It’s midmorning when D’Spara comes by the bullpen, chomping on Tums and frowning vaguely.
“Work with him on his tipping.” He nods to where Johnson is out on the tilted bullpen mound, preparing for their throwing session.
They get set up, Zach squatting, and Johnson going into his elaborate windup, still young enough that he has to contort his limbs in order to generate the power necessary to throw. Some baseball hack once wrote that Braxton, early in his career, had a delivery like casting a half-busted fishing reel. Johnson looks the same—both the contortions and the potential for greatness.
“You’re fluttering your glove,” Zach says, when Johnson is about to deliver his curveball. “The last two fingers in particular. You don’t on your fastball.”
Johnson goes into his windup and he does it again, his glove’s exaggerated leather fingers wiggling.
“Here.” Zach gets up, grabbing a pack of the neon stickers he wears on his fingernails so that pitchers can see his signs. He slaps two on Johnson’s glove. “Keep an eye on how those move.”
Johnson does, practically putting his nose in his glove.
“I didn’t say sniff ’em,” Zach says.
“It’s hard, keeping my hand steady.” Johnson’s next pitch goes wide of Zach, and Zach doesn’t bother to do anything other than watch it as it bounces. He throws another, and this one goes even wider than the first. And then another. Once is a coincidence, but three times is probably a pattern, and Zach unfolds himself from his crouch. “Try wiggling your glove on your fastball instead.”
Johnson does, wiggling his glove in an exaggerated movement. But he delivers his fastball where Zach had indicated he should, and that at least is progress.
“Feels weird,” Johnson says, after a while. “A little like I’m, I don’t know, lying somehow.”
“I think it’s called deception. I hear that’s important for pitchers.”
“Must be kind of hard, lying all the time.”
And that makes Zach stop, because clearly the kid has something to say and has been waiting for an opportunity to say it. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He tries to keep his voice even, wondering if Johnson knows, how Johnson knows, like Zach doesn’t keep his phone locked, doesn’t clear his browser history daily, doesn’t delete his text threads and hide whatever apps in a folder called “utilities” that requires a passcode to access it. A hot wash of anxiety, one that begins in his stomach and elevates into his chest.
“Just that I heard some of the front office guys talking about how much they’re making. Like, their salaries. I shouldn’t say anything about it.” Johnson grabs a drink and gulps half of it down in one swallow. He doesn’t seem to notice that Zach’s heart rate spiked or that it settles now. “I’m just grateful for the opportunity to play. Some guys dream their whole lives of being here.”
It’s bullshit, the kind of bullshit that players spout at beat reporters and not their catch partners, and Johnson knows it, because he continues. “But we aren’t getting paid. And my bonus covers some stuff, but it’s not enough to send home. There’s this loan company that’ll give me an advance.”
“Do not take out a loan from those fucking sharks.”
“Yeah, Miss Morgan told me the same thing when I asked her. I’d play better if I wasn’t worried about it. If I didn’t have to go and work another couple hours every night. I said something to Coach—”
Zach winces.
“I know it wasn’t a good idea. But I don’t know what else to do.”
“Jeez, kid.”
“And I met this girl. I’ve been going to that church. The one with the service in Spanish. We’ve been talking.”
And Zach can only imagine what nice, church-going girls talk about with young future pro-baseball stars. He doesn’t think he needs to talk with Johnson about, like, marriage or using protection, because however much they’re paying Zach, it is not enough to have that conversation.
“About workers’ rights and unions and stuff.”
“Oh,” Zach says.
“I didn’t really understand some of it. But it sounds good, the way she explained it. When it comes down to it, it’s just not fair. They get so much, and we don’t, and it just doesn’t sit right with me.”
“Yeah, I hear you. But you can’t be talking about this around the clubhouse either. The front office-types, they don’t like it when guys make a fuss or stand out. They got a whole camp full of players they can replace you with.”
“Sara Maria says that it’s pretty messed up that they call guys replacement-level or whatever.”
“I’m not saying it’s not,” Zach says. “I’m just telling you that you can’t talk about it here.”
Johnson looks around the bullpen like he’s checking for listening devices or hidden cameras.
“I just meant at the park,” Zach says. “Say whatever you want in church. And look, if you need something, just ask, okay?”
“I don’t like taking charity for what I’ve earned.” Johnson’s standing a little straighter, and looks older, somehow, face shadowed by a passing cloud. After a minute, he seems to realize what he said and deflates. “But, um, thank you.”
“You should bring her around. Get her to come watch you pitch.”
“Yeah?” Johnson goes a little pink. “You think she’d like that?”
“Sure, why not?”
“When you’ve brought girls around, did the other guys give you a hard time about it?”
“Guys give each other shit constantly. But, uh, probably not? If she’s someone you’re serious about.”
“She is.” Johnson says it with a definitiveness that makes something in Zach’s gut flare, a little ember of jealousy at the idea of just meeting someone and bringing them to the clubhouse. To have them sit in the stands and cheer for him and go home after. He douses it with a swig of Gatorade.
“Well, if she does come to see you,” Zach says, “you can’t tip every single one of your curveballs. So, let’s focus on that.”
When Zach gets to the bullpen a week later, there’s another guy in catcher’s gear. One he doesn’t recognize.
“Uh, hey.” Zach glances around for Eugenio or Marti or D’Spara, for Johnson or Giordano or any of the pitchers still not yet relegated to minor-league camp.
The guy—who’s almost as tall as Zach is when he springs up—offers a hand, demanding a handshake, his palm as leathery as a mitt when Zach takes it. He’s older, probably in his mid-thirties, creases at his eyes and on his forehead, and he has the look of someone who’s played the game for a long time. “Francisco. Everyone calls me Frannie.”
Zach introduces himself. “Have you seen anyone else around?” Because someone’ll know why the hell there’s a new guy in the bullpen with no warning.
“Joe said he’d be back in a few minutes.” It takes Zach a second to register that Joe is D’Spara, whose first name Zach always thinks of as being Coach.
There’s a white bag sitting by the shelf of stretch-out straps, food inside still warm, so Eugenio has been there recently. Zach takes it out and eats, chewing loudly.
Frannie goes through standard catcher’s stretches, facing away from Zach, and Zach googles until he finds Francisco Medrano, erstwhile catcher for the Crowns organization, who bounced around affiliated ball for a while before spending a few seasons playing in the Mexican leagues.
There’s an article about his attempts to return to the majors, one titled, “The Pitcher Whisperer,” that discusses his ability to calm volatile young pitchers, to call quality games, even if he’s now too old to spring up with Eugenio’s enthusiasm to catch base runners. He’s an unsigned free agent, though possibly—and Zach’s breakfast goes leaden in his stomach—not for long.
Frannie’s moved from stretches into fuller warmups, like he might go play a game, even though theirs isn’t scheduled until later. The clipboard where they hang the lineups is zip-tied to the fence, and it sits empty, yesterday’s gone, today’s not yet posted. Even if it were and Frannie is on it, there’s no guarantee of being anything more than a showcase for a new catcher the organization can bid farewell to if things don’t work out, like a one-night stand who leaves with a promise to text.
Still, Zach waits. Chews his lip. Starts his stretches. Drinks his coffee. Texts Eugenio to see where he is and if he wants his espresso. Considers the sun reflecting off the mountains in the distance, all the forces of geology and coincidence that shaped them.
Eugenio finds him, snagging his coffee cup from its holder and drinking quickly. He pulls out his phone from where it’s stuck in the pocket of his shorts.
A message appears on Zach’s phone. I was going to text you. Eugenio nods toward where Frannie’s still going through his warmups. Didn’t know what to say about him though.
Zach shrugs. Frannie must know they’re talking about him, since the quickest way to get attention in a clubhouse is to try not to attract attention. He glances back once before continuing to do lunges.
What’d dspara say? Zach texts back.
Just that they know each other from way back when. And that they’re gonna try him out to see if he’s a good fit.
Well fuck
“I know, right?” And he sits down next to Zach. Up close, Eugenio smells like his morning coffee, no cigarettes yet, and the astringent odor of his cologne. He missed a patch shaving, a little island of stubble on his otherwise smooth skin that Zach wants to put his mouth on. Wants to and can’t. So he drinks his coffee and breathes through his nose, and tries to think about the stillness of mountains. Instead, he feels only their slow erosion, hand itching to reach and find purchase on Eugenio’s thigh.
What should we do? Eugenio texts him.
Zach pauses, thumbs over the keyboard. When he looks up, Eugenio’s looking back at him, the edge of his tongue pressed against his lower lip, and Zach focuses on that, on the shape of Eugenio’s words as he says, “We should maybe go see about fielding drills.”
Zach follows him out of the bullpen, out across the green practice field. But Eugenio doesn’t stop, instead going into the training complex, through the narrow set of hallways and to a room that holds various piles of equipment. They stand there for a second, surrounded by shelving, watched by buckets of baseballs, gleaming white and not yet muddied with the particular brand of New Jersey riverbed dirt they coat all the game balls with.
“What are we gonna do?” Eugenio asks.
“They might be testing him out for triple-A.”
“Sure, I always get a guy called the Pitcher Whisperer to work with my marginal fifth starters.”
“I take it you found that article too.”
“I don’t want to spend another year going up and down from the minors. I’ll be twenty-eight in July—” which means that he’s only a year younger than Zach, and old for a rookie “—and I don’t want to waste any more time.” Eugenio grabs a ball from one of the stacks of them and then throws it with full force into a rack of unlettered jerseys, sending them swinging on their hangers. And again. This one caroms off a wall, ricocheting and hitting a stack of bats, one of which rolls onto the floor.
Another pitch, and Eugenio’s hands—steady behind the plate, smooth, quiet—are shaking.
“Hey.” Zach reaches for the ball Eugenio is gripping. He takes it from him and sends it rolling, his fingertips brushing into the callused basin of Eugenio’s palm.
“Do you ever want something so much,” Eugenio says, and his mouth is close at Zach’s ear, breath warm on the skin of Zach’s neck, chest pressed into Zach’s shoulder, “it almost feels like you’re choking on it?”
Zach doesn’t answer, not out loud, not trusting his voice not to shake like Eugenio’s hands are. Just nods, once, again.
“And the closer you get to it, the more out of reach it feels.”
“Only,” Zach says, “only all the time.”
And that’s when Eugenio kisses him.
There’s a moment, right as a batter hits a ball late in a game, a ball that’s going to be a home run. A silence like a collective inhaled breath before the inevitable explosion of noise. A pause, a stillness, one Zach feels now.
Eugenio’s lips are a little chapped. His stubble is a pleasant sting, his groan a pleasure that vibrates against Zach’s chest when Zach edges his tongue into his mouth. He kisses like he’s been waiting for this with the same blossoming want. The kind of kiss that yields the next and the next.
Zach’s fingers are resting against Eugenio’s hand, and he digs them against the meat at the base of his thumb. It’s enough to dislodge Eugenio from where he’s standing, hand on the side of Zach’s face, whatever lingering control he has splintered by the touch. There’s a shelf behind Zach, one that will apparently take his weight because he’s shoved against it. Eugenio’s mouth is an impatient scrape of teeth at Zach’s jaw and neck, his hands determined at his sides, up under his shirt, thigh interjected between his in a hard press, one Zach grinds into.
“Fuck,” Zach says. Because he’s wearing shorts and exercise tights, because they’re in an equipment room with an unlocked door.
Because the shelf hits the wall behind it with a sudden ringing clang that makes Eugenio stop, taking a purposeful breath.
“We shouldn’t—” Zach says, pulling back.
“Does the door lock?” Eugenio looks over at the knob like he can move the gears and tumblers just by staring at them.
“This is a bad idea.” But Zach goes, and it takes a few tries, fingers clumsy at the latch. He tests it, twice, like one of their teammates is going to rip the door from its frame in an effort to get a fresh tube of pine tar.
Eugenio’s shirt is rucked up, and his face is flushed, his mouth distractingly red, incongruous among the stacks of equipment. Zach doesn’t know how long he stands there, letting himself look. Eugenio’s face begins to flush even further, and Zach realizes that, if he wanted to, he could suck a mark on one of Eugenio’s tattoos and have it not be noticeable.
“This is a bad idea,” Zach says, again. Something he knows, objectively. Because they shouldn’t be doing this here or at all. But his feet carry him across the room, his hands move to Eugenio’s sides, pressing their hips together, a slow demanding rhythm punctuated by Eugenio’s mouth on his, the slide of his tongue against the skin of where Zach’s shirt collar meets his neck.
“Don’t give me a hickey,” Zach says. “Someone’ll say something.”
“I won’t.” Eugenio’s hands come up under his shirt, and Zach tugs it off, shedding it, and then motions for Eugenio to do the same. Up close, his chest is smooth, maybe an artifact of swimming, tattoos curling in dark distracting shapes, one across a pectoral, another circling his ribs. A line of hair traces down his belly to the waistband of his shorts; Zach runs his hand through it, feeling the intake of Eugenio’s breathing, his eagerness as he bucks up into the touch.
“I could,” Zach offers, making the familiar hand gesture, and Eugenio nods, before encouraging Zach’s hand into the confines of his compression tights, Zach’s face buried in the muscle of where his neck meets his shoulder.
He’s hard, wet, leaking; he pants when Zach moves his hand, at the friction from Zach’s calluses. Zach withdraws his hand, spitting into his palm, returning, wrist cramping with the angle. Eugenio smells like sweat and the coffee Zach brought for him, and grasps at Zach’s hip, his ass, making little noises.
“Fuck.” He thrusts up into Zach’s fist a few times before stilling, and then Zach withdraws his wet hand, smearing it on a towel sitting nearby, one he’ll need to throw into a laundry bin.
Eugenio’s leaning against the shelf, a little dazed, eyelids darkened, lips bearing the imprint of his own teeth. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he admits, in a rush, making Zach pause. “Show me what you like.”
And he reaches for Zach’s shorts, careful but not hesitant, pushing them down, along with Zach’s compression tights, halfway to his knees, shorts sliding beyond.
“Here.” Zach reaches for one of Eugenio’s hands, running his tongue over his palm, getting spit between his fingers. He gasps when Eugenio touches him. He curls his hand over Eugenio’s; their fingers overlap. Zach’s hand is still wet enough to be sloppy, movements loud, their breath in rhythm together. Eugenio leans to kiss him and bite at his lips and says something Zach can’t quite discern as he comes, spilling over their combined fingers.
Eugenio wipes his hand on the mess of the towel, before sliding down to sit on the floor, where Zach joins him, shorts and tights pulled back up. “I didn’t mean for that to happen,” Eugenio says.
It hurts, a stinging kind of hurt, to hear that out loud even before his breathing has calmed. Zach should get up, haul himself off the floor, unlock the door into the long narrow hallway to the training complex. Go scald himself in the shower. Do something other than sit here, his dick still wet in his tights.
“I mean,” Eugenio says, “I was working up to it. I don’t know.”
“You were working up to it?”
“I didn’t think I was being subtle.” He taps his shoulder amusedly against Zach’s.
And Zach rewinds their interactions over the previous weeks, Eugenio sitting by him on the couch in Zach’s living room, next to him in the early-morning bullpen, trading breakfast for his cup of coffee, their hands brushing. Things that Zach hoped, futilely, meant something beyond what they did. And now a dawn of a realization, enough of one that when he brushes a finger against his mouth to see if his lips are swollen, he finds that he’s smiling. “Oh,” he says, belatedly, which makes Eugenio laugh.
“This is kind of new for me,” Eugenio says. “It was just my ex, really. Off and on from high school. I’ve dated a little since her but no one serious.”
Serious, and the word sticks in Zach’s mind. Like this is more than a hookup. He studies the shelves of equipment around them, the windowless walls, wondering how long they could be here and not be missed. Wondering if this is something he could just have with all the simplicity that’s afforded to other guys. A hope that will probably blow away in the dry desert air, the denied possibility worse than if Eugenio never kissed him at all.
Outside, there’s noise in the hallway, a reminder that they’re not alone in the training complex. That someone will eventually come looking for an unengraved bat, a roll of tape—and can’t find them sitting there, staring at one another, Eugenio’s lips swollen from Zach’s mouth.
“I didn’t, um, realize,” Zach says. “You know we can’t do this. For about a hundred reasons.”
“Can’t? Or shouldn’t?”
“Can’t. It’s not a good idea.”
“It could be a good idea.” And Eugenio is smiling that persuasive smile of his, one that makes Zach want to say fuck it and barricade the door against reality.
They can’t, though, even if Zach is the only one thinking clearly. “If anyone finds out about it, it’ll tank your career.”
Eugenio gets up. His clothing is mussed, and he neatens his shorts and tights, and straightens the stretched-out collar of his T-shirt. His shoulders are tense, mouth a line.
“You don’t know what it’s like, okay?” Zach says. “If this is your first time.”
“It’s not the first time I’ve thought about it.” His voice sounds tight.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Zach says, though everything within him is screaming not to. To instead tell Eugenio how much he wants the same thing. The words feel stuck in his throat; he swallows around them. “I didn’t mean to give you the impression that we could do this. I’m sorry if I did.”
Eugenio takes out his phone and examines himself in the camera before shutting it off and returning it to his pocket. He walks to the door, hand on the knob, then says, “Wait a few minutes before you come out of here, okay? I wouldn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea.”
And Zach waits there among the equipment, the coils of belts and unworn batting gloves and blank jerseys, like something also hidden away. Eventually, he gets up and goes and finishes the rest of what he needs to do.