It’s an hour until they have to go onto the field for the All-Star Classic, and they’re getting changed side by side in the clubhouse in Cincinnati. After Zach finished his interview, the social media people asked him to stay—to give Eugenio a focal point just off camera. And so he stood there awkwardly while Eugenio looked at him and answered questions about him, trying not to sink into the manicured grass of the field.
The clubhouse is a chaos of different uniforms. Zach strips down next to Eugenio and catalogs the exact features of the stall they have his stuff in—jersey, batting gloves, uniform pants, tape—and the details of the uncarpeted floor. And not at Eugenio, who has shucked his pregame clothing, even though not looking feels more conspicuous than looking.
“Thanks for covering for me with that question,” Zach says. “The one about how we met. I didn’t hear what they asked.”
“Sure, not a big deal.”
And it’s almost like Oakland. Enough that, for a second, Zach expects to be pulling on the familiar Elephants green instead of Swordfish teal, Eugenio next to him in classic Gothams pinstripes that emphasize the power in his back and thighs.
“That teal,” Eugenio says, when Zach’s got his jersey on. “Wow.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Because Zach knows he looks practically incandescent, even with a South Florida tan. “Weather’s better in Miami, though. Compared to here.”
“Yeah, I hear the weather’s better. The food’s better. Drinks are better. Everyone’s hot.”
“Sure.” Because it’s true compared to Cincinnati, Baltimore, Indiana. Miami is a great city, except for its baseball team, its constant humidity, its distance from every place not in Florida. Like Oakland. Or New York.
“You seeing anyone?” Eugenio says it no more quietly or loudly than he’s said anything else, volume carefully modulated. Casual, in a way that they aren’t. Surprising, given that he has Zach’s number and could have asked that any of a hundred times in the past two years, and not in a packed clubhouse when Zach hasn’t yet done up his belt.
Zach looks around, in case any of the other players are listening in, but no one’s looking their way. Considers how he would respond to his teammates, if they bother asking, rather than with the hope that Eugenio is asking him for a particular reason. That he’s interested in Zach’s response for more than just small talk.
Zach’s torn between saying that he’s not seeing anyone—hasn’t, really, since he left Oakland—and not wanting to come off as perpetually lonely, stuck in a cold apartment in the Florida humidity. “No—” his mind trips over the words, his throat goes dry “—no one serious. Why?”
Eugenio doesn’t answer. Instead he snags his drink from the floor and walks away. “See you after the game.”
And then leaves Zach standing there, like it’s a forgone conclusion that he’ll go to dinner with him, even though Zach hasn’t technically said yes.
Zach thought the most difficult part of the day would be playing in a screaming stadium, on national TV, as part of what’s likely his first and only shot at being an all-star. Now his heart rate kicks up, from nervousness. From anticipation. From a dreaded kind of hope, one he smothered the last time Eugenio walked away.
All things he can’t process right now, so he finishes changing. And if he sticks his head into the jerseys hanging in his stall, ostensibly looking for something but actually just recovering his breath, no one can tell he’s freaking out. Probably.
It’s still a few hours before the game. His parents text, first demanding a phone call and then a tour of everything, and he has to toggle between showing them the park and its all-star trappings, and seeing them talk.
“You’re going to watch the game later?” He feels a little silly as he says it, like a kid begging his folks to come to a tee ball game.
“Of course,” his mom says. She sends him a picture of the two of them already wearing Glasser jerseys, one from Oakland, one the black-on-black Miami alternate jerseys that make the name hard to read.
“I wish you all had come out here.” He winces, because it’s an argument he doesn’t want to have in public, not with them on speakerphone. He offered to pay for their plane tickets, their hotel. But his mom said they don’t want to be the kind of parents who took their son’s money, something nonnegotiable, even if he can spare it. “A lot of other players are here with their families.”
His mom is making that face, one that precedes a disagreement. “If you met someone nice—”
And it’s another old argument, one he also doesn’t want to have in public. That he hasn’t met anyone in Miami or Oakland who he can introduce them to. Someone he can show off to the baseball world and all the people at his parents’ shul.
“Here, they have an exhibit on the history of the Blues.” He points his phone camera at the one they installed in the area beyond the clubhouse, zooming in on various parts of it, rather than on whatever expression he’s wearing at having disappointed them. Again.
After, there’s not much else to do, so he hangs out with Gordon, who’s still in Oakland, still hitting like he always does, nearing the end of his contract, and when he retires, they’ll probably retire his jersey number. He looks no different than he did when they played together, though he must be nearly forty. He’s there with his entire family and possibly every friend he’s ever met, and he asks Zach what he’s doing after the game.
“Morales invited me out with, uh, a group, I guess,” Zach says.
“Huh, didn’t think you all were still friendly after everything in Oakland.”
Zach hasn’t talked to him outside the Oakland group-chat in years, but Eugenio probably has. It’s possible Eugenio told him the story, the whole story, about what happened, the way Zach did Morgan, when he finally broke down and called her. “He invited me out.” Though it sounds defensive.
Gordon gives a hmm at that, the kind that veteran guys seem to perfect when they hit thirty though Zach can’t really do that convincingly. One that speaks to disapproval without outright saying it. One that indicates Gordon probably knows more about what happened than he can say in a clubhouse. “Well, if it doesn’t work out, I’m sure you’ll find something to do.”
He walks off, leaving Zach without an invitation to whatever block party he’s probably throwing for the entire population of Cincinnati—minus Zach.
Zach isn’t starting the game, and neither is Eugenio. So they sit next to each other on the packed dugout bench, pushed closer together by the number of players, and then out on the field to stand for the anthem, Zach taking his hearing aid out as fighter jets scream overhead in a flyover.
The stadium is loud, fans cheering as each player is introduced. There’s enough ambient noise that Zach doesn’t want to put his hearing aid back in, so he cups it carefully in his hand. “Can you let me know when they say my name?” he says to Eugenio, who’s standing next to him. “Just nudge me or whatever.”
Eugenio nods, and when they get to Zach, he wraps his hand around Zach’s forearm, squeezing twice, an old signal. It surprises Zach enough that he takes a second to start waving, taking his cap off and gesturing to the handful of Miami fans who bothered to attend.
“Got a couple of Oakland faithful here,” Eugenio says, when they get back to the dugout, after a thunderous burst from the Gothams fans at his introduction, and a healthy scattering of boos from what are probably Philadelphia loyalists.
After that, it’s a baseball game. A few players hang out at the railing, nudging each other, gesturing to whatever’s happening on the field. Zach doesn’t need to hear their exact conversations to know what they’re about—the stuff players talk about whenever they get together, the rhythm of it comforting and familiar. Others come and go out of the tunnel between the clubhouse and the dugout, some of the starters who’ll only be in for one inning already done for the night, loud in their intentions to go get drunk.
He and Eugenio don’t say much to one another beyond commenting on this pitch or that, and it feels the way it did back in Oakland, a nostalgia settling over him like warm summer air.
“I’m going to go stretch out,” Eugenio says, and heads off, gear in tow.
Zach moves to the dugout railing, trading war stories about facing a quirky ace pitcher back in the day with St. Louis’ third baseman, who asks if Zach played for Oakland.
“Yeah,” Zach says, and braces for questions about Eugenio. About how he left Oakland, the rumors that he demanded to be shipped out of town. About how they were friends, that they were close until they weren’t.
“Gordon, man, that guy sure can swing it.”
Relief washes over Zach. And he tells him about the time he saw Gordon hit a ball so far out of their spring training practice field, it shattered a car windscreen.
Zach goes to get loose in the fourth. He stretches in the tunnel, watched by blown-up black-and-white pictures of Bluestockings’ greats, then makes his way to the bullpen.
They have him paired with Garza, a young pitcher on the Pittsburgh Rivers. He isn’t that tall for a pitcher, probably listed as six foot and actually that height, unlike Eugenio, who’s listed at that but a few inches shorter. And he hurls fire into Zach’s mitt.
“Save some of it for the actual game.” Zach pops up, walks over to Garza, who laughs, though his eyes wander toward Zach’s ear.
“I saw you taking it out when we were on the field for the anthem.” Garza takes off his glove. He’s missing the last two knuckles of his middle and ring fingers, replaced by a set of black and gold prosthetics with his number on them. “Accident when I was fourteen. Didn’t think I’d get to play, but here I am.”
And he stands a little straighter as he says it, like he’s challenging the stadium around them to disagree.
Something about it makes Zach match his posture. “Yeah, I guess here we both are.”
“I was hoping, if you were okay with it—” Garza tugs on his jersey a little “—if you were up for doing a swap.”
“Sure, come find me after.”
Out on the field, it’s loud, though not as loud as it was earlier in the game, elation worn off. Zach waits until the inning break, then sets up behind the plate.
And proceeds to catch one of the dullest innings of his career. The hulking Toronto first baseman goes down on three pitches. The Crowns’ sure-handed shortstop, who hits well for a shortstop, which is to say adequately, pops up, and Zach catches it in foul territory. The third out takes longer, Garza missing twice with his curveball and then finally delivering a changeup that the batter smokes—right at the second baseman, who’s sober enough to field it.
All told, three up, three down, and Zach wonders if his parents at home missed it. If they got up to answer the whistling teakettle and didn’t see it. And he feels the same—the slow boil leading up to the game and then a quick anticlimactic release.
“Good inning,” someone says, when he gets back to the dugout, like it took effort to achieve three outs against players wobbling in their cleats.
He does his normal cool-down stuff after, though he brings a beer and a feeling of unplaceable disappointment with him into the shower.
He’s changing into his street clothes when Garza appears. They take a couple of selfies together.
“Here.” Zach signs his jersey and hands it to him. It’s still clean, having not even worked up a sweat.
“Are you sure?” Garza asks. “I mean, you don’t want to frame it or something?”
And Zach doesn’t particularly want a reminder of how deflating this was staring at him from his living room wall. “Just remember this next time I’m hitting against you.”
Garza laughs and tells him he’ll strike him out on something good.
They can’t leave for dinner until the last out is recorded, until the game MVP gets the world’s largest participation trophy in the form of a truck.
The game has barely ended when Eugenio comes to find him at his stall. “We’re going to head out in a few minutes.”
“Um,” Zach says, though he has a creeping sense that this is a bad decision. That he can’t sit next to Eugenio at a restaurant and pretend that they’re just old friends having dinner. Especially now that Eugenio has changed into his post-game clothes, collared shirt bright against his midsummer tan. “This place isn’t, like, nice or anything?” And Zach glances down at himself, at the clothes he brought that he shoved into a duffel, wishing he at least considered a dry-cleaning bag.
“Don’t worry, you look just fine.” And there’s that familiar pleased tilt to his mouth.
“Where should I meet you?” Zach asks, and Eugenio’s smile increases even further.
Zach leaves his blueberry of a rental car at the stadium and piles into an SUV with a few others, a driver transporting them to the restaurant. There are only ten players with them in total, and he gets the sense he’s crashing a pre-planned dinner, especially when the service staff at the restaurant hustle to set another place at the table for him.
He’s also the only one in their party not from Venezuela or first-generation like Eugenio. The chatter around him is mostly in Spanish, though he can track enough of it to throw in an opinion about playing at Tampa’s terrible stadium, having banged a home run off its roof in a recent series.
Eugenio shoots him a questioning look after he answers in halting Spanish. “That’s new.”
“I figured I should learn. You know, since teams don’t always have a good interpreter.”
“Yeah, I hear those are hard to find.”
And Zach tries not to flush at that and fails.
They’re in a back room, one with a door separating them from the rest of the restaurant, and Zach expected steaks and bourbon and dark leather. Instead, it’s light wood, favorable lighting, bright without being surgical. A booth in a corner, Eugenio on his right, a Sharks reliever diagonal to him. Eugenio’s sitting close, their legs pressed together, big catcher thigh against his. He smells good, different from how he used to.
“Is that new cologne?” Zach asks it low enough that only Eugenio will hear.
Eugenio’s got a napkin unfolded on his lap, and it slithers off onto the ground. He reaches for it, snagging it with his middle and index fingers, like he might call for a breaking ball in the dirt. “Why?” he says, close. “You like it?”
“I thought you were mad at me.” It sounds petulant, like they just had a lingering spat.
“I’m still deciding.”
And Zach is unsure how to respond, of what he can say in a crowded restaurant. Of what he would say if they were alone.
And so he just nods and considers the menu, reading it closely, deliberately, until Eugenio takes it from him, gently laying it on the table. “Don’t worry. I ordered for us.”
Dinner is loud. It’s ten ballplayers who’ve been drinking since that morning, a few of whom didn’t sleep the night before, and many of whom have known each other since childhood. They eat like baseball players, demolishing plates of food as fast as the service staff can bring them. It’s too loud for him to talk to anyone but Eugenio, which Eugenio doesn’t seem to mind. He reaches past Zach, marshaling plates their way, and telling Zach about this dish or that, laughing when their tablemates propose toasts.
Zach mostly eats, drinking more than he should, and wonders why exactly Eugenio invited him.
“C’mon.” Eugenio picks up his drink in one hand and unthinkingly wrapping his arm around Zach with the other, though he doesn’t move it when Zach glances down at where his hand is resting on his shoulder.
“This is like the only good meal I’ve ever had in Ohio.” Zach is still under the heavy, familiar weight of Eugenio’s arm, which he seems disinclined to move. “How’d you find this place?”
It’s kind of a date question, the sort of question he would ask someone he met online, in the rare instance they get a meal together before fucking. A polite question. Or not one, because of course Eugenio knows how to find the only quality restaurant in the state, one that serves Venezuelan food and is close to the ballpark.
“You know,” Eugenio says, smiling, “I have my ways.”
And Zach cuts an already small piece of beef from his entree even further, eating it slowly, trying to draw out how long they’ll be there, even if most of them are already finished.
“Something wrong with that?” Eugenio nods to Zach’s plate.
“No, it’s perfect.” Except for the fact it’s almost gone. But he continues eating.
“They want to go drinking,” Eugenio says, after the dishes are cleared, nothing left but their drinks and some crumbs.
“You should go. I might call it a night.” And Zach thinks about going back to his hotel. Scrolling through Grindr, hoping not to match with anyone else at the game who might recognize him, and then taking a couple of pills in an effort not to wake up hungover. As much of a routine as anything else in his life.
“We could stay here if you want.”
“Oh.” Zach’s pulse kicks up. The wall partitioning them from the rest of the dining room is thin, thin enough that it would be easy to hear them. Especially if they’re going to rehash the last conversation they had years ago, like they could pick up right where they left off, closing the immeasurable distance separating them, even as Eugenio sits next to him, thigh pressed against his.
“Let me just get rid of them first,” Eugenio says. It takes a while, because there’s no such thing as a short goodbye among drunk baseball players who only see each other every few months. They leave silence in their wake, the service staff having delivered an itemized check to Eugenio, then telling them to take as long as they like.
Eugenio smells like the bourbon he’s been drinking, like his new cologne, and he doesn’t move over to give Zach more room, even in their now-vacated booth. Zach tries to remember the last date he was on, where they did more than made sure the other person matched their online profile or actually sat and talked after the bill came, and can’t. Something they used to do in Oakland; something he missed without quite realizing it.
“I should apologize,” Zach blurts, sudden enough to make Eugenio raise his eyebrows.
Because it’s not an apology. Not anything approaching an apology. But the words that he’s rehearsed all die in his mouth. The ones he thought about on the weeklong road trip he took from Oakland to Miami, his stuff in a U-Haul, a flat of plants sitting on the passenger seat. The ones he thinks when he sits on the beach and watches the calm Florida Atlantic, wishing for the cold harsh spray of the Pacific.
Eugenio waves a hand as if he’s brushing crumbs off a table. “I didn’t invite you so I could squeeze an ‘I’m sorry’ out of you.”
“What are we doing then?”
“I thought it was obvious.” Eugenio traces his finger around the rim of his glass.
“Tell me anyway.”
He leans in, breath warm on Zach’s neck, close enough that Zach can feel vibrations against his skin. “We’re here. Celebrating together. Unless—” Eugenio drops a hand down below the table, onto Zach’s thigh, moving upward. “Unless you’d rather just go back to your room. Have a quiet night in.”
Zach cycles through all the reasons this isn’t a good idea: that they’re in public, that they’re going back to their respective cities, that it’s worse to remind himself of what he’s missing than to not have it. All of which feels like ignorable noise, like restaurant chatter heard through a permeable wall, with Eugenio there watching him expectantly, teeth hooking his lower lip. “Did we pay? Can we pay? Let’s go.”
Eugenio laughs that laugh of his, and Zach wants to feel it against his chest again, if only for a few hours. “Yeah, Zach. I’ve already paid.”
He slugs down the rest of his drink, standing. “They have single-stall bathrooms. Meet me at the one closer to the kitchen. But give it a few minutes.” And he walks away before Zach can respond.