JULY
Current record: 50–42
Since the Portland Lumberjacks franchise was founded in the early nineties, 502 players have suited up in some iteration of the team’s uniform, from those early teal-and-red-and-cream days through the brief buffalo-plaid phase, up through the current palette of mint and greens.
Hours after he’s told he’ll be the 503rd, Gene turns the brightness on his phone down as low as it can go, reads every name on the all-time roster. Somewhere around the hundredth familiar name—long past Altman and Baker, into the G names—an arm slides around his waist, the weight an immediate comfort.
“What are you doing?” Luis asks. He starts drawing lazy circles on Gene’s stomach, the backs of his knuckles dragging without aim through the coarse hairs there.
They each had a single celebratory drink with the team after Baker’s announcement before excusing themselves a few minutes apart and going back to Gene’s place together.
Gene had meant to ask why Luis was back in Beaverton, apologize for telling Baker about his trip to the emergency room, see if Luis was okay. But they’d had their own private celebration first, and then Luis had fallen asleep so quickly, and here Gene is now, hours later, still not sure how to say any of the things he needs to say.
“Sorry,” Gene says. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
Luis deposits a kiss on the back of Gene’s neck. “You didn’t. Are you checking to see if anyone added your name yet?”
Gene locks his phone and sets it facedown on the bed. “Nosy.”
He flips himself over, and Luis pulls him in until their chests touch. A few inches from Gene’s, his face is so sleepy and so sweet that Gene almost can’t take it.
“I have to tell you something,” Gene says.
Luis’s eyes open all the way, worry furrowing his eyebrows immediately. “Is everything okay?”
“I told Baker that I took you to the hospital. And I shouldn’t have.”
“Oh,” Luis says. Surprise, and then calm. “That’s okay.”
“It wasn’t my business to tell,” Gene says, tracing a finger on the same side of Luis’s chest Luis had held last night before he passed out. “I was just worried about you, and I didn’t think. I’m sorry.”
“Nes. I’m not upset with you. I told the Portland coaches as soon as I got to the stadium. I figured they probably wouldn’t want me passing out on the field.”
“Is that why they sent you back down?”
“Probably.”
He says it so casually. If it was Gene getting sent back down, he couldn’t imagine feeling anything but distraught.
“You’re allowed to be upset,” Gene says.
“I know. But I’m not.”
“Why?”
Luis tips his head forward, until his forehead meets Gene’s and his lips press into a kiss. “Can’t I just be excited for you?”
Gene moves his head back until Luis can’t reach to kiss him. “Nada.”
Luis sighs. “I mean,” he says, “I had a panic attack, Nes.”
“I know.”
“No, like—when they called me up the first time. That’s how I got in my accident.”
“Oh,” Gene says. Insufficient, he knows. In an ideal world, he would be able to wrap himself all the way around Luis, entirely protected, so Luis could have the privacy he deserves and so rarely gets. As it is, it’s all he can do to listen.
So he does.
“I was driving, and I had a panic attack. This was before I had Dodger. So I thought I could, I don’t know. Drive through it, I guess?” Luis digs the heel of his hand into one of his eyes and flops onto his back. “I couldn’t. Obviously,” he tells the ceiling.
“Shit, Nada. I’m sorry.”
“I just—I wouldn’t have been a baseball player if it wasn’t for my dad. He really wanted me to. And I realized in the car…like, y’know, he’s dead, and I was still doing this thing he wanted me to, and I had never stopped to think if I wanted it, because it was always easier to just do what other people wanted me to. But I hadn’t gone on a date in years, and it was all shitty and fucking hard, and as soon as I let myself think about how my life had turned out, it felt like everything was falling apart. I was gay, and I didn’t know how to be, and I didn’t really know how to be a baseball player, either. Like I was sort of shitty at both.”
Gene takes a beat to process all of that. He tries, as well as he can, to give the hurt in Luis’s voice the space it deserves before he says, “I think you’re pretty good at both those things.”
Luis laughs. “Thanks. You’re a little biased.” He turns to look at Gene, then adds, “I’d been reading about you. That day, after I got the call-up.”
“I thought you said you didn’t read about me,” Gene says.
“I lied. I read about you sometimes. And I thought about you—fuck, a lot. Especially after Ritz told me you came out.” He takes a deep breath, a little shaky. “And I was just thinking—God, I fucked up. Somewhere along the line, I fucked up. I was going to play in the major fucking leagues, and it still felt wrong.”
Gene rests his thumb in the dip beneath Luis’s bottom lip, traces underneath one side of Luis’s mouth to the other, and lets Luis press a kiss to the pad of his thumb. “Because of me? How?”
“Sort of. I guess I just liked to imagine”—he tugs on one of Gene’s curls—“that you were really happy. You know? You were out, and you were still playing, and that had seemed impossible to me. Then I got traded to Portland, and I was so nervous to see you again. You should have seen me that first morning, before I came to the stadium.”
“Yeah?”
“I was a whole wreck. But then I got to know you again, and obviously realized it’s a lot more complicated than just coming out and everything either being entirely terrible or entirely perfect.”
“It is. But that doesn’t mean you can’t come out.”
“I know. It’s just—I don’t know, Nes. I just,” he starts, and then he stops. “This time, when Baker called, it didn’t feel the same.”
“Okay.”
“I was just glad I wasn’t getting traded. I don’t think I could do that again. But then I started wondering what was going to go wrong this time. You know?”
Gene knows that feeling well, too well, and he wants to hug Luis so bad he can feel the need in his stomach, in the itching palms of his hands.
“Nada.”
“So, I fell apart because I imagined some problems. Which is very on brand for me.”
Gene pulls Luis closer. Always closer. Dodger, from his spot on Luis’s feet, lets out a long sigh, as if waiting for them to go back to sleep.
“How do you feel now?” Gene asks.
Luis smiles, a genuine and easy thing. “Like I’m really excited to watch you play later.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“That’s my final answer.”
“You’re not mad at me?”
“Why would I be?”
“Or disappointed?”
“No.”
“You’re not mad they gave me your roster spot?”
“Nes.” Luis grabs Gene’s face. “Stop. No.”
“Because I was a little jealous when you got called up. And it would be okay if you were upset.”
With a kiss, Luis says, “Then it’s a good thing I’m a bigger person than you are, isn’t it? Now, can you promise you’re not going to worry about this tomorrow?”
“I absolutely cannot.”
“Can you promise you’ll try?”
Gene considers. And—yes. He’s still worried. But he can trust Luis to tell him the truth.
“Yeah,” he says. “I can do that.”
“Good.” Luis reaches over Gene then, grabs Gene’s phone, and holds it out for Gene to input the password. He scrolls until he arrives at the I names, points to where Ionescu would be alphabetized. “That’s where you’ll be tomorrow, after the game,” he says.
Gene takes the phone back, sets it on his nightstand, and, in an effort to calm his own frenzied pulse, buries his face in Luis’s chest. Before he thinks about getting there—that page, that team, Portland—he tries to let himself just be here, in this familiar room, with Luis.
Luis and Vince drop him off early and cheer from the front seat of Jack’s SUV all the way until the metal door of the staff entrance closes behind Gene with a heavy thud.
Gene’s phone goes off immediately, somewhere from the confines of his duffel.
A text from Luis: You’re gonna be great today.
Then, shortly after: Call if you need anything? We’re going to head out to the airport.
He and Vince had offered to pick Gene’s family up after their early flight lands, but they’d insisted on dropping Gene off at the stadium before doing so.
He texts back, Thank you again. Sorry in advance for how nosy Altzy’s gonna be.
Literally already asked when I’m moving in, Luis answers.
Gene cringes, taps out another apology, and drops his phone back in his bag. It’s early for Gene to be there, and the quiet is almost stifling, the nerves even more so. He’s supposed to stop by the manager’s office in an hour, to have his first official meeting with the head coaching staff.
For now, though, he takes a deep breath, and he walks into that stadium on shaky legs, with a shaky stomach and a shaky heart.
If Gene could only ever step foot in one major league ballpark for the rest of his life, he would pick Portland’s. Not only because it was the first he ever visited, not only because of home-team loyalty. Settled along the Columbia River waterfront, the stadium is borderline downtown without being busy. It’s just tall enough to feel intimidating, ivy-covered, with a retractable roof. On sunny days, with the roof open, it’s airy and bright. Every seat, from the dugout-huggers to the nosebleeds, feels magical. It’s the first place Gene remembers feeling the grandness of baseball, the way a crowd can swell together, can turn their collective wanting into something almost palpable.
He visits the familiar spots first.
Portland’s stadium boasts some of the best baseball food in the league, the thoroughfares populated not by stalls but by food carts, rotated out seasonally. Gene walks past the old reliables (hot dogs, tacos, gourmet popcorn and pretzels, the ones that never seem to rotate out and always command a serpentine line) and the newcomers (waffles, fried rice, that fancy ice cream shop with the flavors that never sound good). He’d like to meet everyone who works at every cart, until this stadium’s people are as familiar as Beaverton’s. Until he can recognize every coach, every player. The photographers, the cleaning staff, the ball kids, the announcers, the ushers.
For now, though, he settles for walking out into the open air, taking in a view he has seen dozens of times, if not hundreds.
Across the outfield stretches an eight-foot wall, an even line between the foul poles. The grass, mowed in perfect stripes, intersecting in stretched-out diamonds, loosely resembles the buffalo plaid of their mascot. The ninety-foot white lines painted between each of the bases stand out crisp and bright against the perfect brown of the infield dirt, and Gene, for the first time in his life, imagines himself there, feet planted in that dirt, playing for the very first team he ever rooted for. He imagines the way the ground will feel beneath his cleats.
The picture he sends Luis encompasses the whole of the field and most of the stands, taken at the widest angle Gene can manage. When Luis sends it back, he has drawn a red circle over the empty middle infield.
See you here in a few hours, the text reads.
Over and over, Gene considers going down to the dugout, setting his bag down, and lying in the grass, the way he did with Luis before the Futures Game. It feels impossible. Like if he lets himself do it, the whole thing will dissolve around him, too good to be true.
So instead, ten minutes before his meeting with the manager is supposed to start, Gene ducks into a freshly scrubbed visitors’ bathroom on the main concourse, and he kneels in front of a toilet, leans over as his stomach threatens to revolt.
Are you nervous? Luis texts, as if he can sense it in Gene’s silence.
No, I feel great. Like I could run a mile. Ten miles minimum, Gene responds.
Liar.
Gene smiles, then remembers how close his face is to a public toilet, and sits back on his heels.
Luis texts again: Your meeting’s going to be fine. He’s just gonna say it’s good to have you here, and then it’ll be over.
Luis is right. The meeting will last five minutes, at most, maybe a quick photo op. But it’s the subtext of the meeting that makes Gene nervous: Are you worth the risk we’re taking right now?
Gene doesn’t know how to answer that question yet.
Promise? Gene asks.
100%.
So Gene stands before he can remember to be nervous.
He doesn’t know if the risk is worth it. He doesn’t know if he belongs here. But the same as he did at eighteen, walking onto that very first baseball team, Gene slings his beaten and battered cleats—tied together by the laces—around the back of his neck, hefts his duffel over his shoulder, and lets himself want it anyway.
The hallways that lead from the publicly accessible parts of Portland’s stadium to its innermost rooms—the clubhouses and managers’ offices—are wider, taller, quieter than the halls in Beaverton. They largely pass in a blur, concrete walls and painted murals, framed photos of some of Portland’s all-time greats. Gene snaps a picture of the Altman shrine—a jersey, a signed baseball, an enormous picture of a pre-beard Vince receiving his first Cy Young Award, all hung in a place of pride—and saves it for the next time Vince needs a light teasing.
Because Beaverton plays in an old stadium that no one wants to pay to renovate, the walls block out almost no sound. The Kyles’ pregame playlists carry through the cement and wood and support beams, seemingly permeating the whole of the building. Here, nicer and newer material holds back the bulk of the noise, and even once Gene pulls the clubhouse door open, everything feels almost muted. Like he has earplugs in, forgot his contacts—something.
He misses Baker folding her arms in the corner to size them up. He misses Vince kvetching about his aches and pains while Gene slings his bag into his locker stall. He misses Ernie bounding in, grin blazing, to report to the room his latest efforts to impress the Stumptown barista down the street. And what he misses most, of course, is Luis at his side as he walks in.
But Gene is here. So he walks across that room, his chest too full to breathe, and he sets his bag in his locker, in his clubhouse, in his team’s stadium. A Portland Lumberjacks uniform is hung up with care. Size small, colors crisp, pants short the way he likes to wear them.
A closed fist lands on his shoulder, an encouraging bump. Portland’s starting third baseman—young but established, the core of a team that should, in a few years, be far better than its current record would imply—grins.
And suddenly the noise of the clubhouse hits Gene all at once: their aging catcher in the corner reviewing heat maps with his starting pitcher; a song starting and stopping and turning over to something new, a small squad of relief pitchers singing along to lyrics they only half-know; a hitting coach announcing that batting practice will start in twenty, the answering clamor of cleats being dropped into lockers and warm-up clothes being pulled on. A well-oiled machine compared to Beaverton’s haphazard routines, built out of so many voices Gene recognizes from interviews. Nowhere near familiar, but it feels like it could be someday.
Then, the squeak of a marker as an assistant coach finishes writing the lineup in large block letters on the whiteboard. There, batting ninth, number zero: starting second baseman Gene Ionescu—the name he chose for himself, and the one he inherited from his dad, one stacked atop the other, an announcement and a vote of confidence all in one. Right there in a lineup with the guys he watches in highlight reels, whose names he sees in the headlines.
It’s terrifying, one of the most breathtaking things Gene has ever experienced. Like someone has dropped him in an ice bath the size of an ocean and asked him to swim.
Then, Portland’s third baseman, leaning in:
“Congrats, man. We’re glad to have you here.”
Gene smiles. And he breathes.
Fifteen minutes before first pitch—after he makes it through an uneventful meeting with the manager and hitting coaches, after infield drills and batting practice, after Gene is introduced to a full roster of players he has watched from afar for years and does his best not to act like a starstruck buffoon about it—they walk as a team to the dugout.
Gene tries not to look into the stands, pulling his cap a little lower on his forehead than he normally would to block them out.
As the home team, they’ll field first. In less than twenty minutes, he will need to walk onto that field and trust that his legs will keep him upright, that his body can hold firm.
As the Portland announcers read out the lineup—starting pitcher first, then leadoff hitter, all the way down the lineup until they reach Gene’s name—he barely hears the words. His hands shake, his throat constricts, and he briefly considers running back down the dugout hallway, out of the stadium, all the way back home to the safety of his bed.
Before he can, a voice to his right asks, “Has Baker made you guys wash her car yet this year?”
Gene pulls his attention away from the field, where Portland’s center fielder is making his entrance.
The voice came from Ken Kelly—K.K. Slider to his teammates, named as such for three reasons: his initials, his wicked breaking ball, and his truly impressive eyebrows, much like the cartoon dog from whom the nickname was filched. A onetime mainstay in Beaverton’s rotation, whose breakout season last year had landed him a spot on Portland’s roster.
K.K. has a wad of pink bubblegum tucked in his cheek, good for a bite or two every few seconds. Gene has always found it distracting, the way he pokes it around from side to side with his tongue, but he’s grateful tonight for a distraction.
“Uh,” Gene says, the pinch of anxiety in his gut momentarily forgotten. “Yeah.”
“Cleanest Subaru in Oregon.”
“Which is saying something.”
K.K. tips his head back and laughs. “You ever have to do it?”
“Not since last year,” Gene says.
“Good for you. Staying out of trouble.” Then K.K. points up, as if indicating the voices over the public announcement system. “I think that’s you.”
And sure enough, as they’ve talked, the rest of Portland’s lineup has taken the field, and that’s Gene’s name, so loud he can feel it in his teeth.
He doesn’t have time to think.
He walks up the steps and jogs to second, and as soon as he passes through foul territory and his cleats hit the grass, the sound fades away. There’s the clean white paint of the first base line, the raked-out infield dirt, second base exactly where it always is, stalwart. That subtle give of the bag, sat in the center of it all.
And the crowd: so many of them, thousands upon thousands. All those people—the ones Gene knows and the ones he doesn’t—can see him. A healthy number of them are aware of why Gene’s presence on that field is such a monumental deal, and some of them love that and some of them hate that, and there are probably people out there in Portland jerseys who are hoping he fails.
It’s too much.
He never wondered why Luis had a full-on panic attack about this shit. Not for one second. Even still, now that he’s working life into his glove, getting his hat set just right, he understands it a lot better. Luis—as always—simply thought things through better than Gene did, realized faster how achingly terrifying this would be, and his body shut down over it.
Gene didn’t blame him then, and he doesn’t blame him now. But it’s this—that thought of Luis, the image of him in the stands behind home plate, sandwiched between Vince and Baker, of Mattie watching from Art’s shoulders, Joey whistling sharp and clear, Gene’s dad yelling his name—that makes him steady his goddamn legs and stand up at second.
When he looks, squints until the stands come almost into focus, he can see them. At least, he can see blurs where they should be, can see the way their arms move as they clap, as they cup hands around their mouths and cheer. Gene thinks he might see a few other people standing, too, but it’s this half-row of his family and some of his Beaverton teammates, all there for him, that he cares about.
He’ll play without them tonight, but he can play for them all the same. A little for Baker, a little for his dad in the stands, a little for Vince, and a lot for Luis. And with whatever’s left over after all that, Gene will play for himself.
Twelve innings and a walk-off win later, Gene’s family takes him out to the same diner Gene and his dad used to eat at to celebrate every big win. The Beavers left halfway through the seventh to catch their plane, and the game didn’t end until their flight had already taken off.
Gene gets a FaceTime call sometime around midnight, NADA all in capital letters on his screen. He flops into bed before he picks up.
“You should be asleep,” he says by way of greeting.
“Like fuck!” Luis says.
“Who’re you rooming with?”
“Who am I rooming with? That’s what you want to talk about?”
Gene grins. “I like knowing what’s going on in your life.”
“Altzy.” Luis turns the camera to show a brief glimpse of Vince on the other bed before his own face reappears. “I can’t believe you stole home. I’m so mad we missed it.”
“Skip told me to grab a bag,” Gene says in the most nonchalant voice he can manage. It was chaos at home plate when Gene slid in, safe, his formerly crisp uniform now lovingly decorated with infield dirt. There might not be a home run ball for Gene to keep, but there is a photo of him on the Lumberjacks’s Twitter account, his teammates pressed in around him, a crush of Portland uniforms, Gene’s batting helmet half-toppled off his head. There is his new team holding him aloft to a sparse but joyous Portland crowd. There is that bone-deep joy that Gene will never forget.
“We were watching the replays the whole way to the hotel,” Luis says.
He sent Gene a few videos from the bus, his old teammates just as boisterous as the new ones. Gene saved every last one to his phone.
“Yeah, I liked the part where your finger was over the camera for half the video,” Gene says. “You’re the oldest twenty-eight-year-old I’ve ever met.”
Luis grins.
“And I love that about you,” Gene says before he can overthink using that particular word in this particular context, to this particular person. “Is Altzy sleeping?”
“Not yet.”
“Getting there?”
Vince, from what sounds like a few feet away, answers, “If you two could stop yapping.”
Gene grins. “Tell him hi.”
“I’m happy for you, Nes, but I’ve been up since six. I’ll congratulate you in the morning,” Vince says, with the distinct tone of a man who has his face shoved into a pillow.
“Do you need to go?” Gene asks.
“No,” Luis says.
“Yes,” Vince says.
“Go sit in the bathroom,” Gene says.
He watches Luis get up, can hear the rustling of sheets and then a short silence before a door latches and Luis slides to sit on the ground.
“Okay, hi,” Luis says, his voice quieter, just for Gene.
“Perfect, now we can have phone sex,” Gene says.
There’s a long pause, long enough that Gene almost jumps in to backtrack, and then Luis says, “Seriously?”
Gene laughs and pulls his knees against his chest. He still hasn’t gotten his heartbeat down to a reasonable speed, still feels like he could run all the way to Luis’s hotel room in Albuquerque and get back to Oregon in time for tomorrow’s evening game. He channels all that energy into the tips of his fingers, dancing along the side of his leg.
“I was kidding,” he says. “But you seemed pretty eager, so I’m making a mental note.”
“You’re an ass.”
“Maybe.”
There’s a pause just long enough for Luis to take a breath, and then, his voice far softer, he says, “I’m really proud of you, you know.”
And that’s much better than phone sex. Gene is grateful, as he tips his forehead onto his knees and grins so hard it hurts, that no one is here to point out how gone he is on this man.
“Yeah?” he asks.
“Always, yes. But especially today.”
Gene has to swallow around the way that makes him feel—like he could cry, like he’d go through every bit of today’s anxiety a dozen times over just to hear those words again—so he can say, “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me, Nes. You should get some sleep. It was a big day.”
“You should get some sleep.”
But neither of them hangs up, and for the first time in his life, Gene feels that feeling. The No, you hang up first one that teenagers are supposed to get, but that he never did, because, as a teenager, years before he knew he was trans, years before he knew he was gay, he was never comfortable enough in his skin to fall for someone, or to consider that they might fall for him, too. But he doesn’t want to hang up, and he doesn’t want Luis to, either.
“Do you want to lay down with me?” he asks.
“Right now?”
“Yeah. If you want.”
So Luis takes Gene back out into the main hotel room. He drags his weighted blanket, the one he lugs on every roadie, over his shoulders, and he nestles his phone up against the pillows, so it catches half his face and the crest of his shoulder and Dodger’s head on the pillow behind his.
Gene settles into his own pillows, nestling under his quilt and watching Luis for all of two minutes before he drifts off with the lamp on and Luis sleeping on his screen.