JULY
Current record: 50–40
They fall asleep in the same bed, never quite managing to come down from that post-game, post-sex high. They stick together along nearly the full lengths of their bodies, laughing every time they try to move, and are rewarded by the slightly suction-cup sound of their skin peeling apart. At some point, Luis lets Dodger back into the room, and the night passes without an abundance of sleeping. Instead, stubbornly half-awake, they roll increasingly on top of each other, until the three of them lie in a crowded pile.
By the time morning arrives, Gene’s eyes sting a bit, and his limbs feel as if his muscles have, perhaps, fully fallen out from under his skin. Their shower—almost like a continuation of the one they shared the night before, though this time with more shampoo and marginally less kissing—does little to wake him up. He loves it all the more for its quiet. When Luis leans out from behind the curtain to grab the iced coffee he bought Gene earlier in the morning, Gene takes it in grateful hands. He offers Luis a sip, which Luis accepts, and when they kiss again, it tastes like coffee and cream and no sugar at all, and Gene smiles into it. He can’t seem to stop doing that.
They meet Gene’s family for breakfast, a meal at which Gene and Luis do their best impressions of people who woke up in two separate beds. Whether or not the Ionescus believe them, they make it through the meal without incident.
The next morning, when they’re getting ready for the Home Run Derby, Luis watches Gene button up the Portland jersey the team gave him to wear this week—mint-shouldered, made of slick fabric, with a row of trees printed along the bottom in a deep green, so that they look like the silhouette of a forest when the shirt is tucked into Gene’s shorts.
As soon as Gene twists the final button into place, Luis tugs him in by the waist. “What are the chances you’d be willing to undo some of those?” he asks.
“High,” Gene says.
Luis grins and reaches to help. Gene could maybe get used to the sappy, unfamiliar feeling that spreads through his chest every time he makes Luis experience even a modicum of happiness.
Luis says, “I have to ask you something.”
“Take the whole thing off ?”
“Oh, that too, later.”
Luis looks too focused, too purposeful. Gene puts a hand on one of Luis’s. “What’s up?”
“I want to visit my family,” he says.
“Okay.”
“Like, before the break’s over. I bought a ticket to go after the All-Star Game tomorrow, and”—he takes a deep breath—“I was wondering if you’d come with me.”
Oh.
“Do you want me to?” Gene asks.
“Yes.”
“Then yes.”
Luis fiddles with one of Gene’s undone buttons.
“I want to come out to them. Well, the rest of them. Mia already knows. She’s bi, so it wasn’t that hard to tell her.” He takes a deep breath. “And I just think it might be easier if I’m not alone.”
It’s an awfully boyfriend-like request to make, and Gene is quite certain one night doesn’t make them that, but he doesn’t particularly care. Not when it comes to this, at least. He would go with Luis even if they’d never kissed, even if they never planned to. If Luis wants him there, Gene will come.
Luis starts again, “But it would mean one less day with your family, so I’d get it if—”
Gene cups his face. “Send me your flight number.”
“I already bought you a ticket. Just in case. I didn’t want the flight to sell out.”
“How much? I’ll send you money.”
“I used miles,” Luis says.
“Can you send me the information?” Gene asks. “I need to change my name on the reservation.”
Vince is always telling him he should get his name change done, but it’s expensive, and time-consuming, and complicated, and, frankly, it doesn’t bother Gene enough to overcome the ADHD paralysis. Still, it makes his airport experience a little weird. His ID has a picture of him from right before he came out, same short hair but a rounder face; it says his deadname, which isn’t a big deal to him, but he does try to angle it away from his teammates when they fly. They could probably find it on Google in five minutes, but they wouldn’t do that. He changed his name because he loved being called Gene, not because he hated his old name. He’s lucky in this way, in so many ways.
He explains this to Luis as they log in to Luis’s airline account. Luis still looks away when Gene types it in, as if he hadn’t known Gene by that name first.
While they pack their things, Gene asks, “Any reason you’re doing this right now?”
“Why? Do you think it’s a bad idea?” he says.
“No. But I don’t want you to do it on my account.”
“I think they sort of already know about me. But I just—wanted to actually tell them, while I have a chance to do it in person but before I have time to lose my nerve again. And if I have you there, I think it’ll feel a little less scary?”
Gene tries to ignore the low-grade firecrackers in his chest, the warmth and the spark and that wild joyous burst about being included in this. “Okay,” he says. “It went well when Mia came out?”
“Yeah.”
“Does that make you feel less nervous?”
“I always feel nervous,” Luis says. It comes with an exhausted eyebrow raise, a quirk of his lips, but Gene understands: there’s something a little freeing in admitting to yourself that something will scare you no matter how well you prepare.
The next night, just as the flight attendant tells them to put their phones in airplane mode for the flight, Gene’s lights up with a message—a link from Kyle Clark, in a group chat with Gene and both of the other Kyles. It’s followed up with a text from Kyle Rivera: You were all great!
Kyle Nguyen adds: Tell Nada & Gonzo we say congrats & also they need to give us their numbers, lol
Gene texts back, Will do!! Love you guys, then clicks on the link.
It leads to an article from the Portland Lumberjacks SBNation blog, but before Gene can even read the headline, his eyes are drawn to the picture, which, for a second, makes him wonder if he might need to clean his glasses. Because surely he can’t be seeing right.
But there he is, hoisted high in Luis’s arms, Luis looking up at him with that honest, beautiful smile. Ernie stands at Luis’s back, jostling his shoulder and yelling in delight.
Futures Game Inspires Glimmer of Actual Hope for Once, the headline reads, although Gene is starting to tear up and can’t be completely sure. He blinks twice—long efforts that don’t quite save him—and looks again. Underneath the picture, the caption says, Ernie Gonzales (left) joins the celebration with Beaverton teammates Luis Estrada (center) and Gene Ionescu (right), following the National League’s Futures Game victory at Citi Field.
“Holy shit,” Gene says. It’s the first time he’s seen his own face headlining an article about anything other than his transness. As he scrolls down, he catches a sentence here and there, praise upon praise for the season he and Luis and Ernie have put together so far, representing the bright future of Portland baseball. Like it’s a given. Not once before has Gene read words like this, written about him—assertions that he doesn’t only bolster his teammates’ playoff hopes, but that he could also give that hope to people he’s never met and will never meet, who have rooted for the Portland Lumberjacks for years and have next to nothing to show for it.
He has also rarely seen a trans athlete so unequivocally celebrated for the things they bring to the field. In some ways, the quiet presence of his blue-and-white-and-pink cleats in that picture matters more to him than seeing his own face there.
“Please turn your phone to airplane mode,” the flight attendant says.
“Sorry. Yeah, of course.”
As soon as she has passed their aisle, Gene returns to the article, taking screenshots of the whole thing before he gets in trouble again.
“Holy shit,” he repeats, because it bears repeating.
Luis, for his part, is halfway to incoherence already, having taken his requisite preflight Xanax when they sat down. He rests his head on Gene’s shoulder, and Gene turns the phone to show him.
“That’s us,” Luis says.
He falls asleep by the time the plane takes off, already working on the beginnings of a drool patch on Gene’s shoulder. Gene puts his headphones on and starts his music while he reads on.
The article goes pretty far into the weeds of Gene’s batting and fielding statistics, which Gene marvels at, because at no point in his baseball-playing career has anyone ever written about his actual on-field metrics so thoroughly, or in so positive a light. The article mentions that he’s trans only one time, and then proceeds to systematically pick apart what kind of a player he is.
This, more than the Futures Game, more than any of it—this is what makes Gene start to think there might be a chance, however slim, that he could make it.
As they cross over the New York border, Gene slides his hand under the sweatshirt Luis has draped across himself like a blanket. He laces their fingers together, and, even in his sleep, Luis squeezes Gene’s hand. For a minute, for a moment, Gene lets himself imagine what it would be like if they both made it. If they got the whole damn dream.