The Elephants are in Michigan playing a four-game set against the Detroit Muscle when Zach gets two phone calls. The first is from his mother, a voice mail that begins by her dictating out her number, as if he doesn’t have it, before saying how excited they are to see him for the All-Star break, which is right after the series.
The second call comes from Johnson.
“Everything all right?” Zach says, when he calls him back. Over FaceTime, Johnson looks older than he did in spring training, mid-season weight loss thinning out some of the puppy fat on his face.
“I’m good,” he says. “Real good, in fact. They activated me. I’m on the forty-man. I mean, Baptiste is getting surgery, so that’s not great for him.”
“Hey, congrats. Good for you.”
“Thanks.” And Johnson looks like can’t stop himself from grinning.
Zach asks how his season has been, and Johnson tells him about playing in Nashville, living with four other guys in an apartment that could be a lot worse than it is. About how his parents drove up a couple times to see him pitch, and Sara Maria flew in for a series. About how he’s learning Spanish, so her family doesn’t feel like they have to switch to English when he’s around.
“Yeah,” Zach says, “that still going on?”
Johnson turns red, and Zach laughs, and he turns even redder when Zach laughs. “Um, I’ve been looking at rings, especially now that I might be making some money. It’s early. It just feels like we’ve been through so much together.”
“Everything feels that way when you’re twenty-one.” Zach should probably say something else—that getting serious that young doesn’t always work out. That some guys Zach’s age are going through their first divorces.
“I just want to be with her.” And he says it with the kind of certainty that makes Zach look away from his phone, long enough that Johnson asks him if the call got frozen.
“No, I’m still here.”
“I’ve been thinking, if baseball doesn’t work out, I might move back to Arizona. It only takes a year to get in-state residence for tuition, so if I live there during the offseason, I could enroll someplace. I did two years of junior college, so it wouldn’t even take that much.”
“That’s still kind of a long time,” Zach says. “And like you said, you’re on the forty-man now. Stuff’s gonna work out for you.”
“I’ve been praying on it, and I don’t know. Baseball. Just doesn’t seem fair, even if I make it, other guys don’t.”
“No, it isn’t. I didn’t have a lot of options. It was pretty much baseball or re-covering couches in Baltimore for the rest of my life. Hell, it still might be if things don’t work out.”
“You really think the Elephants would cut you? Even with how you been playing?”
Because he has been playing well, though he feels like less a member of a catcher tandem and more a backup catcher, Eugenio starting nearly double the number of games he is. Enough that guys are beginning to comment on it, Gordon even asking if Zach was injured and not telling the team about it, and not quite believing Zach when he said he wasn’t. “None of this stuff comes with a guarantee.”
It hangs there, Johnson absorbing it, and he looks young to Zach, even if they’re only eight years apart in age.
“But this isn’t about me,” Zach says. “You’re smart. You have good instincts. If you want to go and do something else, well, I mean, I’ll be glad I never have to face you on the mound.”
Johnson laughs at that. “You know, everyone else I’ve said that to acted like I was throwing something away.”
“There’s more to life than having three good pitches. Or in your case, two and half good pitches and a curveball you tip.”
“I’ve stopped doing that. But yeah, I guess I got some thinking to do.”
“Whatever you end up doing, let me know.”
“Thanks, man. I, um, I don’t think I can really say how grateful I am for everything you did for me.”
“You’re making me blush, kid,” Zach says, mostly because it makes Johnson go red. “I mean it, though. Whatever happens—pitching or college or whatever, I want to know about it.”
After they get off the phone, Zach gets a notification that Will Johnson is trying to send him a payment for $20, one marked First of three, a reimbursement for the money Zach gave Sara Maria months ago. Zach declines the transfer. Save it for tuition, he texts, and gets a thumbs-up in response.
He takes the later bus to the ballpark the day after his second start, and when he gets there, Eugenio is standing by his stall. With two people he introduces as his parents.
“This is Zach,” Eugenio says, as if his parents will know who Zach is already.
“It’s nice to meet you both,” Zach says. And he wasn’t expecting anything in Detroit to be challenging, not against the Detroit Muscle’s weak bats, and not in the clubhouse either. Which doesn’t help the churning in his gut as they stand there. His palms, which were previously dry, start to sweat.
Eugenio’s parents aren’t that short, but he has to reach down to shake each of their hands, hoping that they can’t tell that he’s having fifty percent of a panic attack. They’re dressed in more formal clothes than most people wear to ball games, his father in a collared shirt and dress pants, his mother in a modest sundress and a cardigan, though each of them has a Morales jersey over their clothes. Their demeanor is similarly formal, more soft-spoken than Zach would have expected, Eugenio at one point asking them to speak up in the din of the clubhouse.
Zach doesn’t know much about them, other than that they’re professors. But they seem to know about him—definitely more than his own parents do about Eugenio, since he worries he won’t be able to talk about him without accidently giving something away. Usually, it’s Morales, you know, the other catcher and Zach’s playing time has been reduced enough that his mother started grumbling when he does.
“Zach,” Eugenio’s father says, “Eugenio tells us you’ve been helping him get acclimated.” And he says Eugenio’s name differently from the way that Zach’s been saying it, pronouncing the E and U as slightly separate syllables, but not fully separate the way reporters do.
“We go over scouting reports together.” Zach looks very intently at the floor, willing himself not to flush.
“It’s good that you’re working together,” Eugenio’s father says, as if Eugenio needs Zach’s help.
“Eugenio’s pretty prepared,” Zach says, and then amends to, “very prepared.”
“That’s good to hear.”
Giordano came in on the same bus as Zach, and he rolls into the clubhouse now, music blasting from an old school boombox.
And Eugenio’s father asks something that Zach can’t make out.
“Sounds like it,” Eugenio says, loud, over the din.
“I should go. It was nice to meet you both.” Zach turns to leave.
“I was thinking,” Eugenio says, before Zach can make his escape, still at a higher volume than he normally uses, “Zach, if you’re not busy for dinner, there’s this Cuban place a couple blocks over we were all going to check out.”
And Eugenio was in Zach’s hotel room game-planning the night before. He left a pile of scouting reports and his boxers, which are now stuffed into Zach’s suitcase. It couldn’t have been a surprise that his parents were driving in for the game. Couldn’t have been, and yet Eugenio is standing there, beatifically asking him if he wants to check out a Cuban restaurant in front of them.
“I wouldn’t want to intrude,” Zach says. “But thanks for the invite.” And he walks away quickly, hoping he made his point.
Eugenio finds him later in the tunnel before the game.
“You could have asked me that,” Zach says, “yesterday.”
“You would’ve said no.”
“Yes, I would have said no, but now I look like an asshole,” Zach says, tightly. “To your parents.”
“Zach, I know I can’t tell them about—” Eugenio makes a hand motion between them “—but I wanted my parents to meet you.”
“We should not be talking about this here,” Zach begins, when Gordon comes into the tunnel. And they should be talking about the game, except Zach cannot remember a single thing about the game they’re about to play, not who their starting pitcher is, not a single batter in the Detroit lineup he faced yesterday.
Gordon wanders by them and doesn’t say anything about how they’re standing three-quarters of the way to the dugout having a whispered argument and glaring contest. “Fellas,” he says, walking past.
“Morales,” Zach says, because almost no one calls Eugenio anything but that in the clubhouse, except for Gordon dubbing him “Geno,” which Zach is absolutely not going to call him. “Look, fine, whatever, I’ll do it.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I already said I would, so take the fucking W.”
Which is how he ends up at a four-top in the back corner of a Cuban restaurant trying to make conversation with Eugenio’s parents, who are very polite, and very nice, and very quiet.
Zach can’t tell if they’re not talking because he’s there, or if they just don’t talk in general, but the most they say after sitting and thanking the waiters for their menus is that they’re excusing themselves to wash their hands for dinner.
There’s a dance floor in the restaurant, a stage with a place for a band, and the noise level will get worse if they start playing, not that there’s really anything to hear. Eugenio must see him looking over at the stage. “They’re not playing tonight. I checked.”
“Thanks for thinking of that, you know, with this being a last-minute invitation and all.”
“Zach—” Eugenio says, before throwing up his hands. “You’re my friend on the team, and I talk about you a lot with them.”
“It just feels like an ambush.”
“I didn’t know how else to do it.” But he doesn’t continue when his parents return.
“Eugenio tells me you’re professors,” Zach says, when there’s been a lull in the conversation between the discussion of how the game went and what each person is going to order to drink. Neither of Eugenio’s parents ordered anything beyond water, and Eugenio stuck with an iced coffee, adding four sugar packets to it and stirring vigorously. “What do you teach?”
“Religious studies, mostly,” his mother says. “A few core courses. Comparative religion, the history of the early church, but there’s a wide variety of electives.”
“What kinds of electives?” Zach asks when neither of them follows up.
“Religion and,” Eugenio says. “Religion and the movies. Religion and environmentalism. Religion and politics. That kind of thing.”
“Next semester,” his mother says, “we’re co-teaching one on religion and sports.”
“I didn’t know that,” Eugenio says.
“We thought with, you know,” his father says, gesturing across to where Eugenio and Zach are sitting, Zach’s knees bumping the table and his elbow bumping Eugenio’s, “it felt timely.”
“That’s, uh,” Zach says, and for the first time since they sat down, meaning it, “really interesting.”
It turns out the course is on the unique intersection between religion and sports, and their role in society, and that occupies them through most of dinner and into the contemplation of, and rejection of, the idea of dessert. A long enough conversation—one that takes detours into a few stories from Eugenio’s childhood that make Eugenio flush with embarrassment and Zach from amusement—to unfray Zach’s nerves.
Which is why, when Eugenio excuses himself to go to the bathroom, Zach isn’t expecting it when Eugenio’s father says, “We both wanted to say thank you.” He adds, “For helping him this year,” at Zach’s apparent look of confusion. “He mentioned that you worked together closely during spring training.”
Zach flushes, a burning he can feel in his forehead and his cheeks, one he hopes they attribute to false modesty. “He doesn’t need much help with how he’s been hitting.”
“There’s more to the game than that,” his father says. “There’s a human element to it. His team last year, I don’t think had a good sense of how to develop catchers. Things were more difficult than they needed to be. We’re happy he has someone looking out for him.”
“Um, it’s not a problem,” Zach says.
They take a rideshare back to their hotel, Eugenio handing him a bag with two to-go boxes before sliding in. “Did something happen in the minors?” Zach asks. “Your father said something weird.”
“The fact that he said anything to you at all is kind of a surprise.” But Eugenio doesn’t continue.
It’s a short ride, though their driver occupies most of it, asking Eugenio questions that Zach tunes out. When they get out at the hotel, Eugenio lingers by the lobby entrance, pulling out a pack of cigarettes, lighting one.
It’s cooled off, and Zach’s a little cold. He’s about to tell Eugenio he’ll see him tomorrow, when Eugenio says, “Stuff last year wasn’t great. Bad development. I hurt my hip two years ago and it took forever for them to diagnose it. My parents weren’t happy with any of it—my not getting to play, the way the organization was handling it. It’s one of the reasons I wanted you to come to dinner. I thought they wouldn’t talk about it with you there.”
“You could have just told me that instead of pulling that bullshit in the clubhouse earlier.”
“They’re sort of difficult to explain.”
“I mean, I get that, but it’s still bullshit.”
“I did want them to meet you. If I can’t tell them about us, it’s important to me that they like you, okay?”
Zach glances around. Their only real witnesses are the hotel staff, who are mostly occupied with returning valet-service vehicles to the garage. “Can we talk about this inside?”
“Guys go out with each other’s families,” Eugenio says, like that’s all it was, the same as Braxton and Giordano and Braxton’s ex-wife all going to get dinner.
“You know what I mean.”
Eugenio has only smoked half a cigarette, but he finishes it and grinds it into the brick wall behind him, then discards the butt in a nearby trash can. “I bought cake if you want it.”
Some of Zach’s s annoyance deflates. “Uh, sure, I guess.”
They eat in Zach’s room, Eugenio procuring two forks from the front desk and a pile of napkins when it turns out the restaurant included neither. “I really did want you to meet them,” he says, after a while. “We’re close even if we’re pretty different.”
“You don’t say,” Zach says. Eugenio’s shirt is off, and he claimed that he didn’t want to get food on it, though laughed when Zach asked him why he didn’t strip at the restaurant. “You look like them. I mean, except for all the—” Zach gestures to Eugenio’s tattoos “—and I can’t imagine they have as many opinions about tapas.”
“You might be surprised by that once they get warmed up.”
“It’s nice, them coming up to see you play.”
“Like I said, we’re close. The rest of my family thinks they’re strange too. Growing up, it always felt like I was running interference between them and my cousins, who are probably more like what you’d expect.”
“Everyone in my family’s loud. No, wait, my cousin Shoshanna’s quiet. I think. She’s a goth or was in high school, so I have no idea if she’s like that now.”
“So, I should fit in?” It’s teasing, the way Eugenio says it, like Zach can just bring him to his parents’ Baltimore split-level. Can introduce him as no more than a teammate, a friend. “I shouldn’t have asked you like I did. I’m sorry. They’re important to me. You’re important to me.”
And Zach looks up at that, at where Eugenio is sitting, the affirmation settling into Zach’s belly, warming him.
“You look surprised,” Eugenio says.
“Do I?”
“You get this—” Eugenio reaches out, tapping a finger lightly to Zach’s forehead “—line right there. It’s...” He feels around for a word, and Zach’s brain supplies a number of them: sweet, goofy, panicked. “It makes me wonder why other people haven’t told you that before.”
“You mean, what’s wrong with me?” Zach can’t look at Eugenio as he says it, concentrating instead on the even stitching of the bedspread. He picks at the edge of a thread, his chest tight from embarrassment at having said that out loud.
“More, what was wrong with them?”
“Oh.”
Eugenio kisses him, something soft, leaning over the containers of cake he bought, his forehead resting momentarily on Zach’s. “I want to tell my parents. About us. About me.”
“Do you think they would be okay with it?”
“I don’t know. I think they might be. But it feels worse to keep it from them.”
“Even if they were fine with us being together, it’s not like we can tell them and expect them to keep it a secret.”
Eugenio’s eyebrows draw together at that. “They would if I asked them to.”
“Mine wouldn’t. Or they might because they didn’t want people to know, not because I asked them. Or they might tell just one person, and then I’ll walk into some family function, and everyone’ll look at me and just know.” Zach’s throat goes tight at the end of it, and he blinks a few times to wet his eyes, suddenly dry and stinging in the over-air-conditioned hotel air.
“Zach.” Eugenio’s voice isn’t low, but his expression is worried. He collects the containers of cake, setting them on the nightstand, and shifts over. It’s not a large bed. Their shoulders touch, Zach lying on the mound of excess pillows, body feeling like he’s had all the air let out of him.
“There’s this fundraiser in Baltimore my parents are holding over the break,” Zach says. “I don’t really want to go but I am. Morgan and her wife are coming to it. We were gonna go to the beach after.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“I thought you were going to look for a new apartment.” Because Eugenio mentioned moving out of Gordon’s to some place where they didn’t need to worry about a dozen people showing up unannounced.
“I can do both.” Eugenio reaches for Zach’s hand, fingers circling his wrist lightly, forefinger stroking over the tendons there.
“You know we couldn’t be together while we’re there.” Zach imagines what that’ll be like—in his parents’ house, Eugenio a respectful distance away from him, wanting to touch him and not being able to. If his parents will surprise him with one of their friends’ daughters in an effort to set him up. If Eugenio will have to watch and pretend that it doesn’t bother him. That Zach will have to do the same.
“That’s okay. Or not okay, but I can probably survive it.”
“And they’ll probably stick you in a guest room with the world’s shortest bed.”
“Where would you be sleeping?”
“In another guest room on an even shorter bed,” Zach says, and Eugenio laughs at that. “I’ve never brought anyone home. Not like that.”
“Not even a ‘friend’?”
“No.” And Zach thinks about all the guys in high school he played on the team with—the ones he wanted to look at and didn’t, purposefully looking past them. The guys in college or the minors, the ones on the road he met through Grindr or at bars. None of whom he can imagine sitting in his mother’s kitchen, answering her unending questions.
“If it helps, I’ve never met my boyfriend’s parents. So that’ll be a first for me too.” Eugenio’s hand is still in Zach’s and Zach adjusts, threading their fingers together, his heart at his ribs, and the ceiling above him a little out of focus.
“It does help.” His voice is unsteady; he takes a few breaths. Next to him, Eugenio moves closer, a warm line at his side. “There might not even be an available flight.”
Eugenio withdraws his hand. He pulls out his phone and makes Zach find his flight number. He books a ticket on the same flight, an open seat in first class a row ahead of where Zach is sitting. “I can return it for up to twenty-four hours if you change your mind.”
“I kind of can’t believe you’re doing this. It’ll probably ruin your vacation.”
“It won’t. But if you really want to make it up to me, we could go somewhere after the season’s over. Maybe the beach.”
“That sounds like it could be all right. Spend a couple of days relaxing. I’ll even let you pick the restaurants.”
“Oh, you’ll ‘let’ me?” Eugenio says.
“Well, maybe I won’t.”
Eugenio laughs and rolls over onto him, arms bracketing Zach’s shoulders, filling his entire field of view.
“Okay, okay, okay,” Zach says. “I promise I will.”