that’s okay?”
Their flight leaves at six A.M. sharp. Gene agreed to let Luis sleep on his couch tonight, as he has done so many times before, so that they can carpool in the morning without needing to make an extra stop. Gene checks his phone.
“Okay, so you need to wake up at…?”
“Two.”
He turns his phone toward Luis and his chest absolutely does not swell at the sight of Luis looking at him from the other side of his bed. “That is in ninety minutes.”
Luis groans at the ceiling. “Perfect,” he says.
“I’m so sorry,” Gene says. “I didn’t realize how long it would take. In my defense, you offered to do this.”
“It’s fine.” Luis yawns. “I probably wasn’t going to get any sleep tonight anyway.”
He doesn’t look like someone who plans to stay up all night. When his eyes droop closed, they stay that way, his eyebrows uncharacteristically unfurrowed. He stretches, a devastating, stomach-revealing thing, and Gene presses his own eyes closed.
“How far are your dads from the hotel?” Luis asks.
They have settled into their seats for the nonstop flight to New York. Gene is sandwiched in the middle seat between Luis (window, made necessary by his anxiety) and Ernie (aisle, made necessary by his broad shoulders).
Like every player invited to All-Star Week, the three of them will stay in a Manhattan hotel. Gene, however, plans to spend whatever spare time he has with his family in Brooklyn. While invitations to the Futures Game are hard-won, an immense honor for minor league players who receive them, the game itself is still by far the quietest part of All-Star Week’s festivities. The warm-up event. The focus will land solidly on the shoulders of the major league stars, the household names who will be competing first in the Home Run Derby and then in the All-Star Game itself. As invitees, Gene, Luis, and Ernie will get tickets to both of the marquee events, but the spotlight will have moved on to bigger things by then.
Gene’s dad, however, is immensely proud, as if Gene himself is the main character of the week, the headliner for every event this year, and the next, and all the events to come, forever. When Gene texted the family group chat to tell them he’d be coming to town for the break, that he could even get them tickets to see him play, it was past four in the morning in Brooklyn. Even so, his dad had called him in seconds, screaming to Gene and all of Gowanus that he always knew he’d see his son play at Citi Field, then to ask if he could pick Gene up from the airport.
“They’re in Brooklyn,” Gene says.
“And Brooklyn is…far?” Luis asks.
Gene laughs. “Have you guys ever been to New York?”
Luis and Ernie shake their heads.
“Not far. Just inconvenient,” Gene sums up.
Luis lets out a puff of air. He popped a Xanax pretty much the minute they sat down, with Dodger in a crate under the plane. Under different circumstances, Gene might be tempted to give Luis’s hand a comforting squeeze.
“You brought headphones?” Gene asks.
Luis holds up the same ones he wears on every road trip, the ones that Gene used to wonder so much about, until he found out that travel just makes Luis anxious, and that without the headphones or another distraction, he would have to stew in that anxiety.
“Yep,” Luis says.
“Downloaded some podcasts?”
“Approximately a thousand. Yes.”
Luis made a packing list the day after they found out they’d be taking this trip. He doesn’t need Gene checking in to make sure he hasn’t forgotten anything, but Gene does it anyway, because Gene is a worrier, and it’s easier to worry about someone else than it is to worry about himself.
For his part, Gene has armed himself with a backpack full of books he likely won’t have any time to read, a liter-sized water bottle, and snacks enough to last five plane trips. His backpack barely zips closed and doesn’t come close to fitting under the seat in front of him, but he’s prepared. He doesn’t usually travel like this, but this is not the usual kind of trip. This is the Futures Game, the most important baseball experience of his young career. He will go into this eyes wide open, well-hydrated, and snacked up.
The flight is five hours long, with no layovers, which feels like a luxury compared to the roadie bus. Sure, they have no legroom here, and sure, each of them is hopped up on nerves strong enough to power the plane, but in spite of it all, they would be hard-pressed to find anything worth complaining about.
By the time they touch down in New York, Gene has almost talked himself out of worrying. It’s not like he ever thought he’d get to play here. It’s all he can do to try his best, and if his best isn’t enough, well, that’s what he expected anyway. Just on a bigger stage than he ever thought he’d get.
JFK’s concourses are enough to make anyone regret coming to the city—grimy, packed with the world’s crankiest people, perpetually stuck in the limbo between too rushed and too slow. It’s purgatory, if you believe in things like purgatory, which Gene doesn’t. Except for when he’s at JFK.
But then his dad is there, with a bouquet of flowers, and JFK is the best place in the world, actually, if only because it contains Gene’s dad and his dorky bouquets. When they hug, Gene’s bag falls to the ground, and he lifts his dad off the ground a few inches, enough to make him squawk.
“You got bigger,” Franklin says, as if Gene didn’t stop growing a good decade ago. His accent is as thick as ever, and he has started to gather grays. Gene can’t believe his family has the gall to get older without him there.
“Did I?” Gene says.
“Maybe you just look bigger because you never come home anymore.”
“Aw, Tata. Come on.”
“ ‘Tata’?” Ernie asks.
“That’s what he calls his dad,” Luis says.
Franklin wipes his cheeks on the neck of his shirt before he picks Gene’s bag up off the ground and offers to take one of Luis’s.
“No, it’s okay,” Luis says. “We have to get to the hotel.”
He insists. “I’m driving you. Now give me your bag.”
They follow Franklin out and into the parking garage, where his old Volvo waits. Gene sits in the front, and Luis and Ernie pile into the back with a delightedly free Dodger sandwiched between them. Gene gives Luis a smile in the rearview, which makes Luis’s cheeks tinge pink.
Oh, God.
“Tata, what’re we doing for dinner tonight?” Gene asks to distract himself.
“Oh, Art started cooking this morning. Your friends are welcome to come, but they will have to be okay with a lot of questions.”
“How good is the food?” Ernie asks. Luis punches Ernie’s arm. “What? I want to know if the questions are worth it.”
“It is very good food,” Franklin assures them.
“Nes, you look just like your dad,” Ernie says, tapping Gene’s shoulder over the back of his seat.
“Maybe if you grew the mustache,” Luis says, touching his top lip when Gene turns around to look at them. He looks very pointedly north of Gene’s lips. “Then you’d match.”
Franklin, taking the on-ramp onto the highway, points at Gene. “I have always said you would look good with a mustache.”
“Tata, you told me one time I would look good with a pierced eyebrow.”
“Because you’re my handsome son. You always look nice.”
Gene rolls his eyes, but there’s no dedication to it. Being here, with his dad—being told they look alike, from some of his favorite teammates, some of his best friends? He hadn’t realized how much he wanted that kind of normal thing.
When they pull up to the hotel and unload their bags from the trunk, Gene says, “We can meet you at the apartment in a few hours? Around six?”
“Five,” Franklin counters.
“Fine. We will be there at five.”
“Or four-thirty.”
“Tata!” Gene laughs. “We smell. Let us shower.”
He considers. “Fine. Five, and not one minute later.”
He gives Gene a kiss on the cheek, then gets back in his car. He’s yelling at the honking cars behind him before he’s even peeled away from the curb.
Gene can’t begin to imagine how much a night at this hotel must cost—at least as much as a monthly payment for the car Gene wishes he had. Maybe double.
They check themselves in with an air of amazement, Gene and Luis receiving key cards to the same room and Ernie to one down the hall, which he will share with an old Double-A teammate. It’s weird, being in a hotel when they don’t have to hustle to a game in an hour. Sure, they’ll play in two days, but until then, they have time. Actual time. It’s become a foreign concept to Gene in the past few years.
At hotels on the road, they’re lucky if the room comes with two beds and a couple of outlets. Before that, when Gene was in High-A and Double-A, he was lucky if the cleaning staff remembered to stock the toilet paper before smoking their cigarettes half out the window and half onto the bedsheets. But this room has tall windows bracketing a sliding glass door, and a small outdoor balcony with a table. It has a mini-fridge that appears to be younger than Gene’s nephew, and a room service menu set out next to the literal couch. It has space to hang up clothes, and a whole separate room for the beds. Gene looks around the corner, whistling low and admiring the taut pull of the bedding before Luis passes him and starts pulling it up from the bottom edge.
The sight is familiar, so much so that Gene has to hold back a fond smile. “I highly doubt this place has bedbugs,” Gene says.
“Any hotel can have bedbugs.”
Gene lets his bags drop to the ground. “I admire your vigilance. But this hotel rules.”
“It’s just as dirty as any other hotel,” Luis says.
“It objectively is not.”
Luis lifts the mattress up at the corner to peer underneath.
“What’s the verdict?” Gene asks.
Luis lets the mattress fall back to the frame. “Clear.”
Gene jumps onto the comforter. “Perfect,” he says, his voice muffled by the bedding.
“Okay, I’ve told you: they only wash the sheets. They don’t wash the comforter. You’re breathing in other people’s grime right now.”
Gene holds his middle finger up over his head.
Seconds later, the water turns on, and instead of thinking about Luis undressing in the bathroom—he has seen Luis in, quite literally, every state of dress and undress imaginable and has mentally explored every possible iteration thereof—he reads the room service menu.
By the time they’ve emptied the plate of fries Gene orders, Gene has taken his own shower, letting his hair air-dry. Luis’s, too, has gone a little curly—when he doesn’t style it, it has some wave to it. It looks softer this way.
“We should grab Gonzo,” Gene says. “It’ll take us almost an hour to get to Brooklyn.”
“Because of traffic?”
Gene looks at him like he’s lost it. “We’re not driving. We’ll take the train.”
“Like, underground?” Luis looks wary.
“I thought you’d like that. You hate being on a plane.”
“I hate being in a metal tube in the sky, so you thought I’d like being in a metal tube underground?”
“Yeah, kind of.”
Luis lets out that same little puff of air he did earlier. “Fine,” he says.
“If you hate it, we’ll ditch the train and grab a cab.”
“I’m holding you to that.”
Luis does, in fact, hate it, but not enough that he’s willing to admit defeat. Gene offers three times, and Luis shakes him off each time, so he leaves Luis alone to his controlled breathing.
They’ve all dressed up for the dinner, somewhat. Gene is in a button-up that he hasn’t buttoned anywhere above the bottom of his ribs, along with the same jeans and Docs he wears more or less everywhere. Ernie wears the most straight-guy dress-up outfit imaginable—khakis, untucked blue button-up—but he has, at least, rolled the sleeves of his shirt to his elbows and added a nice watch. Luis wears a white T-shirt, tucked into his nicest black jeans, which in turn are tucked into the ankle boots he is so fond of wearing. Gene’s family probably won’t bother to put on shoes, so even a plain blue button-up will look fancy; it still means something to Gene that they all, independent of each other, decided to make an occasion of the night.
“Okay,” Ernie says as they walk from the train station, a very separated O and K. “You were adopted.”
“Yes,” Gene says.
“By your uncle.”
“Bingo.”
“Because your mom was a hot mess.”
“Dude,” Luis says.
“No, that’s fair,” Gene says. “Yeah.”
“And your uncle-dad is married to a man,” Ernie says, drawing imaginary lines in the air like he’s trying to connect the lines of Gene’s family tree. “And that man has a daughter from his last marriage. So now she’s your sister. Am I forgetting anything?”
“He has a nephew,” Luis says. “Mattie.”
“Oh, I won’t remember any of these people’s names,” Ernie says.
They laugh as they round the corner onto Gene’s dads’ street.
When he was in college, Gene did not feel proud to have grown up in Gowanus, which he’d learned was known outside of New York mostly for its dirty canal. Now, with Luis and Ernie trailing behind him, he feels a sort of unexpected affection—not just for the neighborhood but for how comfortable he is here, and how well he remembers how to get from the station to the squat three-story building in which his dad and stepdad live. That bone-deep knowledge that he will never lose.
It isn’t exactly glamorous, but it’s his place, and his people, the same as Beaverton.
“Where’s Vince?” Art calls from the kitchen, as soon as Franklin opens the front door for them.
Gene doesn’t answer that question. “Hey, Art. Good to see you, too.”
Art—Franklin’s husband, Gene’s stepdad since he was sixteen—comes into the living room holding a dripping spoon and embraces Gene. He always smells a little like tomato sauce and garlic, like the Italian grocery store he owns, and Gene takes in a deep whiff. The man gives better hugs than anyone Gene has met, literally ever, and he gives them liberally. When he gets ahold of Luis, Gene has to laugh. He looks something like a green bean next to Art.
They serve dinner family-style, in large bowls in the center of a table that wasn’t built for this many people and which only gets more crowded when, halfway through the salad course, Gene hears a shout from down on the street.
“Is that—”
“Go see,” Franklin prompts him, and Gene nearly knocks over his chair in his haste to stand up. When he ducks into his old bedroom—set up the same way it was when he lived here—to look out the windows facing the street, he sees Joey and Mattie on the sidewalk, both of them waving so hard their arms might rip out of their sockets.
He bounds down the building’s stairs so fast he half-slides down the last two and bursts onto the street just as enthusiastically. He is met by a hug to rival Art’s, Joey’s arms around him as the door closes.
They only let go when Mattie worms his way between them. He’s tall enough now to nearly reach Gene’s armpit.
“This should be illegal,” he says when he hugs Mattie. “If you get taller than me, I’m going to be so mad.”
“Well, I guess you’re going to be mad,” Mattie says.
“Wow. Rude. I think we need to start giving you coffee. Stunt your growth a little like my tata did to me.”
“Is there food inside?” Mattie asks.
“Is there food inside?” Gene repeats. “Has your Papa ever not had food ready when you came over? You silly little man.”
In the excitement, Gene has locked them out, and the building’s buzzer hasn’t worked in years. He tips his head back and yells toward the open window until Luis comes down to let them in.
The seven of them eat what could charitably be called a disgusting amount of food. Even once they’ve all gotten through their seconds and thirds and slipped Dodger enough bites to constitute nearly a whole plate of his own, Art has plenty left over to insist they take back to the hotel with them later, in case they somehow manage to find room in their stretched stomachs.
Luis gets along great with Mattie, if only for the simple fact that he doesn’t talk nearly as much as Gene’s family does and therefore makes for an ideal audience for Mattie’s monologues. Luis and Franklin end up in the living room, listening to a lecture on Mattie’s newest LEGO sculpture, while Ernie excuses himself to meet up with some of the other guys playing in this weekend’s game.
Gene is left in the kitchen with Art and Joey, an assembly line for the dishes. Gene is on rinsing duty, sandwiched between Art, the scrubber, and Joey, the drier.
“So,” Joey starts.
Gene tries to cut the conversation off there. “I know.”
“Luis Estrada got hot.”
“Stop. Your dad is right there.”
Art shrugs, handing Gene the heavy, ancient, enameled Dutch oven in which he makes sauce three to five times a week. Gene maneuvers it carefully under the spray of the water.
“He’s cute,” Art says.
“Gross, Art.”
Art holds his hands up, innocent. “Not for me. Just a general observation.”
Gene hefts the pot onto Joey’s waiting towel. “You guys aren’t the quietest talkers in the world, so if we could talk about literally anything else, that would be great.”
“But you admit it,” Joey says.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your crush is not and never was subtle.” Rude, because he’s trying his fucking best. She gives a low whistle. “And shit, I get it.”
Gene shoots her the exact same look he would have given her when they were younger, if Joey had tattled on him to one of their dads: murderous.
“What?” she asks. “Who wouldn’t?”
“Motherhood has not matured you.”
“I’m a fun mom.”
“You’re an ass is what you are.”
Art hands over a knife, pointedly pointed at both of them. “Cool your jets. Be nice to each other.”
Joey drops the subject, if only because they’re both adults and reprimands from a parent have gotten a bit more embarrassing since high school. Even so, she gives Gene a little knowing look, accompanied by a smirk that makes Gene’s face heat.
When they finally take their leave, exhausted and jet-lagged and having accepted no fewer than two plates of leftovers apiece, the clocks have crept up on midnight without any of them noticing. They take the train back to their hotel, just him and Luis.
One stop into their trip on the F, Luis leans his head against the window, and by the time they get to Jay Street, he’s asleep, his head tipped to the side and onto Gene’s shoulder. It’s the first time they’ve touched, outside a high five or a congratulatory ass slap on the field, since they kissed, and it warms Gene from his shoulder to his cheeks, down to the gay swoop of his stomach. Luis breathes steady now, mouth open and cheek buried against the fabric of Gene’s shirt. He isn’t a snorer, but he makes these sounds in his sleep, sort of content and painfully sweet, that make Gene wish they had to take the train all the way up through Manhattan and deep into Queens.
It almost hurts, how soft Luis’s head feels there, how vulnerable he looks and sounds when he sleeps. Gene is supposed to spend these few days making a commitment to his baseball career, not falling further into whatever this is he’s feeling for Luis, but baseball means Luis, and Luis means a whole mess of these thoughts Gene doesn’t want to name, and so, if Gene wants baseball, he has to take this, too.
When they get back to the hotel, Luis crashes into bed much as Gene did earlier: face-first, ass up, a full-body flop. He smiles at Gene, an eyes-half-closed little look, before he falls back asleep, still wearing his ankle boots and black jeans. Gene peels the boots off for Luis and lines them up just so in the corner of the room while Dodger curls into a donut at Luis’s back.
To cope with the sleepy sounds Luis makes and the way he clutches a pillow to his chest, Gene takes a picture and sends it to Joey, captioned, If I did have a crush, how fucked would I be?
He receives a string of exclamation marks in response, so many they spill onto a second line. He tosses his phone onto the bed next to him, not bothering to plug it in.