A month into Zach’s tenure with the Union, Eugenio sends him a real estate listing for a loft two floors up from his that one of his neighbors is subletting while they’re out of the country.
“Are you sure?” Zach says.
“I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t. It’s a temporary lease. We’ll see how things go.”
The media has caught on to them being friends. There are pictures, sometimes, in the local tabloids, always with the implications they’re about to go pick up women together or, once, have a threesome with an actress neither of them knows.
Maritza corners him about it one morning. “I thought you said you were boring.” She holds up a picture on her phone of the two of them out, Eugenio with his arm around Zach in a corner booth.
“I didn’t say my friends were boring.”
“Morales is definitely not boring.” And her cheeks go a little red.
Zach nearly falls down laughing when he tells Eugenio later, who also goes a little red. “I told her you and Brito should do a photoshoot. Like, you both in pinstripes. It’d sell magazines.”
“Brito? Really? I didn’t think you were into pitchers.”
“Yeah, well,” Zach says, rubbing the back of his neck, but he laughs too.
He plans to move into Eugenio’s building the first weekend in September, his meager suitcases supplemented by his belongings from storage. His parents insist on driving up to help, despite him saying that he can just hire movers. For once, they accept his offer to put them up in a hotel. Which was an argument or at least the beginning of one, until his mom said, “I worry that people think we’re taking from you,” with the same expression she got after meetings with his teachers when he was in school, her eyes shimmering. Something that made him sit down, heavily, before assuring her that no one at the hotel would think anything of it.
Now it’s early evening. Eugenio and he both had day games, the Union losing, the Gothams winning, though neither by a wide margin. “My parents’ll be here on Saturday,” Zach says.
Eugenio pauses where he’s eating, setting down his fork, and then going to pull a glass of water from the sink, Zach following. “I’ll swing by Monday, I guess. Once you’re settled in.” Eugenio’s voice is tight, shoulders rising, expression carefully shuttered.
“That’s not why I was telling you.” Zach takes the glass of water from Eugenio’s hands and sets it behind him on the counter. “I wanted to know if you were going to be around on Sunday, either before or after the game, so you could see them. If you want to.”
“Oh.” Eugenio looks genuinely surprised at that, his eyebrows up above the frames of his glasses.
“I was gonna tell them on Saturday. Um, to give them some time to get used to the idea. That I’m gay. That I’m seeing someone. I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to mention you.”
“Oh,” Eugenio says, again.
“You don’t have to decide right away. Henry says that processing time is important.”
“Tell Henry that I appreciate that.” One of Eugenio’s hands is gripping the fabric of his sweatpants, and Zach covers it, feeling his fingers relax, Zach threading his own between them.
“I don’t want to rush you. It’s not fair that I asked you to wait all those years and not fair if I ask you to rush now. I’m just excited, I guess, or scared. A lot of things I didn’t spend time articulating before, and I figured I’d just shove ’em in a dark cabinet and come back to them when I was done with baseball. It turns out that’s not how that works.”
“It isn’t.”
“Which part?”
“All of it.” And Eugenio’s smiling, a pleased smile.
Zach looks down at their hands, fingers curled loosely together. “I thought about this when we were together, before. After you left. I used to watch you smoke, and I’d be sitting in the bullpen in Arizona trying not to think about what your hands might feel like.”
“I might have noticed you looking,” Eugenio says. “I might have smoked more because of it.”
Zach tips his forehead to Eugenio’s, breath mingling, Eugenio’s hand still interwoven with his. “I know it’s early, but I’m serious about this.”
“It’s been three and a half years,” Eugenio says, with a laugh Zach can feel.
“I’m told processing time is important.” And he kisses Eugenio, on his mouth, on the incline of his neck, the callus on the rise of his palm, on the knuckles of his left hand.
Zach’s parents drive up on Saturday and text him from every rest stop on the Delaware and New Jersey turnpikes, pictures of tourist shlock and the world’s last Roy Rogers. They bring Aviva, who’s five months pregnant and cranky in the September humidity, her hair a halo around her head.
Zach has a game that night, one the next day, and there’s a schedule up in the clubhouse, a bulletin board counting down their magic number until they clinch a postseason berth. His family arrives in late morning. They spend a few hours unpacking, his mother insisting on putting shelf liner in all his cabinets, his father rearranging books Zach didn’t read in Miami and probably won’t read in New York.
Aviva is miserable enough in the heat of his under-air-conditioned loft that he drags her to the little shaded park across the street from him, buys her a gelato that he watches her eat, and then another when she finishes the first.
“Better?” he asks.
“Yeah. How does anyone live in this city without AC?”
“I can go get you a cup of ice.”
“Zach, I’m fine. Just, I don’t recommend being pregnant and in a car that Dad’s driving.”
“Noted.” There are only a few other people at the park, and he has a ball cap on, not a Union one, but an Elephants one old enough to be stained with salt from sweat. “Aviva, I wanted to tell you something before I tell Mom and Dad.”
She doesn’t say anything, but gets up from the park bench they’re on, tossing her gelato cup in a nearby trash can. “It sounds like it’s serious. Are you sure you want to talk about it here?”
Around them, people are walking dogs, wading off late-morning hangovers, moving with the kind of ferocious purpose particular to New York. No one glances their way. “Here’s fine. When you told Mom and Dad about Ivan, how’d that go?”
She fiddles with her wedding band, twisting it around her finger. Near it, her tattoo, uncovered. “You mean, when I had to explain that the Orthodox guy I wanted to marry was Ukrainian Orthodox and not Jewish? About as well as you’d expect.” She curves a hand on her stomach. “Everyone says they’ll be happier once the squidlet here arrives.”
“They were at the wedding.”
“Yes, the fact of which they’ve reminded me several times,” she says. “But they’ve come around to him now that they know he’s not going anywhere. Including conversion class but that doesn’t stop Mom from emailing him.”
And Zach wishes he got something to drink, a soda, a pregame bourbon, something to settle the frenetic feeling of his heart against his ribs as he says, “The guy I’m seeing, his parents are religious studies professors. So he probably already knows what they talk about in those classes.”
There’s a moment of her looking at him in slight disbelief before she hugs him, her hair in his face, a hard big-sister hug. “We do this training, for when students come out to us. What we’re supposed to say to affirm their identity.”
“I have a coach for this. We talked through it a bunch. It didn’t really go like I planned it.”
“It’s okay.” Her hair is soft when she leans against his shoulder. “I’m glad you told me.”
“I probably should have, years ago.” Something that feels easy to say, if only in retrospect.
“I worried about you. Mom did too.”
“Worried that I’m gay?”
“Worried that you seemed really depressed after Oakland. It was hard to talk about with her because she was so convinced that you just had to meet someone. You know how she is. She wants everything a certain way.”
“He and I broke up for a while. He wanted to tell his family, and I wasn’t ready for that. But I am now. Or I think I am.”
And Aviva’s looking at him now, an assessing look that she probably uses on students. “I figured it was someone new.”
“No. It’s been on and off for, uh, about three and a half years.”
“Three and half years?” Something about that hits her, and she brings up the shoulder of her voluminous pregnancy dress and starts dabbing at her face.
He looks around for the pile of napkins that came with her gelato, but she must have tossed them with her cup. “Let me go get you some tissues or something.” He starts to get up, when she tugs on the back of his shirt.
“Zach, don’t worry about it. It’s just, you could have told me. I wouldn’t have told Mom and Dad. I thought we had a brother-sister pact or whatever.”
“I didn’t want you to have to lie to them. It didn’t seem fair.” And he’s not going to cry, not in public, but can’t stop the tightness in his chest either. “I just didn’t want to keep disappointing them.”
“You are literally rich and famous.” She hugs him again, punctuating it by tapping him lightly upside the head like she did when they were young. “When you’re not there, it’s all, ‘Zach did this, Zach did that, did you see Zach’s hit the other day?’”
“I’m not that rich. And I’m definitely not that famous.” He glances around to see if they’ve attracted onlookers, if there will be photos of him sitting on a park bench, Aviva crying, in the Post later. “I’m gonna tell Mom and Dad tonight. And my publicist probably later this week. And maybe some other guys on the team. I haven’t decided.”
“That sounds like quite a list.”
“I owe it to him. To myself. I was worried for so long it’d be the end of my career. Or his.”
“His career?”
“You’ve met him. Eugenio—he came to that fundraiser Mom and Dad had for the local park or whatever.”
Aviva goes through a series of expressions, from surprise to something like recalculation. “I wondered about that. When you were there, and we were playing basketball in the yard.”
“I was trying not to be obvious. I guess it was risky bringing him. But it felt like it was too much to go home without him there.”
“God, all I remember about that party was getting blisters from my shoes and being pissed off at you for Mom not making you run around and do shit. And how happy you seemed.”
“Happy?”
“You just, I don’t know, you seemed like you had this weight off you for once. And you kept smiling when you thought no one was looking at you.”
“Mom found us,” he says, adding, “no, not like that,” when Aviva gives him a shocked look. “They tried to set me up with someone, and I escaped upstairs to talk about it with him. She walked in. We were sitting pretty close.”
“And she never said anything about it?”
Zach shakes his head. Something accepted and not mentioned, either because his parents thought nothing of it or everything, enough to trap his voice in his throat. He breathes through it, purposefully, intentionally, as useless as trying to stave off the tide. “I don’t know how it’s gonna go, later. I’m supposed to list out all my fears before I do this, but it’d be easier to list the things I’m not worried about.”
She hugs him again, the kind of hug where her fingers dig into the muscles of his arm like she can keep him together. “Hey, it’s gonna be all right.”
“Thank you.” He pulls back, wiping his eyes with the heel of his palm. “I wish we’d talked about this. I could have used, I don’t know, an ally. Sounds like you could’ve too.”
“Well, you got me now. How do you want to tell Mom and Dad?”
“I was gonna do it after the game. Just be there. Make sure their blood sugar is level. If we get crushed by the Spiders, they’ll be in a mood.”
“I can do that.” She looks across at the gelato shop. “Having a third one is probably a mistake?”
“Probably.” He gets up. “What flavor do you want?”
They don’t get crushed by the Spiders. Instead, it’s a nail-biter of a game, New York’s magic number in double digits, Cleveland playing like they have nothing to lose, their season over in all but name.
Zach goes out to the batter’s box when he’s up. The crowd is a vague blur of faces, an indistinct sea of noise, his parents and Aviva among many, somewhere in the low infield, with tickets they insisted on paying him back for.
Cleveland’s pitcher is a changeup specialist, and Zach resists the urge to swing at pitches that look deceptively hittable, instead trying to prolong his at-bat. He doesn’t offer at the first pitch, which comes in below the zone. The second arrives similarly; Zach waits for the umpire’s silence indicating a ball. And the third drops just a hair low, bringing the count to three balls, no strikes.
Another pitch. Zach lets this one go by him, a fastball right up the middle, one so perfectly gift-wrapped for a hit that he should have swung at it—and didn’t. One of the many times when he’s chosen to stay still, not punished for his indecision but not benefiting from it either.
He could go back to his loft after the game, eat cake and drink wine, then send his family back to Baltimore the same as they arrived, Eugenio kept distant from his life. He could promise him he’d get to it later, a date that always lives just over the horizon.
Sixty feet away on the mound, the pitcher throws. The ball releases from his hand, and Zach watches the arc and pattern of its movements as it nears its “commit point,” when he has to decide whether to swing or stay put. It’s a choice he’s made thousands of times, with incomplete information, before a curveball bends or a changeup tumbles. One guided by his experience and instincts but also the confidence that his decision will be the right one.
So Zach watches and considers and swings.
And hits a screaming line drive, one that tears past the Spiders centerfielder, hopping off the grass and bouncing up and into the stands for a ground-rule double.
He pulls into second base as slow as his catcher’s legs will carry him, stripping his batting gloves and shoving them into his back pocket. He asks the Spiders second baseman how his day is and if he’s liking New York.
“Liked it better before y’all were winning,” he says. Zach laughs at that, feeling lighter than he has in a long time, like he might float above the field if not for the grip of his spikes in the costly infield dirt.
After the game, there’s a text from his parents telling him they took the train back “for the experience.”
Aviva meets him by the clubhouse door and spends the ride to his loft relating things her husband says via text in a rapid chatter and wondering if she felt the baby kick in the fourth inning or if she ate too much dairy.
“Hey,” he says, “I’m nervous too.”
His hands shake on the elevator ride, as he fumbles getting out his keys. He tries the wrong key in the keyhole a few times before he locates the correct one. Inside, the boxes have been unpacked. His dishes are safe in their cupboards, his books orderly on their shelves, his parents at the dining room table. His mother has her feet up on one of the chairs, her scorebook in front of her, pen moving as she tallies.
“That was some nice hitting,” she says, when he bends to kiss her cheek. “You always did have a good batting eye. It’s good to see you hitting again.”
And he’s been ignoring his stats, the ones reporters keep asking him about—his splits before versus after the trade, batting average hovering closer to .300 since he came to New York—telling them that anyone would hit better if they went from Swordfish Park to Union Stadium.
“Must be the change of scenery.” He reaches for the stack of plates Aviva brings to the table, along with the cake and the wine.
It’s an almond cake, less dense than the kind they eat for Pesach, a bottle of wine that’s too sweet for Zach but that his parents drink. They’re almost done, Zach pressing the tines of his fork into the last mouthful of cake, when he says, “Mom, Dad, I need to tell you something.” And both his parents stop eating, glancing at each other.
“It’s not—” He trips over the word serious. “I’m not injured or sick. I want you to know something, something about me.” He takes a breath, straightens where he’s sitting in his chair. “I want you to know who I am.”
His water glass is on the table, and he reaches for it, not to drink, just to give his hands something to do, the condensation sweating into his palm. “I know it wasn’t easy for you when I was growing up. Because of my hearing. And I guess I didn’t want to make things any harder. For you. For myself. Or to disappoint you.”
“Zacheyleh,” his mother says.
“Just, um, let me finish.” His throat is tight, and the words that came out standing by the ocean next to Morgan, on calls with Henry, feel stuck. He swallows to dislodge them. “I’m gay. I’m seeing someone. It’s serious. I love him.”
There’s a pause, a long enough one that Zach wants to get up, leave the room, escape his loft to where Eugenio is probably already asleep. To crawl into bed with him, under the shelter of his blankets, and lie there in the dark feeling him breathe.
“I worried about you,” his mother says, finally, “all those years you were alone.”
“I wasn’t. Or I was, then I wasn’t. It’s kind of complicated,” Zach says. “We’re together. Now.”
She stands, her chair legs stuttering on his rented floor, then comes to hug him, her arms around his shoulders. “I want you to know. That you could never—” her voice wavers “—disappoint me.” And she recites a shehecheyanu, low enough that it’s only meant for him, a prayer of thanks for preservation, for sustenance.
His eyes are wet. He reaches for a napkin to dry them, one of the cloth ones she bought when he said he didn’t have any. They stay like that for a minute, Aviva marshalling his dad into the kitchen, and Zach didn’t know he had a tea kettle until it whistles. They bring out mugs of tea, a box of sugar packets with them.
Zach shakes two packets together, emptying them into his mug, and stirring it with the handle of his fork.
“Your grandmother,” his mom says, reaching for the box, “she used to drink her tea with a sugar cube between her teeth like they did in the old country. She would say to me, ‘Kindele, you have to hold on to the sweetness in life.’” And she starts crying, enough that his father goes over, wrapping his arm around her.
“Zach, go see if you have any tissues,” he says.
Zach goes into the guest room he’s using as storage. There’s a box of toilet paper there he didn’t buy, a value-pack of Kleenex boxes they must have driven up with, a set of hearing aid batteries from Costco next to them. He undoes the plastic wrap holding the boxes together, taking one out and opening it, cardboard almost slicing his finger.
He pauses before going back into the dining room, getting out his phone. I told them, he texts Eugenio, and then considers what to write next or if he should call.
How’d they react?
My mom is crying but it’s happy I think. I wish you were here
And Eugenio starts and stops a text, enough that Zach has the urge to write something else but doesn’t. Tell them I look forward to seeing them again.
I will
He finds his mother in the kitchen a few minutes later, cleaning up the plates. She’s standing at the sink, running water over them, then loading them into the dishwasher. He watches her for a second before holding out a Kleenex; she takes it from him gratefully.
“There’s something else I need to tell you,” he says. She hands him the cake knife after she rinses it. He dries it on a kitchen towel and puts it into the dishrack. “You had that fundraiser a couple years ago. Do you remember Eugenio?”
“That friend you brought home. The handsome one?”
“Yes.”
“The one who can cook?”
“Yes. That’s who I’m seeing.”
She takes another dish towel from the drawer next to the sink, wipes her hands, and then hangs it up. “And he cares for you?” Her eyes shine.
“He does.”
“And you care for him?”
“I do. I’m trying to be better at it. I promised him I would be.”
“Good.”
“I don’t know if I’ll be ready to tell everyone—maybe not until we both retire, and he’ll probably play longer than I will. I’m not sure how people will react.”
“Feh to them.” She flicks her hand as if casting the thought away. “The world is the world, full of people who don’t know from love.”
He laughs at that, a laugh that starts in the soles of his feet and ends with him folding himself to wrap his arms around her.
“I wish you didn’t wait so long to tell us. That you didn’t feel like you could. That your dad and I made you feel like you had something to be afraid of.” She wipes her eyes. “I just want nice things for you, Zacheyleh. Love. Family. To be who you are. The things we don’t always get in this life.”
“Thank you,” he says, and he hugs her again. “Thank you.”
He plays the next day, a day game that goes into extra innings, and they win and Toronto—who are behind the Union in the race for the division title—loses. Their magic number goes down, inching them closer to the postseason.
I can order dinner, Eugenio texts him after the game. What do your parents eat? and Zach texts him a list: no pork, no shellfish, no dairy with meat, no catfish, no rabbit, no eel. Nothing too salty or spicy. Fish and eggs aren’t meat, and a request not to have to explain that.
Eel was really not a possibility, Eugenio says and then sends a thumbs-up emoji.
Zach gets a text from Stephanie when he’s back at his loft. A reminder to read the article she emailed, one based on a conversation they had a week ago. He scans over its contents, and it mentions, briefly, a few nameless players questioning if Zach had what it took to be a big leaguer because of his hearing, a transition into his career stats as obvious as a “fuck you” but without the hostility.
His parents come over after the game, complaining of the heat, the traffic, the umpire’s unfavorable zone, and Zach retrieves a six-pack from his fridge, a bottle of white wine he chilled, and Eugenio from his loft two floors away.
“Are you ready?” Zach asks. Eugenio’s wearing his glasses, a white collared shirt with an undershirt, tattoos concealed, a pair of slacks. Zach put on actual pants and not sweatpants or shorts after the game, but he’s wearing a T-shirt. “Uh, should I change?”
“They’re your parents. You don’t need to impress them.”
“You don’t either. Can we wait here for a minute?” He sits on Eugenio’s couch. “I want to go up there. I’m just nervous.”
“You said they were okay last night,” Eugenio says. “Have they said something since then?”
“No, they’ve been fine. Practically good behavior for them. It’s gonna be different from when you met them before.”
“It will be. But I survived the last time.”
“They’re kind of awful to Aviva’s husband about converting.”
“Yeah, I figured I’d just call my parents and put them on speakerphone. My mom’s teaching a class on biblical commentary this semester. Let them talk at each other for a while.”
Zach laughs and leans his head against Eugenio’s, closing his eyes. “Your place smells better than my place.”
“It’s the plants.” He gets up and offers Zach a hand. “C’mon, let’s do this.”
They eat at Zach’s dining room table. Zach’s parents ask about a thousand questions, some of which they asked before, now with renewed interest.
“Remind me what your parents do,” his mother asks, and then quizzes Eugenio on his family, what his parents are currently teaching, what he’s thinking about doing after baseball.
“My contract goes until I’m thirty-eight,” he says. “That’ll be ten years of service time. And then, who knows? My parents want me to go back to school. I’ve been in discussions to do a guest appearance on Food Network.”
“I thought I remembered you like to cook,” Zach’s mom says. “I see my New York Times cookbook made it up here with the move. I was going to ask for it back.”
“If it’s okay with you, I’d like to hang on to it for a while,” Eugenio says.
“Keep it as long as you like. Did you ever make that recipe for babka I gave you?”
“I haven’t yet. But I’m looking forward to it.”
“It’s a dough you have to be patient with. It takes a lot of time and care, but it’s worth it for the end results.”
“I’ll do my best,” Eugenio says, and he smiles before taking his next bite of food.
They eat, his parents commenting on their meal, Eugenio discussing his parents’ trip to visit his grandmother and if he’ll go see her after the season’s over.
“You’re not worried about getting traded while you’re out of the country?” Aviva asks.
“He, uh, has a no-trade clause,” Zach says. “Kinda comes with a long-term contract.”
And Eugenio shrugs, color up on his cheeks, looking somewhere between embarrassed and flattered.
“Zach,” his mother asks, “have you decided about your contract option yet?”
And Zach’s agent sent an email reading just ARE YOU SURE? “Uh, before, when I was in Miami, I told my agent I wanted to opt out. I don’t know where I want to play. Or if I want to keep playing.”
There’s a pause, Eugenio looking at him, and then saying, “I was going to get some more ice.” He gets up, asking if anyone wants anything as he walks away, and Zach doesn’t wait before going after him.
Zach’s kitchen is galley-style, two rows of counters and appliances separated from the dining area by a solid wall. They’re hidden from the dinner conversation, though it goes to a murmur like Zach’s family has collectively decided to eavesdrop, which they probably have.
Zach gets an ice tray from the freezer and cracks it into a bowl that Eugenio holds out for him. There’s seltzer in the fridge his parents must have brought, unflavored; Zach opens it over the sink.
The bowl of ice Eugenio is holding begins to frost up the sides with condensation. Zach takes it from him, setting it on the counter.
“We can talk about it later,” Zach says. “You’re upset I didn’t tell you.”
“I am. But I also don’t want them—” Eugenio nods toward the dining room “—to think you’re quitting because of me.”
There are no noises from the other room, not the clink of silverware against dishes or his parents’ low observational chatter. A silence, awaiting a response. “I’m not,” Zach says. “But yeah, it probably sounded that way. Can I go fix this, and then we can talk about it later? Like, later tonight. Not later later.”
“Okay.” Eugenio draws him in, kissing him lightly.
When they get back to the dining room, Zach’s dad is over by the bookshelf, like he didn’t organize the books the day before. His mother is smiling at him, Aviva’s lips twitching like she’s trying not to.
“I’m not sure what’s going to happen next season,” Zach says, when he sits down. “I considered opting out, but I’m still—we’re still—working it out.”
“Let us know what you both decide,” his mother says. “Here.” She slides another portion over to Eugenio. “You both are too shy about eating.”
They finish dinner over tea. His mother hands him a box of sugar cubes she pulls from her purse. “I went down to the corner store earlier.”
Eugenio takes a cube from the dish Zach pours them into, placing one in the hollow of his cheek at Zach’s mother’s instruction.
“You know,” she says, casually, when Eugenio can’t answer, “if you ever consider converting, I’m sure there’re online classes you could take.”
Eugenio takes a swallow of tea hot enough that it must burn his tongue. Zach tries to think of a way out of this conversation with his mouth full of sugar when Aviva stage-whispers, “Mom.”
“Hypothetically, for a ketubah,” Eugenio asks, and he says the word the way Zach says unfamiliar ones in Spanish, like he’s testing it out, “would I need to be Jewish for us to have one?”
There’s a long pause, as Zach’s mom looks at each of them, Aviva’s eyes wide, Zach’s father coughing in a napkin. Zach, fixed to his chair, blinks a few times, wordless with surprise.
“You don’t,” Aviva says, finally.
“And they’ll give them to queer people?” Eugenio asks.
Aviva nods.
“Then I’m probably not going to convert,” Eugenio says, and adds a belated, “Sorry.”
Another pause, this one with Zach glancing between Eugenio and his mother the way he would between a pitcher and hitter during a contentious at-bat.
And she gives the hint of a smile. “Zach, go get the plates for the cookies I bought.”
After, Zach walks his parents and Aviva down to a cab to their hotel and comes back to Eugenio clearing the dishes from the table.
“Did you... Was that...” Zach says.
Eugenio laughs, not a mean laugh, and kisses him. “It was just a thought about the ketubah. I just figured it might be important to you.”
“I guess I never thought I could. But, um, yeah, I would want that.” And it feels enormous to say, standing there, the plates still on the dining room table.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Eugenio kisses him again, and Zach can feel the shape of his smile. “Can we get through the postseason first?”
They clean, side by side, Zach storing leftovers, Eugenio rinsing off dishes.
“I was gonna tell you about my contract,” Zach says. “After you came down to Miami, and, um, we talked, I emailed my agent. I didn’t want to spend another year in Florida when you were up here. Obviously, things are different now.”
“You were going to retire, just like that?”
“I don’t know.” Though the thought of it feels sour now. “If it’s a problem with the team or with other players that I’m gay, I guess it’s easier if I walk away versus if I’m forced out.” Zach picks up one of the rinsed glasses from the dishrack and dries it. “Miami wasn’t great. Not just that we were losing, but it felt like a chore, going to the ballpark every day. I really didn’t realize how miserable I was until I saw you at the All-Star Classic and it all kind of came back to me. How much I used to love playing. How much I missed you. How I never thought I could have both.”
Eugenio takes the glass from him then kisses him. “I might have missed you too.”
“Might have?” Zach teases.
“I didn’t know what to expect when I saw you there. You do look pretty good in teal.”
“I’m liking these pinstripes okay. I asked Morgan about doing a catching clinic at the Women’s Baseball World Cup. It’s in Colombia, if you want to come.”
“That could be good. I’d like that.”
“I realized that that’s the part of the game I like, the coaching part. I kinda want to see if I’m any good at it.”
“Zach, you’ve been coaching for years.” Eugenio wipes his hands on a dish towel. “Of course you’d be good at it. Probably have guys all over the league asking to work with you. The guy who fixed Will Johnson’s curveball. Hell, the guy who made me.”
“Yeah, I hear you’re pretty good.” He laughs when Eugenio taps him on the arm.
“But if you want to keep playing, you should,” Eugenio says. “I just don’t want you to do something you’ll regret. Fuck ’em if they can’t deal with you as you are.”
“Oh yeah? That’s how that is?”
“You think no one ever says shit to me about my nails? Or about flipping my bat or doing the hundred other things that make the old boys’ club angry? That I don’t know what they mean when they talk about ‘playing the game the right way’? That they’re still surprised I know how to read a scouting report, like my parents don’t both have PhDs? And even if they didn’t, it wouldn’t matter.” He shakes his head.
And Zach considers how many times he saw that happen in Oakland, the grim line of Eugenio’s mouth pressed into neutrality when some umpire called him hotheaded, or a reporter mispronounced his name, or he got forced into being an interpreter because the team was too cheap to get one.
“Henry says I need to be prepared for people not to be cool about this,” Zach says. “For people to take time, or to cut off contact. That some guys might not want to share a clubhouse with me. That the team might look for reasons not to renew my contract.”
“Some of that happened when I told the Gothams. But less than I thought it would from the other players. Some of the older coaches were assholes, but it turns out, when your star player doesn’t want to work with you, you have to figure your shit out.”
“I’m not exactly a star.”
“You were an all-star this year. It was fairly memorable.”
“Being a good player on a bad team isn’t the same,” Zach says. “Besides, there’s not a huge market out there for aging catchers.”
“It’s more a question of what you want.”
“I want this,” Zach says, quickly, easily, gesturing between them. “I’ve seen what the other side of it looks like. I know what’s important to me now. I don’t want to break any more promises to you. Or to myself.”
“Promise me you’ll think about it.” Eugenio says it with unexpected ferocity. “That you’re not just going to let them win.”
“Let who win?”
“The Union. The league. New York sports media. Any of them.”
“It’s not really my choice.” But that feels wrong too, the same kind of powerlessness he felt in Oakland, overmatched by the team and the league and his own fears. “But if it’s a problem, I won’t be quiet about it either. If not to the public, at least with other players. Guys should know about the kinds of teams they’re signing with.”
Eugenio kisses him then, a lingering kiss. His mouth tastes like the tea they drank. He wraps his hands around Zach’s forearms, and he squeezes once, again, before releasing them. “You know, I think we waited a couple years to have this conversation.”
“We did,” Zach says. “I wish I could have figured this all out sooner.”
Eugenio leans in, kissing him again, this time with more intention. “Come to bed.”
“The dishes—” Because Eugenio has opinions about going to sleep with plates and glasses still in the sink.
“They’ll wait. I’m done waiting.”
“Yeah,” Zach says, “me too.”